Difficult to assess the relative effectiveness of Iranian missile strikes because there are still zero satellite images of Israeli military bases that were targeted.

Especially strange because we got images of Israeli bases that were hit by Iran in October 2024 within about a day of the attacks.

US politicians desperately want to memoryhole our defeat in Afghanistan.

They won't even call it a defeat.

First, Taiwan developing nuclear weapons would drastically increase the probability of a PLA attack to destroy the nuclear capabilities.

Second, all established nuclear powers generally don't want nuclear weapons to spread. Taiwan having nukes means Japan, South Korea ect. might get nukes.

Military spending is 1.7% of GDP in China.

Even if the US cut 40% tomorrow, Washington would outspend them in dollar terms and in percent of GDP.

data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS...

Maybe it is rage-bait engagement farming?

TikTok isn't officially state-owned.

Everyone is (understandably) focused on the "buy TikTok" part, but the idea of a heavily indebted government that constantly runs massive budget and trade deficits making a sovereign wealth fund is also entirely unprecedented.

"it’s certainly not porn"

Hmmm it's almost like trying to forcibly prevent the technological development of a country with four times your population and a well-educated workforce was doomed to failure.

Good luck banning open-source software.

yes but think of the lolz!

Civilian casualties in airstrikes ostensibly targeting "Taliban meth labs" killed dozens of civilians, according to local officials. It was pretty well documented at the time.

www.bbc.com/news/world-a...

www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/...

Between this news and the recent reports of Ukrainian drone support to HTS, it seems almost impossible that US intelligence agencies didn't at least know about the HTS offensive before it began; likely they were helping plan/facilitate the move.

In 2023 China's exports to the US were worth a whopping $500 billion, or about 2.8% of China's GDP.

However, in 2007 China's $233 billion in exports to the US accounted for a full 6.6% of Chinese GDP.

The US has leverage here, but less than it used to and less that many people assume.

I'm guessing this is measured in nominal dollar terms? If so, on a PPP basis the difference would be even greater.

www.reuters.com/world/us-tol...

In Los Angeles nonetheless!