BahRamYou
1d ago
LOL that passage is hilarious. I hadn't even seen that one. I had to look it up to check if it's real, because that just seems so... on the nose. It's the sort of thing I would have written as a parody to make fun of it.
Also thanks for the info about the Syriac tales. I'm obviously not a religious scholar, so there's a lot I don't know. I did grow up enjoying stories from "the Arabian Nights" as a kid, and other pop culture stuff set in that region, so I think I can fairly claim to not be Islamophobic. It just took me a while to realize that all the stuff I enjoyed from there came in spite of Islam, not because of it.
I would agree that the Mormon origin story is, like you said, "hokey." Or even just straight-up BS. That one book review on ACX pretty thoroughly eviscerated it, IMO.
That said, I like Mormons. They seem like genuinely nice people, with some good moral values, even though I disagree with them on a lot of things. I don't think it's a coincidence that so many of my favorite sci-fi authors are Mormon.
I can't say the same for Islam. I feel like the so-called "Islamic golden age" was mostly just leftover Greek knowledge mixing with Persian culture and the silk road at a time when Islam hadn't yet fully dug in its claws.
BahRamYou
2d ago
To quote Sam Harris: "Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas."
Obviously every religion has its fringe elements of crazy extremists, so I won't condemn them for that. But in Islam, even the mainstream central religion just seems bad in a way I don't see in other religions.
It starts with Mohammed himself. This isn't some ancient figure who's life is shrouded in mystery, he's pretty well documented. He was a warlord who led his tribe to conquer the Arabian peninsula, by a combination of cunning tactics, charisma, and ruthlessness. He frequently executed captives and allowed his men to take sex slaves. This was brutal even by the standards of his time, so he made up his own religion to justify it.
He was also illiterate. In Islam, this is considered a miracle, for how could an illiterate man produce a book like the Quran? Except... when you read it, it's just not a very good book. It's mostly vague references to the bible, with a lot of aimless repition. It's almost like a family guy joke: "hey, remember that time when Jonah got swallowed by a whale? Huh? Wasn't that a good story?" It doesn't have any of the interesting insights or metaphors that other famous holy books have. In other words, it's exactly the kind of thing screed I'd expect from a charismatic, but illiterate leader. This is why the Quran is usually not actually read, but simply chanted, mindlessly, five times a day, as a form of brainwashing.
In older times, Europeans called Muslims "Mohammedans". That's now considered outdated, but I think they were onto something there. The real, central core of Islam is a cult of personality, centered on that one man. That's why so many of them name their kids after him, that's why there's so many fanatics who kill anyone who even draws a picture of him, and that's why the entire religion still seems weirdly stuck in the past, in a way that even the much older religions like Hindu or Buddhism are not. The modern Muslim-American clergy who are trying to whitewash or modernise are having to struggly, mightily, against the core problems.
BahRamYou
3d ago
So in that list I linked you, which includes many examples of them hitting things like apartment buildilngs, not to mention their attempts to destroy desalinization plants... what? Were those all just "mistakes?"
To be honest, I'm not even mad at them for that. "Countervalue" ie mass bombing of cities, has been a part of military strategy for a long time now. It was basically the heart of MAD deterrance in the cold war. I'm more surprised that you think Iran wouldn't be doing something like that. Admittedly they can't "level" a city right now, but it's not for lack of trying, they just lack the firepower. That's a good reason not let them have nuclear weapons.
BahRamYou
3d ago
That... literally did happen though? They've launched numerous ballistic missile attacks against cities. See the list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_during_the_2026_Iran_war#Iranian_and_allies_response
They're not exactly using precision weapons to carefully target military units and avoid civilian losses, they're launching whatever they have at whatever they can hit, which is mostly cities. If you don't hear about it very much, it's simply because most of them either miss or get intercepted, but they are very much trying to destroy cities, and some of them have gotten through.
The clearer example of this is North Korea, which maintains a massive artillery and rocket force aimed at Seoul. For decades, their main dettrance has simply been the threat of causing massive casualties in Seoul. It's worked well enough to let them flout international law, despite their terrible quality overall, so I'm sure Iran wants to copy their example.
Even if they were evilmaxxing, it would be the dumbest decision ever to target civilian centers as it would immediately grant America et al the moral right to do the same to them.
No, that's not how it works, unfortunately. America is held to a far higher moral standard, regardless of what happens. So since the US military accidentally hit one school during its initial massive precision bombing campaign to overwhelm Iran's air defenses, we have to hear forever how the Americans are monsters. Iran has carte blanche to lob crude ballistic missiles at apartment buildings, and it barely even breaks the news, so people dismiss it as "something that only happens in video games."
BahRamYou
3d ago
This is going to sound contraversial and culture-warry but I'll try to say this tactfully. I feel like the fact that this woman was black is very relevant here. Like they seem cuturally just way more open and blunt in pursuing both romance and hookups, not only the men but the women too. Twice, I was just standing on a street corner and a random black lady started talking to me, and then switch into flirting with me very heavily. I know that's not a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, and they were both black, I just can't imagine a white or asian lady ever doing that unless she was trying to sell me something. But since the lady in your story was studying sociology and using academic language, I'm going to guess she also spent a lot of time around mostly-white spaces, which might result in her feeling a bit lost and mixed up culturally, even on top of all the contradictions baked in to academic sociology.
But who knows I'm speculating wildly about someone that I've never met, in a highly personal situation.
BahRamYou
3d ago
The Strait was open before the war.[https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-war-hormuz-trump-yemen-houthis-2b126da67b09de2f328846eb656abe0e](It is not now). That is backwards progress. But I don't even care about this because even if it was open, it wasn't in the defined objectives before the war. At best its a return to the status quo and not a victory.
The Strait was only "open" in the sense that Iran was not actively shooting the hostage. But it was most definitely held hostage, with them building up a huge force of missile boats and threatening to attack ships there. They used that as leverage to get away with all sorts of hostile actions, most obvious being their nuclear weapons program but they were also using the Quds force to launch numerous attacks against US forces in Iraq. It was always a delicate balance, trying reign them in when they had that threat looming over all our heads. Sooner or later, this was going to come to a head, unless you prefer to just give the Ayatollah's whatever they demand and pay the Dane Geld forever.
BahRamYou
3d ago
I won't defend what Trump said, but you have to remember (as always) that he loves to exaggerate. Take him seriously, but not literally.
In particular, this isn't our first rodeo with Iran's nuke program. This has been going on a very long time, like since the 90s. They were strongly sanctioned by most of the world during the 2000s to try and make them stop, which didn't work, but it did at least limit their resources. We used the Stuxnet cyberattack to destroy their centrifuges, and Israel assassinated some of their nuclear scientists. That helped, it did set them back a lot, but eventually they rebuilt. The JCPOA got them to stop developing it publicly, but they were still developing it secretly, just at a slower pace. After that there were a serious of cyberattacks, covert actions, and bombing raids to disrupt Iran's nuke program. Most famously, there was Operation Midnight Hammer, where a group of stealth bombers dropped 10,000 kg MOABS on the mountain where they were hiding their centrifuges. In other words, if you actively bomb them, it becomes hard to finish a nuke, although they were objectively close to finishing one before they got bombed.
However the nuclear material is still there, it's just dispursed into the soil now. It really wouldn't be all that hard for them to dig it out and re-process it into a nuclear weapon at this point. We're not talking about a Manhattan Project style leap of engineering, it's just a lot of brute labor at this point. Like you said, North Korea managed it with a much smaller economy, because we did nothing much to stop them. As a result, they feel free to do things like launch cyberattacks or send troops to help Russia. I would prefer not to give Iran the same leverage.
BahRamYou
3d ago
For what it's worth, the US military already has some very effective drones. Most notably the Lucas, which was based on the Shahed. They're also using the B-52 to drop cheap (but still guided) bombs, and the A-10 to do gun runs. They have no problem doing mass, economical attacks.
People have a misconception that the only way to defend against drones is to shoot them down with expensive interceptor missiles. For one thing there are cheaper ways (like using rocket pods from an A-10). But the best way is to just blow them up on the ground before they get a chance to launch, or blow up their command and control so they can't coordinate an effective launch. We're seeing the attacks from Iran become less and less as this war goes on, and the IRGC who launch them have to pretty much hide in the ground all the time for fear of being bombed the second they launch. This puts the cost burden on the enemy- now they're the ones who have to protect their expensive missiles and drone factories against cheap, ubiquitious bombs and drones. And what we've seen is that they can't, there's no way a paramilitary force like the IRGC can keep up with the operational tempo or equipment of the US military. They're losing major, expensive assets every single day. You just don't hear about it in the news much because it's so common that it's not interesting any more, they only ever report if the US loses something.
BahRamYou
3d ago
So actually there is a particular time limit, namely the midterms and presidential elections. The Iranians don't need to destroy the US Navy to achieve victory, they just need to inflict enough pain on the global economy to ratfuck the Republicans. Pretending the political angle isn't the core of the Iranian strategy is just preemptive cope.
The midterm elections aren't a time limit, because Trump will still be the president and commander-in-chief regardless of what happens, and continue the war at his disgression. Congress's powers to stop a war have proven very limited in modern times. The next presidential election might be, but that has a lot less to do with the war than it does all the other factors that determine elections. It's pointless to ascribe an election to any one particular factor, especially one that hasn't happened yet.
But more importantly: this was never the Iranian strategy. Their original strategy was to use an overwhelming missile barrage to level cities, banking up sheer destrictive power that no one would dare attack them. That hasn't happened, instead their missile attacks have been largely impotent, mostly thanks to the US (and Israel) blowing them up on the launchpad before they get a chance to aim and fire. It's easy to take that for granted now that it didn't happen, but it could have easily been a massive loss of life. They were building up longer-range missiles that could Europe and the US, and I, for one, am grateful that they no longer have that capability. "Paying the danegeld" was not a stable long-term solution.
Their backup plan was holding the strait hostage. In a similar way, this was supposed to cause enough economic damage that no one would dare to attack them. Predictions were for some sort of massive global recession, oil above $200 a barrel, and massive lines at the gas station like what happened in the 70s with the Arab oil embargo. But that hasn't happeend either. It's gone up a bit, but not nearly enough to cause a recession or act as any sort of serious deterrance.
At this point their real "attack" is just political propaganda. All of the people who already hated Trump (so, most Democrats) have simply latched on to this as the new Latest Thing to attack Trump. Iranians proxies make vague threats on twitter promising doom, and then all the useful idiots in the media breathlessly repeat them. They want the war to go badly so that Trump will lose the election. But if it wasn't this, they'd find some other excuse to hate him. It's kind of funny that now they're saying he's an Israel agent, when just a year ago everyone was saying he was a Russian agent.... which one is it supposed to be? But meanwhile the economy continues to grow, the world keeps not-being-an-apocalypse, and the regime change in Venezuela looks like a better deal every single day.
BahRamYou
3d ago
How do you actually talk to people there? My problem is that the music is so damn loud that it's aggressively anti-social. You have to scream into people's ears to be heard, and sometimes even that doesn't work. A lot of long-time ravers end up with hearing loss, even if they wear ear plugs. I hate it.
Why are you in such a hurry?
All of those objectives are being accomplished. Their main navy is sunk, their missile boats are being hunted down, their missile production sites are being bombed, their nuclear program has been halted, and their terrorist proxies are being destroyed. Not to mention that most of their leadership is dead- I notice that you never mentioned who the current decision makers are in Iran, because no one really knows at this point.
Before the war, there was endless gloom and doom about what a disaster it would be to fight Iran. They would destroy cities with ICBMs, they would sink aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, they would shut down all our infrastructure with cyber attacks, and launch terrorist attacks all over the world. The entire world would plunge into some sort of Mad-Max style anarchy as we ran out of oil. Etc.
Instead we've been... mildly inconvenienced? The price of oil has gone up, but not enough to cause a recession- the economy is still growing. (Edit: 18-20) servicemen have died, and that's a shame, but that's also a very small number in historical terms- every military person knows the risks when they sign up. Iran's neighbors have suffered more, but most of them have hated Iran a long time, and this only makes them hate Iran more- they're doubling own on their alliance with the US to get rid of the local menace.
This isn't a game or a sports match, so there's no particular time limit on this. The US and its allies can keep this up for as long as it takes. As long as we're there, Iran doesn't get a nuke or ICBM program, so all objectives accomplishd, and they're rapidly running out of money. It would be nice to find a permanent solution so we can leave the middle east forever, but I'm not exactly holding my breath on that. I know that you'll bring up elections and say things like "Trumpt must end this before the midterms" or whatever, but that's not actually true, he can do whatever he wants. The bigger time pressure might be on allied nations that depend on oil imports, like Korea, which is now considering joining the war.
Of course, it's possible that Democrats will sieze power, and then they'll give in. Give the IRGC money, give them terrorist proxies, give them nukes, give them whatever they want. That would be a huge disaster, but it's not the result of this current war, it's just Democrats being idiots. The JCPOA was basically that, with Obama giving Iran a lot of cash while they pretended to not develop nukes or missiles but kept working on them anyway, not to mention massacring anyone who protested the rule of the Ayatollahs.
So my advice to you is: relax, these things take time. The IRGC is getting the shit kicked out of it, so all they can do is spin up propaganda on the internet. I'm about to go on a long road trip, which I can do easily because gasoline is still cheap and unlimited- not what it would be if the US was actually losing this war.
BahRamYou
4d ago
Where are you getting the numbers for all these? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's kind of hard to get accurate numbers about paramilitary forces in an active conflict. They get their equipmenet from Iran, which is currently being destroyed.
BahRamYou
5d ago
All of this, plus the "arms race" effect. It's OK to be a bit frumpy if that's just what all the regular guys look like. But when everyone starts working heavily on their appearance, you start to stand out a lot more (in a bad way) if you're the one who's not.
BahRamYou
5d ago
Unless... he starts sneaking a little "Soylent Green" into the beef supply...?
BahRamYou
6d ago
I suppose it's possible. But like you said, I just don't think the Saudi military is capable of that sort of thing. It's more likely this was genuine, and the Saudis got caught by surprise, but now they can counterattack easily.
BahRamYou
6d ago
As usual, i find it difficult to follow all the details through the fog of war and propaganda from all sides. My main hunch is that the houthis will be quickly fought back- they just don't have the resources to actually hold territory. The market seems to agree, as the price of oil jumped yesterday but went back down today, suggesting an attitude of initial alarm and then calm.
BahRamYou
8d ago
I think it's just very hard to get started in that career. Of course every career has that to some extent, but in architecture it's especially hard to get people to trust you with that first, crucial career building step of being lead designer on a building. Meanwhile there's a ton of students getting architecture degrees thinking it'll be fun.
BahRamYou
9d ago
Now it is the turn of mathematicians to feel doomed; in that context, I find this sentence very interesting.
Is the purpose of the Great Work not for humans to understand mathematics? What does it even mean to "produce" mathematics?
Isn't it proven by Godel's Theorem that any complex logical system should have an infinite number of potentially provable theorems? And no easy way to know which ones are provable? So I guess the field of mathematics will go on forever, just with AIs proving more and more abstract, ridiculously complex theorems. The "job" of human mathematicians, if you can call it that, is to simply marvel and appreciate what they've done, like an art critic.
BahRamYou
10d ago
Is it not customary for parties in Germany to have a campaign platform outlining all their proposed policies? That's how it works for American elections. They don't have to fully follow it, of course, but it's nice to see it. If they're a more established party then people can just look to their track record to get a general idea, but for a party that's never held power before I think it's valid to ask what they're going to do, outside of their one signature issue (and I'm still not clear what exactly the AfD is proposing their either- limit immigration? halt it entirely? remigration? concentration camps?)
BahRamYou
10d ago
Does the AfD actually have anything to promote "human flourishing?" Genuine question, all I know about them is that they're anti-immigration. I think they might find out what countries like Hungary found out... just because you block immigration, doesn't mean you magically fix the economy or birth rates.
BahRamYou
10d ago
Ah, thank for adding context. Sounds like there's a real chance for AfD to win the governance of Sachsen-Anhalt, then. Still, that's (a) just one state and (b) still a slim majority that relies on a very different party to help it keep it's coalition. So would expect them not to accomplish much. Maybe this will actually cause their support to break, if they finally win power and people realize... it's still just a regular political party, they're not going to snap their fingers and magically solve everything. They probably can't even significantly affect immigration.
Satirist Martin Sonneborn has called for a reestablishment of the wall for decades (and this time it would actually be an antifaschistischer Schutzwall), and more and more I feel that reunification was a mistake. It would have been better to let them join what would become Schengen but keep them separate. An AfD running the government of East Germany would not be so different from Orban in Hungary, PiS in Poland, Haider in Austria and so on, all very tolerable from West Germany.
OK, this would be hilarious. And it opens the door for the funniest election ever. Germany wants a president who is has experience building a giant border wall along politically contraversial territory. Someone with huge name recognition, a fresh approach to politics, and no sense of shame. He's got experience, but he'll be a free agent after 2028. He even has (distant) German ancestry, making him potentially eligible for citizenship if they can dig something up. Drumpf for Deutschland, 2028!
BahRamYou
11d ago
So... big win for AfD last night: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4zejgz3z9o. How important is this?
Since I'm not one to closely follow European politics, at first I thought this meant that they had won control of the entire national parliament. But then I noticed that, no, it's just one state election, and they're still short of a majority. In every other state, they have far less support, and every other party is still maintaining a rule to never work with them, so the AfD is still effectively shut out of power everywhere.
I suppose it's another sign of their trajectory, though. They seem to win more and more votes in every election. I remember when, not long ago, they were an extreme minority fringe party. Now they get enough votes that it's difficult for the other parties to form a coalition without them.
Is this a sign that the people of Germany are secretly longing to Nazi again? I doubt it. They seem to still be, on the whole, an extremely leftist-liberal nation. Pro-immigration, pro-welfare, anti-militarism, anti-nationalism, and anti-nuke. So I wonder how much this surge in support for AfD is driven by immigration, or how much of it is just them being the only real conservative party that gives voters an alternative to the status quo?
I also wonder what the AfD would actually do if they came into power? There's a big range between "slightly restrict immigration" and "force all the immigrants to pack up and go home." I suspect they haven't entirely figured it out themselves, since for now they're still just a protest vote. Not to mention how they'd have to figure out their policy on every single other policy issue. It's easy to make big promises when you have no actual power to deliver on them.
But I don't know! Maybe I'm wrong. I really don't know much about German politics, I just saw this and I thought it was interesting. Anyone else have thoughts?
You could become a drug dealer, they still use flip phones and avoid advertising on social media...
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