this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2026
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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 of the first nuclear icebreaker ever built, the Lenin, which entered service in 1957 in the USSR and decommissioned in 1989. It is now a museum ship in Murmansk. I just think it's neat.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleThe last week has had a lot of Trump admin dipshittery that isn't important enough to be worth remarking on, so I'm just going to skip right past all that. The sanctions campaign against Iran appears to have stalled before it even left the starting line, with China saying that, nope, they aren't going to cut off their ally for the sake of their enemy. From what I've gathered from Naked Capitalism's (albeit limited) reporting on the state of Iran's economy, the impression I get is that while inflation is running kinda wild, everything else, including state revenues, are doing sufficiently well that there isn't going to be an economic collapse this year nor probably next year if we assume a continued no-deal situation over Hormuz.

The underlying geopolitical situation has had some interesting little developments. Iran and Oman appears to have worked out their plan for joint control over Hormuz. Ansarallah is continuing their explosive campaign against the Saudis, who are now begging the US for help. Additionally, the ever-barking never-biting Türkiye is showing some signs that they might soon, finally, after three years of witnessing outright genocide, do 1 (one) (the first numerical digit) action that isn't to the Zionist's direct benefit, by putting up a modicum of resistance in defence of their puppet in Syria; but, quite frankly, I'm not holding my breath on anything truly substantial happening while Erdogan's in charge.

The state of oil flows in and around Hormuz are very hotly debated right now. Many of the oil flow numbers can be dismissed out of hand because they aren't reflective of the reality of Iranian control and vision of the strait. Due to the narrowness of the strait, full visual coverage of the ships travelling through the channel can be achieved with technology no more advanced than a dozen people with binoculars and a not-especially-tall mountain. However, figures that are around 3-5 million barrels per day (compared to the pre-war 20 million per day) seems plausible when including Iran allowing some allied vessels out (notably Iraqi and Chinese vessels, among others). This, plus China's rather odd actions in the oil market over the last six months, have resulted in the US's SPR now draining at "only" 4-6 million barrels per week, compared to 8-9 earlier in the war. However, the war's impact on fertilizer and diesel stockpiles and prices are now unignorable even to those with their heads in the sand, with anxiety steadily building in the mainstream media about food crises next year.

Meanwhile, Trump has decided to pick fights with Canada due to their strange unwillingness to graciously hand over their sovereignty to the US, with the two countries now in a tariff war. That being said, oil seems to be one product that neither side wants to fight over: the US needs a producer, and Canada needs a customer. The only other country in the vicinity with major oil reserves is Venezuela, who has been in the news a lot lately for precisely this reason, but they simply don't have the production to do much of anything to alleviate the US's stockpile issues and likely still won't by the time Trump has left office, and so they can be safely dismissed as a significant player in this ongoing global energy conflict.

On the subject of naval trade routes, a fascinating development is that Russia has finally unveiled the Northern Sea Route as a regular maritime passage, with a small fleet of eight Chinese vessels taking the route as a test run in mid-August. From Shanghai to Hamburg, the route is a little over 7000 nautical miles and goes through no chokepoints (though I suppose the Bering Strait could hypothetically become one), compared to the Suez route which is nearly 11,000 nautical miles and goes through three chokepoints (Malacca, Bab el-Mandab, Suez). Russia has the world's only nuclear icebreaker fleet, and the increased power from those reactors is necessary to provide the sheer force to break up the ice along the route, making them even more uniquely situated to benefit from the route. Many countries, China foremost among them, have identified the advantage of not being subject to chokepoints and hostile waters as the US navy continues its rapid transition to outright piracy, so it'll be interesting to see to what extent the route is adopted in the coming years.


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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.


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[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 68 points 15 hours ago (17 children)

USS Abraham Lincoln arriving in Thailand

[–] smokeppb@hexbear.net 21 points 7 hours ago

Damn girl, u sail like this?

[–] Boise_Idaho@hexbear.net 6 points 5 hours ago

This carrier has seen better days.

[–] iByteABit@hexbear.net 24 points 7 hours ago

Damn, has this been around since Lincoln himself?

[–] naom3@hexbear.net 19 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

So, dumb and largely unrelated question, but how do aircraft carriers stay upright? Like every photo I’ve seen of them is just this massive flight deck balanced on top of this comically skinny base. It seems like that would give it a really high centre of gravity. How does it not fall over in strong winds? Is the base just absurdly heavy to balance it out? Does it flare out underneath the water line?

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 16 points 6 hours ago

You're being misled by shots from the front of the ship. The front is thin to cut into the water, the back is not.

[–] BobDole@hexbear.net 24 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

They have fat asses, basically. Like all ships, the bow is significantly narrower than the stern.

[–] jack@hexbear.net 21 points 8 hours ago

They have thicc-trump under there

[–] kleeon@hexbear.net 12 points 8 hours ago

Looks like Exxon Valdez from Waterworld

[–] Horse@lemmygrad.ml 32 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

i've seen shitheap trawlers in better condition
jesus fucking christ


[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 25 points 10 hours ago

It's a poetic visualisation of the decline of american power.

[–] Athena5898@hexbear.net 46 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

is it supposed to look like a set piece from Fallout?

[–] Guamer@hexbear.net 10 points 7 hours ago

Rivet City: Origins

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 41 points 12 hours ago

That's bad looking.

[–] pierre_delecto@hexbear.net 43 points 14 hours ago
[–] a_party_german@hexbear.net 56 points 14 hours ago (2 children)
[–] FALGSConaut@hexbear.net 44 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Lmao they can't resist making their enemies out to be both weak ("aging rust bucket prone to breakdowns") and an existential threat ("sailed menacingly close") even in the same sentence

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 12 points 7 hours ago

i'm usually with you on that but a rustbucket can still shoot a missile

[–] Infamousblt@hexbear.net 52 points 14 hours ago

Their dilapidated rustbucket vs our heroic war machine

[–] culpritus@hexbear.net 35 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

Why are there weird scrap marks all along the water line? Were they bumping into icebergs in the Arabian Sea?

[–] huf@hexbear.net 44 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (2 children)

steel ships will continually rust all the time on the sea. even stainless steel. the normal way to deal with this is to paint it, and then to maintain that paintjob regularly. also to sometimes cut out the rusty bits and weld non-rusty bits in place.

what i dont know is the rate. is this amount of rust the result of this one overlong mission? or did it set out already undermaintained and rusty?

[–] BobDole@hexbear.net 28 points 10 hours ago

Having been on a (much smaller) ship in that environment, this is about the state I would expect a steel ship to be in after that long underway. Typically, they’d would pull into port in Bahrain, Dubai, or Abu Dhabi every month or two to knock off the rust and grime at the waterline and slap on a fresh coat of paint, maybe have some divers come out to pressure wash below the waterline. But Iran made sure they couldn’t (lol). You can’t safely get a human down on the side of a carrier’s hull underway, especially during flight ops.

They will probably spend a couple weeks in Pearl Harbor painting the whole exterior before pulling into San Diego. That’s pretty standard.

[–] nohaybanda@hexbear.net 42 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

I can’t speak on the Lincoln, but I recall reading somewhere that the US Navy is ridiculously behind on scheduled maintenance to the extent that it’s affecting projected lifetime for numerous vessels - meaning they’ll need to be scrapped before their time due to missed maintenance. lol. Lmao even

Edit: comrade Indi had a nice write up on depreciation

[–] InevitableSwing@hexbear.net 5 points 3 hours ago

they’ll need to be scrapped before their time due to missed maintenance.

The idea seemed great in my head but once I started working on it I realized it's more nonsense and less funny. Plus it has a unneeded connection to Australia.

[–] manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 36 points 13 hours ago

That's Lincoln's beard silly

[–] Big@hexbear.net 46 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not a sailor or anything, but salt water is insanely corrosive and will fuck up any type of material if exposed for too long without maintenance.

[–] carpoftruth@hexbear.net 32 points 11 hours ago

yes, and it is particularly corrosive in conditions where a steel surface is wetted and then dried repeatedly (i.e. waterline of a ship). saltwater corrosion is also worse/faster when it is higher temperature, like 30-60C. obviously the ocean isn't that hot, but it gets sun. a big metal plate in the gulf sun constantly getting exposed to seawater then drying off is about as bad as it gets as far as a corrosive environment for steel.

[–] jack@hexbear.net 45 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

jesus christ no wonder they had to pull that thing out, it looks like the hull's about to rust all the way through

[–] userse31@hexbear.net 41 points 14 hours ago

My grandpap's old truck that was actively collapsing has less rust.

[–] MemesAreTheory@hexbear.net 52 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Long-term damage to the Navy's reputation and morale will reduce enlistment too. Turns out if you stick your troops in a rancid bath with missiles and drones trying to kill them for months for no long-term strategic advantage, they resent that.

[–] ComradeRat@hexbear.net 29 points 12 hours ago

Conscription by 2028, revolution by 2030 timmy-pray

[–] supafuzz@hexbear.net 38 points 14 hours ago

no scorch marks, boo

[–] Rojo27@hexbear.net 47 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

The carrier is TIREDyes-honey-left

Its funny that Trump was saying that they hadn't been deployed for long enough and this was the state the carrier was in, to say nothing of the more widely reported condition of the crew.

[–] casskaydee@hexbear.net 16 points 10 hours ago
[–] companero@hexbear.net 41 points 15 hours ago

Looks like the Silent Hill otherworld version of an aircraft carrier

[–] orlando@hexbear.net 29 points 15 hours ago