This week's summary of the situation is in spoiler tags below:
preamble
Diplomacy between Iran and the US has begun in... perhaps not earnest, but it's certainly started. Iran's very reasonable requirement that the Zionist occupation stop ethnically cleansing Lebanon and withdraw has caused a great deal of consternation throughout their population, and several analysts have suggested that Netanyahu being forced to accept Trump's (and therefore Iran's) demands spells the end of his leadership in the coming elections; then, the occupation is expected to "mellow out" and the conflicts and genocides slow and stop. This view is only really impactful if you believe that, rather than the US and Zionists being in a strongly mutually beneficial relationship based on geopolitical, financial, and clandestine goals, that instead Netanyahu is a devious mastermind bending any and all in the US to his whims. I don't believe this; and, if anything, the events of at least the last three years prove that he's really quite stupid, with "Israel" being in its worst position in decades under his rule.
Nonetheless, Iran has made the issue of Lebanon a not-quite-red-line (an orange line?). It hasn't stopped them from going to Switzerland and beginning negotiations, but they still want to strongly express their discontent by harnessing the newfound superweapon that is Hormuz. Similarly, threats by Trump and others to restart the war if Iran doesn't bend to their whims have been met with formal stoppages of negotiations, but it appears technical teams are still talking to each other and working things out. Trump's threats are fairly idle at this point because most in the US military must know that there's essentially zero effective military actions left to them with their current munition stockpiles.
Trump let slip that the US has about 3-4 weeks of oil reserves left, which aligns moderately well with the projections of analysts like Yves at Naked Capitalism (it's now expected in late July rather than early July as was originally forecasted months ago). This means that even if the negotiation process goes off without a hitch, that there's going to be a period of at least a few weeks where the US is out of reserves but is waiting for new shipments of oil to physically traverse the distance between Hormuz and the US continent. And many analysts have pointed out that it's going to be a long time - at least a few months, and perhaps more like 9 to 12 - before Hormuz flows pick up to pre-war levels, due to logistics companies and insurance companies wanting to be sure that their property isn't going to be blown up mid-transit. Regardless, the fact that the timetable is now so tight could indicate that the Trump admin has finally realized that it cannot outbluff and outwait Iran, and will give them a good deal out of necessity, even if this means forcing their unsinkable aircraft carrier to stop bombing children for five consecutive minutes.
However, there is a palpable anxiety throughout Iran right now, especially due to controversy over the degree to which Khamenei actually agreed with the current course of events. This does seem to be confirmed by his wording (to paraphrase): "In principle, I took a different view, but allowed the President to proceed." Many inside Iran now have more fear that their politicians will not push hard enough for a good deal than that they'll return to war, with all that may imply. This isn't an unfounded fear, especially given how suddenly the 12 Day War ended despite Iran's strengths being medium-and-long-term attrition (now confirmed by this latest war). This is one of those events that reveals how the Supreme Leader in fact doesn't have complete dictatorial power unlike how he's conceived of in much of the West, and that even during existential wars, major concessions have to be made to democratically elected leaders. Though, this could also be a clever move to shift blame explicitly onto the Reformist elements if the deal collapses.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
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:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
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.
"Extreme heat cancels climate change event on adapting to extreme heat"
I don't understand why the British aren't, like, spending every cent of their centuries of global plunder on, you know, adding A/C to shit when they know this is just gonna get worse
Or insulation
My GF and me (who booked this exact week off to redo our >30yo loft insulation):
Wait, what? I understand homes not having heating and/or cooling mechanisms in certain parts of the world, but fucking venues?
Thermal comfort is a major issue in my country, most of our homes are not designed for extreme weather so it's very hot inside during summer and very cold during winter. AC units and heat pumps are way too expensive for most people, but every major venue that's not an outdoor location will have ways to provide a reasonably comfortable temperature.
Most of Northern and Central Europe as well some southern European countries don’t have AC, except for very rich people’s mansions.
Like I have been sweltering in close to 40 degrees Celsius in my home because my parents refused to install an AC because “you get sick from it” or “it has too high of an energy usage”.
Wow, 40°? That's crazy, oh my god. I live in a particularly hot apartment in the Pacific Northwest and yesterday it was like 32° inside and I was dying. Can't imagine much more than that.
In fact, yesterday's heat was the impetus to get an AC, after having discussed it for weeks.
France has been in the midst of a 40C+ (104F) heatwave for close to a week now.
Temps at nights go down to 27C (80.6F) at most. And in many places, that's 40C+ during the day with like 60% relative humidity - that is very close to the lethal levels for everyone (not just the old).
The close future - in the EU and elsewhere - will include weeks-long heatwaves even higher than that; those will be annual megadeaths events.
apparently the thing was set at a historical library and said library is in the 'Old Building' of the LSE. im gonna make some assumptions based on that name alone
I guess Londoners will have to wait until this newfangled concept of "retrofitting" finally arrives in the UK. What a weird ass country
this is me when i visit são paulo and the house/shop i am in somehow still doesn't have AC
It's crazy, if you go farther south, people in colder places like Curitiba and Porto Alegre have to rawdog the full range between 0 and 35 degrees Celsius throughout the year, no AC, no reliable heating. I've known people from cold countries who came to Brazil and felt colder in the south than they did in their home countries, where it fucking snows a hundred days a year lol preparation is everything
On the flipside I have been apologized to by southerners because they do not have AC in the hellish temperatures of 22 degrees C.
I don't know how people sleep without air conditioning. If it's above 20 degrees in my bedroom I can only get 5 hours of sleep. Tops.
acclimation is a bit part of it but, really, there are different kinds of heat. there are parts of brazil's south that one or two generations ago would only sometimes get a dry heat season that reached, at most, 20-30C. now they get the same oppressive, humid heat that you see up in the amazon or in the south-eastern coast.
Well sure, I work in a factory and it gets hot, and you can get used to working in the heat. Just gotta stay hydrated.
But seriously, being even slightly warm when I try to sleep ruins it for me. I'll just be sleep deprived, I never get used to it.
Most of these historic buildings still use original building methods. If they're listed buildings you get into the whole problem of finding people who can be trusted to do it instead of destroying historic interiors and these places are weighing up whether that's worthwhile for a period of 3-4 weeks of the year where it's needed.
Does this apply for "portable" AC? The kind that has wheels and you dump the exhaust pipe out the window.
Those are probably fine but these old buildings are massive rooms with high ceilings.
Hah, retrofitting in the UK is... well, it's a huge tangle. If we had a government that did things, it'd be the source of a program for like a hundred thousand people to start at it.
The old houses were all built at random according to the whim of whatever cheapskate wanted to try out their experimental new attic-kitchen concept out of whatever kind of compressed poison blocks the local smog factory threw out, the modern houses are built by cheapskates out of toothpicks and a crumbly, but somehow flavourless, cheese. And the regulations are, of course, capitalist regulations and really more about enclosing areas of activity to generate profit, with the health and safety part being the skin they hide beneath.
Certainly solvable, but - hell, in the awning article article I mentioned on another comment:
The funny part is, older buildings in the UK had cooling mechanisms before AC was a thing.
Sash windows (the superior window), mostly torn out or painted and nailed solid. Awnings over the windows and doors, mostly removed.
From this article:
They fell out of fashion.
I believe this is one of the keys to understanding the British Character.
True.
Though it pisses me the fuck off!!! when people on tiktok or whatever bring up the meme of "Our buildings were designed to keep heat in" - They weren't designed for shit beyond "how many children can this village generate for my coal mine".
The bricks let in heat and moisture at-will, so you get damp or mould when it rains (on the island classed as a temperate rainforest) and controlling the ambient temperature against the external environment is impossible to do passively.
The roofing is often slate, which is both the worst fucking colour to reflect away sunlight and incredibly thin. I've been in my loft this week to redo the insulation and it is effectively a hot pillow of 40C+ air above our rooms. Nearly gave myself heat stroke at some points which isn't ideal.
The insulation, if it exists, is barely fit for purpose. Most people will have used fiberglass that loses efficiency when damp (see the first point lmao) and/or loose cellulose fibers treated with boric acid that degrade with age. Even if you did meet environmental standards, you probably don't anymore because they've only changed in the last few years. When an attic is your main "deep storage" space, the labour and cost to top-up (let alone redo) insulation is prohibitive.
The rest of the house is plaster and timber that may or may not get gobbled up by the moisture your coal-horny ancestral boss never gave a shit about when commissioning your home.
Houses were built in such a sprawl that they are now devoid of natural shade, and any that was permitted to exist (such as on avenues) are cut down or pollarded ->
because we built our power and communication networks on sodding telegraph poles.
Yeah a bit of a rant that isn't so directed at you, because you're right that any such dialectical response to adapt our homes to heat was stripped from us through generations of capitalist manufactured waste and consumerism. Fuck it all and I can't wait to one day purchase an AC unit that will help collapse our threadbare power network that cancels any opportunity to divest from oil because pensioners who can't feel heat in their geriatric state think 1976 was the only time the country was hot.
The writers' room has given up on subtlety it seems
I know writers who use subtext, and they're all cowards
:dark-place: emojis needed
It's like raaiiin on your wedding day, it's a free riiide when you've already paid...