A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.
Image is a map of Middle Eastern oil/gas production sites, which Iran has promised to strike in retaliation if their own energy infrastructure comes under attack.
My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
For the weekend of August 1-2, Trump had once again promised major strikes on Iran, which would have included crossing the critical red line of striking their energy infrastructure. In response, Iran once again essentially promised to end the possibility of modern civilization as we know it throughout much of the Gulf States and, to a certain extent, the Zionist entity, with the economic impacts radiating outwards around the world from there. The frustrating part about these threats from Trump is that while he's reneged on them before, the consequences of them actually occurring are so dire that it's difficult to ignore them; rolling a dice with even a 5% chance for complete catastrophe will always be nerve-wracking.
Anyway, as we all know, these strikes did not occur, with the excuse this time being much the same as the previous times: our regional allies begged us not to (potentially true) and Iran called us and said they were willing to negotiate/surrender (untrue). The point of these threat displays is at least twofold: first, to see if Iran is genuinely going to flinch, or, at least, if internal elements that may or may not exist will be spooked into action against the IRGC; and second, to manipulate oil prices downwards by creating constant cycles of "relief" out of an otherwise relatively constant downward trend as Hormuz stays closed and oil reserves continue to ebb. I do say "relatively", of course, given that Ansarallah now appears to be delivering a boot up the ass of Saudi Arabia by taking offline quite a lot of its refinery infrastructure.
It is into this situation that Ukraine seems to want in. For those out of the loop, the situation over in Ukraine has largely the same overall attritional dynamics as previous years, but with a few added wrinkles. Ukraine started striking Russian infrastructure a while ago, and while their effectiveness is hotly debated and I don't want to dismiss them as totally ineffectual, it's clear that the psychological effects - such as they are - are greater than the material effects. Russia's retaliation strikes have been considerably more impactful, including strikes on Ukrainian Black Sea ports and vessels, and a campaign explicitly against gas stations across Ukraine, as well as some rather impressive and disruptive explosions at Ukrainian military fairs and production sites. Zelensky has admitted publicly that they are now basically out of Patriot missiles and that Russian missiles are now landing entirely unopposed (beforehand, they were just landing largely unopposed, given the lackluster performance of Western air defences in general). He seems to have considered a possible way out: linking together the Ukraine and Iran Wars to a united front against Russia and Iran, which would then grant Ukraine more munitions to keep fighting on.
Now, for all the fear I've seen of this occurring (and, don't get me wrong, the US and Russia being in non-proxy, direct conflict is a genuinely frightening prospect for continued life on Earth) how linking together two wars which the West is quite decisively losing into a single war would help at all is beyond me. At this moment, at least, US military planners appear to agree with me. Ukraine hit a Caspian Sea vessel going to Iran a while ago, but then seems to have quickly apologised after being given a stern talking to by the US. This shows just how willing the US is to grant Ukraine more aid, as their own interceptor stockpile is running very low due to Iranian strikes. One would almost feel sympathy for Zelensky if is wasn't for... well, everything that's happened. The path of Ngô Đình Diệm is a tough one to walk.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists' destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Hey, wait a minute, that map...
Kuwait isn't shaped like that, it's not so round, it's like the profile of a hood. Lebanon should be a bit longer and its mountain range shouldn't bend through Syria toward Tadmur. Jordan is lacking its panhandle, it should border Iraq. Syria shouldn't have that protrusion on its southeast and it shouldn't border SA. Qatar should border SA instead of UAE, and it should be almost elliptical. It looks like the illustrating entity gave up on the UAE border.
The Sea of Galilee is absent, the Dead Sea is way too small, and Lake Nasser doesn't run that straight for so long. Most importantly, the Strait of Hormuz is shown as 125+ km wide- that's not even a strait anymore, which is the central dynamic of this whole plot!
The pinpoints don't match up to their coordinates either. The coordinates of Leviathan (1) should place it west of Tamar (2), and Burgan (8) should be south of them both and west of Ghawar (3) and Khurais (4). Ghawar's longitude puts it east of Khurais. Sitra (9) should be north of Ma'amoul (10) and Gordy North (6). The list goes on. No more than one or two of them can be placed right, and probably none of them are.
What's the point of a map if it doesn't display things in at least some remote semblence of an affine geometry? Useless ass slop.
There's something depressing about the fact that people are even using AI to generate maps. We only spent several generations improving our map making skills only to ignore all the existing maps in favor of AI generated slop.
Also, it would take like 5 minutes in Paint.NET to put the dots and semi-transparent text boxes on a map.
As a side note, I truly believe that the only salvation from AI slop, hypersurveillance, and environmental devastation (these are all inseparable) is in the collapse of the technological pyramid. If you fail to achieve communism before you start proliferating generative and/or agentic AI, your civilization gets monkeywrenched. It digitizes everything to make the previous modes feel obsolete, then it dilutes and overwrites all the content, and all the while it consumes an ever-increasing amount of energy. Without ever explicitly intending to, by a certain point will have made everybody reliant on it, inflicted a damnatio memoriae on everything outside itself, and set itself and its supports on a path to imminent destruction.
GenAI is kind of like an unconscious Roko's Basilisk, or the digital dead god of capital.
the Slopularity
It's the great filter.
I think this is a bit dramatic. It's a market bubble, so it is being shoved into everything, but once the bubble bursts it will start being used for specific purpose built tasks. This is the thing the ruling class are fixated on because the US economy is barely holding on and they needed to prop it up with something, anything. AI isn't the problem, Capitalists have been doing this exact same shit since we've had capitalism, and as the contradictions of capitalism worsen, so too do these sorts of market bubbles and subsequent market collapses.
The bubble collapsing is not going to make the Internet less dead, it is not going to make agentic AI go away, people are still going to be using it all the time as a crutch and for a substitute for human interaction. The genie is out of the bottle and the only solution is for the genie to starve to death.
For the record, I had this pessimistic position on surveillance tech and social media long before ChatGPT came out.
In fairness, GDAL / GRASS / QGIS is fucking confusing.
More slop and fewer bears, it is not looking good for this here web forum!
dead hexbear theory
I didn't look at it before, just looking at the text it appears AI generated, there is a certain type of font that it seems to always produce. I might be tripping but the title on the top definitely looks like AI image font. And yeah the geography is nonsense which is only likely to happen like this if it was AI generated.
@SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net
found a better one:
IRA
Sykes & Picot rough draft
lsiaamic Kingoom of Imarn
Also, what's up with this "Israel" thing where Palestine should be?
Yeah it also counts 1-12 in the key, skipping 11. Then the thing labeled 12 in the key is labeled 11 on the map. There's also the purple dot missing on the map on number 9. Looks like the AI also just gave up on drawing the border between Oman and UAE (which...fair)
Drawing the border between Oman and the Emirates is much easier than drawing the border between the Emirates.
literal map gore
oh god that’s awful
I had to cite The Economist because at least I trust they aren't using AI slop for their maps quite yet, quite awful indeed
dark times
Also just noticed that they called the Persian Gulf just "The Gulf"
They really don't like implying that it belongs to Persia/Iran in any way lmao. Wonder when that one becomes The Gulf of America 2 on all the burgermaps