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Not super comfy with this attack on GH. I get everyone's frustration but there's irony on both sides of GH 'mocking and gawking' and you all taking that bait if it were.
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On March 24 2026 04:03 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 01:30 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 01:01 Jankisa wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Well, apparently Trumps phone number is a public secret in Washington and everyone has it, he finds it very amusing that notifications are non stop and it never stops ringing, it makes him feel important and special, so, you never know, maybe a prank caller got through to him and convinced him he's the new Ayatollah and they agreed to terms.
Or, it's blatant and obvious market manipulation as it was countless times before, we are all laughing at how stupid Trump is while everyone behind him is making bank and raking it in at the expense of everyone without the inside information on the timing of his insanity and stupidity. On March 24 2026 00:26 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 23 2026 21:37 LightSpectra wrote:
Don't feed the trolls. Genuinely, what else would you all do? We can always engage with you some more, haven't been called a "White moderate" in a while. I find it funny that, instead of, like many others deciding to come in here and engage when topics that you are interested in (economic injustice, AI) are discussed in order to contribute something, anything outside your usual incredibly unproductive and repetitive shtick, instead of that you come in to "troll" people you don't like by calling them out for engaging with bad faith posters/trolls. As always, your lack of self awareness is amazing! I engaged fine with the AI discussion. But even by your own measure, your answer is effectively "I don't know". It was a genuine question, because I haven't really seen any evidence lately that you all are even capable of any prolonged discussion about US politics that isn't primarily/exclusively the "usual incredibly unproductive and repetitive shtick" mocking and gawking/feeding trolls. I mean I obviously have opinions about it, but I'm just pointing out a factual observation, judgement aside. In all seriousness, how many pages do you think you all could go just picking a/some US politics topics besides the "usual incredibly unproductive and repetitive [ mock and gawk] shtick" and discussing it among yourselves while ignoring trolls? Careful now - the last time you quoted me twice in a single post and I made a joke about it, you became incredibly angry and called me a shitposter! You're criticizing others for repeating their same old feeding-the-trolls preference, all the while copy/pasting the same old quotes and phrases about mocking and gawking. Besides, plenty of posts over the past few days have been people engaging with baal and others, not solely with JJR or oBlade. And while I think that baal was mistaken on many of his points and flippant remarks and one-liners (which have already been addressed by others), I don't think baal is a troll per se. Would you consider baal to be a troll?
Not angry, just descriptive.
Again, I obviously have opinions, but I genuinely can't point to any significant discussion about US politics that you guys have maintained among yourselves that isn't/doesn't quickly turn to primarily/exclusively the typical of mock and gawk/feed the troll spam you all ostensibly don't want to be doing.
My perception was that the obvious attempts to humiliate and shame baal into silence was indicative that being a "troll" would be the lighter indictment. "Troll" or otherwise, the part that interests me/relating to US politics is how "das kleinere Übel" won and facilitated the fascists, in a "rhyming" kind of way to how it won in the US only to facilitate the takeover by the fascists here.
I get you guys have different interests in the type of political discussions you like to have here, that's fine. Beyond any opinions I have about the value of what's happening, I'm just pointing out some observable facts. In the process, I've been developing a better understanding of why this is so upsetting for some of you.
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Yeah, at this point it's groundhogs day and no one actually gets anything out of it, I kind of agree and regret my participation.
EDIT: Ugh, yeah, people pointing out that baals confidently wrong opinions are wrong = shaming him into silence, what a take GH! I guess that is a stance you take when you think that you are disliked because everyone else is a "white moderate" and not because you are a Tankie who has 0 realistic plans on how to fix shit or because you are a pretentious douche who keeps spamming the same tired quotes and "points".
Let's talk about something fun instead, like insane levels of corruption.
Exhibit 1:
At around 6:50 a.m. in New York, S&P 500 e-Mini futures trading on the CME recorded a sharp and isolated jump in volume.
Exhibit 2:
A similar pattern was observed in oil markets. West Texas Intermediate May futures also saw a noticeable pickup in trading activity at roughly the same time, with a distinct volume spike interrupting otherwise quiet conditions.
Source from CNBC.
Sure looks to me like what I mentioned before, 15 minutes before Trump decided to lie in order to manipulate markets, pre-market trading had an unusual spike that is very easy to explain if you aren't in a cult.
Now, I'm not an economist, historian or expert on finance, but to me, this seems unprecedented and absolutely insane.
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On March 24 2026 04:45 Fleetfeet wrote:
Not super comfy with this attack on GH. I get everyone's frustration but there's irony on both sides of GH 'mocking and gawking' and you all taking that bait if it were.
I guess it could be the case that GH has been warning us not to engage with himself.
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On March 24 2026 04:45 Fleetfeet wrote:
Not super comfy with this attack on GH. I get everyone's frustration but there's irony on both sides of GH 'mocking and gawking' and you all taking that bait if it were.
I reject the premise. Mockery is a valid rhetorical technique. GH uses it themself in almost all of their posts. They could attempt contributing to the conversation instead of spamming copypasta if they wanted a good faith conversation.
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On March 24 2026 04:45 Fleetfeet wrote:
Not super comfy with this attack on GH. I get everyone's frustration but there's irony on both sides of GH 'mocking and gawking' and you all taking that bait if it were.
I've weathered worse.
On March 24 2026 04:53 Jankisa wrote:Yeah, at this point it's groundhogs day and no one actually gets anything out of it, I kind of agree and regret my participation. EDIT: Ugh, yeah, people pointing out that baals confidently wrong opinions are wrong = shaming him into silence, what a take GH! I guess that is a stance you take when you think that you are disliked because everyone else is a "white moderate" and not because you are a Tankie who has 0 realistic plans on how to fix shit or because you are a pretentious douche who keeps spamming the same tired quotes and "points". Let's talk about something fun instead, like insane levels of corruption. + Show Spoiler +Exhibit 1: At around 6:50 a.m. in New York, S&P 500 e-Mini futures trading on the CME recorded a sharp and isolated jump in volume. Exhibit 2: A similar pattern was observed in oil markets. West Texas Intermediate May futures also saw a noticeable pickup in trading activity at roughly the same time, with a distinct volume spike interrupting otherwise quiet conditions. Source from CNBC. Sure looks to me like what I mentioned before, 15 minutes before Trump decided to lie in order to manipulate markets, pre-market trading had an unusual spike that is very easy to explain if you aren't in a cult. Now, I'm not an economist, historian or expert on finance, but to me, this seems unprecedented and absolutely insane.
Maybe the 8238457th time mentioning Trump's corruption will be the winner!
On March 24 2026 04:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 04:45 Fleetfeet wrote:
Not super comfy with this attack on GH. I get everyone's frustration but there's irony on both sides of GH 'mocking and gawking' and you all taking that bait if it were. I guess it could be the case that GH has been warning us not to engage with himself.
I've repeatedly indicated that what I'm suggesting isn't necessarily engaging with me (or even a specific topic I prefer), but with US politics among each other (sans me or Sartres) beyond the typical mock and gawk based on your own assertions that it is ostensibly what you'd prefer to do.
You guys have basically turned into those polls where people oppose their own ideas when the wrong person repeats them back to them.
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On March 24 2026 05:15 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 04:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 24 2026 04:45 Fleetfeet wrote:
Not super comfy with this attack on GH. I get everyone's frustration but there's irony on both sides of GH 'mocking and gawking' and you all taking that bait if it were. I guess it could be the case that GH has been warning us not to engage with himself. I've repeatedly indicated that what I'm suggesting isn't necessarily engaging with me (or even a specific topic I prefer), but with US politics among each other (sans me or Sartres) beyond the typical mock and gawk based on your own assertions that it is ostensibly what you'd prefer to do. You guys have basically turned into those polls where people oppose their own ideas when the wrong person repeats them back to them.
Do you have an example of me doing that in this thread?
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On March 24 2026 05:23 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 05:15 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 04:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 24 2026 04:45 Fleetfeet wrote:
Not super comfy with this attack on GH. I get everyone's frustration but there's irony on both sides of GH 'mocking and gawking' and you all taking that bait if it were. I guess it could be the case that GH has been warning us not to engage with himself. I've repeatedly indicated that what I'm suggesting isn't necessarily engaging with me (or even a specific topic I prefer), but with US politics among each other (sans me or Sartres) beyond the typical mock and gawk based on your own assertions that it is ostensibly what you'd prefer to do. You guys have basically turned into those polls where people oppose their own ideas when the wrong person repeats them back to them. Do you have an example of me doing that in this thread?
...Yes.
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On March 24 2026 05:34 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 05:23 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 24 2026 05:15 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 04:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 24 2026 04:45 Fleetfeet wrote:
Not super comfy with this attack on GH. I get everyone's frustration but there's irony on both sides of GH 'mocking and gawking' and you all taking that bait if it were. I guess it could be the case that GH has been warning us not to engage with himself. I've repeatedly indicated that what I'm suggesting isn't necessarily engaging with me (or even a specific topic I prefer), but with US politics among each other (sans me or Sartres) beyond the typical mock and gawk based on your own assertions that it is ostensibly what you'd prefer to do. You guys have basically turned into those polls where people oppose their own ideas when the wrong person repeats them back to them. Do you have an example of me doing that in this thread? ... Yes.
...Where?
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On March 23 2026 17:22 KT_Elwood wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2026 17:10 Acrofales wrote:On March 22 2026 16:45 KT_Elwood wrote:
Free speech:
"Charlie Kirk (right wing agitator) was a debateable character"
-> You lose your job <-
"Glad that Mueller (Former head of FBI) is dead, so he can no longer hurt innocent people"
-> You stay president"<-
Human rights and Geneva convention and the war:
"Make gas cheaper or we bomb civil infrastructure with our toilet starved aircraftcarrier that is also on fire"
It's time that Europe... finally... 'taxes' US tech, especially AI. Like make employers pay the same amount for social insurance for every install/license of CoPilot, ChadGPT... as they already are paying for the employee who uses them.
IF AI really replaces people, it should pay for their healthcare - or kill them, just be of consequence.
I'm sure Americans like it just as much as I like this post telling us what to do. Taxing employers for the use of AI is an absurd angle that'll immediately kill any homegrown innovation in the area, with a long-term impact of making Europe MORE reliant on US/China AI tech, not less.There are about a million ways of doing this so it doesn't hurt local innovation and is a broader tax on US tech, most of which are under consideration by the EU, but they all have downsides that need to be considered. It isn't an easy problem. But charging social security fees for AI usage is nuts. The "AI" I want to be "Taxed" can be bought only from US companies. Either directly or indirectly by building your own Datacenters with US technology. The datacenters are a dystopian feverdream of having bodyless slaves generated by stolen ideas... that you rent out to customers, but can only exist in a billion dollar infrastructure that will have only a malvolent oligarchy owning them. Right now it's a infinite Money powered idiocracy.. and if you "Tax" it... investors maybe kill 1/3 of the DOW and besides gas prices.. that's the only number that will make congress consider of finally taking action. Also it totlaly fits the german problem of employees directly paying for current pensioners, while german companies move jobs abroad, creating more pensioners and pay less and less for pensioners.
A more complete answer below, and other people, like Velr, have addressed the core economic issue here. But both you and Jankisa seem to think AI is profitable for the providers. Let me make it absolutely clear: it is not.
While I fully sympathize with the basic ideas here: Germany needs to find a way to better structure their economy to pay for pensioners (honestly, Spain's migration policy is rather productive atm and I'd suggest copying it rather than all the xenophobia, but Spain is probably going full right-wing xenophobic fascism next general elections, so we're just delaying the fuckedness). Simultaneously, Europe does need to invest in keeping data and compute local. But "social security for AI" is a dumb take regardless. And as promised, more below.
On March 23 2026 21:11 Jankisa wrote:
I personally believe that the only way for EU to actually come out of the AI economy as anything other then a vassal of USA/China is to focus and insist on locally hosted open source AIs.
Mistral is a good start, but if each of the EU nations had their own lab and started from the open weight available LLMs and trained them up and specialized them for use cases most important to local economies and then make these AIs available to businesses instead of having them pay exorbitant amounts to USA or Chinese companies in order to stay competitive on the world stage that would allow us to keep our AI sovereignty.
This, of course, would NEED to go hand in hand with a divorce from USA tech giants, including replacing all of the Microsoft stack and providing companies with "EU OS" that would come preloaded with the MS software stack replacements for seamless transitions, it would also require going away from AWS, Google Cloud and Azure and instead investing in EU alternatives and building up Datacenter capacity.
A lot of these things are stated by EU politicians as goals and something to strive for but it seems like there is a tremendous pressure fighting against it from huge multinationals and USA in general.
A good example are attempts at creating the Digital Euro which is being attacked by bank conglomerates who, apparently love to be at the mercy of USA credit card companies, or, more realistically just like that we are as a world moving into the Cyberpunk Tech oligarchy where they will get a seat at the table while everyone else is in servitude.
Firstly, AI companies are not raking in the cash. Or maybe they are, but they are making insane losses. OpenAI just closed a massive funding round based not on their current revenue, which is deep in the red, but on the promise that they will be profitable in 2030 and that prognosis is completely delusional. Right now, Europe by not investing is getting AI heavily discounted. OpenAI: deep underwater. Anthropic: deep underwater. xAI: lol. Google: obviously profitable, but they are maybe at best breaking even on all the AI compute. The Chinese models have already shown the way: you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Between distillation (Anthropic moaned loudly about it the other day), open models and fundamental algorithmic advances, what was built yesterday is worthless tomorrow. Mistral is a cool company, but they are losing the race, not because they lack the brains, but because they don't have billions of VC capital to burn on loss-leading nonsense. Where I believe there's a real niche is in LLMs for smaller languages. Brazil had a good idea there with taking the lead on the Portuguese-first models, but Brazil also has a bigger need than most of Europe, with generally good English education. That said, I notice a significant drop, in particular in voice models, when using Spanish compared to English. My bet is it's worse for French, even worse for German and Italian and absolute crap in all other European languages. So democratizing AI by focusing on non-English models seems like a quick win for a publicly funded AI project, especially if transfer learning can be easily leveraged to specialize something like Llama or Qwen for multiple languages. That said, for most current applications, keep "paying" the American companies that are making massive losses on the current evolutions. Given how easy it is to switch models, when they start increasing the prices to the actual cost of the compute is when many companies will start considering more carefully what needs to happen here.
Secondly, AI infrastructure. Currently it's a feeding frenzy and all but guaranteed money sink.The mega datacenters that are promised worldwide are more vaporware than anything else atm. I find it rather hilarious that OpenAI pulled out of a large datacenter deal with Oracle, leaving them to foot the bill because by the time the construction is done, all the GPUs Oracle already bought from Nvidia are going to be deprecated for the compute OpenAI wanted them for. That's how insane things are atm, and I fully agree that taking a step back and just waiting is a perfectly valid approach. Especially as all those big companies are building the datacenters in Euorpe anyway. You seem to have some idea that if Google gets my data that is worse for me than if Mistral gets my data. The only difference is US-security issues, but as long as I don't piss off the FBI the GDPR basically guarantees there is not a lot of difference. Google cannot use my proprietary data (unless I opt-in) to train their models, and neither can Mistral.
Thirdly, right now any AI-specific tax would hit small companies far harder than big companies. The current innovation isn't in a Block that is laying off employees "in favor of AI" (stop believing the press releases, neither Amazon nor Block are laying off people because of AI, it's just a convenient excuse that keeps shareholders happy when they need to lay people off regardless due to disappointing productivity numbers). The current innovations are in people like Peter Steinberger taking a few weeks to build an insane (albeit completely insecure) AI system (openclaw). Or all the other smallscale projects that people are suddenly able to build on their own, or in a small team. Not because previously they didn't have these ideas, but because previously to build an app you needed an idea, some design, a backender, a frontender (or a full stack developer) and a few months of work. Now someone with a reasonable level of critical thinking and some general programming experience can have an idea and fire it off with a $20 monthly AI subscription on Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor or any other system. This isn't lowering productivity: these things would otherwise never have been built. Are all of these ideas good? No, probably not. Before the AI boom I think the metric was 95% of startups going bust. This will probably stay stable or even go up. But it definitely democratizes innovation further and faster than ever before. If you wanted to tax AI specifically, these are the companies hit hardest, not the Googles of the world.
That said, I am a huge proponent of many of the ideas floating around, particularly at EU level to tax corporations on the money they extract from EU citizens. I'm also a huge fan of critical controls on social media and content platforms. And a big proponent of finally considering software and networking as critical security infrastructure that shouldn't just be outsourced to some random consultancy because governments are too lazy to build it themselves. Similarly, AI infrastructure is necessary. Any governmental and military applications would need to be developed in-house by EU AI-companies, because outsourcing that to the US would be just as stupid as relying on them for our jet figh... oh. Well, as the Dutch like to say, even a donkey doesn't bang itself on the same stone twice.
Anyway, enough rambling. I think it's clear that I am a big proponent for Europe-wide market protection of digital services. It's just worth noting that just because silicon valley is collectively losing their minds in trying to see who can bankrupt themselves fastest means we should join the race. Watch China though, they have the right idea.
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On March 24 2026 04:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 04:45 Fleetfeet wrote:
Not super comfy with this attack on GH. I get everyone's frustration but there's irony on both sides of GH 'mocking and gawking' and you all taking that bait if it were. I guess it could be the case that GH has been warning us not to engage with himself.
At least in this method yeah. I'm sure he'd be happy to whir in socialist circles another round, but this 'attack GH' angle is just as fruitful as engaging with oBlade imo.
Not seeing attempts to 'silence' baal tho, just pushing for better understanding of what they're trying to say. They're consistently just wrong about 'facts' they report (see - Dankula saga starting with being sent to jail when that didn't happen, and recent being objectively wrong on several points regarding the rise of hitler) so it's hard to understand what they're driving at without doing a little digging.
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On March 24 2026 05:49 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 05:34 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 05:23 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 24 2026 05:15 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 04:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 24 2026 04:45 Fleetfeet wrote:
Not super comfy with this attack on GH. I get everyone's frustration but there's irony on both sides of GH 'mocking and gawking' and you all taking that bait if it were. I guess it could be the case that GH has been warning us not to engage with himself. I've repeatedly indicated that what I'm suggesting isn't necessarily engaging with me (or even a specific topic I prefer), but with US politics among each other (sans me or Sartres) beyond the typical mock and gawk based on your own assertions that it is ostensibly what you'd prefer to do. You guys have basically turned into those polls where people oppose their own ideas when the wrong person repeats them back to them. Do you have an example of me doing that in this thread? ... Yes. ...Where?
Right there. ChristianS tried to explain it to you this way:
On November 19 2025 00:14 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2025 19:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 18 2025 15:10 ChristianS wrote:On November 18 2025 09:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 18 2025 08:09 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 18 2025 06:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 18 2025 05:01 WombaT wrote:On November 18 2025 04:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 18 2025 02:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 18 2025 01:51 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote] Hell yeah, better late than never!
Can we turn that into a reasonable metric for primaries in 2026 and beyond? That works for me, for both the primary elections and the general elections. Hopefully Trump doesn't decide to run for a third term, so I would implore Dems to focus less on him (the past/present) and focus more on the future. I also hope they make a concerted effort to outline a helpful, positive, pro-left agenda (similar to Mamdani and Sanders), as opposed to running a campaign that's just anti-right / anti-Republican (even as many Democrats still ultimately run against MAGA Republicans). I'd go so far as to say that even when running against an incumbent (either for Congress or for the presidency), the messaging should still be at least mostly positive and mostly aimed towards things you want to implement and improve, as opposed to having mostly anti-opposition messaging. I think you misunderstand. I'm asking if we can turn your assertion that Dems should instead be energizing and galvanizing the left instead of trying to convince the right that they're gullible cult followers into a metric for who to primary in 2026. As in, can we look at who is doing which and use that as a reasonable metric to determine which Democrats need to be primaried in 2026? I'm also curious if you (or any Democrat supporters) can identify any Democrats that need to be primaried in 2026 based on that or any other metric? Why do you want to primary them? Do you want to do so because you think it’ll make a vaguely similar platform win with a better quality of candidate, or do you want a completely different platform that you think can also win and is a better platform? Those are good questions for DPB and other people who believe it is a viable strategy moving forward. I look forward to seeing their answers... On November 18 2025 05:22 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 18 2025 04:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 18 2025 02:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 18 2025 01:51 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote] Hell yeah, better late than never!
Can we turn that into a reasonable metric for primaries in 2026 and beyond? That works for me, for both the primary elections and the general elections. Hopefully Trump doesn't decide to run for a third term, so I would implore Dems to focus less on him (the past/present) and focus more on the future. I also hope they make a concerted effort to outline a helpful, positive, pro-left agenda (similar to Mamdani and Sanders), as opposed to running a campaign that's just anti-right / anti-Republican (even as many Democrats still ultimately run against MAGA Republicans). I'd go so far as to say that even when running against an incumbent (either for Congress or for the presidency), the messaging should still be at least mostly positive and mostly aimed towards things you want to implement and improve, as opposed to having mostly anti-opposition messaging. I think you misunderstand. I'm asking if we can turn your assertion that Dems should instead be energizing and galvanizing the left instead of trying to convince the right that they're gullible cult followers into a metric for who to primary in 2026. As in, can we look at who is doing which and use that as a reasonable metric to determine which Democrats need to be primaried in 2026? I'm also curious if you (or any Democrat supporters) can identify any Democrats that need to be primaried in 2026 based on that or any other metric? + Show Spoiler +Yes, I think we can use it as a metric for who to primary in 2026. In my opinion, just because a seat is already blue doesn't mean it can't be a better version of blue. I hope that more left-wing progressive politicians are willing to challenge moderate-left incumbents, and if that happens in elections that I can vote in, I'll happily support those further-left progressive challengers. I don't have the time or bandwidth right now to look into future seats that I hope will soon be challenged + Show Spoiler +during the next election cycle, but when they do happen in spaces where I can vote (local, state, national), I pay attention to who's running and try to help whoever I consider to be the best option. You're not alone. Which is a major contributor to why it doesn't happen/hasn't happened often enough to work at scale. It takes people like you (who already spend more time and bandwidth than most investigating and discussing politics) making time and bandwidth for it. It's also part of why I've been asking you about Booker. How does he score on your metrics for if he needs to be primaried or not? Your metrics are pretty useless/hopeless if you can't/refuse to apply them to your own Senator in 2026. Otherwise it's basically just another iteration of the hollow/useless rhetoric I described before This question is irrelevant because I'm not in charge of whether or not a candidate gets primaried. I don't get to choose who gets primaried and who doesn't. When the time comes for him to run for re-election, and if/when he has to run against an alternative primary challenger, I'll assess how he "scores on my metrics" and compare that to how his opponent "scores on my metrics" in 2026. It's on a relative scale, between two or more actual candidates. I'll cross that bridge if/when we come to it. And as I said at the very beginning, this should be done "for both the primary elections and the general elections". (This also is nothing new, and it's what all of us have been doing for years already.) That failure to recognize where those "alternative primary challengers" come from and when/why they are necessary is part of why your rhetoric about your metrics are really just empty clichés that are hopeless at actually making the changes in the Democrat party that you ostensibly want. It's not just you that thinks like this. It's basically every "improve the Democrats from within" type I've ever encountered (that hasn't abandoned the party at this point) that is waiting for a "bridge" to cross, instead of doing the obviously necessary work to build it. Then when the bridge doesn't magically manifest or (despite other people's hard work) is less prefered than the established road (to apocalyptic climate catastrophes among others), the "only rational choice" is to choose the scenic route to apocalypse over the shortcut offered by the other party. As ChristianS suggested, ...In more stable times maybe that could be tolerated, but in this moment we don’t have room for complacency. If someone can fight, they should do it, if they can’t they should retire. I'd add (and I think ChristianS might agree?) that we all have to work on identifying who these politicians that aren't sufficiently fighting are prior to the date to file for a primary so we can plan accordingly. If they don't/won't retire, then they should be primaried. I also think I might agree! I mean I don’t begrudge DPB wanting to focus on his own representatives and/or specific (rather than abstract) candidates, but at the same time I think it’s perfectly valid for me to say “Chuck Schumer should be replaced as caucus leader” even though I don’t have an alternative leader in mind and I’m not one of the people who gets to vote on that. And if I ask someone if they agree and they say “well, I don’t get a vote on that” that feels like a dodge. Sure. And if you ask a voter what their perspective is on politician X and the voter tells you that they honestly haven't yet had a chance to research the politician to the extent they're satisfied with / to the extent you're looking for - but that the voter is definitely going to do a deep dive into politician X soon, and the voter would be happy to get back to you with their thoughts on politician X when they have more time - it might not be the most persuasive move for you to then condescendingly lecture that voter on how the voter's eventual assessment is probably nothing more than "empty clichés that are hopeless" and that the voter is actually "refusing to apply metrics" just because they don't immediately have an answer the moment you asked them a question. (When I write "you", I'm not referring to you, ChristianS.) Sure, I get it. GH comes across as a scold, and it’s completely reasonable to say “I haven’t done the research to have a full answer to that question right now.” + Show Spoiler +I don’t even know how many Dem Senators I can name off the top of my head, I certainly don’t have pro and con lists for each one, and I’m not more motivated to do that work because, like, what am I gonna do with it anyway? Write about it here I guess?
That said, I shared that Josh Marshall piece talking about more or less this issue. Something he’s enthused about is that despite the fumble at the finish line, the Dems at the end of the year were still night and day from the Dems back in March or whatever. Back then Schumer made them agree to some bullshit CR because he didn’t think it was the right time to fight or something. That decision got ridiculed all year, and that crowd got so spooked they waited more than a month to cave, and created all this theater around it when they finally caved because they’re scared of the blowback they’ll get.
So to me what GH (or if you prefer, Josh Marshall) is talking about is just follow-through. We’ve got them running scared, now we need to track them to their hidey-holes – if they’re not willing to fight, they need to give up their seat to someone who will. This political moment requires an opposition that’s willing and able to fight back.
I mean, thinking about the endgame here: the only constitutional remedy to most of these abuses is impeachment. Of course we all know GH is not putting his faith in “constitutional remedies” – he’s hoping we all see the futility of that and join his revolution – but something I think he’d agree with me on is that a large majority of Americans (including the ones he’ll need to persuade for his revolution to work) still believe in the power of those systems. They’re going to need to see them fail before they’re willing to entertain his ideas. So either they mobilize and the constitutional remedies succeed, or they fail and people become open to more radical solutions (maybe his solutions, maybe not). What I’m scared of (and maybe he is too) is that people are already too jaded to mobilize in the first place – they vaguely believe in the abstract that electoral solutions are the “right way” and reject his revolutionary talk, but then they turn around and don’t do what the electoral solutions would require either. That’s the loss condition here, imo.
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On March 24 2026 06:04 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 05:49 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 24 2026 05:34 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 05:23 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 24 2026 05:15 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 04:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 24 2026 04:45 Fleetfeet wrote:
Not super comfy with this attack on GH. I get everyone's frustration but there's irony on both sides of GH 'mocking and gawking' and you all taking that bait if it were. I guess it could be the case that GH has been warning us not to engage with himself. I've repeatedly indicated that what I'm suggesting isn't necessarily engaging with me (or even a specific topic I prefer), but with US politics among each other (sans me or Sartres) beyond the typical mock and gawk based on your own assertions that it is ostensibly what you'd prefer to do. You guys have basically turned into those polls where people oppose their own ideas when the wrong person repeats them back to them. Do you have an example of me doing that in this thread? ... Yes. ...Where? Right there. ChristianS tried to explain it to you this way: Show nested quote +On November 19 2025 00:14 ChristianS wrote:On November 18 2025 19:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 18 2025 15:10 ChristianS wrote:On November 18 2025 09:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 18 2025 08:09 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 18 2025 06:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 18 2025 05:01 WombaT wrote:On November 18 2025 04:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 18 2025 02:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
[quote]
That works for me, for both the primary elections and the general elections. Hopefully Trump doesn't decide to run for a third term, so I would implore Dems to focus less on him (the past/present) and focus more on the future. I also hope they make a concerted effort to outline a helpful, positive, pro-left agenda (similar to Mamdani and Sanders), as opposed to running a campaign that's just anti-right / anti-Republican (even as many Democrats still ultimately run against MAGA Republicans).
I'd go so far as to say that even when running against an incumbent (either for Congress or for the presidency), the messaging should still be at least mostly positive and mostly aimed towards things you want to implement and improve, as opposed to having mostly anti-opposition messaging. I think you misunderstand. I'm asking if we can turn your assertion that Dems should instead be energizing and galvanizing the left instead of trying to convince the right that they're gullible cult followers into a metric for who to primary in 2026. As in, can we look at who is doing which and use that as a reasonable metric to determine which Democrats need to be primaried in 2026? I'm also curious if you (or any Democrat supporters) can identify any Democrats that need to be primaried in 2026 based on that or any other metric? Why do you want to primary them? Do you want to do so because you think it’ll make a vaguely similar platform win with a better quality of candidate, or do you want a completely different platform that you think can also win and is a better platform? Those are good questions for DPB and other people who believe it is a viable strategy moving forward. I look forward to seeing their answers... On November 18 2025 05:22 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 18 2025 04:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 18 2025 02:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
[quote]
That works for me, for both the primary elections and the general elections. Hopefully Trump doesn't decide to run for a third term, so I would implore Dems to focus less on him (the past/present) and focus more on the future. I also hope they make a concerted effort to outline a helpful, positive, pro-left agenda (similar to Mamdani and Sanders), as opposed to running a campaign that's just anti-right / anti-Republican (even as many Democrats still ultimately run against MAGA Republicans).
I'd go so far as to say that even when running against an incumbent (either for Congress or for the presidency), the messaging should still be at least mostly positive and mostly aimed towards things you want to implement and improve, as opposed to having mostly anti-opposition messaging. I think you misunderstand. I'm asking if we can turn your assertion that Dems should instead be energizing and galvanizing the left instead of trying to convince the right that they're gullible cult followers into a metric for who to primary in 2026. As in, can we look at who is doing which and use that as a reasonable metric to determine which Democrats need to be primaried in 2026? I'm also curious if you (or any Democrat supporters) can identify any Democrats that need to be primaried in 2026 based on that or any other metric? + Show Spoiler +Yes, I think we can use it as a metric for who to primary in 2026. In my opinion, just because a seat is already blue doesn't mean it can't be a better version of blue. I hope that more left-wing progressive politicians are willing to challenge moderate-left incumbents, and if that happens in elections that I can vote in, I'll happily support those further-left progressive challengers. I don't have the time or bandwidth right now to look into future seats that I hope will soon be challenged + Show Spoiler +during the next election cycle, but when they do happen in spaces where I can vote (local, state, national), I pay attention to who's running and try to help whoever I consider to be the best option. You're not alone. Which is a major contributor to why it doesn't happen/hasn't happened often enough to work at scale. It takes people like you (who already spend more time and bandwidth than most investigating and discussing politics) making time and bandwidth for it. It's also part of why I've been asking you about Booker. How does he score on your metrics for if he needs to be primaried or not? Your metrics are pretty useless/hopeless if you can't/refuse to apply them to your own Senator in 2026. Otherwise it's basically just another iteration of the hollow/useless rhetoric I described before This question is irrelevant because I'm not in charge of whether or not a candidate gets primaried. I don't get to choose who gets primaried and who doesn't. When the time comes for him to run for re-election, and if/when he has to run against an alternative primary challenger, I'll assess how he "scores on my metrics" and compare that to how his opponent "scores on my metrics" in 2026. It's on a relative scale, between two or more actual candidates. I'll cross that bridge if/when we come to it. And as I said at the very beginning, this should be done "for both the primary elections and the general elections". (This also is nothing new, and it's what all of us have been doing for years already.) That failure to recognize where those "alternative primary challengers" come from and when/why they are necessary is part of why your rhetoric about your metrics are really just empty clichés that are hopeless at actually making the changes in the Democrat party that you ostensibly want. It's not just you that thinks like this. It's basically every "improve the Democrats from within" type I've ever encountered (that hasn't abandoned the party at this point) that is waiting for a "bridge" to cross, instead of doing the obviously necessary work to build it. Then when the bridge doesn't magically manifest or (despite other people's hard work) is less prefered than the established road (to apocalyptic climate catastrophes among others), the "only rational choice" is to choose the scenic route to apocalypse over the shortcut offered by the other party. As ChristianS suggested, ...In more stable times maybe that could be tolerated, but in this moment we don’t have room for complacency. If someone can fight, they should do it, if they can’t they should retire. I'd add (and I think ChristianS might agree?) that we all have to work on identifying who these politicians that aren't sufficiently fighting are prior to the date to file for a primary so we can plan accordingly. If they don't/won't retire, then they should be primaried. I also think I might agree! I mean I don’t begrudge DPB wanting to focus on his own representatives and/or specific (rather than abstract) candidates, but at the same time I think it’s perfectly valid for me to say “Chuck Schumer should be replaced as caucus leader” even though I don’t have an alternative leader in mind and I’m not one of the people who gets to vote on that. And if I ask someone if they agree and they say “well, I don’t get a vote on that” that feels like a dodge. Sure. And if you ask a voter what their perspective is on politician X and the voter tells you that they honestly haven't yet had a chance to research the politician to the extent they're satisfied with / to the extent you're looking for - but that the voter is definitely going to do a deep dive into politician X soon, and the voter would be happy to get back to you with their thoughts on politician X when they have more time - it might not be the most persuasive move for you to then condescendingly lecture that voter on how the voter's eventual assessment is probably nothing more than "empty clichés that are hopeless" and that the voter is actually "refusing to apply metrics" just because they don't immediately have an answer the moment you asked them a question. (When I write "you", I'm not referring to you, ChristianS.) Sure, I get it. GH comes across as a scold, and it’s completely reasonable to say “I haven’t done the research to have a full answer to that question right now.” + Show Spoiler +I don’t even know how many Dem Senators I can name off the top of my head, I certainly don’t have pro and con lists for each one, and I’m not more motivated to do that work because, like, what am I gonna do with it anyway? Write about it here I guess?
That said, I shared that Josh Marshall piece talking about more or less this issue. Something he’s enthused about is that despite the fumble at the finish line, the Dems at the end of the year were still night and day from the Dems back in March or whatever. Back then Schumer made them agree to some bullshit CR because he didn’t think it was the right time to fight or something. That decision got ridiculed all year, and that crowd got so spooked they waited more than a month to cave, and created all this theater around it when they finally caved because they’re scared of the blowback they’ll get.
So to me what GH (or if you prefer, Josh Marshall) is talking about is just follow-through. We’ve got them running scared, now we need to track them to their hidey-holes – if they’re not willing to fight, they need to give up their seat to someone who will. This political moment requires an opposition that’s willing and able to fight back.
I mean, thinking about the endgame here: the only constitutional remedy to most of these abuses is impeachment. Of course we all know GH is not putting his faith in “constitutional remedies” – he’s hoping we all see the futility of that and join his revolution – but something I think he’d agree with me on is that a large majority of Americans (including the ones he’ll need to persuade for his revolution to work) still believe in the power of those systems. They’re going to need to see them fail before they’re willing to entertain his ideas. So either they mobilize and the constitutional remedies succeed, or they fail and people become open to more radical solutions (maybe his solutions, maybe not). What I’m scared of (and maybe he is too) is that people are already too jaded to mobilize in the first place – they vaguely believe in the abstract that electoral solutions are the “right way” and reject his revolutionary talk, but then they turn around and don’t do what the electoral solutions would require either. That’s the loss condition here, imo.
Time traveling sounds pretty neat! ChristianS's explanation - which had nothing to do with me opposing my own idea when someone else repeated it back to me - was from 4 months before your (now twice, still seemingly irrelevant and still absolutely unexplained) quoted post. "Yes" and "There" - very edgy to not provide any context or clarification. If you don't have any examples or are unwilling to actually explain any examples of what you're asserting, then that's on you. Congratulations on the derailment; I'm going to stop engaging with the troll now.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1229 Posts
On March 24 2026 02:37 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 02:23 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 24 2026 01:11 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 17:03 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 09:30 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 20 2026 07:14 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 07:10 Hat Trick of Today wrote:On March 20 2026 07:03 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 07:01 Hat Trick of Today wrote:On March 20 2026 07:00 Yurie wrote:
[quote]
As always, communication is a two way street. The recipient is part of the conversation. If they feel insulted (even if you didn't mean to insult them) you failed in communication. Do it often enough and people don't want to talk to you. Most people do a mistake here or there and that is forgiven if you simply apologize for it or simply don't do it more than a few times in total.
As always the problem with Trump is that he doesn't even realize he made a mistake. Thus he cannot learn from it and will repeat it again. Is it a mistake if you did it on purpose. Depends on the outcome you want. If you want Japan to help you with Iran it is clearly a mistake. If you want Japan to tell your other allies that Iran is a bad deal and stay out, it isn't a mistake. It’s already too late to get allies to help you out in a collision of the willing because Trump and this administration doesn’t believe in even bothering to try manufacturing consent. Like this administration believes in zero sum everything. They believe nations will come help solve this issue because the world economy is cooked if it isn’t resolved and the US believes it js better positioned than other countries to absorb the blow. So I don’t think this administration believes it’s made a mistake or has really made a mistake in the context of their belief system because the only thing this administration believes in is in forcefully coercing people to indulge in their zero sum world view. From my point of view the issue is resolving itself slowly already. Iran is taking full control of the strait and will put up restrictions on which nations that can send ships through. So the global issues will resolve themselves with or without supporting the US vs Iran based on current trends. I'm not sure this is so much resolution, as 'neither actually involved sides see much viability of reaching resolution' so everyone else is trying to find ways around the problem so the world economy can keep chugging along (since they sure as hell can't actually resolve it). And Iran is just reasonable enough to come to agreements with some third parties (probably because 'everyone else' involves some of their allies). I'm not sure if this will do anything to actually end the fighting, Iran won't just let all the ships through, because this is their primary leverage towards no longer getting bombed. And even the rest of the world combined can't pressure the US/Israel into meeting Iranian demands. While the US/Israel can just lose interest/stop bombing Iran, I don't think Iran will trust that it's not just a short reload then they are back in a few months/years again. I don't envision a world where Israel doesn't actually just come back after a short reload, dragging the US back in. So either ground troops actually go in, or somehow the US pressures other countries into some kind of reparations/rebuild package for Iran (the US is sure as hell not going to pay Iran reparations). Or there needs to be at least a change in attitude on the side of the US, eg telling Israel, 'Next time you bomb them you are on your own'. In which case the fight sort of fizzles out, and Iran eventually believes it's not just a short break to restock munitions. None of these options look particularly likely. Either that or Trump gets either China or his russian friends to agree to help Iran rebuild in lieu of actual reparations. They might accept it because it basically guarantees their influence in the region for the forseeable future, and Trump might accept it because compared to not having to deal with either a disastrous ground campaign in Iran or a humiliating meeting of actual Iranian terms probably outweighs actual US geopolitical interest every time. Even there I don't think Russia is even in an economic state to help, and China might just not be that interested in cleaning up a US mess. Well Iran - US relations are dead unless there is a regime change in Iran. Which currently seems unlikely as the US public doesn't want boots on the ground and there is an election soon. Though the US is putting enough marines into the area to be able to do it if they want to. I basically see it as Iran will let Chinese, Indian etc ships through. Ships that are not from those nations will instead move to other trade regions, causing a local monopoly on ship capacity. They can then start charging ships passing through similar to Seuz or Panama canals and things stabilize. It seems to be acceptable to the US as well since they prioritize global trade over crippling Iran (as Iranian oil exports are up since the start of the war). The US is also seriously discussing stopping sanctions on Iranian oil to keep prices down, same as they did for Russian oil. (If I am from a European country bordering Russia I would be furious at that removal of sanctions.) So seems they are trying to leverage their control of the strait into switching from the US dollar to the Yuan for oil trade. That is actually more dangerous to the US than a few nukes in Iran. (Also seems to be old news, I just missed it a few days ago.) The other topic I replied to. The UK is now allowing US to use their bases. I still think they would have allowed this if they had time to consider it and got some small concession for it. Only 20% of the oil supply goes through the strait. I don't think forcing an actual switch to Yuan based dollar is feasible. Honestly, I think it's more about extending China's ability to weather the oil shock. While China was somehow better prepared for the oil shock than the US, despite the US + Israel causing the situation to begin with, they will eventually run out of oil (not soon, but eventually). Once Iran's richest ally is no longer able to wear the shock, Iran pretty much has to open up the strait at that stage. So their leverage does have a use by date, they are just trying to extend it a bit. I think your vastly overestimating the influence China has over Iran or Iran's dependance on China. China does not get to decide when Iran needs to surrender and it takes very little resources to keep the strait closed, the threat itself does almost all the work.
It's not about China deciding when Iran gets to surrender, it's about once it's directly against China's direct material interest to continue running political interference for Iran, they are likely to... stop doing that.
While many individuals around the world are maybe hoping Iran wins (or at least hoping US/Israel loses), on the global stage of nation states very few countries are actually on Iran's side. At best, many of the US's traditional allies are just unenthusiastic on getting involved. Russia and China are two of a very few countries that are.
They run political interference, provide intel, and China is responsible for buying most of Iran's oil, as well as selling them vital parts to keep what industrial economy they have going to keep building drones.
It's very hard for Iran to actually go completely alone, what allies it has are invaluable to it.
I'm not imagining China just telling Iran enough is enough, and to open the strait. It's more likely going to be a 'sorry we can't help anymore, we need to worry about our own situation'
If you follow much of how the Chinese government does things, it's that it's very serious about noone fucking with the Chinese economy, not even itself. While it stands on principle on the Iran issue, if it had to choose between principle or its own economic growth, it's going to choose its own economy every time.
While Iran will still have Russia, who do not suffer from the oil shock the same way, it's hard to hold out when your only ally is also pretty broke.
Look I imagine there will be some solution involving China and Russia helping Iran rebuild in the end, and some kind of formal security agreement or ceasefire. Long before actual exhaustion of China's strategic reserve. As far as we know, China hasn't actually started tapping into its strategic reserve yet, we don't know if it's even reducing their commercial reserve yet.
But Iran surely has to know, being able to gate 20% of the world's crude oil supply does not give you the ability to change the petrodollar status.
They seem to be in the 'our current strategy appears to be working, and we are going to hold the current position long enough that the US is going to remember the economic pain' phase. So that they can get out of the 'US demands something, Iran agrees, then the US says not good enough and sanctions or bombs Iran again' pattern every few years.
When it comes to learning it's lessons, the US can be a bit... slow. Especially this administration. It makes sense for Iran to make sure that their own ability to keep this up, and their economy, such as it is, doesn't fall out from underneath them,
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On March 24 2026 06:23 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 06:04 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 05:49 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 24 2026 05:34 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 05:23 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 24 2026 05:15 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 04:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 24 2026 04:45 Fleetfeet wrote:
Not super comfy with this attack on GH. I get everyone's frustration but there's irony on both sides of GH 'mocking and gawking' and you all taking that bait if it were. I guess it could be the case that GH has been warning us not to engage with himself. I've repeatedly indicated that what I'm suggesting isn't necessarily engaging with me (or even a specific topic I prefer), but with US politics among each other (sans me or Sartres) beyond the typical mock and gawk based on your own assertions that it is ostensibly what you'd prefer to do. You guys have basically turned into those polls where people oppose their own ideas when the wrong person repeats them back to them. Do you have an example of me doing that in this thread? ... Yes. ...Where? Right there. ChristianS tried to explain it to you this way: On November 19 2025 00:14 ChristianS wrote:On November 18 2025 19:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 18 2025 15:10 ChristianS wrote:On November 18 2025 09:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 18 2025 08:09 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 18 2025 06:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 18 2025 05:01 WombaT wrote:On November 18 2025 04:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]I think you misunderstand.
I'm asking if we can turn your assertion that [quote] into a metric for who to primary in 2026.
As in, can we look at who is doing which and use that as a reasonable metric to determine which Democrats need to be primaried in 2026? I'm also curious if you (or any Democrat supporters) can identify any Democrats that need to be primaried in 2026 based on that or any other metric? Why do you want to primary them? Do you want to do so because you think it’ll make a vaguely similar platform win with a better quality of candidate, or do you want a completely different platform that you think can also win and is a better platform? Those are good questions for DPB and other people who believe it is a viable strategy moving forward. I look forward to seeing their answers... On November 18 2025 05:22 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 18 2025 04:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]I think you misunderstand.
I'm asking if we can turn your assertion that [quote] into a metric for who to primary in 2026.
As in, can we look at who is doing which and use that as a reasonable metric to determine which Democrats need to be primaried in 2026? I'm also curious if you (or any Democrat supporters) can identify any Democrats that need to be primaried in 2026 based on that or any other metric? + Show Spoiler +Yes, I think we can use it as a metric for who to primary in 2026. In my opinion, just because a seat is already blue doesn't mean it can't be a better version of blue. I hope that more left-wing progressive politicians are willing to challenge moderate-left incumbents, and if that happens in elections that I can vote in, I'll happily support those further-left progressive challengers. I don't have the time or bandwidth right now to look into future seats that I hope will soon be challenged + Show Spoiler +during the next election cycle, but when they do happen in spaces where I can vote (local, state, national), I pay attention to who's running and try to help whoever I consider to be the best option. You're not alone. Which is a major contributor to why it doesn't happen/hasn't happened often enough to work at scale. It takes people like you (who already spend more time and bandwidth than most investigating and discussing politics) making time and bandwidth for it. It's also part of why I've been asking you about Booker. How does he score on your metrics for if he needs to be primaried or not? Your metrics are pretty useless/hopeless if you can't/refuse to apply them to your own Senator in 2026. Otherwise it's basically just another iteration of the hollow/useless rhetoric I described before This question is irrelevant because I'm not in charge of whether or not a candidate gets primaried. I don't get to choose who gets primaried and who doesn't. When the time comes for him to run for re-election, and if/when he has to run against an alternative primary challenger, I'll assess how he "scores on my metrics" and compare that to how his opponent "scores on my metrics" in 2026. It's on a relative scale, between two or more actual candidates. I'll cross that bridge if/when we come to it. And as I said at the very beginning, this should be done "for both the primary elections and the general elections". (This also is nothing new, and it's what all of us have been doing for years already.) That failure to recognize where those "alternative primary challengers" come from and when/why they are necessary is part of why your rhetoric about your metrics are really just empty clichés that are hopeless at actually making the changes in the Democrat party that you ostensibly want. It's not just you that thinks like this. It's basically every "improve the Democrats from within" type I've ever encountered (that hasn't abandoned the party at this point) that is waiting for a "bridge" to cross, instead of doing the obviously necessary work to build it. Then when the bridge doesn't magically manifest or (despite other people's hard work) is less prefered than the established road (to apocalyptic climate catastrophes among others), the "only rational choice" is to choose the scenic route to apocalypse over the shortcut offered by the other party. As ChristianS suggested, ...In more stable times maybe that could be tolerated, but in this moment we don’t have room for complacency. If someone can fight, they should do it, if they can’t they should retire. I'd add (and I think ChristianS might agree?) that we all have to work on identifying who these politicians that aren't sufficiently fighting are prior to the date to file for a primary so we can plan accordingly. If they don't/won't retire, then they should be primaried. I also think I might agree! I mean I don’t begrudge DPB wanting to focus on his own representatives and/or specific (rather than abstract) candidates, but at the same time I think it’s perfectly valid for me to say “Chuck Schumer should be replaced as caucus leader” even though I don’t have an alternative leader in mind and I’m not one of the people who gets to vote on that. And if I ask someone if they agree and they say “well, I don’t get a vote on that” that feels like a dodge. Sure. And if you ask a voter what their perspective is on politician X and the voter tells you that they honestly haven't yet had a chance to research the politician to the extent they're satisfied with / to the extent you're looking for - but that the voter is definitely going to do a deep dive into politician X soon, and the voter would be happy to get back to you with their thoughts on politician X when they have more time - it might not be the most persuasive move for you to then condescendingly lecture that voter on how the voter's eventual assessment is probably nothing more than "empty clichés that are hopeless" and that the voter is actually "refusing to apply metrics" just because they don't immediately have an answer the moment you asked them a question. (When I write "you", I'm not referring to you, ChristianS.) Sure, I get it. GH comes across as a scold, and it’s completely reasonable to say “I haven’t done the research to have a full answer to that question right now.” + Show Spoiler +I don’t even know how many Dem Senators I can name off the top of my head, I certainly don’t have pro and con lists for each one, and I’m not more motivated to do that work because, like, what am I gonna do with it anyway? Write about it here I guess?
That said, I shared that Josh Marshall piece talking about more or less this issue. Something he’s enthused about is that despite the fumble at the finish line, the Dems at the end of the year were still night and day from the Dems back in March or whatever. Back then Schumer made them agree to some bullshit CR because he didn’t think it was the right time to fight or something. That decision got ridiculed all year, and that crowd got so spooked they waited more than a month to cave, and created all this theater around it when they finally caved because they’re scared of the blowback they’ll get.
So to me what GH (or if you prefer, Josh Marshall) is talking about is just follow-through. We’ve got them running scared, now we need to track them to their hidey-holes – if they’re not willing to fight, they need to give up their seat to someone who will. This political moment requires an opposition that’s willing and able to fight back.
I mean, thinking about the endgame here: the only constitutional remedy to most of these abuses is impeachment. Of course we all know GH is not putting his faith in “constitutional remedies” – he’s hoping we all see the futility of that and join his revolution – but something I think he’d agree with me on is that a large majority of Americans (including the ones he’ll need to persuade for his revolution to work) still believe in the power of those systems. They’re going to need to see them fail before they’re willing to entertain his ideas. So either they mobilize and the constitutional remedies succeed, or they fail and people become open to more radical solutions (maybe his solutions, maybe not). What I’m scared of (and maybe he is too) is that people are already too jaded to mobilize in the first place – they vaguely believe in the abstract that electoral solutions are the “right way” and reject his revolutionary talk, but then they turn around and don’t do what the electoral solutions would require either. That’s the loss condition here, imo. Time traveling sounds pretty neat! ChristianS's explanation - which had nothing to do with me opposing my own idea when someone else repeated it back to me - was from 4 months before your (now twice, still seemingly irrelevant and still absolutely unexplained) quoted post. "Yes" and "There" - very edgy to not provide any context or clarification. If you don't have any examples or are unwilling to actually explain any examples of what you're asserting, then that's on you. Congratulations on the derailment; I'm going to stop engaging with the troll now. You're confused.
The specific thing you said that's quoted in this exchange is:
I don't have the time or bandwidth right now to look into future seats that I hope will soon be challenged
With the most recent examples demonstrating that you still haven't and won't because it is the sort of hollow/empty rhetoric I pointed out before (and is in the quote chain).
When presented with your idea of primarying Democrats that are insufficiently fighting for Americans/opposing Trump you have and continue to oppose/refuse/fail for nearly a year to even discuss a fair and reasonable way/metric for Democrat supporters to identify who that is or isn't among yourselves.
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United States43737 Posts
On March 24 2026 06:38 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 02:37 Gorsameth wrote:On March 24 2026 02:23 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 24 2026 01:11 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 17:03 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 09:30 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 20 2026 07:14 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 07:10 Hat Trick of Today wrote:On March 20 2026 07:03 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 07:01 Hat Trick of Today wrote:
[quote]
Is it a mistake if you did it on purpose. Depends on the outcome you want. If you want Japan to help you with Iran it is clearly a mistake. If you want Japan to tell your other allies that Iran is a bad deal and stay out, it isn't a mistake. It’s already too late to get allies to help you out in a collision of the willing because Trump and this administration doesn’t believe in even bothering to try manufacturing consent. Like this administration believes in zero sum everything. They believe nations will come help solve this issue because the world economy is cooked if it isn’t resolved and the US believes it js better positioned than other countries to absorb the blow. So I don’t think this administration believes it’s made a mistake or has really made a mistake in the context of their belief system because the only thing this administration believes in is in forcefully coercing people to indulge in their zero sum world view. From my point of view the issue is resolving itself slowly already. Iran is taking full control of the strait and will put up restrictions on which nations that can send ships through. So the global issues will resolve themselves with or without supporting the US vs Iran based on current trends. I'm not sure this is so much resolution, as 'neither actually involved sides see much viability of reaching resolution' so everyone else is trying to find ways around the problem so the world economy can keep chugging along (since they sure as hell can't actually resolve it). And Iran is just reasonable enough to come to agreements with some third parties (probably because 'everyone else' involves some of their allies). I'm not sure if this will do anything to actually end the fighting, Iran won't just let all the ships through, because this is their primary leverage towards no longer getting bombed. And even the rest of the world combined can't pressure the US/Israel into meeting Iranian demands. While the US/Israel can just lose interest/stop bombing Iran, I don't think Iran will trust that it's not just a short reload then they are back in a few months/years again. I don't envision a world where Israel doesn't actually just come back after a short reload, dragging the US back in. So either ground troops actually go in, or somehow the US pressures other countries into some kind of reparations/rebuild package for Iran (the US is sure as hell not going to pay Iran reparations). Or there needs to be at least a change in attitude on the side of the US, eg telling Israel, 'Next time you bomb them you are on your own'. In which case the fight sort of fizzles out, and Iran eventually believes it's not just a short break to restock munitions. None of these options look particularly likely. Either that or Trump gets either China or his russian friends to agree to help Iran rebuild in lieu of actual reparations. They might accept it because it basically guarantees their influence in the region for the forseeable future, and Trump might accept it because compared to not having to deal with either a disastrous ground campaign in Iran or a humiliating meeting of actual Iranian terms probably outweighs actual US geopolitical interest every time. Even there I don't think Russia is even in an economic state to help, and China might just not be that interested in cleaning up a US mess. Well Iran - US relations are dead unless there is a regime change in Iran. Which currently seems unlikely as the US public doesn't want boots on the ground and there is an election soon. Though the US is putting enough marines into the area to be able to do it if they want to. I basically see it as Iran will let Chinese, Indian etc ships through. Ships that are not from those nations will instead move to other trade regions, causing a local monopoly on ship capacity. They can then start charging ships passing through similar to Seuz or Panama canals and things stabilize. It seems to be acceptable to the US as well since they prioritize global trade over crippling Iran (as Iranian oil exports are up since the start of the war). The US is also seriously discussing stopping sanctions on Iranian oil to keep prices down, same as they did for Russian oil. (If I am from a European country bordering Russia I would be furious at that removal of sanctions.) So seems they are trying to leverage their control of the strait into switching from the US dollar to the Yuan for oil trade. That is actually more dangerous to the US than a few nukes in Iran. (Also seems to be old news, I just missed it a few days ago.) The other topic I replied to. The UK is now allowing US to use their bases. I still think they would have allowed this if they had time to consider it and got some small concession for it. Only 20% of the oil supply goes through the strait. I don't think forcing an actual switch to Yuan based dollar is feasible. Honestly, I think it's more about extending China's ability to weather the oil shock. While China was somehow better prepared for the oil shock than the US, despite the US + Israel causing the situation to begin with, they will eventually run out of oil (not soon, but eventually). Once Iran's richest ally is no longer able to wear the shock, Iran pretty much has to open up the strait at that stage. So their leverage does have a use by date, they are just trying to extend it a bit. I think your vastly overestimating the influence China has over Iran or Iran's dependance on China. China does not get to decide when Iran needs to surrender and it takes very little resources to keep the strait closed, the threat itself does almost all the work. It's not about China deciding when Iran gets to surrender, it's about once it's directly against China's direct material interest to continue running political interference for Iran, they are likely to... stop doing that. While many individuals around the world are maybe hoping Iran wins (or at least hoping US/Israel loses), on the global stage of nation states very few countries are actually on Iran's side. At best, many of the US's traditional allies are just unenthusiastic on getting involved. Russia and China are two of a very few countries that are. They run political interference, provide intel, and China is responsible for buying most of Iran's oil, as well as selling them vital parts to keep what industrial economy they have going to keep building drones. It's very hard for Iran to actually go completely alone, what allies it has are invaluable to it. I'm not imagining China just telling Iran enough is enough, and to open the strait. It's more likely going to be a 'sorry we can't help anymore, we need to worry about our own situation' If you follow much of how the Chinese government does things, it's that it's very serious about noone fucking with the Chinese economy, not even itself. While it stands on principle on the Iran issue, if it had to choose between principle or its own economic growth, it's going to choose its own economy every time. While Iran will still have Russia, who do not suffer from the oil shock the same way, it's hard to hold out when your only ally is also pretty broke.
Russia is only broke if Iran capitulates. Russia is rolling in cash if Iran keeps going. And Russia is the world’s one way attack biggest drone manufacturer.
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On March 24 2026 05:53 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2026 17:22 KT_Elwood wrote:On March 22 2026 17:10 Acrofales wrote:On March 22 2026 16:45 KT_Elwood wrote:Free speech:
"Charlie Kirk (right wing agitator) was a debateable character"
-> You lose your job <-
"Glad that Mueller (Former head of FBI) is dead, so he can no longer hurt innocent people"
-> You stay president"<-
Human rights and Geneva convention and the war:
"Make gas cheaper or we bomb civil infrastructure with our toilet starved aircraftcarrier that is also on fire"
It's time that Europe... finally... 'taxes' US tech, especially AI. Like make employers pay the same amount for social insurance for every install/license of CoPilot, ChadGPT... as they already are paying for the employee who uses them.
IF AI really replaces people, it should pay for their healthcare - or kill them, just be of consequence.
I'm sure Americans like it just as much as I like this post telling us what to do. Taxing employers for the use of AI is an absurd angle that'll immediately kill any homegrown innovation in the area, with a long-term impact of making Europe MORE reliant on US/China AI tech, not less.There are about a million ways of doing this so it doesn't hurt local innovation and is a broader tax on US tech, most of which are under consideration by the EU, but they all have downsides that need to be considered. It isn't an easy problem. But charging social security fees for AI usage is nuts. The "AI" I want to be "Taxed" can be bought only from US companies. Either directly or indirectly by building your own Datacenters with US technology. The datacenters are a dystopian feverdream of having bodyless slaves generated by stolen ideas... that you rent out to customers, but can only exist in a billion dollar infrastructure that will have only a malvolent oligarchy owning them. Right now it's a infinite Money powered idiocracy.. and if you "Tax" it... investors maybe kill 1/3 of the DOW and besides gas prices.. that's the only number that will make congress consider of finally taking action. Also it totlaly fits the german problem of employees directly paying for current pensioners, while german companies move jobs abroad, creating more pensioners and pay less and less for pensioners. A more complete answer below, and other people, like Velr, have addressed the core economic issue here. But both you and Jankisa seem to think AI is profitable for the providers. Let me make it absolutely clear: it is not. While I fully sympathize with the basic ideas here: Germany needs to find a way to better structure their economy to pay for pensioners (honestly, Spain's migration policy is rather productive atm and I'd suggest copying it rather than all the xenophobia, but Spain is probably going full right-wing xenophobic fascism next general elections, so we're just delaying the fuckedness). Simultaneously, Europe does need to invest in keeping data and compute local. But "social security for AI" is a dumb take regardless. And as promised, more below. On March 23 2026 21:11 Jankisa wrote:
I personally believe that the only way for EU to actually come out of the AI economy as anything other then a vassal of USA/China is to focus and insist on locally hosted open source AIs.
Mistral is a good start, but if each of the EU nations had their own lab and started from the open weight available LLMs and trained them up and specialized them for use cases most important to local economies and then make these AIs available to businesses instead of having them pay exorbitant amounts to USA or Chinese companies in order to stay competitive on the world stage that would allow us to keep our AI sovereignty.
This, of course, would NEED to go hand in hand with a divorce from USA tech giants, including replacing all of the Microsoft stack and providing companies with "EU OS" that would come preloaded with the MS software stack replacements for seamless transitions, it would also require going away from AWS, Google Cloud and Azure and instead investing in EU alternatives and building up Datacenter capacity.
A lot of these things are stated by EU politicians as goals and something to strive for but it seems like there is a tremendous pressure fighting against it from huge multinationals and USA in general.
A good example are attempts at creating the Digital Euro which is being attacked by bank conglomerates who, apparently love to be at the mercy of USA credit card companies, or, more realistically just like that we are as a world moving into the Cyberpunk Tech oligarchy where they will get a seat at the table while everyone else is in servitude. Firstly, AI companies are not raking in the cash. Or maybe they are, but they are making insane losses. OpenAI just closed a massive funding round based not on their current revenue, which is deep in the red, but on the promise that they will be profitable in 2030 and that prognosis is completely delusional. Right now, Europe by not investing is getting AI heavily discounted. OpenAI: deep underwater. Anthropic: deep underwater. xAI: lol. Google: obviously profitable, but they are maybe at best breaking even on all the AI compute. The Chinese models have already shown the way: you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Between distillation (Anthropic moaned loudly about it the other day), open models and fundamental algorithmic advances, what was built yesterday is worthless tomorrow. Mistral is a cool company, but they are losing the race, not because they lack the brains, but because they don't have billions of VC capital to burn on loss-leading nonsense. Where I believe there's a real niche is in LLMs for smaller languages. Brazil had a good idea there with taking the lead on the Portuguese-first models, but Brazil also has a bigger need than most of Europe, with generally good English education. That said, I notice a significant drop, in particular in voice models, when using Spanish compared to English. My bet is it's worse for French, even worse for German and Italian and absolute crap in all other European languages. So democratizing AI by focusing on non-English models seems like a quick win for a publicly funded AI project, especially if transfer learning can be easily leveraged to specialize something like Llama or Qwen for multiple languages. That said, for most current applications, keep "paying" the American companies that are making massive losses on the current evolutions. Given how easy it is to switch models, when they start increasing the prices to the actual cost of the compute is when many companies will start considering more carefully what needs to happen here. Secondly, AI infrastructure. Currently it's a feeding frenzy and all but guaranteed money sink.The mega datacenters that are promised worldwide are more vaporware than anything else atm. I find it rather hilarious that OpenAI pulled out of a large datacenter deal with Oracle, leaving them to foot the bill because by the time the construction is done, all the GPUs Oracle already bought from Nvidia are going to be deprecated for the compute OpenAI wanted them for. That's how insane things are atm, and I fully agree that taking a step back and just waiting is a perfectly valid approach. Especially as all those big companies are building the datacenters in Euorpe anyway. You seem to have some idea that if Google gets my data that is worse for me than if Mistral gets my data. The only difference is US-security issues, but as long as I don't piss off the FBI the GDPR basically guarantees there is not a lot of difference. Google cannot use my proprietary data (unless I opt-in) to train their models, and neither can Mistral. Thirdly, right now any AI-specific tax would hit small companies far harder than big companies. The current innovation isn't in a Block that is laying off employees "in favor of AI" (stop believing the press releases, neither Amazon nor Block are laying off people because of AI, it's just a convenient excuse that keeps shareholders happy when they need to lay people off regardless due to disappointing productivity numbers). The current innovations are in people like Peter Steinberger taking a few weeks to build an insane (albeit completely insecure) AI system (openclaw). Or all the other smallscale projects that people are suddenly able to build on their own, or in a small team. Not because previously they didn't have these ideas, but because previously to build an app you needed an idea, some design, a backender, a frontender (or a full stack developer) and a few months of work. Now someone with a reasonable level of critical thinking and some general programming experience can have an idea and fire it off with a $20 monthly AI subscription on Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor or any other system. This isn't lowering productivity: these things would otherwise never have been built. Are all of these ideas good? No, probably not. Before the AI boom I think the metric was 95% of startups going bust. This will probably stay stable or even go up. But it definitely democratizes innovation further and faster than ever before. If you wanted to tax AI specifically, these are the companies hit hardest, not the Googles of the world. That said, I am a huge proponent of many of the ideas floating around, particularly at EU level to tax corporations on the money they extract from EU citizens. I'm also a huge fan of critical controls on social media and content platforms. And a big proponent of finally considering software and networking as critical security infrastructure that shouldn't just be outsourced to some random consultancy because governments are too lazy to build it themselves. Similarly, AI infrastructure is necessary. Any governmental and military applications would need to be developed in-house by EU AI-companies, because outsourcing that to the US would be just as stupid as relying on them for our jet figh... oh. Well, as the Dutch like to say, even a donkey doesn't bang itself on the same stone twice. Anyway, enough rambling. I think it's clear that I am a big proponent for Europe-wide market protection of digital services. It's just worth noting that just because silicon valley is collectively losing their minds in trying to see who can bankrupt themselves fastest means we should join the race. Watch China though, they have the right idea.
Well, as you, I'm sure know, most of these companies burn incredible amounts of money before they become profitable, just because they are not right now, that doesn't mean that Europeans aren't still forking cash over to them right now and will continue to do in the future, it's simply better for this money to stay in Europe then for us to get into another Microsoft/Google/Amazon situation where we are locked in to their ecosystems.
It is easy to change models right now, just like it was easy to switch from Azure to locally hosted or from Office365 to cPanel 10 years ago, but every year you stay within such an ecosystem harder it is to get away from it, from my experience, since we are still relatively early, and since this will, 100 % be a transformative technology it's crazy not to at least attempt to keep our sovereignty.
I agree and am aware of all the criticisms of these companies, I hope OpenAI burns and crashes and takes Nvidia and Oracle with it, they deserve it, xAI, yeah, I think that whole venture might be toast within a year, so much about Grok just reeks incompetence and wastefulness.
I think we broadly agree on most of this stuff, anyway, cheers for your lengthy and detailed post!
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1229 Posts
On March 24 2026 06:46 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 06:38 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 24 2026 02:37 Gorsameth wrote:On March 24 2026 02:23 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 24 2026 01:11 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 17:03 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 09:30 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 20 2026 07:14 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 07:10 Hat Trick of Today wrote:On March 20 2026 07:03 Yurie wrote:
[quote]
Depends on the outcome you want. If you want Japan to help you with Iran it is clearly a mistake. If you want Japan to tell your other allies that Iran is a bad deal and stay out, it isn't a mistake. It’s already too late to get allies to help you out in a collision of the willing because Trump and this administration doesn’t believe in even bothering to try manufacturing consent. Like this administration believes in zero sum everything. They believe nations will come help solve this issue because the world economy is cooked if it isn’t resolved and the US believes it js better positioned than other countries to absorb the blow. So I don’t think this administration believes it’s made a mistake or has really made a mistake in the context of their belief system because the only thing this administration believes in is in forcefully coercing people to indulge in their zero sum world view. From my point of view the issue is resolving itself slowly already. Iran is taking full control of the strait and will put up restrictions on which nations that can send ships through. So the global issues will resolve themselves with or without supporting the US vs Iran based on current trends. I'm not sure this is so much resolution, as 'neither actually involved sides see much viability of reaching resolution' so everyone else is trying to find ways around the problem so the world economy can keep chugging along (since they sure as hell can't actually resolve it). And Iran is just reasonable enough to come to agreements with some third parties (probably because 'everyone else' involves some of their allies). I'm not sure if this will do anything to actually end the fighting, Iran won't just let all the ships through, because this is their primary leverage towards no longer getting bombed. And even the rest of the world combined can't pressure the US/Israel into meeting Iranian demands. While the US/Israel can just lose interest/stop bombing Iran, I don't think Iran will trust that it's not just a short reload then they are back in a few months/years again. I don't envision a world where Israel doesn't actually just come back after a short reload, dragging the US back in. So either ground troops actually go in, or somehow the US pressures other countries into some kind of reparations/rebuild package for Iran (the US is sure as hell not going to pay Iran reparations). Or there needs to be at least a change in attitude on the side of the US, eg telling Israel, 'Next time you bomb them you are on your own'. In which case the fight sort of fizzles out, and Iran eventually believes it's not just a short break to restock munitions. None of these options look particularly likely. Either that or Trump gets either China or his russian friends to agree to help Iran rebuild in lieu of actual reparations. They might accept it because it basically guarantees their influence in the region for the forseeable future, and Trump might accept it because compared to not having to deal with either a disastrous ground campaign in Iran or a humiliating meeting of actual Iranian terms probably outweighs actual US geopolitical interest every time. Even there I don't think Russia is even in an economic state to help, and China might just not be that interested in cleaning up a US mess. Well Iran - US relations are dead unless there is a regime change in Iran. Which currently seems unlikely as the US public doesn't want boots on the ground and there is an election soon. Though the US is putting enough marines into the area to be able to do it if they want to. I basically see it as Iran will let Chinese, Indian etc ships through. Ships that are not from those nations will instead move to other trade regions, causing a local monopoly on ship capacity. They can then start charging ships passing through similar to Seuz or Panama canals and things stabilize. It seems to be acceptable to the US as well since they prioritize global trade over crippling Iran (as Iranian oil exports are up since the start of the war). The US is also seriously discussing stopping sanctions on Iranian oil to keep prices down, same as they did for Russian oil. (If I am from a European country bordering Russia I would be furious at that removal of sanctions.) So seems they are trying to leverage their control of the strait into switching from the US dollar to the Yuan for oil trade. That is actually more dangerous to the US than a few nukes in Iran. (Also seems to be old news, I just missed it a few days ago.) The other topic I replied to. The UK is now allowing US to use their bases. I still think they would have allowed this if they had time to consider it and got some small concession for it. Only 20% of the oil supply goes through the strait. I don't think forcing an actual switch to Yuan based dollar is feasible. Honestly, I think it's more about extending China's ability to weather the oil shock. While China was somehow better prepared for the oil shock than the US, despite the US + Israel causing the situation to begin with, they will eventually run out of oil (not soon, but eventually). Once Iran's richest ally is no longer able to wear the shock, Iran pretty much has to open up the strait at that stage. So their leverage does have a use by date, they are just trying to extend it a bit. I think your vastly overestimating the influence China has over Iran or Iran's dependance on China. China does not get to decide when Iran needs to surrender and it takes very little resources to keep the strait closed, the threat itself does almost all the work. It's not about China deciding when Iran gets to surrender, it's about once it's directly against China's direct material interest to continue running political interference for Iran, they are likely to... stop doing that. While many individuals around the world are maybe hoping Iran wins (or at least hoping US/Israel loses), on the global stage of nation states very few countries are actually on Iran's side. At best, many of the US's traditional allies are just unenthusiastic on getting involved. Russia and China are two of a very few countries that are. They run political interference, provide intel, and China is responsible for buying most of Iran's oil, as well as selling them vital parts to keep what industrial economy they have going to keep building drones. It's very hard for Iran to actually go completely alone, what allies it has are invaluable to it. I'm not imagining China just telling Iran enough is enough, and to open the strait. It's more likely going to be a 'sorry we can't help anymore, we need to worry about our own situation' If you follow much of how the Chinese government does things, it's that it's very serious about noone fucking with the Chinese economy, not even itself. While it stands on principle on the Iran issue, if it had to choose between principle or its own economic growth, it's going to choose its own economy every time. While Iran will still have Russia, who do not suffer from the oil shock the same way, it's hard to hold out when your only ally is also pretty broke. Russia is only broke if Iran capitulates. Russia is rolling in cash if Iran keeps going. And Russia is the world’s one way attack biggest drone manufacturer.
They are rolling in cash on hand, but the state of their industry throughout the country isn't great (it's not especially bad now, it's just not been good for a long time). Even on drones, China (well, chinese companies) are the biggest supplier of drone parts to both Russia and Ukraine, by far. I would be surprised if they weren't also the biggest supplier of drone parts to Iran.
Cash on hand is nice, but you still need someone to make the stuff you want to buy. Russia also has no shortage of urgent places that need spending, given they are still in the middle of their SMO.
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United States43737 Posts
On March 24 2026 07:08 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 06:46 KwarK wrote:On March 24 2026 06:38 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 24 2026 02:37 Gorsameth wrote:On March 24 2026 02:23 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 24 2026 01:11 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 17:03 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 09:30 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 20 2026 07:14 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 07:10 Hat Trick of Today wrote:
[quote]
It’s already too late to get allies to help you out in a collision of the willing because Trump and this administration doesn’t believe in even bothering to try manufacturing consent.
Like this administration believes in zero sum everything. They believe nations will come help solve this issue because the world economy is cooked if it isn’t resolved and the US believes it js better positioned than other countries to absorb the blow.
So I don’t think this administration believes it’s made a mistake or has really made a mistake in the context of their belief system because the only thing this administration believes in is in forcefully coercing people to indulge in their zero sum world view. From my point of view the issue is resolving itself slowly already. Iran is taking full control of the strait and will put up restrictions on which nations that can send ships through. So the global issues will resolve themselves with or without supporting the US vs Iran based on current trends. I'm not sure this is so much resolution, as 'neither actually involved sides see much viability of reaching resolution' so everyone else is trying to find ways around the problem so the world economy can keep chugging along (since they sure as hell can't actually resolve it). And Iran is just reasonable enough to come to agreements with some third parties (probably because 'everyone else' involves some of their allies). I'm not sure if this will do anything to actually end the fighting, Iran won't just let all the ships through, because this is their primary leverage towards no longer getting bombed. And even the rest of the world combined can't pressure the US/Israel into meeting Iranian demands. While the US/Israel can just lose interest/stop bombing Iran, I don't think Iran will trust that it's not just a short reload then they are back in a few months/years again. I don't envision a world where Israel doesn't actually just come back after a short reload, dragging the US back in. So either ground troops actually go in, or somehow the US pressures other countries into some kind of reparations/rebuild package for Iran (the US is sure as hell not going to pay Iran reparations). Or there needs to be at least a change in attitude on the side of the US, eg telling Israel, 'Next time you bomb them you are on your own'. In which case the fight sort of fizzles out, and Iran eventually believes it's not just a short break to restock munitions. None of these options look particularly likely. Either that or Trump gets either China or his russian friends to agree to help Iran rebuild in lieu of actual reparations. They might accept it because it basically guarantees their influence in the region for the forseeable future, and Trump might accept it because compared to not having to deal with either a disastrous ground campaign in Iran or a humiliating meeting of actual Iranian terms probably outweighs actual US geopolitical interest every time. Even there I don't think Russia is even in an economic state to help, and China might just not be that interested in cleaning up a US mess. Well Iran - US relations are dead unless there is a regime change in Iran. Which currently seems unlikely as the US public doesn't want boots on the ground and there is an election soon. Though the US is putting enough marines into the area to be able to do it if they want to. I basically see it as Iran will let Chinese, Indian etc ships through. Ships that are not from those nations will instead move to other trade regions, causing a local monopoly on ship capacity. They can then start charging ships passing through similar to Seuz or Panama canals and things stabilize. It seems to be acceptable to the US as well since they prioritize global trade over crippling Iran (as Iranian oil exports are up since the start of the war). The US is also seriously discussing stopping sanctions on Iranian oil to keep prices down, same as they did for Russian oil. (If I am from a European country bordering Russia I would be furious at that removal of sanctions.) So seems they are trying to leverage their control of the strait into switching from the US dollar to the Yuan for oil trade. That is actually more dangerous to the US than a few nukes in Iran. (Also seems to be old news, I just missed it a few days ago.) The other topic I replied to. The UK is now allowing US to use their bases. I still think they would have allowed this if they had time to consider it and got some small concession for it. Only 20% of the oil supply goes through the strait. I don't think forcing an actual switch to Yuan based dollar is feasible. Honestly, I think it's more about extending China's ability to weather the oil shock. While China was somehow better prepared for the oil shock than the US, despite the US + Israel causing the situation to begin with, they will eventually run out of oil (not soon, but eventually). Once Iran's richest ally is no longer able to wear the shock, Iran pretty much has to open up the strait at that stage. So their leverage does have a use by date, they are just trying to extend it a bit. I think your vastly overestimating the influence China has over Iran or Iran's dependance on China. China does not get to decide when Iran needs to surrender and it takes very little resources to keep the strait closed, the threat itself does almost all the work. It's not about China deciding when Iran gets to surrender, it's about once it's directly against China's direct material interest to continue running political interference for Iran, they are likely to... stop doing that. While many individuals around the world are maybe hoping Iran wins (or at least hoping US/Israel loses), on the global stage of nation states very few countries are actually on Iran's side. At best, many of the US's traditional allies are just unenthusiastic on getting involved. Russia and China are two of a very few countries that are. They run political interference, provide intel, and China is responsible for buying most of Iran's oil, as well as selling them vital parts to keep what industrial economy they have going to keep building drones. It's very hard for Iran to actually go completely alone, what allies it has are invaluable to it. I'm not imagining China just telling Iran enough is enough, and to open the strait. It's more likely going to be a 'sorry we can't help anymore, we need to worry about our own situation' If you follow much of how the Chinese government does things, it's that it's very serious about noone fucking with the Chinese economy, not even itself. While it stands on principle on the Iran issue, if it had to choose between principle or its own economic growth, it's going to choose its own economy every time. While Iran will still have Russia, who do not suffer from the oil shock the same way, it's hard to hold out when your only ally is also pretty broke. Russia is only broke if Iran capitulates. Russia is rolling in cash if Iran keeps going. And Russia is the world’s one way attack biggest drone manufacturer. They are rolling in cash on hand, but the state of their industry throughout the country isn't great (it's not especially bad now, it's just not been good for a long time). Even on drones, China (well, chinese companies) are the biggest supplier of drone parts to both Russia and Ukraine, by far. I would be surprised if they weren't also the biggest supplier of drone parts to Iran. Cash on hand is nice, but you still need someone to make the stuff you want to buy.
It’s not an evenly bad economy, it’s a dual economy that averages worse than before. But some segments of the economy are absolutely thriving (offset by others collapsing). Russia has gone from relying on Iran for drones to launching dozens to launching hundreds to launching thousands. The Soviet economy in 1945 wasn’t in great shape (tens of millions dead, tens of millions in uniform) but T 34 production was at absurd levels.
Giving drones to Iran pays for itself.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1229 Posts
On March 24 2026 07:13 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 07:08 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 24 2026 06:46 KwarK wrote:On March 24 2026 06:38 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 24 2026 02:37 Gorsameth wrote:On March 24 2026 02:23 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 24 2026 01:11 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 17:03 Yurie wrote:On March 20 2026 09:30 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 20 2026 07:14 Yurie wrote:
[quote]
From my point of view the issue is resolving itself slowly already. Iran is taking full control of the strait and will put up restrictions on which nations that can send ships through. So the global issues will resolve themselves with or without supporting the US vs Iran based on current trends. I'm not sure this is so much resolution, as 'neither actually involved sides see much viability of reaching resolution' so everyone else is trying to find ways around the problem so the world economy can keep chugging along (since they sure as hell can't actually resolve it). And Iran is just reasonable enough to come to agreements with some third parties (probably because 'everyone else' involves some of their allies). I'm not sure if this will do anything to actually end the fighting, Iran won't just let all the ships through, because this is their primary leverage towards no longer getting bombed. And even the rest of the world combined can't pressure the US/Israel into meeting Iranian demands. While the US/Israel can just lose interest/stop bombing Iran, I don't think Iran will trust that it's not just a short reload then they are back in a few months/years again. I don't envision a world where Israel doesn't actually just come back after a short reload, dragging the US back in. So either ground troops actually go in, or somehow the US pressures other countries into some kind of reparations/rebuild package for Iran (the US is sure as hell not going to pay Iran reparations). Or there needs to be at least a change in attitude on the side of the US, eg telling Israel, 'Next time you bomb them you are on your own'. In which case the fight sort of fizzles out, and Iran eventually believes it's not just a short break to restock munitions. None of these options look particularly likely. Either that or Trump gets either China or his russian friends to agree to help Iran rebuild in lieu of actual reparations. They might accept it because it basically guarantees their influence in the region for the forseeable future, and Trump might accept it because compared to not having to deal with either a disastrous ground campaign in Iran or a humiliating meeting of actual Iranian terms probably outweighs actual US geopolitical interest every time. Even there I don't think Russia is even in an economic state to help, and China might just not be that interested in cleaning up a US mess. Well Iran - US relations are dead unless there is a regime change in Iran. Which currently seems unlikely as the US public doesn't want boots on the ground and there is an election soon. Though the US is putting enough marines into the area to be able to do it if they want to. I basically see it as Iran will let Chinese, Indian etc ships through. Ships that are not from those nations will instead move to other trade regions, causing a local monopoly on ship capacity. They can then start charging ships passing through similar to Seuz or Panama canals and things stabilize. It seems to be acceptable to the US as well since they prioritize global trade over crippling Iran (as Iranian oil exports are up since the start of the war). The US is also seriously discussing stopping sanctions on Iranian oil to keep prices down, same as they did for Russian oil. (If I am from a European country bordering Russia I would be furious at that removal of sanctions.) So seems they are trying to leverage their control of the strait into switching from the US dollar to the Yuan for oil trade. That is actually more dangerous to the US than a few nukes in Iran. (Also seems to be old news, I just missed it a few days ago.) The other topic I replied to. The UK is now allowing US to use their bases. I still think they would have allowed this if they had time to consider it and got some small concession for it. Only 20% of the oil supply goes through the strait. I don't think forcing an actual switch to Yuan based dollar is feasible. Honestly, I think it's more about extending China's ability to weather the oil shock. While China was somehow better prepared for the oil shock than the US, despite the US + Israel causing the situation to begin with, they will eventually run out of oil (not soon, but eventually). Once Iran's richest ally is no longer able to wear the shock, Iran pretty much has to open up the strait at that stage. So their leverage does have a use by date, they are just trying to extend it a bit. I think your vastly overestimating the influence China has over Iran or Iran's dependance on China. China does not get to decide when Iran needs to surrender and it takes very little resources to keep the strait closed, the threat itself does almost all the work. It's not about China deciding when Iran gets to surrender, it's about once it's directly against China's direct material interest to continue running political interference for Iran, they are likely to... stop doing that. While many individuals around the world are maybe hoping Iran wins (or at least hoping US/Israel loses), on the global stage of nation states very few countries are actually on Iran's side. At best, many of the US's traditional allies are just unenthusiastic on getting involved. Russia and China are two of a very few countries that are. They run political interference, provide intel, and China is responsible for buying most of Iran's oil, as well as selling them vital parts to keep what industrial economy they have going to keep building drones. It's very hard for Iran to actually go completely alone, what allies it has are invaluable to it. I'm not imagining China just telling Iran enough is enough, and to open the strait. It's more likely going to be a 'sorry we can't help anymore, we need to worry about our own situation' If you follow much of how the Chinese government does things, it's that it's very serious about noone fucking with the Chinese economy, not even itself. While it stands on principle on the Iran issue, if it had to choose between principle or its own economic growth, it's going to choose its own economy every time. While Iran will still have Russia, who do not suffer from the oil shock the same way, it's hard to hold out when your only ally is also pretty broke. Russia is only broke if Iran capitulates. Russia is rolling in cash if Iran keeps going. And Russia is the world’s one way attack biggest drone manufacturer. They are rolling in cash on hand, but the state of their industry throughout the country isn't great (it's not especially bad now, it's just not been good for a long time). Even on drones, China (well, chinese companies) are the biggest supplier of drone parts to both Russia and Ukraine, by far. I would be surprised if they weren't also the biggest supplier of drone parts to Iran. Cash on hand is nice, but you still need someone to make the stuff you want to buy. It’s not an evenly bad economy, it’s a dual economy that averages worse than before. But some segments of the economy are absolutely thriving (offset by others collapsing). Russia has gone from relying on Iran for drones to launching dozens to launching hundreds to launching thousands. The Soviet economy in 1945 wasn’t in great shape (tens of millions dead, tens of millions in uniform) but T 34 production was at absurd levels. Giving drones to Iran pays for itself.
The point is Russia is broke in basically the same areas as Iran is. Eg, it's not providing much other than intel that Iran doesn't also have.
Currently, Russia basically has military equipment, oil and money. While some of this military equipment (eg anti air defense systems) isn't what Iran can make and is useful, a lot of it is just stuff that would get instantly destroyed if actual bombs/missiles were to drop again.
Oil, drones and money are also what Iran has. Even on the political inteference front, other than the weird influence Russia sometimes has over the US right now, Russia is itself a global pariah. Whereas China appears to be too big and too connected to be that now.
The point is Russia can only provide so much assistance to Iran, not because it is unwilling, but because it is unable. Since what it has/makes a lot of, overlaps significantly with what Iran has/makes.
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