Shlags

[Shlags @shlags1]

@sasimons How are you not embarrassed to post this shit every day? I’m genuinely curious how you do it .

[Shlags @shlags1]

@InesBetancur1 I know very little about horses, but I know damn well not to stand in the strike zone.

[James Lindsay, anti-Communist @ConceptualJames]

What you see almost endlessly from Tucker Carlson, "Comic" Dave Smith, Theo Von, etc., and the rest of the blackpillers amounts to a Critical America Theory. I'm not making this up. I'm explaining.

Critical Theory was developed by neo-Marxist Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School in 1937. In an interview in 1969, Horkheimer explained what the Critical Theory is. He said (closely paraphrasing):

"I developed the Critical Theory because we [Western neo-Marxists] realized we cannot articulate the good or ideal society on the terms of the existing society. What we can do is criticize those aspects of the existing society that we wish to change."

In other words, a Critical Theory believes everything is so captured and corrupted by power and those who benefit from systems of power that it isn't even possible to talk about a better situation in clear terms. All that's available is criticism of why the system/society isn't better than it is. This activity has come to be known as identifying or "making visible" the various "problematics" in the existing system.

A Critical Theory OF SOMETHING would focus this general mode of engagement into a particular domain.

For example, a Critical Theory of Race in America would believe that racism is so endemic to a society and embedded within its systems to the benefit of whites that we cannot articulate a true "antiracist" vision on the terms available to us. All we could do is identify where "racism" manifests and criticize it for being there.

We call that program "Critical Race Theory" because it is a Critical Theory of Race. What it does in practice is
(1) identifies "hidden racism" in everything (criticizing those elements of the existing (racial) system they wish to change), called "identifying problematics";
(2) induces more people to think this way;
nothing else.

What a Critical America Theory would look like is not being able to articulate what a good or ideal America would look like on the terms of the existing America but criticizing those elements of America as it exists that we wish to change.

That is, it would look for everything America isn't doing perfectly according to some ideal standard that doesn't exist, probably cannot exist, and cannot even be articulated and "make those problematics visible" in the hopes of changing the system.

Leftists, including the whole of Critical Race Theory, do this endlessly. From Derrick Bell's (founder of CRT) 1970 book, Race, Racism, and American Law, forward, it is a relentless racial Critical America Theory. That's why it exported poorly and often hilariously to other countries that don't have the same law or racial history.

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States (1980) is another example, a very naked example, of a work of Critical America Theory. Specifically, this book goes through every chapter of American history, from pre-founding (Christopher Columbus) to the present (1980 at the time) and catalogues how America cheated "the people," mainly workers, indigenous, racial minorities, and women (the intersectional coalition).

What I'm telling you is that the blackpillers of Podcastistan and X, etc., very notably including Tucker Carlson, are doing a socially conservative variation on Critical America Theory. Whether Carlson or "Auron MacIntyre" (nhrn) from The Blaze, the undertone of every message is plainly "you don't hate your (real) country enough" as compared against an imaginary ideal that doesn't, can't, and won't ever exist.

The Blackpill Comics all do the same thing, relentlessly identifying "problematics" and alleged hidden systems of control that delegitimize the country as it actually is against a standard that isn't even real.

The thing is, Critical America Theory is a Critical Theory of America. That is, it is a Critical Theory. That is, when you participate in this slop, you are taking on a critical consciousness about America. Having a critical consciousness is being WOKE, by definition (of Woke). This slop is Woke.

When this Critical America Theory slop takes on a socially Leftist slant, we call it Woke Left (or just Woke).

When this Critical America Theory slop takes on a socially conservative or Rightist slant, we call it Woke Right (which is just Woke too).

They are both Woke. They are both toxic. They are both false enlightenment into a kind of terrible darkness, entitlement, malice, despair, hatred, and failure.

Reject Critical America Theory. Love your country. It's great, and it's worth it.

[10Δ @_10delta_]

3 weeks ago I argued the US goal in Iran is to seize the global oil spigot. Venezuela in January -> Iran in February.

Neutralize every supply channel outside the dollar system within 90 days. Achieve a compliant successor government and complete energy dominance.

The oil thesis was the obvious layer. However, when you zoom out & view the last four years as a single sequence rather than isolated geopolitical events, the architecture of the grander US plan becomes visible.

1st was Europe, which laid the groundwork.

The Ukraine conflict provided the justification for sanctions that collapsed Russian pipeline gas from 150 billion cubic meters to 40.

Then Nordstream was destroyed, which rewired the entire European energy system permanently. The US went from supplying 28% of Europe's LNG in 2021 to 58% by 2025, exporting a record 111 million MTs, the 1st country in history to break 100 MT.

Europe was transformed from a customer with options into a captive market now purchasing its survival in USD.

2nd was Syria.

The fall of Assad severed the critical node connecting China's Belt & Road Initiative to the Mediterranean.

The trilateral railway linking Iran, Iraq & Syria, designed to bypass Western maritime chokepoints, was completely destroyed.

This isolated Iran geographically & cleared the path for what came next.

3rd was Venezuela.

In January the US effectively took control of the world's largest heavy crude reserves. The US Gulf Coast has the most advanced refining complex on earth, specifically built for heavy sour crude. Phillips 66, Valero & the rest are now positioned to process hundreds of thousands of barrels of Venezuelan crude daily.

The US captured a massive strategic reserve & solidified its position as the dominant exporter of refined petroleum products, an industry worth $110 billion in 2025 alone.

Venezuela & Iran were the two major oil supply channels that existed outside the dollar system. Both produce heavy crude sold primarily to China & evaded US financial supervision. Both now being neutralized within 90 days, which leads us to..

4th is Iran & the Middle East energy shock.

Israel struck Iran's South Pars gas field, the world's largest natural gas reservoir. Iran retaliated against Qatar's Ras Laffan, the single largest LNG facility on earth, responsible for a fifth of global supply. QatarEnergy's own assessment is that 17% of export capacity is gone and recovery will take up to 5 years. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. European gas prices spiked 70%. Asian spot prices doubled.

The only remaining scaled supplier? The United States.

If Iran falls & a successor government is installed that the US controls or influences (the Delcy model described weeks ago) then roughly 40 to 45 million barrels per day of global production out of 103 million is effectively under US control. OPEC becomes irrelevant because the US coalition is now the marginal producer. Now add the gas dimension & it goes beyond oil.

This war is solidifying the petrodollar system as it evolves into a hybrid petro/LNG-dollar. The old system was built on Saudi crude priced in USD. The new system is built on American crude plus American gas from the Gulf Coast, with no alternative supplier of comparable scale. The dependency is deeper because LNG infrastructure requires long term contracts & regasification terminals that lock buyers into supply relationships for decades. Europe & the Pacific allies (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc.) cannot pivot away as there is nowhere left to pivot to. They're now locked into the US energy system.

The market confirms this. DXY went from 96 to 101. Gold down ~20% from its January all time high. Bitcoin down 20% on the year. Brent above $100. European & Asian institutions are liquidating precious metals and crypto to buy dollars because they need dollars to buy the only remaining scaled energy supply. The world is selling its gold to buy American energy in American currency. The dollar is now being weaponized through energy dependency.

The structural repricing is happening regardless of how the conflict resolves.

But the US grand strategy goes deeper..

Artificial intelligence is a physical industry. It runs on power and chips. Data centers require massive uninterrupted baseload electricity, primarily provided by natural gas. Semiconductor fabrication requires helium & rare earths.

By choking the Strait of Hormuz & crippling Middle Eastern LNG & helium production, the US is systematically degrading China's ability to power its data centers & fabricate semiconductors at scale.

The US is energy self sufficient, especially with newly captured Venezuelan reserves & expanding Gulf Coast capacity running on domestic gas.

On the other hand, China is import dependent & every joule it imports effectively now transits chokepoints the US Navy controls..

Iran was the Belt & Road's overland energy bypass, the corridor that allowed China to mitigate the Malacca Trap. With Iran neutralized that corridor is severed. China faces a world where its compute infrastructure competes for scraps on a depleted global LNG market, while American data centers run at full capacity on domestic energy.

Russia is next in the sequence. A post-war Iran reopening under US influence competes directly with Russia for the same refineries in China & India at lower cost. Iran's production costs are lower. Russia loses its last structural advantage in heavy crude & its economic lifeline. Additionally, under the Iran war cover, Ukraine has been opportunistically destroying Russian energy infrastructure & all signs point towards Russia being at the end of the line. The message from Washington becomes very simple: we dismantled two regimes in three months, your economy is about to get crushed, sign the Ukraine deal.

Then Trump sits down with Xi holding every card. Complete energy dominance. The hybrid petro/LNG-dollar fortified, Iran cleared, Russia cornered, & China facing the Malacca Trap fully closed with no remaining energy bypass.

Israel & the GCC are absorbing the kinetic cost of a conflict whose primary beneficiary, counter to the mainstream narrative, is actually America (First). Qatar offline for 5 years reprices the entire global gas market in favor of US exporters for the remainder of the decade. The Gulf states face years of rebuilding. Europe faces its 2nd energy crisis in four years.

Sure, the average American might face temporary moderate inflation & higher gas prices. But if you are the architect of the US empire & you view the rise of China & Chinese ASI as an existential winner takes all scenario, the collateral damage is acceptable cost.

Whoever controls the energy corridors controls the monetary system. Whoever controls the monetary system & the energy supply simultaneously controls the compute infrastructure that determines which civilization builds ASI first.

The US is seizing all 3.

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

I am glad everyone is 100% sure that the war in Iran is the end of the world/a genius move/the end of the American Empire/the begining of a new age of American greatness/insert other opinion here.

But could you just acknowledge for a moment that you don't actually know how this is going to go because no one does? It's a gamble which could go either way. And all I see is people doing the usual "Here is my baseless opinion expressed with 100% metaphysical certitude followed by the typical "I hope I'm wrong" disclaimer which allows them to simultaneously harvest the clicks of people who wanted to have their retarded opinion reflected back at them while having plausible deniability for when that retarded opinion turns out to have been completely wrong.

The coin is in the air and we don't know how it's going to land, but the internet is full of people screaming "IT'S GOING TO BE HEADS" arguing with people screaming "IT'S GOING TO BE TAILS".

Stfu.

[Shlags @shlags1]

@JoeListComedy your story on todays episode of the pod reminded me of this clip. https://t.co/rnhjJPYdLI

[vittorio @IterIntellectus]

the Haber-Bosh process and its not even close
it has saved ~4 billion people

[Kareem Carr, Ph.D. @kareem_carr]

I’ve grown increasingly skeptical of the liberal idea that you can engineer moral change through language. For example, I don’t think changing “homeless guy” to “unhoused person” actually means anything. At best, it’s a short reprieve before “unhoused” takes on the same connotation as “homeless.”

On a different note, if you say “wow, you really blindsided me there,” I don’t think you’re doing something especially harmful to blind people. I think this kind of language is just a natural consequence of having bodies and thinking in terms of embodied experience.

To be clear, this is not a defense of slurs, which don’t really fit into this framework. A slur like the n-word, when used as a slur, is basically just a combination of the concepts “black people” and “bad.” There isn’t much nuance there.

On the other hand, phrases like “you look like a homeless person” or “my apartment is so ghetto” do have linguistic nuance. They communicate states of experience within a shared social and embodied context.

To be sure, they do imply that someone would prefer not to be poor or without a home, but those are extremely normal preferences.

I don’t think there is any magical terminology where, if you get people to avoid certain words, they will suddenly think homelessness and poverty are good.

You could go back ten thousand years and I’m pretty sure the humans around you would agree that having a place to call home is good and not having resources is bad.

All of this makes me skeptical of the liberal obsession with inventing special words for everything. I think it reflects a mistaken view of what language can actually do.

And yes, a lot of it just reads as straight-up Orwellian, which is a bad look for the liberal project.

[Shlags @shlags1]

@RiggsBarstool @TaylorMadeGolf 90

[Shlags @shlags1]

@ryanlongcomedy The response you’d get if you asked the Iron Shiek if he liked Purple Rain.

[Mark Hemingway @Heminator]

Really gotta hand it to the WNBA for going out of their way to confirm every negative stereotype of female social dynamics.

[Nature is Amazing ☘️ @AMAZlNGNATURE]

I honestly believe this is one of the biggest mysteries there is, Orcas are the most efficient predators on earth, yet they have never attacked us in the wild. They know something we don’t.

[Shlags @shlags1]

@KeithOlbermann @Riley_Gaines_ Congrats on an absolute ice cold take Keith.

[Shlags @shlags1]

@ryanlongcomedy Hilarious Ryan. Well done.

[Shlags @shlags1]

@MyGolfSpy Malbon

[Shlags @shlags1]

@JCrossley78 @StingrGolf I have one of these. Definitely destroys a ball.

[Shlags @shlags1]

@MyGolfSpy I’ve never had an ace and in 2020 I dunked a tee shot directly onto the foam hole insert and it shot straight up in the air and landed right next to the hole. I’ll never know if it would’ve stayed in. I’ll never forgive the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

[Shlags @shlags1]

@wokal_distance @DouglasKMurray You seem to have summarized Murrays position way better than he was able to. This was frustrating to listen to.

[Shlags @shlags1]

@freckles570 @RokuSupport Same for me

[Shlags @shlags1]

@jopawo Just happened to me so I came to X to see if anyone else had the same experience. How long did it take to correct itself?