Link list: Articles and other links of interest
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@graydon @cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic Global famine because of a 'convenient' war to distract from the Epstein files sounds like too much punishing for people who do not have anything to do with Trump or the imperialist USA.
@danielmunoz Politically, this is more to keep Bibi out of jail than to distract from Epstein. (The first US mistake was the B-2 attack last year, which gave the Israelis the ability to commit the US to a conflict with Iran.)
Fertilizer, fuel, and spares are will be short or unavailable for the northern hemisphere spring planting season. Throw in consequent disruptions on top of existing food insecurity and 1848-but-more is possible.
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@cstross There are four ways out of this.
1. everyone in power in Iran and the US agrees that peace is more important than their personal futures, and make peace.
2. the US genocides Iran to the point there cannot be an Iranian industrial economy; the Strait opens as a victory for maritime power and freedom of navigation. (Takes years or nukes.)
3. The US undergoes collapse/gives up; Iran taxes tanker traffic.
4. Famine-driven new world order.@graydon @cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic so 3 or 4 then. Because LOL not 1, and please Eris not 2.
Can we at least pretend there's a possibility for some solarpunk utopia in there? Or is that the best-case version of 4? -
@graydon @cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic so 3 or 4 then. Because LOL not 1, and please Eris not 2.
Can we at least pretend there's a possibility for some solarpunk utopia in there? Or is that the best-case version of 4?@stingraz Solarpunk outcomes are a best case for #4, yeah.
Not especially likely without an active effort to abolish fossil carbon extraction, which takes a lot of cohesion because the famine risk is not so much a risk as a certainty without a lot of collective effort to produce fertilizer by other means (and all that implies and entails), but anything, even the Fatal Slump, that abolishes fossil carbon is preferable to an End Permian 2.0 Atmosphere.
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@cstross There are four ways out of this.
1. everyone in power in Iran and the US agrees that peace is more important than their personal futures, and make peace.
2. the US genocides Iran to the point there cannot be an Iranian industrial economy; the Strait opens as a victory for maritime power and freedom of navigation. (Takes years or nukes.)
3. The US undergoes collapse/gives up; Iran taxes tanker traffic.
4. Famine-driven new world order.@graydon @cstross @lasagne @pluralistic #3 is possible. TACO.
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@graydon @cstross @lasagne @pluralistic #3 is possible. TACO.
@mitch They're all possible.
It's not a question of TACO; it's a question of the maritime order, American power as the Oil Empire, and the degree to which some combination of industrial capacity and existing stockpiles permit them to exercise military power despite what is shaping up to be a major economic constriction.
Plus two generations of American elite consensus about an appropriate fate for the Islamic Republic.
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In praise of (some) compartmentalization — Cory Doctorow @pluralistic on how he gets so much work done, living with chronic pain, living with global anxiety, flow, Derek Thompson’s theory of familiar surprises, AI and its fundamental conservatism — “… by definition, AI tries to make a future that is similar to the past, because all it can do is extrapolate from previous data” — “passive flow”/“shitty flow”/“zombie flow” and “social media scroll-trances.”
Cory: “These are anxious times. I don't know anyone who feels good right now. Particularly this week, as the Strait of Epstein emergency gets progressively worse, and there's this January 2020 sense of the crisis on the horizon, hitting one country after another. Last week, Australia got its last shipment of fossil fuels. This week, restaurants in India are all shuttered because of gas rationing. People who understand these things better than I do tell me that even if Trump strokes out tonight and Hegseth overdoes the autoerotic asphyxiation, it'll be months, possibly years, before things get back to ‘normal’ (‘normal!’).
“Any time I think about this stuff for even a few minutes, I start to feel that covid-a-comin', early-2020 feeling, only it's worse this time around, because I literally couldn't imagine what covid would mean when it got here, and now I know.”
@mitch @pluralistic This is quite a true reading by Cory of what thousands of people around the world are recognizing. Yet so many people are blithely ignorant. They just don’t pay any attention to “the News” and are even proud to tell people this. Then there are those supporting the Capitalists, the Oligarches, the Trump followers, the MAGA crowd, those profiting with the sales on military spending, politicians who get so much money from certain donors, and the general Republicans who no matter what, support the new status quo their leaders created.
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Outstanding reporting and writing by my colleague Monica Alleven about how Dish’s exit from the wireless industry leaves small, family-owned businesses on the hook for crippling property damage. Monica talks to small business owners left struggling after Dish’s maneuvers.
Private equity built a rentier economy.
What happens when the rentiers "turn off the lights and walk away from their obligations"?
For example, the petrostate despots funding the AI bubble & laundering their money in the USA...
...what happens when those nations realize how they were scammed?
They'll likely do like Musk, walk away, leaving others to face consequences & clean up a mess
https://archive.is/cZuhP
https://archive.is/c1yv4 -
@danielmunoz Politically, this is more to keep Bibi out of jail than to distract from Epstein. (The first US mistake was the B-2 attack last year, which gave the Israelis the ability to commit the US to a conflict with Iran.)
Fertilizer, fuel, and spares are will be short or unavailable for the northern hemisphere spring planting season. Throw in consequent disruptions on top of existing food insecurity and 1848-but-more is possible.
@graydon @danielmunoz @cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic
Diesel is already in short supply for South Africa's Winter grain sowing. Buckle up. -
@cstross There are four ways out of this.
1. everyone in power in Iran and the US agrees that peace is more important than their personal futures, and make peace.
2. the US genocides Iran to the point there cannot be an Iranian industrial economy; the Strait opens as a victory for maritime power and freedom of navigation. (Takes years or nukes.)
3. The US undergoes collapse/gives up; Iran taxes tanker traffic.
4. Famine-driven new world order.@graydon @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic Your options 2-4 look like a mix-and-match bundle to me. Option 1 is the least likely, given the way the west's power structures have doubled down on repression since 2008.
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@mitch They're all possible.
It's not a question of TACO; it's a question of the maritime order, American power as the Oil Empire, and the degree to which some combination of industrial capacity and existing stockpiles permit them to exercise military power despite what is shaping up to be a major economic constriction.
Plus two generations of American elite consensus about an appropriate fate for the Islamic Republic.
@graydon @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic Yup. Trump is a symptom not a cause, much as Louis XVI was a symptom, not a cause (of the decay of the French monarchy leading to the point of fiscal crisis and revolution).
