I suppose a habit does look a great deal like a hijab, especially if you’re a racist idiot…

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent steve?”

Well it’s certainly pretty…

Not really; he made the mistake of ripping off rich people - and that’s the one crime no oligarch can forgive.

Er… Isn’t Ukraine already striking russian air bases?

Any idea what the poles are? They look a lot like roast dog.

Trump priority was regime change and he though it would be easy so it was a worth thing to disturb the global economy . When he realized that it will not work he was forced to stop the full scale war

While obviously a bit oversimplified (geopolitics does not lend itself to a two-sentence summary) I quite agree that this was a big part of it.

Maybe I misunderstood you

Yeah I think so - I was indeed referring to the Israel/Lebanon agreement (“framework”), not the MOU.

If Trump refuses to put real pressure on Israel and the full scale war is back , that’s a choice the U.S. made not something Israel forced on them. The USA has full responsibility for this decision

Yes, that’s the problem. As I said earlier, “If Israel doesn’t listen to trump, which seems unlikely to happen though I hope it does, Trump’s only recourse to opening the straight is to restart the war with Iran or go to war with another nuclear power (and one that he’s very ‘loyal’ to)”. It’s gambling a great deal on Trump being a rational actor who does not want to go to war.

So, I’m glad you seem to be in agreement with me. That’s nice.

So I believe the impact is real and not negligible like you believe .

Er… That’s not what I said at all. I said that for the majority of the war opening the strait was not Trump’s priority. At the end of the ‘hot’ conflict it became a much more pressing reality as the impact of the closure started to affect trump’s base in the US, and support for the war began to plummet. I agree that should Trump figure out a way to spin the closure, he’ll restart the war in a heartbeat.

You said that Israel signed the MOU which was false.

What? Where did I say that?

I don’t understand why your posed the question of why Israel signed the deal if you already knew the answer

Pretty straightforwardly to highlight their motivations here. Your answer is true but it just glossed over the major point, which is to allow Israel to regroup. I wanted to check and make sure we’re both on the same page.

to pressure it to stop even if they fail which Trump is not doing right now.

That’s been my point the whole time; it might pay off, but they’re banking on Trump doing the rational thing and keeping Israel on a leash. But at the moment, all they’re getting is a transparent Israeli faux-ceasefire with Lebanon.

I think like I already said multiple time that it stopped the full scale war to continue.

I’m not quite sure we’re talking about the same thing, but I’m also not quite sure we’re disagreeing. The pressure from the closure of the strait is for sure a major (although I’d argue that it’s perhaps not in-of-itself the direct majority - it’s closure for sure lost Trump domestic support for the war though) reason Trump balked at continuing the war. But at the same time, the strait was closed for months and for most of that time it had a negligible impact on Trump’s willingness to continue; so while it is a powerful means of pressuring the world economy, it’s not one that couldn’t be bypassed should Trump decide the temporary hardship of a closure during a true commitment of forces outweighs the cost to his ego (and all the other reasons he wants it restarted, but the man is damnably ego-driven).

If you are talking about the mou between the USA and Iran, they didn’t

Yes exactly, it’s an agreement between the US and Iran. That’s the problem with it - it binds Israel without Israel being a party, relying instead on trump’s winning personality and diplomatic skill to enforce the terms instead (you may be able to see why I am concerned).

If you talk about the deal between usa/lebanon/israel then that deal give Israel the right to response to anything they deal against Israel national security.

Yeah, exactly. Israel does this so often I suspect my cat is aware of the pattern - sign a “ceasefire”, use that time to regroup and prepare for the next stage. I assume that’s why they’ve been setting up the occupied Lebanese territory to be so easily recaptured and difficult to fortify for the LAF.

And on top of that, when the Israel/Lebanon deal collapses the US agreement with Iran (theoretically) goes along with it. I don’t see any other reason they would have signed, especially since (as far as can tell) Trump has done nothing to pressure Israel into the deal. There’s no indication that Israel is planning to actually stop, and if they play it right they can drag the US back into the fight right along with them.

That’s a fair criticism - there’s mods out there that improve the AI situation, but I don’t know of one that really changes the fundamental nature of the gameplay eventually becoming progressively moving through the map.

I have longed for years for the devs to revist the game and add something like a campaign or story mode - or to make it more focused on survival and exploration. Pretty much a total overhaul I realize, but still I dream…

My FLGS (which is a weirdly massive deal) has the same limits on pokemon pack purchases that everyone else has had to implement, but they recently went one further and now have a rule that children get to cut to the front of the line on restock days. Not a perfect system sure, but the salt from the scalper base has been absolutely legendary.

Um. Why exactly can’t the MOU be killed? The strait is a powerful card, but as has already been exhaustively demonstrated it’s not an automatic win button.

And to that, if the US exerted no influence then why did Israel sign an agreement at all? It’s not like Israel has been pushed back with force; they’ve been making steady progress in consolidating their control over the yellow line towards the litani pretty much without pause. Without some degree of outside pressure, there’s no reason for them to have stopped - much as they haven’t stopped demolishing what little is left of palestine.

while Iran shot the tanker to prevent the alternate route and prevent it

“To save the MOU, you must be prepared to kill the MOU!”

The reason why Israel is getting away with genocides is the lack of real restrictions on Israel, not the opposite.

Yeah totally - I’m not clear on how this disagrees with what I said.

Despite the framework from Friday (which ew does it gargle trump at the end) Israel has predictably not actually stopped blowing up lebanon.

So I don’t really know what if there’s a good takeaway right now, any way it happens it sure seems like we’re going to be waiting at least a little while longer before an actual ceasefire happens. But hopefully this shows willing between the US and Iran and tensions will ease, and from there Israel will fall in line - though I’m skeptical of Israel adhering to the terms of their agreement with lebanon given they started violating the terms literally moments after they were done signing it, and with how the occupation of Lebanese territory has been prosecuted so as to make rebuilding almost impossible / recapture almost trivial… We’ll see how it plays out.

If Israel don’t listen to trump then trump should use his power and impose gradual restrictions on Israel.

I mean… sure, that’s technically an option, but not only does that leave the strait closed for an indeterminate amount of time - which is the absolute worst case for Trump - it allows israel to continue its genocides until it’s own resources and other allies run out. From Trump’s perspective it’s a terrible choice - I can’t really fathom why he or Iran would want this. It seems especially unlikely, since it’s counter to what Trump’s currently doing (is fucking up the MOU so he can restart the war).

Iran is doing everything to limit death by prevent the return of the full scale war

I’m curious why you think their actions are going to prevent the return of full-scale war. That’s a take that to my eye very much does not align with their behavior, as they have consistently risen to every provocation.

You think so?

Iran is playing an incredibly dangerous game, and one that could so easily backfire. Their move with the MOU admittedly looks okay on paper, but it’s predicated on there being rational actors which have yet to materialize. Trump is actively violating congress’s war powers act with his most recent strikes, and Bibi doesn’t give a fuck because he’s pure evil going to prison if the wars ever stop.

If Israel doesn’t listen to trump, which seems unlikely to happen though I hope it does, Trump’s only recourse to opening the straight is to restart the war with Iran or go to war with another nuclear power (and one that he’s very ‘loyal’ to). Maybe it will pay off, but from where I’m sitting it was a huge mistake to tie the US and Israel together instead of playing them off one another like the hateful fuckwits they are. If Iran had instead made the opening of the straight dependent on the behavior of israel alone, and allowed the US to back out of a wildly unpopular war that has effectively no domestic support, they would have left themselves room to engage Israel militarily and give Trump a way to both abandon the US’s allies (our favorite thing to do) and signal some limited victory ahead of the midterms. Trump could just sit back then, letting the media cycle forget about the his involvement as everyone shifts focus to the Iran-Lebanon-Israel-Palestine war.

But instead of this, we get… a dickwaving contest, where everyone is constantly sniping at one another, chipping away at the ceasefire and unable to do anything substantive to get what they want because of a badly thought out agreement that sought to humiliate an imbecile more than it did to actually prevent more deaths.

Reassembly, a fantastic and beautiful simple shipbuilder with a great modding scene. My go-to game when I’m high and just want to chill with some pretty particle explosions…

(should we be upvoting the games we haven’t heard of? Or just downvote only?)

Yeah at this point both sides are pretty clearly just using the idea of a ceasefire to gain advantage over the other one - neither one seems to actually give a shit about stopping the conflict. Its fucking depressing to watch these assholes meme at eachother while meanwhile people continue to die every day.

yeah its a hard nope from me.

Oo, the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge! There’s still a rope bridge there, though it’s a lot less rickety in the modern era. Here’s a view of what you were walking over at the time:

It feels… racist?