Frenchfold

It’s the Green Zone, with Washington playing Baghdad.

5/ And on the Strait of Hormuz, they had NO PLAN. I can't go into more detail about how Iran gums up the Strait, but suffice it say, right now, they don't know how to get it safely back open.

Which is unforgiveable, because this part of the disaster was 100% foreseeable.

I gotta tell you, long before the advent of AI, the expense of paying the writer was already, with very few exceptions, not a significant part of the cost equation. I think we’re just dealing with people who see the existence of humans as a problem to solve.

bsky.app/profile/mrpi...

Our societal systems have elevated to untold power and wealth the most bent and twisted humans among us, people who exploit their fellow humans to such a degree they learn to scorn humanity. Little wonder the tools they build seek to eliminate the problem of humans from the equation of society.

This is the whole NPC thing. It’s the lordly disdain for peasants, working people, and “low-caste” people in fancy new pajamas.

Arrogance sets the table for these stupid, simple thoughts.

War is peace and peace is war.

You know, long after we’ve all migrated away, lazy columnists will still be griping about how the politics on Bluesky are so insular and unrepresentative. It’s such a useful trope!

we are weeks away from 'Trump attempts to make horse a Senator' and the only thing stopping him is that he is too much of a sociopath to form an attachment to animals

We’re close to Nero’s human torches, too.

Matt’s byline has always made me stop to read something. I’ve gifted his books to like-minded nerds before; maybe there’s something for you in his shop.

Oh there is! Thank you!

Damn, can’t put Mastodon on my phone 😬

There is a very high interesting/cool/kind ratio here, and is much less maddening than Twitter at its height. How/where can all of us trek to together?

Exactly.

But then we’ve gotten to a really deep level of propaganda where all these people sound like Lewis Carroll wrote their lines.

Who would have guessed that the legal system in America was so fragile that a single crazy president could ignore the whole thing, from the Constitution right down to state laws?
Why does the Supreme Court and Congress let this demented moron act like the dictator of a banana republic?

holy shit

I don't think you have to Nostradamus to figure that bombing Iran might raise oil prices. And it seems pretty obvious that buying oil in advance of causing an oil price spike might just save Americans a lot of money. But...

...maybe there wasn't much planning?

oh just a thought if your plan for overthrowing the Iranian government depends on the Iranian public rising up, you likely shouldn't have defunded the American government run news agency that speaks in Farsi.

Either they didn’t think about the effect of the invasion on oil and gas prices or they did and didn’t care. I wrote a paper once distinguishing malice, recklessness, negligence, and incompetence. Sometimes you get them all at once.

Trump is the deranged figurehead and thus analysis will focus primarily upon him but none of this happens without a cadre of elites pushing for it and that is the more terrifying thought — the Republican Party proper could stop this at any time and they won’t. The party wants it.

His supporters have already followed Trump down the election denial rabbit hole. If things go very badly they won’t blame him. He’s the chosen one, right?

This is an important point: happened in the US, as we all know.

There’s no chance this comes as a surprise. And The Don, or so we’re told, loves and understands the Gulf States.

This is one of those moments when you have to wonder if there’s an evil plan, or they really are so stupid that they’re just going by his “gut”.

Trump's decision to bomb Iran is now the greatest windfall to the Russian war effort on record. If it continues, it might save the Russian war economy.

This is why Greek tragedy is still being read and performed.

Well he did join the “Board of Peace,” didn’t he?

Perhaps — just putting it out there — for some reason they don’t care what the voters think?

Blowtorching diplomatic and humanitarian capacity while burning through military capabilities and alienating allies is malpractice of the highest order by the Secretary of State, the nation's top DIPLOMAT, and by the National Security Advisor. It does not help the military to kill US diplomacy. 14/

Well-informed commentators have been saying this for a while, but it’s good to have a solid study like this. The madness of McSweeney’s courting of the Labour-Reform voter is profound: he was focused on at best 8% of the Labour coalition, while this strategy drove out 36%.

So, in launching a huge bombing campaign on Iran they apparently didn't plan for:

- Who takes over;
- Interceptor shortages from sustained drone retaliation;
- How to defend US bases in the region;
- Threats to ships in the Strait of Hormuz; and
- How to evacuate Americans with airspace closed.