Great analogy.
02.03.2026 14:54 β π 242 π 30 π¬ 4 π 1Great analogy.
02.03.2026 14:54 β π 242 π 30 π¬ 4 π 1We know with a reasonable degree of confidence that the US was not assassinating reformers and former government officials. Whatever the US aims are, they are different from the Israeli aims. Which is what I said. Love this website.
02.03.2026 14:51 β π 147 π 6 π¬ 3 π 0Nonzero chance Donald eventually realizes Bibi is using him and starts rage posting about Israel. All bets are off after that because I have no idea how American politics shakes out during a US-Israeli divorce.
02.03.2026 19:22 β π 27 π 4 π¬ 0 π 0
Oh neat.
Dear @straczynski.bsky.social, please make Babylon 5 less relevant in our current politics.
Thank you.
Not for Trump, mind you. He likes their bribe money a lot! But for America, at least. These corrupt fucks have been buying politicians and retired general officers and think tanks for too fucking long.
02.03.2026 19:21 β π 5 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0There's a part of me what wonders whether the Gulf States getting rekt is a plus here.
02.03.2026 19:20 β π 8 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0Haaretz is reporting that this is already happening. Qatar is panicking because it expects to exhaust its patriot missiles inventory in about 4 days.
02.03.2026 19:18 β π 6 π 3 π¬ 0 π 0Iran's strategy appears to be: Don't have the air defenses to counter US and Israeli attacks, don't have enough strike capacity to get through their air defenses and impose serious military costs, so hit whatever you can, including in US-partnered Gulf Arab states, and hope they push the US to stop.
02.03.2026 19:07 β π 103 π 29 π¬ 18 π 5That said, a cold winter means that European LNG stockpiles are at a low. Goldman estimates prices could spike 130% if the Straits are cut off for a month.
02.03.2026 19:18 β π 6 π 3 π¬ 1 π 0Qatar accounts for 20% of LNG capacity globally, and for the moment, it's shut down. It can't be diverted by pipeline, as Saudi oil can be. That's why European natural gas prices are up 50% (though fortunately we're at the end of winter, not the start).
02.03.2026 19:16 β π 13 π 3 π¬ 1 π 1like i said, a lot of americans are going to learn we're at war this week when they go to fill up their gas tanks, and we can imagine what their response will be
02.03.2026 01:25 β π 565 π 79 π¬ 19 π 2for reference, 73% of americans supported the war in iraq in 2003 β two years after 9/11 and two years of the bush administration making the case for it. this will be different, iran's in much worse shape to begin with, but it's starting wildly unpopular and will only get worse with consequences
02.03.2026 01:30 β π 908 π 135 π¬ 18 π 4Jimmy Carter walking by uniformed men with guns.
Americans upset about high fuel, low economic growth, persistent inflation, declining manufacturing jobs,and foreign policy fiascos in Iran?
Welcome, Dark Jimmy Carter
Like, we can just break shit from the sky but I am pretty sure they want Baby Shah to give them one million oil and join the so-called Board of Peace.
02.03.2026 19:01 β π 34 π 2 π¬ 1 π 0Honestly, I think eventually (as in six months to a year from now) deploy meaningful ground forces because they wonβt own a failure and canβt do... Whatever it is theyβre trying to do otherwise.
02.03.2026 18:59 β π 49 π 8 π¬ 4 π 0This is what they were hinting at on the Goldman Sach call this morning.
02.03.2026 18:59 β π 49 π 11 π¬ 2 π 0Allegedly he was openly dealing coke while bartending too so really just being a certain type of white dude is a career superpower
02.03.2026 18:55 β π 102 π 8 π¬ 1 π 0For a while, doing it again wasn't working.
02.03.2026 18:52 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0With some help from Arab scholars who appear to have originated the idea of the "Curse of Ham".
02.03.2026 18:43 β π 4 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0Fun fact: the system of racialised hierarchy which put black people at the bottom was first invented in Medieval Europe to justify continuing to exclude converted Jews, Mulsims and Pagans from being part of the Christian community!
02.03.2026 18:42 β π 14 π 3 π¬ 1 π 0Also a large part of the prohibition coalition only wanted to ban hard liquor while leaving beer and wine legal. When the maximalists got their way the coalition broke up and as a result enforcement never commanded a political majority.
02.03.2026 18:28 β π 11 π 1 π¬ 1 π 0
Absolutely. Low-alcohol wine and beer was the safe drink of choice going all the way back to ancient times and throughout the middle ages.
One interesting aspect of that is the advent of tea and then coffee helped immensely and partially supplanted it, because you were then boiling your water.
The answer to this riddle is virtually every non-Catholic, non-John Dewey intellectual in the early 20th century was into eugenics
02.03.2026 18:32 β π 4 π 1 π¬ 0 π 0A related thing people have a hard time grasping from our modern perspective is Jim Crow segregationists were often also agrarian economic populists, it wasn't the later Buckley/Reagan fusionism of small government free market stuff + social conservativism.
02.03.2026 18:07 β π 37 π 2 π¬ 0 π 0All of which was also tied up in Progressive stuff more broadly, which is why it's really problematic to equate late 19th / early 20th C. "progressives" with our modern sense of the word.
02.03.2026 18:02 β π 42 π 4 π¬ 2 π 0Temperance, Suffrage, and Eugenics were a tightly coupled package in the early 20th century and we just do not know what to do with that
02.03.2026 18:01 β π 57 π 11 π¬ 4 π 3It's not a defense of Prohibition which of course failed spectacularly, but an important thing to contextualize historically for why the temperance movement was such a big deal was that people used to drink *insane* amounts of booze compared to what we'd regard as normal today.
02.03.2026 18:00 β π 293 π 38 π¬ 26 π 12You can actually see the hamster running on the wheel in Markwayne Mullin's head when he talks.
02.03.2026 18:25 β π 52 π 2 π¬ 4 π 0
"President Hegseth's been there"
π