Now is a very good time to exercise one’s Delayed Gratification ability.

And then there is the whole inflation feeding through into Fertilizers (mainly from higher Natural Gas prices rather than Oil prices), in turn feeding through into Food prices, all of which carries even long delays to fully emerge in consumer prices because of the time food takes to grow (more so if you think cattle since fertilizer prices indirectly push costs up through the increase in feed prices, so there’s even more delay there than for something like corn).

Just the first month of war has baked in many months of rising Inflation.

Also there’s the alternative way which Iran offered: kick out the American and Israeli embassadors.

Iran is playing 5D chess whilst Trump’s America is playing Tic-tac-toe.

I’m sure there are plenty of other CIA/Mossad pedo-honeypots operating.

There is no better proof that the right wing nationalists are actually “sold out traitors” per the very ideologies they claim to defend, than how they fight for policies which are good for other countries and bad for their own country.

If there is one thing genuine Leftwing and the Rightwing ideologies would agree with is self-sufficiency in core needs like food and enery.

If there isn’t a political shift in the Democrat Party away from fielding “almost as evil as the Republicans but not quite” candidates and pushing “tactical vote” propaganda, a hard neoliberal in power in the US next is a guarantee as is an outright Fascist in 4 or 8 years.

Just look at this graphic of social mobility in the US - the trend has long been to move away from a “land of opportunity” into a dynastic neo-Feudal society and unless that trend is actually reversed (rather than 4 or 8 more years of ratchet effect that at most slows it down slightly) the underlying problems of poverty and hopelessness that create a large block of votes who are easilly swindled by far-right populists scapegoating foreigners, will not be solved.

Which is why the massive Propaganda programs distracting people away from those who are to blame for all this shit by, for example promoting Nationalism and blaming the immigrants, exist and in some countries have taken over all of the traditional Press and most of the messaging in non-traditional media such as Social Media.

Those who have most of the power will always chose to put money into brainwashing the masses, early detection and suppression of seeds of rebelion and buying politicians since that’s far more profitable for them than, say, pay sufficient taxes and salaries so that the life of the many is improved.

This is why so much of the Press is now Propaganda (either overtly so or using Manufacturing Consent techniques), so many of the supposed Representatives of voters only represent an tiny fraction of people and governments in supposed Democracies keep pushing for the kind of civil society surveillance that would make the likes of the Stasi green with envy.

Things will get much, much worse, before they either crack into Rebellion or Democratic systems are subverted into extreme repressive Authoritarianian systems.

Personally, looking at the World now, I fear the US will end up in Authoritarianism, as will part of Europe.

Not just America: it’s pretty much the same in all those countries with economies were Services are a 70%+ proportion.

If most of the Economy isn’t actually creating health but rather in being an intermediary between producers and users (sales, distribution), distracting people (social media, TV, a lot of the Press), slight efficiency improvements, capital usage tweaks or even just bypassing inefficiencies in the actual economic system (most services sold to businesses, outsourcing) and extracting rents from merelly holding wealth or resources which can’t be reproduced (realestate, finance), the production of real value which allows people in such economies of “sitting in the middle and take a cut” to survive must come from somewhere else.

So at least most of Europe as well as Japan have the same disfunctional economic structure as the US and people there are also self-deluded in thinking that higher stock or house prices is a wealthier economy, though maybe not quite as thoroughly deluded as in the US.

Cogito, ergo sum

As a random person on the Internet I don’t actually have anything to add but felt it would be nice to jump in.

If there had been a “Buy 10, Get 1 free” they could’ve used 11 humans instead of 10 for the same $250.

“They’re Free to ask the right questions!!!”

There’s a reason present day “AI-in-everything” Microsoft bought a code hosting company.

Also an Oil Shock will almost certainly cause the AI bubble to burst, another win which also reduces global warming.

Personally I would also love to see the ended of the Reserve Currency status for the USD, which is a possible consequence of the reduction in use of Oil (though it’s a less likely outcome in the short and even mid term).

PS: By the way, great username.

It will accelerate energy transition.

Even Fertilizers can be produced from renewable power (the hydrogen needed to make Amonia can be produced by electrolosys) and need not be made from gas.

A short sharp pain might be in the best mid and long term interest for most of us, the environment and even parts of the Middle East itself (American interference there makes no sense if their Oil is just another unimportant mineral product) and it might even lead to the end of the USD Reserve Currency status.

Oil AND gas.

Which in turn will propagate to massive inflation in the West and possibly even problems with food production.

Further they can fuck up the economy of the Gulf states which are allies of America to such a point that they end up in a death spiral from which they can’t recover.

Again, again and again Trump has shown that he follows the mindset of the bully, and he’s not even subtle or sophisticated about it: he threatens the other side to get something out of them and if they concede in some way (and merelly trying to accomodate him is seen as a concession), then after a while he’ll come at them again with further threats and demanding even more, whilst if they pushback he TACOes.

We saw this with Europe: Trump does the whole Tariff thing and the EU Commission goes for a trade treaty to accomodate him. He kept on using Tariffs as threat against the EU and EU nations and didn’t took long for him to break that treaty. Meanwhile with the whole Greenland thing Europe started preparing for War and various European nations even sent military trigger forces there with the result that Trump TACOed.

So what Iran is doing is exactly the correct response to somebody like him: “You do that and we’ll fuck your shit up even more than now”.

Siding with Iranians for being the victims of an ethno-Fascist aggressor state were over 70% of the population sees them as “vermin” because of being Muslim in the very same spirit as the Nazis saw Jews and Roma as “vermin” and a Fascist aggressor state with a long history of wars of aggression in the Middle East which caused hundreds of thousands and even millions of civilians deaths, and whose President right now is a sociopath pedophile who wants to steal their Oil, isn’t the same as siding with the Regime in Iran.

Mind you, right now I do support the Regime in Iran to win this war, not because I like them in any way form or shape but because right now they’re the only thing stopping Iranians from suffering the same fate as Palestinians at the hands of the Zionists - a 21st century version of the Nazis - which in a country of 90 million could be a new Holocaust which would make the NAZI Holocaust look insignificant.

There are very few, if any, Regimes in the World right now which are more evil than the one in Israel and in recent history maybe only the Nazis beat them and the Zionists are working hard at surpassing them.

Yet.

And how exactly do we know for certain that all that juicy web access data complete linked to whatever identifying information associated with a Mozilla account isn’t going to be sold?!