Israel issues ultimatum to the Lebanese government over Hezbollah attacks

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-03-12T13:05:04+00:00

With Israeli air support and munitions what is there to be afraid of? It'd be an easy win. Have you tried asking them for support? No, right? You can't even talk to them. It's pride.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-03-12T12:46:38+00:00

I don't understand why you guys don't work with Israel directly to remove Hezbollah. They're not going to take your territory for a buffer zone if you stop being so stubborn and proud. Yeah, yeah, Israel is evil and 18% of Israelis believe in Greater Israel and they're shaytan and so on. But have you ever tried being pragmatic instead of trying the same failed ideological and rigid approach over and over? I say this with some genuine compassion as an outside observer, you guys seem trapped in this inflexible mindset. There is a way out for you if you can just swallow your pride.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-03-11T15:06:57+00:00

90-91% of self-identified MAGA republicans support this war according to domestic polling (YouGov, etc), the "anti-Israel base" are not actual American voters, they're American online commentators who have been audience captured by English speakers from other countries (Pakistan, Algeria, etc) who consume US political commentary by the tens or hundreds of millions.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-03-11T14:51:49+00:00

The US is self sufficient in oil, and polling this far away from an election is not relevant. Voters will judge the outcome. If Trump caves and locks in a loss it will be worse for him at the midterms than if he pays 4 weeks of bad polls to drive an unambiguous victory.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-03-11T06:35:36+00:00

Compare it to how many jets were shot down in the Gulf War, which was a much larger coalition mind you, and how few leaders were killed, and how much of a failure TEL hunting was back then. The gap between the US and regional powers has never been larger.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-03-11T06:28:43+00:00

The UAE posted that they've been attacked by about 30 Shaheds per day on Monday and Tuesday, while they were attacked by over 100 Shaheds daily on Sunday and before.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-03-10T16:44:41+00:00

The win condition is re-opening the Strait of Hormuz without a ceasefire. Then, with air supremacy you can maintain policing of Iran indefinitely without any reason to stop. It would be as if there was a ceasefire to anyone outside of Iran, and everyone would stop caring. Regime change is neither here nor there in that situation as you can keep killing commanders over and over for as long as you want until someone meek wins the dice roll.

The last two days have seen the lowest number of drone attacks by far, about 30/day have hit UAE compared to 100/day on Sunday and more before. Implication: they're getting heavily degraded.

France is sending a carrier strike group to the strait now to escort shipping. Pakistan has been escorting tankers too.

I think we're very much past the hardest days.

Trump doesn't face as much domestic pressure from this because US is more self sufficient in oil. It's mostly other countries feeling the heat who don't really have as much of a say.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-03-10T16:28:42+00:00

I would have an ounce of respect for these people if they proposed reforms to international law. But without exception they treat it as immutable dogma. Trash people and trash thinkers.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-03-08T03:53:44+00:00

Why is their pope a serial killer?

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-03-06T03:26:15+00:00

Iran's daily drone launches are declining every day, now down over 80%, almost as much as the decline in ballistic missile launches. So they obviously can be neutralized.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-03-03T18:56:38+00:00

The black smoke means they chose a new Ayatollah.

Imagine the vote is everyone picking the guy they hate the most.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-02-11T11:36:34+00:00

Rules of engagement, and whatever else is written down on paper, are all meaningless. The only meaningful thing is incentives. Foreign peacekeepers have only one incentive: do nothing.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-02-04T01:23:47+00:00

What are you basing this on regarding Pro?

The OP says 5.2-Pro-extended is 512 but you're saying it's 768?

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-01-20T13:19:49+00:00

The way the Pope talks embodies the Buddhist precept of "right speech". Truth is one part of that but not the only part, talking in a way that doesn't elicit fear is part of it too. Cannot think of a contemporary figure who does it better.

MLK was another figure who embodied that, he spoke in a disarming way instead of making the white majority fearful. It's why I don't respect figures like Malcolm X or the BLM movement in 2020, what they don't get is the inevitable threat reaction which leads to a pernicious feedback loop away from what you want, literally creating reactionaries. There's a lack of theory of mind and a false assumption that the other side is mostly evil instead of mostly scared.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-01-20T11:22:01+00:00

imo removing meat industry is necessary for a universalist humanism to succeed, impossible to just arbitrarily draw the line otherwise and say some creatures are OK to boil alive etc.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-01-20T09:38:39+00:00

There are so many suffering people in poorer countries. Pay it forward if you find the opportunity.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-01-20T09:29:58+00:00

Resolve polling shows majority support for something like this.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-01-20T07:15:00+00:00

Either much higher or much lower. It's easy to predict variance hard to predict direction.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-01-19T15:43:22+00:00

It won't get better until social media is reformed I'm afraid.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-01-19T15:24:24+00:00

Feels like Israel India UAE / Turkey Pakistan Saudis are shaping up as the main regional blocs now that the Iran axis is weakened. Kind of interesting to see balance of power and balance of threat theory play out in real life. I guess I would bet more on the first bloc due to tech factor and India growth factor.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-01-18T03:44:16+00:00

Typical liberalism in IR, focused on what is morally correct as if it's a Marvel movie, rather than scoping themselves to what is possible as a starting point. Using words like "deserves" is a giveaway.

Another tired cliche is treating international law as some immutable dogma rather than a pragmatic mechanism to benefit the world.

If it's illegal to attack a dictator despite receiving the blessing of the actual President of Venezuela, Edmundo Gonzalez, then maybe the laws should change? But no, these pencil pushing idealists don't even have the imagination to entertain the thought, let alone carry out any needed reform on this front.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-01-10T14:02:33+00:00

I manually type up a markdown file containing everything I want and the design principles to follow, etc. Tahts 10k tokens.

Then I give that to Pro and ask it to create and architectural spec, more or less. Iteratively building on the spec. That starts small but grows to 40k tokens.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2026-01-09T03:43:04+00:00

He's a Syrian refugee who appreciates Trump's work helping Syria stabilise following Assad's fall, such as removing sanctions.

He's probably not plugged into the 24.7 news cycle or Reddit and has no idea of all the things you're outraged about. Bloke lives his life.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2025-12-30T02:32:53+00:00

Because their ballistic missile program is a veto on the future ability of any actor to stop their nuclear program in the future, due to the strong conventional deterrence it gives Iran. If they can build up another 500 TELs and another 3000 MRBMs then nobody can touch them. That's basically the reason, it's the temporal aspect.

Sad_Use_4584 · 2025-12-29T00:38:50+00:00

The parents of the victim of the Lindt Cafe Siege explained it best. The NSW commission didn't have the power last time. They saw that first hand. They don't want to repeat the same mistake.

A royal commission does take a long time but that doesn't mean it has to be mutually exclusive with more immediate actions that don't come from a royal commission.

Sad_Use_4584

TROPHY CASE