It is and you shouldn’t.

I’m going to be reading it but of the three dollar books that are out it’s probably the one I’m least excited for.

So far @paulblustein.bsky.social’s dollar book is fantastic. Going to recommend it as an intro for lay people.

Nahh you’d not have the skill set

As a guy who did that I’m glad you didn’t.

Frankly, it’s marketing. They are selling the image of evil genius which started with Steve Jobs and Zuckerberg being assholes and evolved into this.

It’s true in any modern capitalist economy.

me: hey do banks lend excess reserves? opus 4.7: 11:45 AMNo. Not in the way your econ 101 textbook implied. Reserves sit on the central bank's balance sheet and shuffle between banks for settlement — they don't get loaned to the public. Loans create deposits; the reserves question comes later, if at all. Reserve requirement in the US has been zero since 2020 anyway. Go pester Gemini for the long version. This reeks of the kind of question a first-year PhD student asks to feel smart at a happy hour nobody invited them to.

calling alignment "solved" for now

Minions posted with the Romanians at Stalingrad.

Minions do Pickett’s charge

Someone needs to put Minions in
The defendants dock at Nuremberg.

Can confirm after teaching hundreds of Am undergrad Christians. Entire semester devoted to Eastern Christians (Oriental & Byzantine), including attending at least 1 liturgy/qurbana, could not disabuse c. 50% of students from calling ECs "Islamic"--largely, I suspect, b/c of skin colour.

No. It's the port. Formally, if a blockade is declared, then any flagged nation can't enter of exit the port of the belligerent without risking entering into an engagement.

Frankly, you are allowed to hit it way harder and take way less risk as far as I know.

Ship is warned, disabled without lethal effect, boarded, searched, seized. That's kind of what you do in a blockade under most legal ROE.

The war is illegal by US law but the conduct of the stop is pretty much by the book of how you do a blockade under international law.

A lot of what is coming out of Iran, and the source of the "rifts" that have consumed so much attention (despite being, in general, poorly understood and under-sourced) is not whether Iran should seek a deal with the US that ends the war, but whether the current context lends Iran sufficient leverage to get the best deal possible. Spurning talks and continuing the war is argued in that context: not to bring further ruin to the country, but to impose more pain on the US and thus clinch a more favorable postwar status quo.

This from @gbrew24.bsky.social seems like the right way to think about dynamics within the Iranian regime

"rifts" is a dramatizing term that suggests regime instability. What's going on are *debates* over war strategy

but it still means the status of talks is up in the air

x.com/i/status/204...

Araghchi’s tweet reflected an understanding in Tehran, likely based on what they heard from Pakistan, that if they took a positive step by opening Strait of Hormuz, US would reciprocate by lifting the blockade. But Trump kept the blockade in place, and through his many tweets, suggested that Iran was surrendering on the nuclear issue. This has only fed Iran’s suspicions about Trump and that Islamabad like Geneva is a diplomatic ruse before another military attack. The door to diplomacy is not closed, but it has now become considerably more difficult. Deliberately or not, Trump has undermined diplomacy and raised likelihood of more war.

Likewise, this from @valinasr.bsky.social offers a theory of the dueling messages from Iranian negotiators and state media which doesn't depend on "rifts"

The offer to open the Strait was seen as an act of good faith to be reciprocated, and when it wasn't, Iran pivoted

x.com/i/status/204...

My personal mental break down point.

I want to be clear here - the president is causally threatening to kill millions of Iranian civilians, a war crime that is on a magnitude of the ones committed in WWII. This is incredibly bad.

They said this guy was more mentally stable and healthy than Biden. Jack Tapper needs to be hauled in front of a committee of under employed journalists and shamed out of the profession.

Best sleep I ever had with the worst long term consequences.

Climate finance, interrupted

open.spotify.com/episode/2rUl...

Another enraging look at the straight-up illegal maneuvers hampering climate action - the damage done to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund

Or a fist fight

OP thinks the fascists have a point

lol if I can build a 2.5 million 8 unit building in that lot then it’ll be worth a lot more than 150K.

Anyway. None of this is political. The world bank is simply carving nature at its joints.

well considering the average rural white american is 80% hitler particles by volume I don't think this is true, unless you mean national socialism

bsky.app/profile/vect...

He’s afraid of losing the Rogan voter

Only domestic wars.