Difficult Adjuster ☂️

Bosnian players refused to shake hands with Israeli players before their U21 Euro qualifier match 👏

This could be the offramp the world needs. You can think of it as the best outcome for everyone, under the circumstances. (1) From MAGA’s perspective, if Trump declares victory here and moves on, the US won’t waste yet more blood and treasure in the Middle East. It won’t invade Iran. It also won’t take all the blame for the ongoing global supply chain crisis. It just pulls out and lets everyone work out the regional security equation for themselves. Trump can say he’s fulfilled both his campaign promises: stop Iran from getting a nuke, but also no endless Middle Eastern wars. (2) From Israel’s perspective, Iran has now been shown to be quite hostile to its neighbors, and its military has been substantially degraded. Stopping now is good. Otherwise there’s a danger of overreacting to Oct 7 as Americans overreacted to Sept 11. Israel can stand back and call it a win, because after a US pullout, Iran will have much less excuse for holding the Strait hostage. (3) From the Iranian diaspora’s perspective, it’s unfortunately clear that the current war isn’t going to result in liberalization. Further attacks would push Iran further into fundamentalism, making it even harder to eventually do a liberal reformation. (4) From the long-suffering Iranian people’s perspective, ending the war now would also save countless lives. Otherwise they’ll get hit by friendly fire and drafted by the regime to fight for fundamentalism. (5) Finally, from the world’s perspective, once the US declares victory and goes home, substantial diplomatic pressure will be applied to Iran to simply open the Strait of Hormuz and allow ships through. Iran’s leadership has shown, perhaps surprisingly, that they care about global public opinion…and they would be on the hook for the suffering of billions of people if the Strait remains blocked. TLDR: if Trump declares victory and leaves, Iran no longer has any excuse for blocking the Strait and holding the global economy hostage. Let the matter be worked out diplomatically with pressure from all the 100+ affected countries on Iran. America shouldn’t have to spend a single cent more, or send a single soldier more, to the Middle East.

Valuable certainly, but “extremely valuable” to the point that he deserved jobs that others got? No. I know you (and he) have claimed that DEI is the reason other people might have gotten more funding/jobs/etc over him from several different organizations that claim is very wrong. From what I can tell there has never been a single hiring/funding decision in the history of the many companies funding Bitcoin Core contributors that considered anything except intelligence, commitment, and history of contributions. The other day you tried to claim that I suggested anything but that but that claim was also wrong. At no point have I ever suggested, nor thought, that hiring decisions should consider anything but the above. I have stated, and do think, that it’s worthwhile for companies and groups funding bitcoin core contributors (and indeed, any company hiring) to reach out to people that might otherwise not apply for a job or program and encourage them to. Lots of research shows that when you do that you end up increasing the intelligence/skill of the people you end up hiring, not decreasing it - more applicants means more people to choose from.

1/ In 2025 Bitcoin Core removed a decade-old mempool policy default — a configurable limit on how much non-financial data nodes would relay. OP_RETURN was effectively uncapped. Not a consensus rule. A default setting. But defaults govern what most of the network does. Which governs what miners see. Which governs what gets mined. The justification: it wasn’t working anyway, data was getting in through a loophole. What wasn’t disclosed: that loophole had been deliberately kept open. Here’s the documented sequence. 🧵