hotspur [he/him]

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Joined 6 years ago
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Cake day: July 29th, 2020

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  • I had ghost peppers one year—never could figure out what to do with them, so just left them on the plant and let the whole thing die, and presumably, compost over the winter. Next spring I go out with a string trimmer to tidy up around the veggie garden. Two minutes later I hear my wife, and then my neighbor start sneezing and coughing 25 feet away. Turns out that stuff was still potent and I aerosolized it. Later I read that people in India grew them, but as pest repellant; they would smear them, carefully, on fences to try and keep elephants out of their crops…
















  • This could actually be true, can’t really know, but it would run counter to most of the news and commentary of the last couple weeks that all shared the theme that reformists have largely been marginalized after previous two betrayed talk processes and that Iranian hardliners (really just “realists” TBH) have more or less accepted that it may be structurally impossible for US and Israel to make any deals of any kind, and given that a solution must be found through continued defeat and not diplomacy. All of that could certainly be a ruse, but just feels less likely than it being the truth, since it accurately describes the situation. There are other harder to know factors of course though, like what kind of pressure is China applying, anger from other nations nearby or affected like India or Pakistan, etc etc.

    Anyhow will be interesting to see where things go I guess. It always feels like the western economic system is about to implode from these events, but there must be many hidden break-in-case-of-emergency functions because it always seems to take longer than I imagine.



  • So based on various reporting from last week, Iran has been repeating that it is not negotiating. Trump TACOS here because military tells him we’ll run out of munitions, can’t protect Israel, gulf states call and say we will be wiped from region, etc. Wouldn’t the funniest or best thing for Iran to do right now be to continue to hit US military targets and call the lie that Trump is trying sell?

    There’s clearly zero value in this bullshit “framework of a deal” lie, they know there will be nothing that can come of this as long as the current incarnations of US and Israeli gov’ts continue to exist in their current configurations.

    I suppose given how calculating and cautious Iran has demonstrated itself to be, they might see value in stringing the thing out more to let the economic damage continue to accrue, so perhaps that provides a decent explanation if they don’t continue.

    They had previously restricted themselves to reaction for PR reasons but had also recently announced a change in doctrine to preemptive self defense in recognition of the seeming futility of a diplomatic solution to America’s war of choice. So continuing to harass and destroy American regional capability would seem to be inline with this policy shift?