Sam (ABeardedPanda)

International Relations Is Not a Morality Play: What to Expect From the War With Iran The Trump administration has no plan and no path to a good outcome.

"Militarily closing the Strait of Hormuz—i.e. preventing US Navy access to it—would be hard, but Iran doesn’t need that for an economic impact. Hostilities make ships afraid to sail, and insurance companies refuse to cover the risk."

Looks like the White House really didn't think this through.

This is a good piece, but I am struck by how he explains that Trump's brazenness has taken every 'congress must authorize' and turned it into 'congress needs a super-majority to stop.'

And I think the solution, to be frank, is in 2029 to put administration officials on trial for their illegality.

I don’t think that “accidentally” getting a Nazi tattoo means you have to be exiled from the whole of society, I do think it means you don’t get to be one of the hundred most powerful people in America. Sorry. I know that seems unfair. That’s just the way it works.

The threat posed by shaheds was 110% anticipated and anyone who says otherwise is either misinformed or lying

I'm aware that category apparently includes the SECDEF and chairman

Trump is so bad at re-industrializing we can't even manufacture consent in the United States anymore

One of these days I would like to stop being right

If anyone is friends with any Georgian air traffic controllers, buy them a nice bottle of wine. As guardians of pretty much the only narrow gap still available between Europe and Asia that avoids both Iran, the Gulf, Ukraine and Russia, they are under some substantial pressure.

Excavators Are Building Ukraine’s Drone-Era Fortifications Volunteers are supplying compact excavators to frontline units. Without them, brigades dig frozen ground by hand while drones hunt them from above.

An article from Forbes about our efforts at @libertyukraine.bsky.social to raise funds for excavators.

Thank you @tonyalevchuk.bsky.social and @andrewperpetua.bsky.social for continuous support.

Also big thanks to everyone who reposted or donated

Link below.

www.forbes.com/sites/davidk...

U.S. sub sinks Iranian warship off Sri Lanka, killing 87 and expanding war zone A U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, killing dozens of sailors and dramatically widening Washington's pursuit of the Iranian navy.

A US submarine sinking a lonely, dinky Iranian surface ship an ocean away from the theater of the main conflict—and 9000
miles from North America—makes it pretty clear the US is fighting a general war, without the declaration required by the Constitution. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

“Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is Pete Hegseth”

Carl von Clausewitz, probably.

your mission: make pete hegseth feel like a big beefy tough boy

it’s very important to remember what you post/don’t post on a niche social media site over the next few hours will determine what happens next in the middle east

I think a lot of people forget that the CoD campaign gunship levels pretty much always have a segment that sets the rules of engagement and have failure states for friendly fire or civilian casualties

A multiplayer AC-130 or Chopper Gunner is just the player blasting away

Everyone is quick to jump to the gunship levels in CoD games as the point of reference but it really is multiplayer montages of guys getting and then popping off AC-130s or Chopper Gunners

the problem with aughts critiques of games like CoD is that they all assumed that the single player campaigns were the most culturally influential forms of the medium

but more seriously have you ever wondered why DoD, cough cough DEPARTMENT OF WAR PR now seems to largely consist of killcams

a lot of critiques in aughts alleged that pentagon was influencing video games and in truth the relationship seems to be the other way around

The Trump administration putting the screws to their most consistent racist voters in the northeast, The White Men of Boston, just before the midterms seems like a bad plan

Elon has now completely given up on pretending Grok is actually a competitive model on benchmarks or task performance and the entire release PR is just hyping how anti-woke it is

gavin newsom is a very useful weathervane because he believes in nothing save the fact that he should be president

that he's making these noises about israel support should tell you how incredibly over it is for israel within the democratic party going forward

Platner is an aggressive ignoramus who shouldn't be within 100 yards of authority.

I don't think he's an idealogical Nazi, per se, but if someone read him "Protocols..." or an Alexander Stephens speech, he'd say "Hell yeah, brother!" and smash another empty Icehouse tallboy into his forehead.

Would love for WSJ or whoever is feeding them to explain what exact munitions they are speaking about here. There were 6 different articles before this thing kicked off saying the US only had enough PGMs for a 3-4 days of combat (a blatant lie).

This was pointed out by others but if he ever got any other tattoo other than the one to cover it up he *should* have learned very quickly what his mistake was unless he was yet again frequenting nazi establishments by total coincidence

i got a spiderweb tattooed on my elbow when i was 17, i am *uniquely* qualified to refute this argument. lots of people get dumb tattoos when they’re young. they don’t get totenkapfs, and if they somehow do, they get them covered a lot faster than he did

the thing is, yeah, young people do a lot of stupid shit. but they also don't follow up the "i got a totenkopf tattoo when drunk" fuck-up with going on antisemitic conspiracy theory podcasts and retweeting antisemitic shitheels

if you don't think it's a big deal, growth a set and say so

A whole lot of people are revealing that they have very strong negative opinions about Eastern European antisemitism, unlike American antisemitism which they are ambivalent to positive about

you know personally i find it's quite funny that this suddenly becomes an acceptable view to hold when the guy doing it is One of Your Own and not a Ukrainian.

.@SecRubio : "We're going to unleash Chang on these people in the next few hours and days. You're going to really begin to perceive a change in the scope and intensity of these attacks as, frankly, the two most powerful air forces in the world take apart this terroristic regime."

oh my god they USED CHANG

HE STILL DOESN'T KNOW