LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

MOOD: https://youtu.be/VtItscbcvS0?t=55

fingers crossed

If anyone wants a good video covering this strait and other important ones, here’s one by TLDR News Global:

Mapping the World’s (other) Maritime Chokepoints - YouTube

• Something like 16 % of all sea‑borne trade by value passes through the Bab‑el‑Mandeb compared to about 6 % for the Strait of Hormuz.
• In normal times something like 20 % of all oil and gas trade consumed by the world passes through the Strait of Hormuz compared to more like 10 % for the Bab‑el‑Mandeb.
• Saudi Arabia started relying more heavily on exports via the Red Sea which mostly flow out towards Asia via the Bab‑el‑Mandeb
• Most sea‑borne trade between Europe and Asia passes through the Bab‑el‑Mandeb.
• The next most direct maritime route includes an 8,000 km detour around Africa.

And on Easter … god damn

Great advice. I would suggest as you’re reading through whatever material you’re trying to understand, there are parts that you don’t quite “get it”. Try to formulate answerable, isolated questions that would help you “get it” or solidify your understanding and try to answer them by re-reading, finding the relevant parts or doing a bit independent research. In general, creating questions to strengthen your understanding is a great way to make learning more like a game and it prevents your mind from feeling frustrated as it wants to understand everything all at once. You just need to answer that one question and for the most part your brain will handle the rest when it comes down to the bigger picture.

Obviously, you need to strike a balance here.

I read 12 hours / week and thought damn Russians are progressive out of the sudden 💀

Does lifting sanctions on a country that you’re at war with the smart thing to do? Literally helps to fund their enemy.

Also:

Energy analysts, including Brent Erickson, a managing principal at Obsidian Risk Advisors, have said the administration’s efforts to control prices would not have a meaningful impact until the strait is opened to vessels.

They even lifted sanctions on Iranian oil

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/20/us-sanctions-iranian-oil

They’re doing great

Hmm maybe i’ll do something similar. I was thinking recently of using a new alias when doing purchases online but haven’t decided yet. Kinda don’t want to over-complicate things you know?

That’s my philosophy. The more unprocessed, whole, plant based, the better.

Exactly why I only use email aliases for newsletters and stuff

Because it isn‘t a single state?

Yes. How can you be a superpower when a single country like Hungary can veto important decisions?

It doesn’t even have it’s own army. Only 27 separate militaries with different languages, commanders, equipment and it relies on US-led NATO for security.

For all the recent announcements, Europe has little strategic autonomy. Military capacity is outsourced to Washington, technology platforms are American, energy reliance has shifted from Russian gas to American liquefied natural gas, and the dollar’s reserve role leaves European economies exposed to decisions made in the White House. Europe never built the political architecture to address any of this. The fundamental question remains unanswered: is this economic integration to manage a single market, or political integration with genuine collective agency? Decades of deferring that answer have left Europe divided, dependent, and sidelined.

The EU’s Single Market is still large and wealthy enough that it routinely forces the US and China to adapt to its rules. That is a massive form of global influence.

Also, multilateralism isn’t the EU trying to unilaterally enforce rules against the USA, China, Russia and so on. It’s the EU teaming up with other like-minded middle powers (like Japan, Canada, Australia, Brazil, etc.), and international institutions to create diplomatic and economic costs for rule-breakers. But if EU is inconsistent in this regard (like it was with US Iran situation) no one will take it seriously. Rules cannot apply only when it’s convenient to you. That is what the author was pointing out.

But you’re not wrong. He’s approaching the issue from a Liberal Institutionalist perspective, while you’re viewing it through the lens of Structural Realism. Both valid perspectives. One point that both of you will agree on is that EU needs to get independent from the US ASAP.

EU is not a superpower like US Or China. Mid-sized powers rely on international law and multilateralism to survive and exert influence. If the world devolves into a purely “might makes right” arena (which the author argues Trump is doing), Europe inevitably loses.

But MR.PRESIDENT said he and Putin are good friends

Valve is a shitty company.

Does valve make some good things? Yes. Do they make shitty things? Yes. Not hard.

You just stated the exact nuanced position I was defending from the very beginning, while simultaneously insulting me for holding it 😂

It’s not.

Look, you are not necessarily wrong in holding the opinion that Valve’s monetization practices are so horrible, that they ruin the company’s entire reputation. It’s a valid moral boundary. But at the end of the day, it’s just an opinion, not some objective law of the universe and other people can weigh the scales differently without being an evil person. Yet you portray it as the TRUTH. And it’s a bit ironic, that when people disagreed you started talking about echo chambers and attacking the community. This is why you got downvoted.

I feel like you’re straw-manning here.

I never said it’s okay. All I’m saying is that a mega-corporation can simultaneously exploit psychological loopholes for profit (loot boxes) while actively pushing open-source ecosystems (Linux), providing great value to consumers and fighting other pc gaming monopolies (Microsoft). Look at the whole picture.

Maybe just maybe it’s because it’s not as black or white as you make it seem? Especially talking about a company that did so much for Linux and looking at what their competition is doing…

Last week, we published our team’s findings about an exposed Elasticsearch cluster that contained over 160 indices and held 8.7 billion primarily Chinese records, ranging from national citizen ID numbers to various business records.

Last December, the team uncovered an unprotected database containing 4.3 billion records, some of which included LinkedIn-derived personal information. The 16TB-strong instance contained emails, photos, employment histories, and other personal data. A single collection alone contained 732 million records, including photographs.

In July, Cybernews covered one of the largest data leaks in history, after researchers discovered several collections of login credentials, containing 16 billion records. The team found 30 exposed datasets, each containing tens of millions to more than 3.5 billion records.

The leaked data included login info for just about every online service, including Apple, Facebook, Google, GitHub, Telegram, and even government platforms.

Damn…