Dean
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Variously accused of being a hilarious insufferable reactionary post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal critical theorist Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man idiosyncratic party-line Fox News boomer. No one yet has guessed a scholar, or multiple people. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
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Yet somehow, despite this war goal being accomplished and the war being over, Saudi Arabia is still being attacked by Iran's Proxies..
I have to ask- how competently do you believe this characterizes the situation?
The Saudi-Huthi conflict was in a pause during the recent year, and was a non-factor for the US-Iran conflict which both Saudis and Huthis largely stayed out of. It re-ignited post-MOU when the Saudis tried to block an Iranian flight from landing in Huthi-controlled territory by bombing an airstrip, which was either responded to or provoked to justify a retaliation depending on who you ask. In the last week(s), the Huthis and Saudis have had dueling offensives, with significant increases in missile and airstrikes as the southern front shifts to and fro.
Saudi Arabia and the Huthis have a separate conflict independent not only of the US-Iran war, but predating the Huthi-Iran alliance. Saudi is not 'still' being attacked by Iran's Huthi proxy as a continuation of the US-Iran war because Saudi was not attacked by the Huthis during the US-Iran war in the first place. And also calling the Huthi's an Iranian proxy is wildly misleading of the dynamic. The American war goals in the US-Iran war are orthogonal to the resumption of the Saudi-Huthi conflict, because the war-ending effort of the MOU had nothing in particular too say about the Saudi-Huthi conflict, unlike other Iranian proxies active at the time, and the Huthi-Saudi conflict predates the US-Iran war by a decade.
I get that Shakes' Trumpian triumphalism can be annoying, but this is the sort of pretty bad reading of regional dynamics that gives him more than a bit of a leg to stand. By trying to conflate a separate (and pre-existing) conflict into a rhetorical cudgel regarding the conflict you want to contest the characterization off, you're just giving Shakes a lot to (correctly) reject, and in the process letting him use (well justified) rebuttals to paint the counter-picture that annoys you.
Yeah, about that. Funny stories behind this, which I'll share since it would be shaping the data and it's not quite what some people suspect.
Back in 2025, there was a point that I realized I had a many-month streak going, albeit by accident. Out of curiosity / ego / an inebriated bet to myself, I wanted to see if I could make a year straight of AAQCs, just to see if I could. The 'so you want to get an AAQC' thread at the end of 2025 was the culmination/reflection of that deliberate effort. The early posts in 2026 were just trail of from that- the one in January about Maduro was literally typed in an airport waiting for a flight after a new years trip.
That obviously took a lot of time, and with some long-term predictable things on the horizon for 2026, I made a new years resolution to try and cut back. There were three parts- too much time spent chasing AAQCs, not enough time spent on some personal efforts, but also a resolution to try and cut down on the number of internet arguments I got into this year, especially culture-war related.
I mentioned earlier this year I was taking a sabbatical to play a game that had just come out (MENACE), which coincidentally happened before the whole Iran conflict. It did have impacts to me professionally, but my absence from the motte really was mostly spending my free time playing video games and writing about that on reddit instead of writing in the motte. By the time my pre-planned hiatus resolved, the Iran War discussion seemed toxic enough that I mostly didn't want to get involved.
Then in mid-2026 more personal predictable things happened, and I changed jobs. Which entailed all the typical prep, move, and new faculty familiarization. It also entailed unfortunate property damage, including a personal gaming computer I also used for Motte posting. Which was replaced with a better computer able to actually play more of my backlog, including games that recently got updates.
Now we're approaching US election season, which goes back to the new year resolutions, but it's also bringing back Iran angles for geopolitical reasons as well, which goes back to sitting out the Iran discussions in genneral.
I suspect I'll increase the posting again in 2027. It won't be the artificial highs of 2025, but it (probably) won't be the artificial lows of 2026. I have some personal priorities on the horizon, but I also have some ideas of a monthly effort post series of fun-for-me topics tying nerd media to real world competition.
That aside- for your main questions, I suspect the biggest reason for fewer AAQCs from 2026 is Iran / Trump / AI nexus sucking out most of the oxygen. Fewer people want to talk about much else, especially with the American election year involving all three, but Trump and AI are old topics at this point with fewer new insights, while Iran toxicity squanders the novelty option.
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