• Myth #3: It’s Bad for Russia - That's not a myth, it is bad for Russia. First it is unclear how much stuff for Russian Shahed / Geran is still coming from Iran. It could also be that Russia won't be able to manufacture one way drones as Iran will lose its own manufacturing capacities due to bombing.

    Furthermore constant loss of allies around the world is pushing Russian influence into irrelevance. Putin loves to talk about multipolar world and when such multipolar world is happening to be, Russia is not a pole at all despite its size.

    And in the end, it is questionable how much can Russia benefit from elevated prices. Shadow fleet tankers are chased around the world, pipes are shutdown or bombed. So even that prices are elevated it may not do much for Russia as there is broken logistics between Russia and its customers.

  • I was hoping that the article would present some mechanism. It might well be true, but simply asserting "this will make him rich" is not interesting unless you say in what way. This is an example of what's in there:

    > What does Trump get out of it? Perhaps Club Med Mar-a-Lago or Trump Tower Tel Aviv.

    That's just the beginning of the article but if you read through it's like that all the way to the end. This does not actually live up to "Operation Epic Fury Explained" as a title and has more the sense of a struggle session than of an explanation.

    • “Operation Epic Fury might turn Iran into a luxury resort destination” is a compelling argument only to the small subset of people who are against luxury resorts on principle.

      That’s not to say that there aren’t more compelling arguments against attacking Iran.

    • Yeah, this is really just a rant, there's nothing substantive here, other than a warning against assuming that the political/voting blowback will be meaningful, or assuming that Trump cannot hold out indefinitely.
  • What are the chances that Trump & co actually steal the midterms?
    • Kalshi currently has the chances at 13% for full republican control of congress
  • The boomers are taking us all with them on the way out. And nothing we can do will stop them.

    Doesn’t help that half of the gen Xers on here are planning to fight for the remaining scraps with Peter Thiel at the helm, and program the robot dogs to finish off any survivors.