C

My brain dump

[depths of wikipedia! @depthsofwiki]

from japanese wikipedia (autotranslated to english)

[Dan Shapiro @DanielBShapiro]

Until the text of the US-Iran deal is signed and released, there is going to be a lot of spin on both sides. But here is my initial take.

This war was a mistake, and it needs to end. The President thought that the Iranian regime would collapse quickly, but it did not. In fact, it has been strengthened strategically by its survival against a heavy US-Israeli assault and carrying out some effective counterstrikes. Many countries in the region are now courting Iran and looking to deescalate and rebuild ties. A sign of which way the wind is blowing.

Getting the Strait of Hormuz open is the most important outcome of this MOU. Of course, the Strait was open before the war. Now we are paying to reopen it with sanctions relief. Iran has taken a theoretical point of leverage and turned it into a very real and powerful one, imposing costs across the global economy and rattling President Trump.

As for the nuclear issues, there really is no agreement, other than to negotiate over the HEU stockpile and an enrichment moratorium. Iran knows how to drag out those negotiations, and try to pocket concessions along the way. It is possible that no deal will every be reached, and very likely that if one is reached, it will be worse than what we could have achieved through diplomacy before the war.

Iran is not likely to take seriously that the US would return to war, certainly before the US midterms. So that means we will be conducting diplomacy without a credible threat of force.

If any agreement ultimately reached actually safely puts Iran's nuclear ambitions out of reach, I'll acknowledge it. It's just too early to make that judgment.

Trump is mainly focused on comparing his deal favorably to the JCPOA. But we are a long way from being able to make that comparison, and it may end up no better, or weaker than that deal.

But in some ways, Trump's deal and the JCPOA are already similar. Nothing on ballistic missiles, nothing on proxies, nothing on weakening the regime or helping the Iranian people. And plenty of sanctions relief that will strengthen the regime, and be poured into the missile program and proxy network. Honest critics of the JCPOA will not twist themselves into pretzels to defend Trump's approach.

Israelis are deeply disappointed in this outcome, but they should not be surprised. After some initial overlap of Trump's and Netanyahu's interests, there was a strong divergence. The United States needed this war to end. Netanyahu wanted to continue.

Trump's claim to include Lebanon in the ceasefire and his harsh shutting down Israeli attacks on Hezbollah is also a win for Iran. After the JCPOA was signed, Obama and Netanyahu worked together to strengthen Israel's campaign of strikes in Syria to intercept Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

So let's hope we see the removal of Iran's enriched uranium and a long-term suspension of enrichment, with full verification. But to achieve those goals, Trump's team is going to need to engage in far more sophisticated diplomacy, backed by qualified experts, than they have to date. If it is a phase one splash with no follow-up on implementation of later phases, like in Gaza, we will be much worse off after, and because of, this war.

[b3k-holing @b3kholing]

wooks are like Disney adults in the edm community. its ok to be really passionate abt that but dont do it around me

[C @CMerged]

@intelligentpawg But save the swans

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

Wait…Did he just say checkered past ? I’m 28 felonies, 6 bankruptcies, and an Epstein bromance short of his checkered past.

[Fav ⛧ @Favwontmiss]

It’s always “you have ADHD” and not “thanks for being able take whatever word or phrase I say and immediately sing it in a song you know”

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

@SoundDobad I know this may sound petty, but I can’t stand it when people put photoshop a meth pipe in my mouth. A crack pipe doesn’t have that little bowl at the end. This is why we can’t trust AI. Please make the appropriate edit. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[kat @ervis_2000]

is she serious with these lyrics ? 😭

[barrel rolls @barrel_rolls]

you can lead a horse to baja but you can’t make it blast

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

This has a clinical name. Revenge bedtime procrastination. And the ADHD version runs on a completely different mechanism than the neurotypical one.

A neurotypical person stays up late because they want more leisure time. The ADHD brain stays up because it spent every drop of dopamine it had on executive function during the day. Sitting in meetings, managing transitions, filtering impulses, remembering the thing you were supposed to remember. That burns through dopamine the way sprinting burns through glycogen. By 10pm the tank is empty.

But here's where it gets counterintuitive. The exhaustion is physical. The dopamine deficit is neurological. Those are two separate systems. Your muscles want sleep. Your prefrontal cortex is starving for the stimulation it was denied all day because it spent 14 hours on task-switching and impulse control instead of anything that actually felt rewarding.

The phone at midnight is the brain trying to collect what it's owed. Low-effort, high-stimulation content. Scrolling, short videos, rabbit holes. The exact profile of activity that delivers dopamine without requiring the executive function you already depleted.

The sleep researchers call this a "self-regulation failure." It's closer to a debt collection. You borrowed against your own reward system to function all day. The bill comes due at midnight. And the brain will not let you sleep until it gets paid.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

Global airlines are cancelling flights at an unprecedented pace:

Airlines have cut 2 million seats and 12,000 flights worldwide from their May schedules over the last 2 weeks, reducing the total available seats to 130 million.

This comes as jet fuel costs have DOUBLED since the Iran war began, forcing carriers to cancel unprofitable routes, switch to smaller aircraft, and raise ticket prices.

Turkish Airlines and Air China account for the largest seat reductions, cutting ~520,000 and ~490,000 seats, respectively.

Lufthansa leads in flight cancellations, at ~4,000 flights in May alone, with the airline having removed 20,000 flights from its schedule between May and October.

Meanwhile, Gulf carriers, including Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar Airways, are still operating well below pre-conflict capacity, as the closure of Gulf airports has disrupted ~33% of all European journeys to Asia.

Singapore and Tokyo airports asked carriers not to add extra services to limit jet fuel use, and Vietnam introduced jet fuel rationing.

The global aviation shock is spreading.

[akila. @becka1icious]

ur job shouldn’t be ur first priority, that weird girl on twitter should be

[Katherine Argent @effthealgorithm]

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

I haven't seen anyone tracking all of the alleged (or open) Trump corruption, self-dealing, and quid pro quos in one place. For the last 15 months, I've been tracking every single tip+story I can find and organizing it. Today, I published a 6,000 word piece with every example.

[Michael Pettis @michaelxpettis]

Caixin: "Chinese companies cannot legally fire employees simply to replace them with cost-saving artificial intelligence, courts in the country have ruled, setting a significant precedent for labor rights as automation sweeps the tech sector."
https://t.co/C5O6JiygzU

[Kuppy @hkuppy]

It’s now been a month since this posting of mine. I still don’t think it’s dawned on most investors that Hormuz isn’t opening until Iran wants it open.

With oil starting to get frisky to the upside, I think we’re getting to the point where the market is forced to care that oil is about to seriously break stuff.

Good luck. As traders, we wait years for these crazy market events…

[anna !!! :)) 🇵🇸🌸✨🌸🇵🇸 @frogs4girls]

i will not puke in the uber. puking in the uber is the mind killer. puking in the uber is the little death which brings total obliteration.

[cosmicfauxpas @cosmicfauxpas]

nephew told me ufos are unc slop. hard pill to swallow but he's right.

[Claire Lehmann @clairlemon]

Odd date to pick but OK
https://t.co/96aDrVBdoA

[Darshak Rana ⚡️ @thedarshakrana]

Mentally healthy people live in a permanent hallucination.

Lauren Alloy's landmark studies at Temple University shattered a comfortable assumption about mental health.

She gave participants a simple task: press a button and try to control when a light turns on.

Some had control, others didn't.

Depressed participants accurately identified when they had zero influence over the light. Mentally healthy participants believed they were controlling it even when the light operated on pure randomness.

The pattern repeated across dozens of experiments. Healthy people overestimated their test scores before getting results back. They predicted longer lifespans, better job prospects, and lower divorce risk than statistical reality supported. Meanwhile, mildly depressed individuals predicted outcomes that matched actual data with eerie precision.

Alloy called this "depressive realism" and it reveals something disturbing about human consciousness. What we label as mental wellness depends on systematic self deception. Your brain evolved to lie to you about your chances, your control, and your capabilities because accurate risk assessment would have killed your ancestors before they reproduced.

The optimism that gets you out of bed each morning is the same cognitive error that makes you buy lottery tickets.

But, the depressed participants who saw reality clearly became more depressed as a result of their accuracy. Knowing the truth about your limited control and uncertain future creates a feedback loop that spirals into paralysis.

Evolution faced a choice between accuracy and action. It chose action every time.

The people you admire for their mental strength are chemically incapable of seeing how bad the odds really are.