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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I mean, if you ignore maybe half of the things he says about Black Americans or immigrants, you could maybe not see him as a white supremacist. Tucker Carlson is a good political communicator, and he is clever. But he's still a bad person.

> But he's still a bad person. But that doesn't make him a supremacist. Tucker knows his audience and gives them what they want. He's done content in support of both major parties in the US; he's a true capitalist not a supremacist.

He said immigrants make the country “poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.", he credited “white men” for “creating civilization.”, he was pro-iraq war he said he felt “no sympathy” for Iraqis, calling them “semiliterate primitive monkeys.”, he believes in the great replacement theory he said the Biden administration’s immigration policy is like “eugenics” against white people, he said black people killed by police that sparked the BLM protests deserved to have been killed, it's fucking endless like a week ago he called pro-hitler Oswald Mosley one of Britain's 'great war heroes'.

That's why the parent comment said "the large scale replacement of white people in their home countries" as a statement of fact, all you dog whistling nazi fucks

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#622
post #615
post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I install solar panels, a battery, and a next gen breaker box in CA, even with premium equipment and no subsidies, I'm looking at a max payback period of like 20 years, right? At that point yea, it's effectively free energy. Is it an investment? Sure, but it's an investment that trivially pays for itself.

To be fair, CA is one of the only places that's true, largely due to PG&E fuckups paired with a legislature keen to grant them unlimited money to kick back to shareholders.

That’s just not true, there are plenty of places where the math works easily without subsidies.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#623

The Straight of Hormuz is open to any country willing to pay $2M per voyage. Any country except the U.S. and Israel. The most important aspect of the "toll" is that Iran prefers payment in yuan, not dollars. If Iran succeeds in nationalizing the Straight and is successful in enforcing the toll, it represents a very serious threat to the dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the world's reserve currency for trading energy.

> The most important aspect of the "toll" is that Iran prefers payment in yuan, not dollars.

> If Iran succeeds in nationalizing the Straight and is successful in enforcing the toll, it represents a very serious threat to the dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the world's reserve currency for trading energy.

This theory seems to predict that CNY/USD should have gone up since Feb 27 as everyone rushes to trade and obtain yuan so they can pay the Iranians. But in fact the opposite is the case; that currency pair peaked Feb 27 after a bull run (well, only about +7%) since approximately "liberation day".

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iran's dickhead move... Remind me again, which country started this whole mess? > what choice do the gulf nations, or even all the asian+european (strait users) nations have? They can go "yeah, you know, the US has been less than reliable as an ally recently, what with absurd tariffs, saber rattling around greenland, belitteling NATO, etc., and they seem unwilling to change, so we're just gonna pay the piper, and g…

Don't think there is much of a point replying to this person seriously as he is obviously a troll. You can take half a minute to check his profile

People having worldviews you disagree with does not make them "trolls".

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#625
post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the payback period is like 5 years if you count all the subsides. My point is only that, you can effectively take most of your house of the grid, even in an urban area, with a relatively short payback period, and an almost guaranteed return. Is it the most profitable place for investment dollars? Probably not, but it's effectively risk-free, and there are plenty of knock-on benefits, like having power in a bl…

I agree with this, but I don’t trust that it will stay this way. It always seems like there’s no real way to ‘get ahead’. They’ll always find a way to make the system cost such that it barely pays itself off, by introducing fees or cutting rebates. For example, there was a proposal in Australia to raise our fixed grid access fee from something like $1 a day to $5 a day. Or consider even just the feed-in-tariff for so…

[deleted]

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're swapping a dependency which hits very quickly if disturbed, for one that would take a much longer time to manifest. That's not the entire point. You still rely on global supply chains. Those semiconductors in your MacBook Pro are made in Taiwan - many steps (perhaps most) in that supply chain to go from raw material to MacBook Pro, or EV, or fresh produce rely on oil. When Iran holds 20% of the world's oil s…

Nobody said that a modern economy can be completely independent, but that doesn't mean all levels and types of dependency are equal.

Right: My body will never be able to survive without taking in elements from the outside, but I'd rather have an interrupted supply of calcium than an interrupted supply of oxygen!

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#627
I agree with most of the sentiment in the OP with a few key disagreements. OP repeatedly says Iran is not very important (not strategically important). This is clearly not true for a few reasons:

1) They control the flow of oil, as we're seeing now.

2) They provide a huge amount of funding to hostile forces throughout the middle east - Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, pro-Iran militias in Iraq. This destabilizes the entire region, including important partners beyond Israel (Saudi Arabia, UAE). Their support for the Assad regime in Syria and Hezbollah, who killed nearly half a million Syrians during the civil war there, also created a huge refugee crisis throughout Europe that has led to a rise in far-right parties who are reacting to the failed integration of these refugees.

3) They provide drones to Russia and instructions for how to build those drones.

4) They provide oil to Russia and China, two major geopolitical adversaries.

5) They are among the most significant propagandists that use social media to destabilize the west - having been caught repeatedly manipulating social media platforms like Reddit, Instagram, Twitter/X.

There are also some strategic benefits to the current war, especially if you're a narcissistic kleptocrat running the US:

1) We've already seen the market manipulation.

2) Every bomb dropped is a bomb taxpayers must replace; that money goes right to defense contractors

3) Then consider the American oil companies: they stand to make a lot more money from this, as their products are now more scarce and more valuable. The US, as a net exporter of oil (we import low quality oil because we're good at refining it; we export the good stuff), will make more money.

4) The disruption of the Persian Gulf hurts Russia and China far more than it hurts the US and EU. There are some US allies and neutrals who get hurt (those in east Asia, gulf oil states). But it's not a balanced impact - we definitely come out on top in the current situation in my view.

5) Electric vehicles are starting to look a lot better. Who's Trump's bff and biggest financial backer, again? Does he operate in that space?

I think the overall impact of the attacks on Venezuela and Iran sum to an attack on the hostile Russia-Iran-China axis, with the benefit of hurting some of their minor allies as well. It seems too perfect that we attack the two largest non-allied oil suppliers in quick succession for it to be coincidence. It might not be Trump's plan, but it seems like a long-standing plan to achieve a favorable geopolitical environment.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#628
post #600
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar complaints from Trump the other day “So, it’s it’s uh little unfair. You know, you win a war, but they have no right to be doing what they’re doing.” https://x.com/ME_Observer_/status/2033768757688934424

In fighting games, this is exactly the way "scrubs" think. They lose and appeal to some vague notion of fairness to avoid confronting the reality - they lost! Would be funny if it wasn't real.

I feel the comparison is too apples-to-oranges, games are designed things with goals like the enjoyment of participants and—on at least some level—a fair playing field.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#629
post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That would be catastrophic to Israel: they could face Iran from the air and Arab ground forces from multiple directions. " Israel has little to fear from Iran in the air, the IRIAF has been destroyed and ballistic missile launches have tapered off. In terms of Arab ground armies, only Egypt and Saudi pose much of a threat; the others are small, unintegrated and inexperienced and rely heavily on Western contractor su…

> ...they always have the Samson Option of nuclear-tipped missiles from silos and submarines. At which point Israel is over. I have no doubt about that.

Hence the name Samson: caving the roof over one's self while taking down the enemies.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...What does induction cooking have to do with renewable energy?

> What does induction cooking have to do with renewable energy? Gas stoves aren't renewable. For most countries, they're dependent on volatile exports.

See, when I initially wrote that comment, it legitimately did not occur to me that there was even such a thing as a "gas stove" until I walked away from the computer. In my world they're a strange novelty.
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