Very interesting, but I wish the analyst had “gamed it out” a bit more.

What happens if Israel does hit the nuclear facilities? What’s the escalation after that?

Ukraine would have a free hand to hit Russia’s territory, with whatever weapons it could obtain.

Doesn’t Russia have defensive pacts of their own, with North Korea and CSTO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Organization#History

They would undoubtedly claim to be attacked if Ukraine uses weapons in “their” territory the next time around, and at the very least drag Belarus (and NK as an explicit supplier) in with them.

Wouldn’t Turkey or someone sour this?

But if it’s actually possible, that’s fascinating… if Ukraine can’t push back quickly, wouldn’t it “force” an end to the war? Russia would have a red line it absolutely can’t cross, no hope of advancement, and likely just claim everything on the other side. Surely they wouldn’t continue a grinding stalemate where Ukraine has a “safe zone” to operate out of.

If Ukraine does retain its ability to push back hard by the time this happens, and doesn’t go for a truce, then that’s especially peculiar. Walling off a part of their territory as actually untouchable seems like a massive strategic advantage for Ukraine.

And also acting like “climate change” is a taboo topic that should never be spoken over the air, lest you offend someone.

Well, it’s not over.

This is coming next week. Path is unclear, and its not as big as Helene, but anything near a 930mb in Tampa Bay and plowing over Orlando at 950mb, especially at this angle, is a catastrophe.

Katrina was 920mb at landfall, and these intensity forecasts have been undershooting hurricanes recently.

And there’s another low pressure system at the edge of the GFS that I don’t like, taking a similar path to Helene:

This is what the upcoming hurricane looked like a few days ago.

Exoplanets? Named asteroids? Human satellites?

Twitter screenshot of this linked in slack that evening.

The modern internet in a nutshell, lol.

Discord is even worse, as you need to find an invite to a specific Discord, and sometimes go through a lengthy sign up process for each Discord.

Some won’t let you sign up without a phone #.

Matrix.

And… Lemmy.

It doesn’t matter though, the problem is the critical mass is migrating to Discord and shunting everything out of view. Honestly that’s much worse than being on Reddit, even now.

I’m a bit salty this was apparently announced through Discord. Was it even posted anywhere else?

The future of social media is fragmented siloes, I guess.

Israel’s “Special Military Operation”

Even Russia learned their lesson in this part of the world.

This does benefit him if it gets him votes. He wants voters to like him, and he’d absolutely build this crazy pipe and slap his name on it if he could.

But like you said, he’d drop it like a rock if it’s inconvenient.

Unlike other politicians, Trump accepted there’s no real consequence for making fantasies up and almost lying, just like he did in business.

“Is he saying this because he thinks it benefits him to say it, or because he thinks it benefits him to do it?”

And anyone who’s on the fence about Trump is not thinking critically like this, they are looking at a few things he’s saying and pondering if its a good thing and benefits them.

And again, fact-based news journalism does not have the luxury of assuming “Here’s what we think he’s saying, and we think he’s making that up because it benefits him, so it’s probably nonsense.”

It’s not totally incoherent though, its vague and almost poetic.

This is kind of Trump’s talent. He makes these grand statements that aren’t quite lies. The crowd gets exactly what he’s trying to say: all this water pouring out of snowy mountains into the ocean is a “waste” when it could just be diverted to LA, so let’s fix that. It’s worded almost like a dream. It’s an attractive fantasy. But it’s also vague, not quite enough to be a lie even if the implied facts are straight up wrong.

What can the news do? If they dig into it, he didn’t really make any hard claims to roast. They can veer into opinion talk and say that sounds unpresedential and that his speech should be more clear, but making fun of his speech style at a rally is not supposed to be their job. So they do what they can, guess what he’s saying and refute that.

Again, this was his talent before he got into politics. The Motley Fool did this great podcast on Trump (before Trump was big and political) where he sold massively overvalued real-estate from his private company to his public one, effectively “duping” the market, and it worked because he sold it as a vague fantasy just like this. He got plenty of criticism and it didn’t matter, because he threaded the needle and what he’s claiming is not hard enough to stick. This is what he does.

The difference is he could be the next president and try to turn whatever he’s thinking into national policy, so it’s worthwhile to try and dissect what he’s saying.

But those experts are also (somehow, still) not really accustomed to Trump’s bombastic language. He was like this long before he got into national politics, hyping real estate and business for the market (where it kind of worked). That’s a totally different world, where half lies and crazy sales talk are the norm.

No kidding, even inland salt is a menace. That + sand destroys stuff outside.

Florida has the added bonus of being a swampy jungle, which you don’t really understand until you try to live there. Your landscaping, weeds, anything that grows, grows like crazy. Your pets will get all sorts of infections and parasites from the ground, even with all the pesticide they spray through sheer necessity. Mosquitos are even bigger than in Texas, and they never leave. And I saw a big alligator tear up our neighbor’s porch trying to run/hide from us, in a very suburban area.

I love this petty fatalism, like more immigrants voting is the apocalypse and the Republic Party can’t possibly just… accommodate that? And adapt?

Same with a 51st state.

If they don’t like it, well, they can lose more elections.

I think this is your phone doing you a favor, dynamically restricting the apps so they don’t misbehave in the background.

If its our area (Flordia coast)… that’s not a problem.

Buyers don’t care. They don’t know squat about flooding or hurricanes, they just come in from out of state and get dazzled by the realtor and the weather and everything and buy.

Our housing market was so crazy houses were being auctioned left and right. Market value just keeps going up, even on the coast.

TL;DR if the area is superficially attractive enough, home buyers are idiots. I realize this is probably not the case in Georgia mountains, but it his here, and its enabling a vicious cycle where builders keep building homes in obvious flood zones, where they absolutely shouldn’t.

Maybe so… but I feel like this is one of the biggest mistakes in the post WWII order. Imagine what things would be like if the UN had more teeth (and no security council)

“You know this war we’re slow-walking? That we keep almost negotiating a ceasefire to? Yeah, let’s keep sabotaging that, and start another war, just in case.”

I also kinda sympathize with American allies looking on from the outside now, as the U.S. is going to no doubt unconditionally support this, because… yeah.