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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   19637 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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I've seen a lot of discussion online about whether or not Iran would mine the strait, and it looks like it's happening.

Mate, not to put too fine a point on it, but CNN was publishing on this 2 weeks ago.

I'm not one to condemn people for not paying attention to ongoing conflicts. But if you have seen a lot of discussion about whether Iran would mine the strait or not over the last two weeks, you were seeing a lot of discussion by people who were either low-information, in denial, or falling for (admittedly generally widespread) efforts of international governments and their media-allies to downplay true-but-inconvenient facts. Update priors, and past questions, accordingly. If you are wondering how the mines would change the conflict, you've had the last two weeks to observe the impacts. If it was a game changer, the game changed about half the length of the conflict ago.

Now, there's certain some interesting questions or discussions that could be raised from this media report... such as why is there a press surge now of 'old' news? Why did so many states and media try to smother the initial information in the first place, including CNN not revisiting it? Is there an actual new development on the ground, or is this part of DC kabuki theater as the Trump administration tries to move towards closing the conflict while the Iranians deny there are talks?

An international attention surge might have utility to someone. Or maybe something else has happened.

I'll offer a measured apology if this came off as being too harsh at the start. However, treating old news as new is a pet peave of mine, in part because it is such a classic propaganda technique used by the originators (which are not you) to get people to react rather than remember context.

There were conflicting reports about this, but that earlier report of mines seem to have been debunked unless the US was keeping it secret for some reason. This new one seems a lot more certain, telling us [exactly which kind of mines were laid[(https://maritime-executive.com/article/report-floating-and-bottom-mines-detected-in-strait-of-hormuz).

I've been spending most of my spare time sitting in hospital waiting rooms for the last couple of weeks. Geopolitics has not been on the top of my priority list, outside what's showing on the TV that's bolted to the wall

And that, good sir, is generally better life priorities.

Hear. Hear.

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