2rafa
1d ago
The question is whether this makes a withdrawal more or less likely. Under most presidents, I’d say less, but under Trump, I think perhaps more.
My read on the strikes over the last two days is they’ve been purely aimed at destroying expensive infrastructure to cause economic chaos after a withdrawal that might, hopefully presumably, create space for some kind of popular uprising. Destroying it to make rebuilding armories more expensive doesn’t make sense, since the IRGC will always prioritize that over civilian infrastructure.
2rafa
1d ago
As I understand it the liberal justice clerkships are much, much more competitive than the conservative ones, so some ambitious students do swap sides for their own gain. But the overall pool or spaces is so low that even among the best ‘conservative’ (real or fake) HYS law students (or even just Yale ones, as I understand that’s the best) the odds are still slim.
It’s possible Russia has some leverage over Iran or could at least stop sharing intelligence and targeting data with them. As to what Trump could do, unsanction Russia, which is worth more than any weapons shipment.
2rafa
1d ago
The real ‘rogue trade’ option here would be - given Russia is now suffering very badly from Ukrainian strikes against its oil and gas infrastructure - for Trump to ‘trade’ Ukraine for Iran.
The oil point has arguably been widely known since the 70s and the rare earth point was kind of made during the China tariff news phase last year.
Colonial wars can never be fought against zealots. You can fight them against fat local elites who value their lives and wealth and local fiefdoms over the cause, because eventually they will sue for peace or flee. But you cannot fight them successfully against those truly, strongly motivated by an ideology. The US has never been willing to pay the required price to overthrow the Islamic Revolution since 1979, and that is as true today as it was then and as it has been throughout the period between the two.
Against true believers, only total war works. In very, very limited cases (like the Boer War) an extraordinarily capable colonial power can win these, although they require extraordinarily disproportionate resources and are often not worth it even when attempted.
My guess is option 2, framed around a negotiated ‘ceasefire’. Netanyahu said this week that Iran is no longer an existential threat to Israel. That is obviously a lie, the highly enriched uranium they already have hasn’t even been confiscated, the regime is still in place and angrier, etc.
So why make that statement? The only reason you make it is to set up a US withdrawal that isn’t yours choice as something you acquiesce to. The Israel Hezbollah war will continue, and for that reason Iran will likely continue to fire missiles at Israel and vice versa, but the intensity will probably slow down.
Iran will control the strait and it will have nuclear weapons within five years. It may extract tolls from some vessels, although I have my doubts that revenue will flow to the Iranian treasury. The Saudis and other Gulf Arabs will likely build more pipelines, maybe even north through Jordan and Syria to the Mediterranean. The US will be humiliated, especially once the damage to the evacuated bases becomes clear. The GCC nations, especially the weakest, closest US allies and most vulnerable to Iran like Bahrain and Kuwait will probably sign punitive peace deals with the Iranians. So might Saudi. Behind the scenes they will put a lot into air defense.
Oil prices will slowly come down. Trump will claim he killed the Ayatollah and taught the Iranians a lesson they won’t forget, and the navigation issue is for the locals who use the oil to figure out. Nobody in America cares much about the SoH. His base will believe him. Trump has extraordinary political instincts and few personal principles. A steady flow of US deaths in a long war is poison for the same reason that allowing the Pro-Life lobby to try to force a nationwide abortion ban or heavy limits on congress would be political poison when leaving it to the states washes his hands of the issue entirely.
Or put it this way - Trump chickened out of tariffs that would have been far less damaging to him than 10,000 American military deaths in a full or even partial invasion. Why would he TACO the former but not the latter?
2rafa
3d ago
Men have less sympathy for other men in abusive relationships than women do for other women in them. The extent to which that is real or performative and the extent to which it matters are both debatable, but I think that seems at least to me to be the obvious truth.
I don’t think this is true, it’s just that female sexuality is policed by other women more than men in ways that men mostly don’t notice or participate in.
2rafa
3d ago
People make stupid choices all the time. Often, the reasons are very much human and understandable, even if they’re bad. Someone might be lonely, the other person might be very attractive or charming, they might enjoy the attention.
Society does try to help some people not make very poor choices. Most people are not libertarians or anarcho-capitalists; that’s why indentured servitude, selling many narcotics, gambling, and prostitution are regulated or banned in most jurisdictions. Still, there must be some freedom. The freedom to make a bad choice in terms of partner is probably one of them.
I think gloating is poor form in these cases.
2rafa
4d ago
Probably none, but most people here have still driven at some point, and it’s not like they lack knowledge of what a car is.
Increasingly I disagree. You can actually achieve the same outcome by not paying people at all.
Imagine if all the senior positions in the government, MPs, ministerial positions but also the most senior civil servants were all completely unpaid. Then implement a maximum age of 55. Keep the same exam.
The civil service would be staffed entirely by the children of the rich who are committed to public service, plus a few people sponsored by the unions (who, again, are already in politics). You would get some champagne socialists, but you get them already anyway. Most importantly, you’d cut out all the strivers. Let a man make his money and then send his son to parliament.
It wouldn’t even increase corruption, since the corrupt will be so anyway on a current civil service salary.
2rafa
4d ago
You can always go to Oxbridge for Land Economy or whatever, which is probably harder to get into than UCL for engineering or math. Modern languages is easy to get into. Greek and Latin slightly harder but filter for those wealthy enough to go to public school from the outset, so you’re not competing against the general population. Getting into Oxbridge is also much easier than getting into HYS in the US. As I understand it, if you have perfect grades in the UK, have personality and charisma at interview, and don’t go for one of the hardest courses / colleges you will probably get in. That isn’t true even at the elite American schools that have more meritocratic (not fully, which is none, but more than average) admissions.
The Civil Service Fast Stream is fully affirmative (sorry, positive) action-ified and has been since at least the early 2010s, as is pupillage for barristers, where diversification in terms of gender, race and social class (ie hugely reducing the number of posh white men who went to elite schools) has been the central priority since about the same time.
2rafa
4d ago
The main paragraph that stood out as AI, which @BurdensomeCount himself acknowledged above, was extremely obvious. I noticed it immediately because, I’m sorry to say, it read a lot like some of the things you’ve written recently in style and tone. The rest was a mix, but clearly quite a lot was written or rewritten by him.
In general, there are two issues with LLMposting. The first is the obvious quality issue. That paragraph and some other text stands out but eventually this issue is clearly going to be solved, this isn’t magic and it is presumably only a matter of time before the LLM can authentically recreate our small foibles and stylistic elements of our writing. The second is the honor system, where this community becomes pointless if we’re all reading LLM writing we could generate ourselves (either directly or prompted by a tweet-length thought).
For this reason, I think people are opposed to LLM users now because of what it bodes for the future. We can detect it (mostly, in some long posts, by regulars) for now, but we won’t be able to forever. Soon, it will be purely the honor system.
2rafa
4d ago
I asked some people in my office and a couple got it wrong, I’ve met even smart people who miss basic gotcha riddles like this
2rafa
5d ago
The carwash riddle that made the rounds recently is a way better gamble.
No, the car wash example is much worse. Rs in strawberry is something anyone who can spell can count out. The car wash riddle is something most intelligent people should catch if told to look out for it, but many of them still, let alone people of average or below average intelligence, will stumble over and fail because they skim the question or don’t actually catch the ‘trick’. It’s like a lot of classic riddles in that way.
Yes, that has always been the most likely outcome.
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