Andy Harbison

Windows 11 has an updated Minesweeper game

A little offended Grammarly didn't make a sloppelganger of me

I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public.

I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.

1/ Here's what I can share:

Turns out the US Secretary of Energy’s tweet that the US Navy was escorting tankers turned out the be BS (I wonder if he was shorting the price of Brent Crude). So we’ll see what it does in the morning
In the past, commodity prices had some bearing in reality. Nowadays its just another roulette game

We opened fire on them in the middle of negotiations. Why on earth would they go back to the table?

Check my LinkedIn if you’re obsessed about it. I use my real name.

The Kuwait Emergency Response Project, KERP. I was on the electricity grid, but I had all the fun of choking smoke, corpses lying around.

First time I’ve ever been pursued by a reply guy. Maybe you ought to talk to a therapist?

With free to read link

as.ft.com/r/1754a96b-d...

Accidental.

But the point stands. Oil catches fire, and who would know better than the Iranians how to ignite it?

Too many people applying wishful thinking to this conflict. Talk now of the U.K. sending a destroyer to reopen the strait 🙄. They have 6, 3 in drydock, so that isn’t going to happen.

Soon, an oil-bro heavy on shorts will show you a screendump or even recordings from your favorite AIS-service stating that Hormuz strait is open.

These are the ships "transiting" right now. Ask you local sailor if shipping looks like that.

Repeat after me: real data or it did not happen.

Strait - freaking autocorrect

Tankers are expensive and, for the moment, impossible to insure passing through the Hormuz Straight. They’re also really easy to set on fire.

Don’t hold your breath on those transits.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower

If your alternate outcomes are being dead, being overthrown (and also probably dead) or being bombed again in 12 months (and being dead) sowing chaos probably looks pretty good.

I think you’re missing the basic games theory. Get hit once and you might shrug it off, hoping to avoid a fight. Get hit a second time, you’re in a fight whether you like it or not.

The Iranian regime’s intent might be to deter a third air attack. Sowing economic chaos for a while serves that goal.

I far from certain there are many in the Kuwaiti hierarchy that learned anything that might be of use in a drone war.

And places like Shuaiba, Burgan and their de-sal plants are horribly vulnerable to attack and damn near impossible to defend.

They were well armed against Afghanistan *and* they had boots on the ground, and they still lost. Eventually you run out of strategically useful bombing targets.

Drones are not hard to build and tankers are big, slow, vulnerable targets. It would not take a lot to keep the Hormuz straight closed.

Having lived in Kuwait, Alexander, this is a rubbish take.

A large proportion of the Kuwaiti population cleared out after the liberation and had to be threatened by the Emir to return. There is a hard core of patriotic types, but it isn’t large. And the only war that mattered was the 90-91 one.

1. Iran gets a say on whether it ends or not, and it is in their interests to weaken Trump and deter further attacks.

2. What lunatic would invest money in this overpriced, vibe-driven roulette wheel of a market?

Sorry, Strait of Hormuz. 🙄

I can’t see why Iran would give up right now. If they do, the US can just wait until they’re better prepared and attack again - as they’ve already demonstrated they will. Iran has demonstrated it can inflict enormous economic pain - pain Trump can’t stand - and they’ll definitely want payback.

💯This is the point few seem to be considering. Trump lies all the time. For him the truth is what he can induce other people to believe. To plan any long term strategy on his words is irrational.

It is easy for Iran to keep peppering the Gulf of Hormuz with Shaheds until they get what they want.

Just slaughtering people outside a declaration of war is murder - for decades it was practically synonymous with terrorism.

I think you should read the article. My point is they were claiming protections provided to combatants in respect of USS Charlotte in the case of war when no war had been declared. There was also a thin argument about not providing aid because doing so would place the sub under threat- from what?

Movies that cost less to make than disgraced former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's $220M ad campaign:

Iron Man
The Matrix
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Top Gun: Maverick
Barbie
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2)
The Hunger Games
Oppenheimer

Also, one of the authors is a serving US officer - hardly the most neutral of sources.

It misses the important point as to whether or not the Dena was in a truce at the time of the attack due to its participation in MILAN 26.

Also, these rules apply to two countries in a state of war - something the US government denies is the case, so as to avoid seeking Congressional authorisation.

the president has no idea what he has set in motion. none.

www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

The DOJ released evidence, which the FBI deemed credible, that the President of the United States sexually and physically assaulted a 13 year old girl AND she was afraid to talk about it because Trump would kill her—and it’s somehow not the biggest scandal in American history?

love how we killed the old, frail anti-nuke ayatollah just to have him replaced with his young, healthy son who wants nukes and who just had his father, mother, wife, and child murdered on the same day by his mortal enemy. surely this will bring peace to the region

Attacks leave dead vs killed