Link list: Articles and other links of interest
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@cstross @acsawdey @hakona @pluralistic @mitch @lasagne we need to invent some kind of book that tattoos the themes on your face in order to read it. if only sam altman had to see "don't invent the torment nexus" on his face every day because he watched 'her' maybe it would have sunk in before he did a stochastic terrorism to himself
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@cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic I wish that the motivation that would so move the american people were “civilian deaths” and not “gas prices” but so it goes
@glyph @cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic the current moment creates a perverse dynamic where it appears that a short term increase in aggregate suffering will lead to lower overall suffering, but “hoping” for increased suffering even in the short term feels pretty gross.
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@glyph @cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic the current moment creates a perverse dynamic where it appears that a short term increase in aggregate suffering will lead to lower overall suffering, but “hoping” for increased suffering even in the short term feels pretty gross.
@BilldeWorde7a @cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic I'm definitely glad that I'm not in a decision-making capacity that could actually affect this. idle thoughts do not have a moral valence and we shouldn't judge ourselves or others for them. still: same
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@BilldeWorde7a @cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic I'm definitely glad that I'm not in a decision-making capacity that could actually affect this. idle thoughts do not have a moral valence and we shouldn't judge ourselves or others for them. still: same
@BilldeWorde7a @cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic but, to reframe it more positively: I would never cause a crisis if given the choice, but in my activism and fundraising I am sure as shit not going to let a crisis like this go to waste
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@daburudar @acsawdey @glyph @hakona @pluralistic @mitch @lasagne Naah, they'll just get OpenAI to pirate a cracked copy off the web and digest it for them.
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@cstross @acsawdey @glyph @hakona @pluralistic @mitch @lasagne
Weren't you the guy who was complaining a few years ago (in the run-up to Brexit, IIRC) that you weren't writing •instruction manuals• please & thank you?
Sorry, love ya to bits, but I have zero confidence in your estimations of the relevant safety margins, lolsob
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@mitch @lasagne @pluralistic Four months is *in principle* long enough for the crisis to plateau and begin to ramp back down *if* all sides come to an agreement in the next couple of weeks. Which is all I can hope for at this point. Spoiler: I don't expect anything within spitting distance of sane from the Trump administration these days, even if it's something as obvious as putting down the baseball bat they're whacking themselves in the nuts with.
@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. -
@mitch @lasagne @pluralistic It's bad. My wife has a significant birthday coming up in September and we'd been planning a trip to Japan (we haven't been there since 2010). Only now, it ain't gonna happen unless there's a miracle because the price of aviation fuel is already through the roof and if this goes on the cost of flights will be 3x to 5x what it was at the same time last year.
@cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic So, Trump doing something for the planet after all. Destroying oil demand
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@pluralistic That is *bleak* . Rings true though. @glyph @cstross @mitch @lasagne
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Link list: Articles and other links of interest
Trump is alienating nearly every group in the unlikely coalition that voted him into office, even white voters without college degrees. “A new CBS News/YouGov poll found Trump's approval among white voters without college degrees — the backbone of his movement — has swung from +36 early in his term to underwater at -4, a 40-point collapse.”
@mitch 'eclectic' really isnt how we describe a seditious coup of nazis and abusers.
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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
Or
No one agrees peace is good, not a ceasefire, but, not a war, just lobbing drones, missiles, airstrikes at each other. Slowly dragging more into the maelstrom, involve the bab el mandab & red sea, involve china, Pakistan, India, escorting their tankers, more friction, eventually something will happen, too many variables, far too few cool heads. A wider conflict opening up before we know what's happening. Then...then, we're on the road to hell -
@graydon @cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic
Or
No one agrees peace is good, not a ceasefire, but, not a war, just lobbing drones, missiles, airstrikes at each other. Slowly dragging more into the maelstrom, involve the bab el mandab & red sea, involve china, Pakistan, India, escorting their tankers, more friction, eventually something will happen, too many variables, far too few cool heads. A wider conflict opening up before we know what's happening. Then...then, we're on the road to hell@Sine_Nomine That's #4, famine-driven new world order.
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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 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.
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@cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic I wish that the motivation that would so move the american people were “civilian deaths” and not “gas prices” but so it goes
@glyph @pluralistic @cstross @mitch @lasagne if folks in the USA only offer "thoughts and prayers" instead of anything meaningful over their own dead, why would anyone expect more for dead people outside the borders?
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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.
