Stoop to Rise

“…when you have separated his sexuality from all that might humanise it, weigh in on him with it in some much more brutal and cynical form.” — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“To live is to fight.” — Latin proverb

@ELuttwak All transit by ship or pipeline becomes vulnerable when operating within range of Iranian fire.

crude from Abqaiq sent by a 1590 km/ 990 mile pipeline straight to Israel's Ashdod on the Mediterranean via Jordan would not require a perilous Persian Gulf transit, nor a perilous Bab el Mandab entry to the Red Sea, or the Suez Canal. Could function in two years

Oh, to be in England now that April's there

@Empty_America In Christianity, both holy marriage and monastic celibacy are honored as equally valid paths to holiness; however, at certain points in history, some traditions have mistakenly elevated one above the other.

Christianity is not a religion of universal or "expected" marriage, unlike Judaism or Islam. You can marry but it's not even especially encouraged. Monastic celibacy is supposed to be a PROMINENT path of life. Losing is this a sign of decay/heresy.

@gecafe @timecaptales The point is: he employed it with the same meaning it has today, before it was popular

@StoopToRise @timecaptales yes, words existed once, with different meanings

In the summer of 2000, as the Harry Potter series was quickly becoming a global sensation, legendary Yale critic Harold Bloom gave one of his most unpopular takes, calling 35 million readers wrong

@gwyrain @Tweetophon Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26)

@Tweetophon It is literally impossible to convert Japan to Christianity unless Christianity dramatically morphs itself into a specifically Japanese character, inverting and changing its position to do so. It's the only way they were able to convert Germanics who had similar worldview

0.34% Catholic... Japan converting to Catholicism has to be one of the most anachronistic & bizarre dreams. The religion failed to secure a foothold back when it was strong. Now Christianity has suffered intense decline. What foreign nation would mass-convert at this late hour?

This is one of the reasons I enjoy reading old books, lots of history, and taking time to think.

@anabology ✅

The average person does not want to deal with health If you are spending hours a day taking care of your health, 'self-care,' if you find the gym and supplements and research fun... You're in the minority. We should be striving for things that make you healthy with no effort

@hikingshawty ‘Home-Thoughts, from Abroad’

Oh to be in England now that April’s there

@celestialbe1ng If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You’ve got to forgive people. If you realised that about 85% of the population is metabolically retarded and therefore barely sentient, you wouldn’t be so hard on—or annoyed with—thy neighbour or anyone around you

@TakeThiamine @paulsaladinomd when comparing sugar and honey, pesticide contamination in honey is often overlooked x.com/pikeypilled/st…

Paul, this is a strawman. The steelman argument is: A little added sugar to an otherwise nutrient-dense diet is benign, even helpful. The argument is not that everyone needs to eat the Standard American Diet, or mostly processed foods. Are you really going to pretend that honey is so much more nutrient-dense? There are plenty of traditional cultures that consume large amounts of white rice as a staple and remain healthy (parts of Japan, other Asian populations historically). Are we going to pretend white rice is so superior to white sugar? Nutritionally, they’re extremely similar: both are refined carbs providing mostly empty calories with minimal vitamins/minerals/protein/fiber. Glycemic index almost identical. The studies you cited are not convincing. “Sugar bad” PMID 32397233: This is an editorial, not original data. It notes that high sugar intake (in the context of a Western diet) can shift microbiota toward more Proteobacteria and less Bacteroidetes, potentially increasing inflammation and metabolic endotoxemia. It’s a general observation about poor diets overall. There’s no specific dose, no human trial, no mention of “a little added sugar” in an otherwise healthy diet. PMID 34201938: A narrative review. It focuses on excessive/chronic high-fructose intake causing dysbiosis, LPS leakage, and inflammation. But again, it’s about overconsumption, not moderate amounts in a nutrient-dense meal. Also, you really shouldn’t cite this when you advocate for eating plenty of high-fructose fruits. “Fruit and honey good” PMID 38906893: This one is a small human crossover trial (n=19). They gave 500 mL of either a plain sugar-sweetened placebo or diluted cloudy apple juice (iso-caloric and iso-sweet). The sugar drink spiked post-meal endotoxemia and TLR2 ligands; the apple juice did not. Cool finding—suggests the fruit matrix (polyphenols, etc.) can blunt the effect. But this is acute (one meal), specific to apple juice, and doesn’t address whole fruit, honey, or long-term use. PMID 35967810: A review of in-vitro, animal, and small pilot human studies. It highlights honey’s oligosaccharides as potential prebiotics that can reduce pathogens and boost good bacteria. Promising for gut health, but again, not a head-to-head trial vs. “naked sugar,” and mostly preclinical. Studies linking sugar to problems are confounded by poor overall lifestyles. There are virtually no high-quality RCTs on moderate added sugar in already-healthy, active people or athletes. Context and total diet matter far more. Just like you argued in The Carnivore Code for red meat: epidemiological studies that suggest sugar is bad come down to Healthy User Bias. Red meat eaters often ignore other standard health advice because they already believe what they’re doing is bad for them. So they’re also more likely to smoke, eat fast food, ride motorcycles, whatever the case may be. The same applies to added sugar. It’s a given that “sugar is bad.” But this is intellectually lazy without context. Sugar gets broken down the same as any other carbohydrate. Same citric acid cycle, same electron transport chain. Only thing lacking is the nutrients. That can be provided elsewhere quite easily. Is something so benign in moderation really worth demonizing when it’s consumed in the right contexts? Do you really believe that homemade organic raw milk ice cream would suffer so much by having white sugar added in place of honey?

Yes, sugar is bad. Shocker. Multiple studies show that "naked" sugar can lead to dybiosis in the gut and raise LPS (endotoxin), leading to inflammation and IR (PMIDs: 32397233,34201938). Fruits, honey do not have the same effect (PMIDs: 38906893,35967810). Nature is cool.

Pregnenolone is like taking a deep breath on a mountain after being in the city for too long

The only possible exit plan for a ground war that could work is to topple the regime and replace it with a puppet. But then that would require winning a protracted counterinsurgency war. This is not possible given the required force-to-population ratio. It would need 40-60 divisions when the US can field only 10-15 even with a draft. US casualties in a counterinsurgency war will be horrendous. Meanwhile, Iran would’ve destroyed most gulf energy and water infrastructure, pushing the world economy into a Great Depression. A ground war is a recipe for a vastly bigger disaster than the one they have already plunged us in.

@Empty_America A ground war is a recipe for disaster x.com/policytensor/s…

If I were to invade Iran, I would enter the country in the far East around Chabahar in Iranian Baluchistan and then seek to solidify costal control West to at least Bandar Abbas. This facilitates control the Strait and gives US control of 2 major Arabian Sea Ports.

@no1abba invincible pipeline?

If the Saudis had joined the Abraham Accords and built the pipeline long discussed between the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean via Israel, nobody would be talking about the Straight of Hormoz.

@johnkonrad @IsOlympus Oil isn’t fungible. US refineries were built to run heavy imported crude, while today’s output is mostly light oil. So the US exports what it produces and imports what its system is designed to process. You can’t just reroute supply domestically as new infrastructure takes years

@Empty_America That's like saying there is no other "power" capable of shooting itself in the foot as effectively The geostrategic upshot of this ‘pulverising’ is Iranian regional hegemony and control of a chokepoint handling ~20% of global oil & gas flows, with tolling potential

There is also no other "pole" or "power" that would have been remotely capable of moving its forces there and pluverizing Iran in the same fashion.

Strait of Hormuz + old fashioned Artillery Iranian islands + Soviet era artillery is enough to close the Strait of Hormuz indefinitely with the most basic low tech hardware. No electronics, no rare earths needed, just steel and cordite, little more than Napoleonic technology. Below are 1970’s era artillery guns, that can be fed with mass produced Russian or North Korean artillery shells. Oil and LNG tankers are not warships, they are not armoured. They are not designed to absorb any sort of hits. They will never sail into a bombardment, or even the threat of a bombardment. This is why Iranian steel mills were hit. Iran doesn’t need high tech drones, doesn’t need EW, doesn’t need rocket motors, or guidance systems, doesn’t need fibre optics or chips. Iran only needs a few old artillery pieces and they can dig artillery guns into mountain pill boxes. Even if you bombed all the artillery, Iran could tow new Artillery to its coastal positions faster than any tankers could escape the gulf. What does this mean? It means Iran has essentially taken the whole Middle East hostage, and can now collect a petroleum export tax on some 30% of the world oil production. It also means OPEC is dead. OPEC serves no purpose in a world where Iran has a geographical choke on the world’s oil supply. It means Iran can become wealthy unless someone intervenes to end this. If Iran collects $20/bbl on exports for clear passage, that’s $400m / day. That new revenue would be 1/3rd of Iran’s GDP. They are unlikely to give this up now that they have stumbled upon this new power. Iran’s military budget is $10bn / year, if they extort $20/bbl for free passage, that’s approx 15x their military budget. If the Iranian people start to benefit from this extortion revenue, it gets even harder to prevent it as there are 90 million people over there. Way too many people for any modern military to conquer. Therefore this could be a new paradigm for the world economy and its energy supplies. Maybe one morning everyone will wake up and just go back to how things were before all this started? But the more people are involved and the longer it goes on, the less likely that is. Just seems like a huge mess.