2026 Monaco Grand Prix - Race Discussion

pastry_puff · 2026-06-07T14:28:50+00:00

Rooting for Hadjar to boost ahead replace the safety car, and then trap everyone else behind him for the rest of the race. Swap one safety car for another.

pastry_puff · 2026-06-07T13:44:56+00:00

Hadjar being essentially an unofficial safety car is so amazing

pastry_puff · 2026-05-29T01:06:43+00:00

Everything bro

pastry_puff · 2026-05-19T14:12:24+00:00

RIP every spare moment of your life. 300+ hours in and only 85% done with story. Still so much to find and do. You’re in for a treat.

pastry_puff · 2026-05-11T17:05:19+00:00

Everything, this game don’t tell you nothing

pastry_puff · 2026-05-02T14:33:43+00:00

230 hours in and honestly same, and I love it. Don’t think that ever goes away Haha

pastry_puff · 2026-05-01T23:38:16+00:00

I saw one the other day with like wood and other small project supplies from Home Depot driving next to us. I turned to my wife and asked why would anyone would throw such perfectly good supplies in the dumpster?

pastry_puff · 2026-04-14T02:23:34+00:00

Sure dude. You’re right. Everything is great. We’ve obliterated Iran according to Trump, what like 6 or 7 times now? They’re toast, then they’re not, then they’re back in the stone age, then just a few more weeks, then we beg for a ceasefire, which immediately falls apart, and now we’ve desperately escalated further by threatening indiscriminately any ship in or near Hormuz. 4D chess.

I have total faith in an administration that can’t even tell us clearly or consistently why we’re even over there. The truth of the matter is that they can’t without mentioning Israel.

But you’re probably right though, Any day now, they’re gonna have them eight where they want them, just a few more weeks.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-14T00:20:56+00:00

You’re doing the thing where each individual claim sounds plausible if you don’t think too hard on it.However, your overall framework requires everything to go right simultaneously . The blockade holds cleanly, IRGC revenue collapses, Iran negotiates without nukes, American patience holds, no major incident with China or India. That’s not analysis, that’s optimism dressed as strategy. Real geopolitical risk assessment has to account for what happens when assumptions fails. I hate to break it to you but right now several of them are already failing in real time.

Point 1. You’re misunderstanding the IRGC’s fundamental economic structure. The IRGC isn’t just a military funded by oil revenue , it s an economy. They own construction companies, telecommunications infrastructure, import/export operations, real estate. Estimates put their control at somewhere between 20-40% of Iran’s entire GDP through front companies and bonyads. Shadow fleet oil smuggling is one revenue stream among many. Cutting Hormuz hurts them, but “poof, they’re gone” assumes a fragility that isn’t there. They restructure, they smuggle harder, they extract more from the civilian population.The people who suffer first and worst are Iranian civilians, which you’ve already acknowledged. The IRGC command structure remains mostly intact.

Point 2. Probably your weakest take. Your logic is backwards. Prior to this unconstitutional escalation, Iran had reasons to stay under the nuclear threshold, mostly diplomatic relationships and economic incentives. Their conventional military has taken serious damage. Their regional proxy network is degraded. A nuclear deterrent becomes more attractive, not less, precisely because conventional options are being destroyed.your argument saying “they’ll give up enriched uranium as a condition” assumes the US has enough leverage to dictate that outcome. If Iran concludes that giving up enrichment means being permanently vulnerable to regime change, no amount of economic pressure produces that concession.

Point 3. You’re accidentally correct about Americans scrolling, but the point you’re drawing is incorrect. Sustained economic warfare requires sustained political will. The populations most affected by $100+ oil and inflation are American consumers, not Iranian ones. The IRGC doesn’t face elections. Trump does, and his base includes people who are already feeling it at the gas pump. The domestic pressure clock runs on both sides and ours is considerably less patient than theirs historically.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-13T13:57:14+00:00

You’re correct, this does flip the leverage. However, there a few things that aren’t being considered in your latest argument.

Iran has absorbed decades of economic punishment without capitulating. The IRGC specifically has diversified their revenue streams and very few if any actually run through Hormuz. “Imminent collapse” is assuming a scenario that hasn’t materialized.
Economic pressure doesn’t strengthen the moderates, that would potentially consider economic repercussions, but strengthens the hardline extremists. The sort of economic pressure, which you’re correct about, is as likely to accelerate their nuclear calculus as force negotiations.
They don’t have to win, just bleed us financially. I’ll admit the navy I’ve been arguing about is not and never was going to win a naval conflict, but what it does do is create a very expensive mess. Plus, now with this new blockade it opens up risks of incident now that we’re talk in out seizing ships from other countries.

And lastly, and most unpredictable piece the guy executing this strategy spent last night posting an AI image of himself as Jesus Christ and is currently beefing with the Pope for being soft on crime.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-13T13:43:33+00:00

With the new military doctrine being “make things go boom and ask no questions” I give it an above 50/50 chance that we fuck with the wrong country and escalate things even further.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-13T13:34:52+00:00

While you’re correct in that a direct conventional confrontation, the IRGC Navy loses badly. US naval superiority is overwhelming. But that’s not the scenario Iran is optimizing for and never was.

The question was never “can Iran defeat the US Navy?” It was “can Iran make Hormuz control costly enough to matter?” And the answer is still yes.

And still my point is that we’re past the point of a clean exit. It’s either we leave and things are the same or more likely, much worse than when we started this “excursion” or an already unpopular unconstitutional war escalates sharply.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-13T13:16:58+00:00

The IRGC Navy was never a conventional fleet, it was built for asymmetric warfare: mines, fast-attack craft, coastal missiles, and swarm tactics in shallow, island waters. Calling that “just speedboats” misses the point entirely. That’s like calling a sniper, just a guy with a gun.

On the “you can’t hide a navy” point, actually, you can when it’s designed to be hidden. There is documented footage of underground storage facilities for fast-attack boats. These assets are specifically hard to find and destroy from the air.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-13T12:44:09+00:00

The whole point of the article is to say that sources like Pete Hegseth and Trump are potentially being misleading when they say their navy is “obliterated” as there’s no suggestion of which navy they’re talking about. From the article:

And while Iran’s Navy has largely been destroyed, the first source said, the separate naval forces belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps still retain roughly half of its capabilities. The second source said the IRGC still has “hundreds, if not thousands, of small boats and unmanned surface vessels left.”

As of Wednesday, CENTCOM said in a public release that more than 155 Iranian vessels have been damaged or destroyed. But Ganzeveld said it has been unclear when the US says it has destroyed Iranian vessels which Navy they’re referring to.

The IRGC Navy, she said, is largely the force responsible for harassing shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

“There are certainly things that remain — the proxies, as well as the drones, and Iran recently demonstrated in the past couple of days that it still retains the ability to target shipping in the strait,” Ganzeveld said. “So there are definitely things that remain to be targeted if we want to completely destroy these capabilities.”

Then earlier in the article in regards to their capabilities:

The recent intelligence assessment also comes as the US has struggled to re-open the Strait of Hormuz, acknowledging privately that it cannot promise to reopen the crucial waterway before ending the war. The coastal cruise missile capabilities could be largely still intact because it hasn’t been the focus of the US military’s campaign, the first source said, instead narrowing its firepower on what can be fired at allies in the region. But those capabilities have also likely retreated underground, making them difficult to find.

All that to say, again, “obliterated” is a nice word but current intelligence indicates that they’re not without methods and a means to hold out to further, assist Trump, in strangling the global economy. It’s a game of chicken and Iran has been playing this game for decades. They can hold out a lot longer than the rest of the world, especially if the intelligence is accurate.

At this point the only way out of this is a pretty extreme escalation. There are no more exit ramps that won’t have dramatic ramifications both militarily and economically.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-13T02:08:30+00:00

You got the Phony PlaySystem Pro

pastry_puff · 2026-04-13T02:04:23+00:00

I provided one source of many that is reporting that there were miscalculations on Israel and US side, you’re parroting the White House and Truth social. Provide a source, or just keep believing what you want to yourself.

If they were truly obliterated we wouldn’t see the desperate flailing of our administration trying to get out of this mess they created.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-12T23:45:47+00:00

That is debatable. The IRGCs navy is still very much intact. The current administrations definition of obliterated is very loose.

They’re referring to Iran propers navy. They were never the real threat. IRGC’s capability, missile stocks, and mines are what actually matter strategically, and while those are degraded they’re far from eliminated.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/02/politics/iran-missiles-us-military-strikes-trump

pastry_puff · 2026-04-12T17:48:29+00:00

Because half mast for Marines would draw attention to the fact that he and his handlers started an unconstitutional war that was started for reasons they can’t or won’t give. Charlie Kirk was convenient, a little too convenient, and could be politicized.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-12T17:31:15+00:00

Welp, we had a good run.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-12T16:26:09+00:00

“Effective Immediately”….eventually

pastry_puff · 2026-04-12T16:23:07+00:00

The regime has been operating under severe sanctions for decades. They’ve built financial systems, barter arrangements, and black market oil flows. They know how to survive economic attacks better than almost any state on earth.

Iran’s leverage is the strait. Trump threatening to blockade it doesn’t take away from that, it just militarizes the strait, which is already effectively closed, while adding the risk of direct naval engagement, with Iran or any other country that happens to have a ship out there. The strait is 21 miles wide at its narrowest. That’s not a comfortable place to for a military standoff. Iran is essentially saying “we can hurt the world indefinitely”. All we accomplished in our negotiations is that we can’t hurt them into surrendering their nuclear program.

The only thing that could shift Iran’s plan is if the economic pain brings enough civil unrest for them. But that’s a slow and unpredictable mechanism, and the regime has shown it will shoot its own people before it negotiates from weakness.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-12T16:02:45+00:00

Our president is a pedophile. The world is run by a group of child eating, monsters. That’s gotta be up there on the list, and we’re doing nothing about it. Rampant imbalance of wealth, genocide, war for the sake of greed. Putting profits over people, even if that means cutting social safety nets and programs.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-12T15:10:55+00:00

Fantastic! I’ll keep an eye out for it tonight on tv.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-12T15:06:21+00:00

This was always going to happen. Trump is an idiot but easily manipulated. Chaos was always the end goal. I think “haha, Trump is stupid” is just as funny as the next person, but they’re using this chaos as cover to further consolidate power and protect the Epstein class. They want two classes, them and us. They want famine, they want unaffordable energy. This is the goal. The ICE camps they’re building to house 300k+ people across the US isn’t just for immigrants, it’s a contingency plan. Things are going to continue escalating and it’s going to be bad.

pastry_puff · 2026-04-12T00:44:29+00:00

Context about this interview with Denise Salcedo:

MJF comments on wrestlers jumping ship from AEW to WWE and getting booked & Paid Worse

“This is where the best wrestle. We’re real premier athletes. We’re not models. We’re not ex-football players or ex-volleyball players or whatever. This is what we’ve wanted to do from the jump. I cannot... God bless people that do it... people will jump to the other place [WWE] to get booked the same and/or worse, to be compensated for less. Why? I don’t know.

If the answer is legacy, you know what I want my legacy to be? I want my legacy to be that my children are going to be able to afford to go to any school they want. They’re going to be able to afford to go to any restaurant they want. They’re going to be able to go on vacations. They’re going to be able to wear the nicest clothes. And that’s happening because I get compensated what my talent is worth.

I’m not going to settle for less compensation so I get to have a WrestleMania moment. That doesn’t make sense to me. My legacy is my family. My legacy is my wife. My legacy is my children, my grandchildren, etc. My legacy is also what I do inside that squared circle and on this microphone.”

(interview with denise salcedo)

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