Oil chokepoints drive geopolitical conflict & countries dependent on hydrocarbons often have authoritarian governance & strategic leverage. TRANSITIONING TO RENEWABLES REDUCES THAT LEVERAGE. Transition itself takes decades & the world still runs heavily on oil today.
But never too late to transition
😆 This illegal war between U.S.-Israel & Iran has evolved into a "MiddleEastEnder" TV series that global audience can't help but watch because of the criminality, delusions & madness that accompany each episode. Exactly the kind of conflict you'd expect when tv HOSTS are in command of your military.
Agree, and the same is case for Finland as well. If anything this latest crisis has - again - showed that basing the better part of our economy on energy sources that are found almost exclusively in locations controlled by authoritarians and/or suffering from instability leaves us vulnerable.
Thucydides alert!
"What made war inevitable, in other words, was not merely the presence of rival great powers, but the fact that one of those powers was abusing the rules of the system that had enabled its rise to greatness in the first place."
Gift link
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/19/o...
Any US settlement or resolution of the conflict that enables Iran to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would represent a major US defeat and set a precedent with critical implications for global trade, given the strait’s role as a critical energy chokepoint.
“We are witnessing astonishing military successes that do not add up to victory and that is squarely on the president and how he’s chosen to do his job—lack of attention to detail and lack of planning,” said @kschake.bsky.social
www.wsj.com/politics/nat...
I told @ms.now it isn't just that Iran is 'winning' its propaganda war with new tech - the US is losing it with narratives that don't resonate beyond his MAGA base at home, and definitely not with international audiences. This gives Iranian propaganda a lot to work with. www.ms.now/news/banned-...
I explained that "the Trump administration has made Iran’s job easier by talking about the war in an extreme and unprecedented way, such as Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization and White House videos making light of bombings and killings." www.ms.now/news/banned-...
I told @news.rte.ie that "Trump has essentially changed the narrative internationally away from how terrible the Iranian regime is and has helped Iran, in my view, to lead with their framing" www.rte.ie/news/2026/04...
Europe v the US? There is much talk of a possible collapse of Nato but other big stuff in a gathering transatlantic civil war is invisible – or little noticed. France took a strategic step last week towards reducing its dependence on American tech giants. 1/
www.numerique.gouv.fr/sinformer/es...
People, companies & governments who push for war do so because they profit & benefit from it. Vote for politicians who don’t accept money from them & cease awarding them gov contracts to break the cycle of war & the necessity for a draft, which will be unpopular regardless of how they market it.
From Palantir, again just one of two dozen 🤯 but despite the vagueness I bet I can guess what sorts of 'solutions' they mean
"Oh, you know the ones"
Importantly, Sapphire was done with knowledge and cooperation of the host government (Kazakhstan). It took a month. It was not done under fire in enemy territory
this is an utterly bizarre thing for *any* company to put out, much less a defense company
the next secretary of defense appointed by a democract is going to need to insist on very serious changes for palantir and/or be prepared to dismantle them entirely, karp is utterly unfit to run a company with the contracts and connections to national defense that palantir has
And kick out all the MAGA senior officers. Ban Fox News. If that’s a 1a problem ban all news. Only hgtv or cooking shows on public tvs. Change all the base names back by agt of congress and lock that bullshit down. Tear down every confederate monument in the country. Push their nose in it. Punish.
The only way we unfuck our country is through a puritanical anti-corruption drive. We need to rip out a vast substrate of corrupt elites and marginalize an even larger contingent of mere incompetents and cowards.
Ppl need to be terrified of the white-collar criminal laws of the United States again.
A bit of casual war-criming to manipulate the markets before tomorrow morning’s opening. Like every other weekend. Has any war ever been so gruesome and yet at the same time so tedious?
I have an entire PhD in political science and have never been sure what constitutes "The West" in a meaningful, consistent way.
What is the term meant to include - or exclude? Are the differences between "the West" and other "civilizations" greater than the differences within the so-called "west"?
Wonder what the State Department’s genocide lawyer does these days.
Another tell from Trump administration officials is the invocation of WWII allied bombing as “precedent” to defend atrocities or potential atrocities.
The law of war rules governing the conduct of hostilities (eg aerial bombing) have developed quite a bit since WWII.
A tweet from Pope Leo XIV that reads: “When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.”
Apparently the Pope has read Baudrillard.
Catholic teaching on atomic weapons is usually fairly condemning, but the USCCB set this sucker to high yield before dropping it on Vance and co.
Every Cyberpunk author: In my book I invented the concept of the evil tech megacorp as a cautionary tale.
Palantir: At long last, we have created the evil tech megacorp from every classic cyberpunk novel.
I’m sure Palantir considers:
building gaudy monstrosities to yourself,
putting your face on coinage,
offering pardons to your paramilitaries & cronies,
launching wars without reason / explanation,
purging security forces of civil servants, &
bribing yourself with the treasury
to be “The West”
This is as crazy as everyone is saying. Palantir is not a healthy company.
Is that what’s happening? I don’t think this is what’s happening.
What’s actually happening is creepy guys find that women don’t like them so they have to prey on vulnerable women in poor countries
We didn't stay the same, we became more POWERFUL THAN WE ARE WISE. And that gap is the problem.
Humanity has evolved, we have less global and interstate wars than the 20th century, our tools has evolved faster than our restraint, and yet much of mankind has already REGRESSED in a few stages.
This is one of those unintended consequences of war. And don’t forget other significant and notable chokepoints in the world like the:
Strait of Malacca
Suez Canal
Bab el-Mandeb
Danish Straits
Turkish Straits (Dardanelles & Bosporus)
Panama Canal (Atlantic to Pacific Oceans)
and Cape of Good Hope.
90 minutes until they're back, if you want to watch
#ArtemisII 🧪🔭
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfhD...