chainsaw on a stick

🚨 Iran is strategically holding back its doctors of philosophy. Larijani was a moderate Kantian. DC fears the escalation ladder: Hegelian → Schmittian → Heideggerian → post-structuralist At the final stage, the subject dissolves, the target disappears, power is everywhere

@bernardtjoy Bernard T. Killjoy over here

People tell me Villeneuve's Dune trilogy, once completed, will be one of the great trilogies in film history. But I just can't imagine a great trilogy spawning from such a poor first instalment.

@allTheYud this is a popular complaint on the right but totally nonsensical. Trivial to think of a million examples of good people doing good things in popular culture, from Die Hard to Captain America. The Subtle Knife? Earthsea? You can pull a zillion of these out of a hat

I wonder how much of Western civilization's collapse is downstream of writers and scriptwriters deciding they were too cool and sophisticated to write about good people doing good things.

@maiamindel actual lol, extraordinary self-own

Shot / chaser from the NYT instagram

I know the jokes about the Israeli data centers and bots are funny. But I literally haven’t gotten a sex bot dm request NOR a single Neo Nazi death threat or an n word only dm request in an entire week. I used to honestly, on my dead chihuahua, get a hundred death threats a week

A little note about war planning.⬇️ Over the years I've come to the conclusion that the scenario that often ends up playing out in war - and the one that actually has to be mitigated if planning is to be successful - is one that's beyond the worst-case scenario envisioned prior to the operation. This is because the people thinking up those worst-case scenarios are staff officers who suffer from institutional pressure to stick within conventional wisdom and keep the boss happy by telling him that, yes, this operation is actually possible and not a terrible idea. Meanwhile the enemy can be expected to ruthlessly take advantage of every possible opening because he is smart, tough, and motivated - and the first and foremost gap that the enemy slides through is the one between conventional expectations and battlefield realities. Let's apply this to Iran. The worst-case scenario envisioned by the yes-men in the Pentagon was probably that the campaign might take several weeks because the US and Israel could be expected to quickly breach the Iranian anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) "system of systems" and effective conventional bombing would break Iran's will to resist in a manner similar to Serbia in 1999. This was the "long" war plan which was floated prewar and reflected in the statements of US and Israeli officials in the first hours of the war - that this operation would take, at most, a few weeks. The Iranian population was also assumed to despise the regime, and would quickly rise up against it if given the opportunity. Furthermore the Iranian leadership was apparently assumed to be basically corrupt and mercenary (see claims that the Ayatollah controlled a vast personal fortune), and would not risk their valuable oil industry by either closing the Strait of Hormuz or inviting counterattack from striking Gulf Arab oil sites. This scenario was probably put up as a "Most Dangerous Course of Action" on the briefing slides - the "Most Likely" course of action was probably regime collapse after Khamenei was killed. This all briefs very well to someone like Hegseth, who wants to be told how we can do something rather than all the reasons why we shouldn't. The actual battlefield scenario we're facing right now - on D+12 and with absolutely no end in sight - is far worse than what was, in retrospect, an absurdly optimistic prewar assessment. Iran's A2AD network is still very intact, the Iranian population rallied around the flag, and Khamenei turned out to have been a respected, moderate octogenarian who was restraining the regime hardliners who were happy to set the Middle East on fire just to get at the US and Israel - not the other way around. Thus we see talk of ground troops - and a militarily implausible, open-ended invasion of Iran. We leapt into the abyss thinking it was a kiddie pool. This is something of an aside, but it's also occurred to me that this absurd analytical failure - an almost total misread of the political and military situation in Iran on the part of the US military and intelligence services - can best be explained by something I've also noticed and commented upon with respect to Ukraine. We're outsourcing not just our intelligence data but also our analysis to third parties. As shown in the Texeira Leaks, SACEUR was getting briefed raw, unquestioned Ukrainian cope propaganda as the TS level because we'd apparently outsourced our intelligence collection and assessments to the GUR and brOSINT and had no institutional capability to even sanity check the story that we were being told, or political will to suggest that this was even necessary. Going into Iran CENTCOM was likely sold a bill of goods by Mossad in the exact same way, with the exact same constraints of analytical competence and politics preventing critical assessment of whatever rosy picture the Israelis were painting of a short, victorious war.

@DerekPederson3 Mistakes: - Gulf states weren't neutral, they hosted US army bases and forces. They may be more, not less, inclined to neutrality now - Regime isn't weakened militarily. It hasn't lost any assets it cannot readily rebuild - There is no feasible operation to "open the Strait"

So the outcome so far is: - the regime is weakened military but hardened politically - Iran destroyed their relationship with several countries that had been neutral in the Middle Eastern Cold War like Qatar, Oman, and Turkey that will now likely lean towards the anti-Iran coalition in the future - Iran has lost a lot of influence in both Lebanon and Iraq (Maliki is out, looks like Sudani will get another term as PM) and in Lebanon it might be for good if Hezbollah can be disarmed with the help of Syria and Israel - No obvious off-ramp to the war as the IR has rejected a ceasefire but we might be able to keep the Straight of Hormuz open via tactical operations - The opposition remains too disorganized relative to the hardliners in the government to overthrow the regime, despite a majority of Iranians desiring this outcome and even factions of the government probably wanting to break with the Mullahs - The only thing the US could do to *guarantee* such an outcome would be a ground invasion, for which there is no support in the US Does this all sound correct?

@wyatt_browdy 2666

What are the best "everything novels"? Novels that are seemingly about everything at once

Israel is (famously) not a signatory of the treaty that outlaws cluster munitions because it likes using cluster munitions against its victims, most recently Lebanon. Embarrassing, deeply hypocritical post

@SandyofCthulhu Chinese aerospace manufacturing has been of domestic design (and distinct from Russian avionics / engines etc.) since the debut of the J-20 some 15 years ago. I think a lot of these assumptions are a decade or so iut of date tbh

1) We have fought wars against Chinese equipment and it has NOT stood up. 2) if we haven't fought a peer, neither has China. In even longer. In fact the last "peer to peer" war either of us had was against each other, in Korea. 3) we have captured and examined Russian targeting, radar, and electronics from shot-down planes in Ukraine. China uses the same systems. So we know all about Chinese electronics. Thanks, Zelensky! 4) even if the Chinese are a peer-to-peer opponent quality wise, the US has 13,000 military aircraft. China has about 3500. We used to hear a LOT about how "quantity has a quality all its own" and how the Chinese vast numbers would overwhelm us. Well, in case of a confrontation in the recent future, we would be the "vast number" opponent. 5) we have indomitable allies we can rely on. Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, for example. Hell, even Vietnam(!) has said they'd let us use their naval bases in an anti-Chinese conflict. That's how hated China is.

worth noting the US dropped nearly a million tons of bombs on North Vietnam, beat back the Tet Offensive, devastated Laos & Cambodia, bloodied the NVA and Saigon still fell in 1975 because "let's drop bombs and hope for the best" is not a strategy

@RWApodcast actual lol

My culture is not your costume

@Romy_Holland None. Israelis are hoping to destabilise a rival so it collapses into civil war. It's happening now because Tel Aviv felt Iran has not recovered from the last war and dragged the US into this.

okay im sorry for the dumb questions but can someone explain what the point of war with iran is? like, what’s the exact win condition here that will determine how many weeks this goes on? and why is this happening now specifically?? i’m finding lots of info about what is happening but im confused as to why it’s happening.

@NotPotBol US keeps insisting it has total air superiority but Iran clearly planned for that to be the case. It's a slugfest now - who's gonna run out of munitions and will, Iran or the US? Quagmire. Disaster for the US. Trump's very own Special Military Operation lol

@ThatchEffendi not to be That Guy but if it's plural then the phrase is "[the] Alten Kämpfer". "Alter Kämpfer" is singular

It's funny to watch who's jumping off the Trump train. The Alter Kämpfer seem to have some ideological commitments and it's hard for people to call them traitors, so they're fine openly criticizing him. The Anti-Anti-Trump Free Press/Tablet types can't really admit that, in part because they were such late converts. None of them are willing to say "uh maybe Trump isn't the Weltgeist and maybe Anne Applebaum isn't history's greatest monster, sorry we messed that up!"

@ArmchairW This is gonna be a mission in Ace Combat 9

The USAF had one of its worst days in a generation this morning when three F-15Es were shot down in a matter of minutes over Kuwait. Let's examine this incident in detail.⬇️ Let's examine the damage. All three pilots walked away unharmed and the videos we have available show relatively modest damage to the airframes centered on the tail section. The one video we have of a hit shows a clean strike to the rear of the aircraft, with strong indications of control surface damage and engine failure immediately afterwards. This is inconsistent with strikes by heavy SAMs - either from a Kuwaiti Patriot or HAWK (as is being claimed by CENTCOM) or S-300VM (as is being claimed by Iran). A hit from any of those rather large systems could be expected to tear the aircraft apart and kill the pilot instantly. Finally, let's examine the context. The one impact we have a video of (video 1) shows an F-15 flying straight and level before being hit squarely in the tail. No missile is visible inbound or extensive cloud of debris after the blast, suggesting that whatever hit it was rather small and low-powered. No evasive maneuvers are apparent, which indicates that this aircraft's pilot was unaware they were under attack. Combat aircraft have radar warning receivers that light up like Christmas trees if they're being painted with a fire control radar and the pilot could be expected to take strong evasive maneuvers and deploy chaff and flares if they were aware they had been fired upon, whether by mistake or not. There's only really one theory that I think makes sense here, and I understand if it sounds aggressive - because it is - but I think it's the only theory that fits the observed facts: An Iranian fighter probably slipped into Kuwaiti airspace this morning and shot these F-15s down with IR-guided Sidewinders or R-73s before escaping. And everyone is lying about what actually occurred for reasons of their own.

@NotPotBol US killed the guy who had pushed hard for de-escalation & negotiation and was careful to always give US an off-ramp. His successors understand this was viewed as weakness by the US and are now determined to make the US pay - I believe Iran has just rejected a ceasefire

Really important to me that Genghis Khan and his Mongol horde were going around saying 'what up dog' to each other

@SandyofCthulhu I agree but I doubt the Israelis are interested in a free Iran; Netanyahu explicitly stated his goals as balkanisation (and therefore endless civil war) across the Iranian plateau. As awful as current regime is, that outcome would be so much worse

I know no one is following me for my political views. And that’s okay. I’m not here for politics. War is awful - it’s Satan’s most terrible creation. But in our fallen world we sometimes have to use fallen methods to achieve a good goal. There IS such a thing as a Just War. They’re rare, of course. In the 80s I knew several Iranian families who had fled the regime. They all had tales of the fanatic murderers who’d seized power, who hurled their children into machine-gun fire in the Iran-Iraq war. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian teenagers ran to their deaths in white robes, armed only with a hand grenade. The Iran horrors against their own people go decades back. I believe that Iran’s government has proven itself so monstrous that they have built their own case for a Just War against them. I pray for a swift and decisive end, and for a glorious dawn of freedom for a New Iran.