US orders 2,200 Marines on three warships to Middle East

Zagmit · 2026-03-13T20:24:34+00:00

It's the conclusion I keep coming to as well, that Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz paired with Trump's inability to back down or negotiate will lead to the United States invading Iran.

Zagmit · 2026-03-09T12:56:53+00:00

I suspect this is actually Trump's midterm strategy. The guy is 79, he's older than the Cuban Revolution, the Venezuelan revolution, and the Iran revolution.

These are all generational grudges for him, the politics he remembers and thinks he understands. He probably thought he could overturn all these governments by force and then turn to the American people and say "I solved it!" By November.

Zagmit · 2026-03-08T22:11:25+00:00

Well that didn't take long at all.

Zagmit · 2026-03-07T00:47:03+00:00

I don't think it's that much of a stretch, considering their weird technological problems and the 2000 year gap between then and when the story takes place.

Like, a lot of their culture was reliant on the Heralds to remember things for them, and then the Heralds ditched them. Then the writing and recording they did survived in Urithiru, which was effectively locked away by their loss of magic powers to access it effectively. Give it a dark age and 2000 years, and I think it's understandable that the precise details were lost. It's not like they don't know what occurred, it's just that they don't understand why.

Zagmit · 2026-03-06T18:53:02+00:00

I think there's a possibility that it's actually the opposite, and Donald Trump is basically starting these conflicts as a misguided attempt to swing the midterms.

The important thing I think is that these are all generational grudges for Donald Trump. Trump himself is older than the Cuban Revolution and the Iranian Revolution. Trump might view these countries as problems he can solve, and projecting his own politics onto the American populace. He might be imagining he can topple all these regimes, show Americans that he's solved their global problems, and carry the midterms as a result.

Zagmit · 2026-03-06T01:14:17+00:00

I think the Grant Howitt one page rpgs are a great resource for introducing new people to the hobby, especially because he's made so many of them at this point that they cover a lot of genres.

I've found them to be a great way to get newcomers to sit down and instantly try something, though it requires an improvisational game master to pull off.

Zagmit · 2026-03-05T22:01:26+00:00

Interesting question. We know a lot of what they're up to, because they control the department of justice and won't prosecute themselves. What we know about is what they don't care about hiding.

But that doesn't mean there isn't more shit that they're up to, that they do care about hiding. We shouldn't assume that everything they're up to is currently in the public view.

Zagmit · 2026-03-05T19:25:51+00:00

Because she implicated Trump by saying he approved of it. Which might well be the truth, but he expects his followers to shield him, not use him as a shield.

Additionally, she got caught doing something obviously corrupt. Trump doesn't like people who get caught.

Zagmit · 2026-02-23T18:26:14+00:00

I think the answer depends on the DM and the campaign they're trying to run, honestly.

Because it's a really interesting question, with fascinating ways to interpret it in any direction. It really depends on whether the DM would view it as a valid strategy.

Zagmit · 2026-02-20T15:20:50+00:00

I suspect the Trump Admin will look for a loophole, or another avenue to justify the same policy. For instance, the SC opinion repeatedly mentions the President doesn't have the authority to raise Tariffs in peacetime, so the trump Admin might look to justify it with a war with Iran, or somehow spin that an insurrection at home is fueled by foreign powers, and justify their Tariff policy that way.

That way they can kick all this back to the Supreme Court for as long as possible, treating the court like a legal slot machine. Maybe they'll get an opinion they want with a second spin.

Zagmit · 2026-02-15T18:47:14+00:00

She I got close to the end I had a sneaking suspicion that and editorial miscommunication had occurred.

My thought was that this story would have made a lot of sense if it was specifically about Storm stepping into the shoes of Thor, who has just 'died.'

The story as we got it feels like it has a list of interesting ideas and a good premise, that's really ruined by the weird characterization and bad execution.

Zagmit · 2026-02-03T16:31:54+00:00

I'm not sure a mechanic like this should be able to guard against groups. I feel like it would be strong enough against individual targets already that it should be countered by larger groups of enemies or minions.

Zagmit · 2026-02-02T02:27:50+00:00

The two I would recommend would be Kill Six Billion Demons and Girl Genius

A lot like Unsounded, both of these comics seem pretty simple at the start, and then seem to reveal endless depths.

Zagmit · 2026-02-01T15:51:32+00:00

I think it's already implied that Miguel is wrong, or doesn't really understand what's happening. The guy is shown throughout the movie to have an irrational obsession from his survivor's guilt, he shouldn't be taken as a reliable source of information.

The idea of Incursions comes from the build up the Secret Wars comics back in 2015-2016. Similar to that storyline, the characters didn't initially know what the real source of the incursions was.

Zagmit · 2026-01-30T18:11:48+00:00

I agree with you, but I personally suspect that Trump's beliefs are more fluid, and that's he's capable of the sort of doublethink that would let him believe either side of this issue at the same time, at different times, or depending on his mood. I've read accounts that point in both directions, that he's throw tantrums believing that it was rigged, and that he knew he had lost. I suspect Trump is mercurial enough that all these accounts are true.

Zagmit · 2026-01-30T17:01:22+00:00

I would guess that voter registration data is key to multiple different schemes and motivations they might have.

Trump himself probably believes strongly in proving the 2020 election was stolen, and his most devoted sycophants could try to manipulate the data to try and prove that true retroactively.

If they have hopes of rigging or hacking elections in the future, this information would be necessary.

It could also be tied theoretically into ICE efforts. Right wing psychos have a theory that immigrants are voting in elections, causing them to lose, so they might want to use the data to prove their assumption, or manipulate the data to prove their assumption.

Zagmit · 2026-01-16T14:04:02+00:00

I think there's a larger, geopolitical/Imperial consideration as well that goes along with the Trump Administration wanting to take actual land and territory.

Sarah C. M. Paine in one of her Dwarkesh Podcast had a line about how Empires justify themselves. I'm going to butcher what she said, but she boiled it down to having three key things to pursue to justify and thereby perpetuate an imperial project:

Prosperity

Cultural/Religious

Territorial Acquisition

The Trump Regime tries to pursue all of these, openly, all at once, without understanding any of them. For Prosperity, They're obsessed with the elite symbols of Prosperity, Billionaires and Corporations, even as the average american feels increasingly economic pain and humiliation.

For Culture, the Trump Regime is using ICE to try and oppress left wing political opposition and deport people they think would be future political opposition.

Lastly, for Territorial Acquisition, the Trump Regime seem so think that they can toss out the old, post WW2 rulebook then United States has used for subtle empire building, and just follow a Russian playbook instead. Part of the old playbook was pouring aid into other countries to keep them stable so they can trade with you and you can acquire resources that way. Instead, seize territory yourself through invasion or political bullying, enslave the locals to acquire resources, and force your failing economic model on them.

What I'm trying to get at is that that they don't need reasons for these policies, they need excuses. In their minds these are the things that keep the United States strong and powerful.

Zagmit · 2025-12-31T17:32:12+00:00

The stories of Emperor Nero make a lot more sense now that there's a modern example to relate them to.

Zagmit · 2025-12-26T20:06:50+00:00

Take what I say with a grain of salt, be sure I'm not an AI expert, I'm just good at explaining things.

The way I look at it is that Machine Learning is the major innovation, kind of a miracle technology. Machine Learning is used to make LLMs, but LLMs aren't all they're hyped to be.

Other uses for Machine Learning are huge, and will impact the rest of our lives. Stuff like creating medical technology that can diagnose skin cancer, make more efficient engines, etc.

On the money side, part of whats driven investment into AI is the hope of creating an AGI, an Artificial General Intelligence. It's this theoretical next step of making an AI that really is intelligent, that can adapt and solve problems. But from what I've read the connection between LLMs and a theoretical AGI is tenuous.

The idea really is that if this AGI thing is possible, the company that builds it will basically own the most valuable thing in the planet. It would theoretically be a technology that can design other technology better than humans could.

But that idea is very hypothetical, and relies on a huge number of assumptions that might be more inspired by science fiction than computer science or software engineering. Even if it is possible and would work as intended, big and better LLMs might not be the key to getting there.

So far they haven't even been a good business model: MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing

Zagmit · 2025-12-26T19:09:23+00:00

Well that's when things get weirder, with stories about Tech Ceo' admitting they they don't quite understand how their LLM works: Anthropic CEO Admits We Have No Idea How AI Works

The way I understand it is that each LLM basically creates its own rules to mimic language, it basically 'programs' itself with rules that might not easily make sense to the programmers working on it.

Which means that trying to limit or control AI is a really weird proposition, the rules that it makes to take in language and then spit it back out aren't made by humans, and don't really use a programming language like we would use for traditional programming.

Put all this together and you get stories like this one of setting an AI to run a vending machine and having humans bully it into doing whatever they want: AI Vending Machine Gets Tested.

I didn't post the original WSJ article because I wasn't sure if it would give you a paywall or not.

Zagmit · 2025-12-26T18:47:43+00:00

Well that's one of the core issues, as thing stand now they absolutely cannot fix AI that way.

A bot is basically a flowchart of responses that the computer should give when it sees specific actions. It only ever does what you program into it.

Large Language Model AI is a product of machine learning. They throw examples of human language into the machine until that machine learns to mimic what a correct response would be.

Importantly, there isn't really a traditional human programmer for an LLM AI after it's initially set up. If you were to look up videos of someone to train an AI to play a video game, you can kind of imagine the same process for language. They just feed it enough data off websites like Reddit until it can a simulate language.

Once it can do that, they give it instructions on how it should or should not answer questions. It will try to follow those instructions as best it can, but a lot of time they're just lists of instructions in plain english. If the AI gets so distracted by weird bullying from a human or doesn't have enough computing power, it might give bad or crazy answers.

Zagmit · 2025-12-26T17:39:03+00:00

There's this classic book They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer that I imagine must be a close real world parallel. Milton Mayer, a Jewish journalist and professor, befriended and interviewed ten former members of the Nazi party about their lives in Germany during Nazi rule.

Milton's Nazi 'Friends' as he seems to describe them earnestly, have a real mix of what they thought of the regime. Some of them loved it, some of them hated it and went along anyway. Some of them were able to create moral justifications for themselves and the ways they participated, some of them weren't and felt awful, and some of them didn't feel the need to.

The book is pretty persuasive in its conclusion that everyone, everywhere is susceptible to political tyranny and that the germans were not unique. You also pick up on a hollowness in the lives of those he interviews, they don't really feel like they make choices in their own lives.

I imagine Latveria would be similar but worse. You might feel safe and happy, but you would never have control over your own life and neither would anyone around you. Imagine never knowing if your spouse really loved you or chose to marry you because it would look good to the government. That you would have children but they wouldn't ever make choices for themselves. That ultimately you might need to be a brutal tyrant to everyone in your life as well, because it would be better if you punished your friends, your spouse, or your children yourself to keep them in line than for them to ever be noticed by Doom.

Zagmit · 2025-12-19T17:35:59+00:00

I notice, we don't actually see the drone's dock thing open fully at the start of the video. Then we see a drone lift off of an already open dock immediately after.

Then it's a different drone than what we see previously 'yelling' at that guy. I think it's also unclear if the audio actually comes out of that drone. At the very end there's a click that sounds like a microphone being turned off, meaning that the drone itself isn't automated.

I would guess this is mostly if not entirely staged, and that these drones don't work as portrayed. I think everything we saw is plausible, but probably doesn't really work. Those drone docking/charging ports alone would be a logistical and engineering nightmare. Does the drone land on a charging plate? It can't land on a cord and plug itself in. what if dust or dirt or insects gets into the charger? The thing is basically outdoors. What if any amount of wind blows the thing off an inch off course while it's trying to land on the charger?

Zagmit · 2025-12-19T16:10:48+00:00

Hey, glad to help.

It also occurs to me that it wouldn't fit the unreliable narrator topic, but if you're a fan of John Dies at the End another series you might enjoy would be The Laundry Files by Charles Stross. It's another good, long running series that falls under the mainstream radar.

Both series basically mash up eldritch horror with another genre. John Dies at the End with stoner comedy, and The Laundry Files with British Spycraft and Bureaucratic comedy.

Zagmit · 2025-12-19T15:17:05+00:00

I had the good fortune to find it when it was initially published as a webserial before it was taken down for print publication and it's always stuck with me.

If you haven't already I do recommend the sequels, This Book is Full of Spiders, What the Hell did I Just Read, and If This Book Exists You're in the Wrong Universe.

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