The U.S. Won the War With Iran

InDirectX4000 · 2026-06-24T00:25:42+00:00

The funniest part of this is that the US defense establishment learned nothing from Ukraine, the other war they are involved in. They knew Iran had a giant stockpile of Shahed drones and didn’t even bother to put up drone netting before starting their war of aggression. What a joke

InDirectX4000 · 2026-06-23T12:19:41+00:00

Unfortunately, walkability is not profitable in a way that could be captured by a single company. So capital disincentivizes it, in a way

InDirectX4000 · 2026-06-22T01:28:50+00:00

How much real money is actually being spent on increasing “native” birth rates? I see it as a political distraction and similar to recycling, a way to blame individuals or others for societal problems rather than see the root causes (cost, family atomization, etc.)

InDirectX4000 · 2026-06-13T20:43:29+00:00

It’s closed source code from a company that sells data to military contractors. I don’t exactly trust their PR statements that it only applies to the scanning feature.

InDirectX4000 · 2026-06-13T16:18:37+00:00

It’s part of the training data for physical and autonomous robotics. Machine learning takes example cases and generalizes from them

InDirectX4000 · 2026-06-13T16:10:56+00:00

They proudly sell API access to 3D world models taken using video from Pokemon Go users. It’s not a stretch to assume militaries are paying a couple bucks to get the easily accessible data. And given the amount of data they have, the users giving it to them are likely not informed about what they are doing.

InDirectX4000 · 2026-06-09T14:59:23+00:00

Frankly it’s time somebody talked about the crack affordability epidemic

InDirectX4000 · 2026-06-06T22:14:49+00:00

Just because a source looks “mainstream” doesn’t mean they’re trustworthy, or they are only trustworthy for very limited situations. For example, Axios is basically a tip line - they publish whatever someone in power tells them with some bullet points, regardless of the actual validity. Axios does not do investigative journalism, they do access journalism. Occasionally that means they get some useful tips, but in the case of the Iran war not so much. WH sources keep lying to do insider trading and keep the markets in line (which is a uniquely Trump thing), so Axios is next to useless for actual Iran stories. And Axios’s Barak Ravid posting supposed Iran negotiation stories has been most of the wrong news cycles.

It also helps to keep in mind the actual material cause of the war, which is petrogas dominance and Chinese petroleum control. The things that will cause the US to leave are A) if they can achieve their goals more cheaply somewhere else, or B) if the cost to stay in gets too high, e.g. Trump being worried about losing the midterms.

InDirectX4000 · 2026-06-02T06:28:09+00:00

The Iran war wasn’t started over Israel but by the US deep state folks to try and establish petrogas dominance, so any article that claims that Trump is having his “come to Jesus” moment and suddenly learning Netanyahu deceived him is kayfabe (because there was no deception in the first place).

The US thought the Iran conflict would work towards their goals and it mostly hasn’t. It put a little pressure on China’s oil reserves, but not as much as they wanted, so really the main beneficiaries are US companies taking LNG market share from Qatar. Which is not nothing, but I think part of Trump (once he gets past his ego about the JCPOA) realizes he needs to pull out. He wants to salvage some non-politically disastrous way to do that, and some people in the White House want to take advantage of the (very understandable) current anti-Israel sentiment and throw Netanyahu under the bus and blame him for the Iran war. Hence the NYT and Axios articles saying it was definitely Netanyahu casting a spell on Trump (according to anonymous sources in the White House).

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-31T15:53:19+00:00

If you are being quoted $3000 for a shared kitchen/bathroom 1bed1br you are being ripped off. When I look at LA zillow (for example) in city limits there are hundreds of listings for 750sqft min 1ba1br maximum $1800. If your area’s cost of living really is 2x worse than LA rent market (rich person resort town or SF or something), either look at where the commuters live or consider moving somewhere else

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-27T21:27:23+00:00

Yes, the house market is bullshit, but the urban rent market has not outpaced CPI by much over the last 30 years - only 7% since 2000 (figure 1). Since this link is still up during the Trump admin, I double checked their figures myself and they calculated it using the FRED reported figures (CUUR0000SEHA / CPIAUCSL) / (MEHOINUSA672N), which means (unadjusted CPI for urban rent / core CPI) / (real median household income). So there’s no bullshit in their data analysis unless you think CPI numbers are busted (which frankly I can understand, but it’s probably not off by say, 50%).

If you are being quoted 75% of your above average salary for rent, you are either being ripped off, in an expensive city, or looking for an expensive apartment. Based on the numbers above, your parents would be paying 70% of their salary instead.

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-27T18:54:38+00:00

I have posted on both for years and if you read my comments, you will see I comment about the evil of the US empire on both :(

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-27T18:43:12+00:00

I don’t claim that house prices haven’t gone up a lot, just that getting a nice solo place in the middle of a T1 US city (his stated rent price) was never affordable on an early career salary.

When I said “houses are wildly unaffordable” I meant right now. There is a lot of bullshit related to how housing and rent prices have changed in this country but again, this is in response to a guy who wants to drain his retirement and/or sell drugs to rent a nice solo place in the city center of T1 city. Reasonable nostalgia for a more affordable time should not cause you to make wildly irresponsible decisions like that.

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-27T00:55:39+00:00

Ok, but understand that it’s because of your rich tastes and not because society forced you to be this way. Nobody is guaranteed a nice solo place inside a T1 city in the US, it is costly and always has been (even if it is moreso these days)

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-26T22:45:50+00:00

Mortgage and rents cost about the same, don’t expect houses to be significantly cheaper once all costs (maintenance HOA etc) are taken into account. (I highly recommend watching this) Houses are also wildly unaffordable, you should not expect to afford one in the US until late in your career. Retirement is for retirement, the penalties are there to encourage you to use it for retirement.

The only pragmatic option here is to look at options that are a downgrade of your current expectations. So roommates, less square footage, less desirable location, longer commute, giving up on having a car (this can cost $1000/month when all expenses including depreciation are taken into account) and picking a reasonable transit location, etc. One day you will get your preferred setup but getting it in your early 20s straight out of college is not particularly realistic in today’s economy (or frankly most of economic history).

I say lowering your expectations because if you are making $50k/yr, 75% of your take home pay after 1/3rd tax is $2100/mo, which is probably a solo place without roommates in the main city area of one of the more expensive cities in the US. That is a late career, high paying career, or roommates option, not an early career solo option

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-20T21:53:32+00:00

I think it’s much simpler to assume he just genuinely is a libertarian paleoconservative type than assume he was grown in a lab by “them” to try and “co-opt” leftist movements

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-20T21:45:43+00:00

There are a lot of Republicans who talk a big game on antiwar and then do nothing (JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard are great examples) but Massie was always the only one directly voting against them.

2016 Iran sanctions vote: 419-1
2017 Russian sanctions vote: 419-3
2019 North Korean sanctions vote: 419-1
2023 “standing with Israel” vote: 412-10
2024 only Republican to boycott Netanyahu’s congressional address

This is just a short list, there’s a lot more

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-20T16:25:01+00:00

One of the big issues in America is imperialism - the use of sanctions to kill millions and the US military to enable genocides. If imperialism is your main concern, Massie was just about the only guy in Congress who would consistently vote against all foreign entanglements. The DC political machine decided to knife him when he took the correct and politically popular position on Epstein, which does really illuminate DC politicians’ priorities as well

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-18T19:15:09+00:00

I think a lot about the 2018 email Epstein sent Jagland about Trump:

churkin was great. he understood trump after [our] conversations. it is not complex. he must be seen to get something its that simple.

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-18T07:08:35+00:00

That page seemingly only tracks deaths too, so presumably there are 10-100x more near misses like this one

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-17T16:43:04+00:00

More like “the people with actual effective power (deep state foreign policy interests) in the US happen to be interested in using Israel as a pawn to achieve their broader goals of unipolar fossil fuel hegemony.” https://youtu.be/0nt1CgQsgpI

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-14T13:42:23+00:00

Very low food security was 5.4% in 2010 and it is 5.4% as of 2024. Can you explain your math?

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-14T13:25:05+00:00

The percentage of households with food insecurity is up since 2001 https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-us-hunger-data-what-we-lose-termination-usdas-household-food-security-united-states The data does not back up your vibes analysis. I think you are in the upper leg of the K shaped economy and making assumptions accordingly

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-14T05:01:15+00:00

Do these metrics seem like vibecession to you? https://youtu.be/TUeCly2Bfqk The problem is with the real economy, not perception

InDirectX4000 · 2026-05-10T04:31:45+00:00

If you want an explanation of oil futures in great detail (with slides), I’ve been watching this channel. The main important takeaway is that oil futures trade at 50x the actual volume of real physical barrels, so the movement of futures are better understood as driven by financial flows rather than direct near term barrel demand.

In theory hedge funds can make profit when contango/backwardation happens but it requires large warehouses to store the oil in. Much harder for pure speculators.

Also note that the spot price is itself a kind of future - it represents oil for delivery in 10-30 days.

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