catonkatonk

Traffic through the Suez Canal has fallen from around 2,000 transits per month before November 2023 to around 800 in August,

Greece-based Conbulk Shipmanagement Corporation stopped Red Sea voyages after its vessel MV Groton was attacked twice in August.

Torben Kolln, managing director of German-based container shipping group Leonhardt & Blumberg, said the Red Sea and wider Gulf of Aden was a "no go" area for their fleet.

An executive at a third shipping company, which has also received a letter, said they decided to end business with Israel in order to be able to continue to use the Red Sea route.

The Houthis have not stopped all traffic and the majority of Chinese and Russian-owned ships - which they do not see as affiliated with Israel - are able to sail through unhindered with lower insurance costs.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/houthis-warn-shipowners-new-phase-red-sea-campaign-prepare-be-attacked-2024-10-03/

That interview is infuriating. The suggestion at the end that Palestinians are responsible for their own subjugation is genuinely shocking to me.

It's a good point, but I think we have to be open to the idea that the people running the show are not rational, not intelligent, and perhaps even in the throes of hubris. Perhaps they have an exaggerated sense of their own capability and a mistaken belief in the power of their bombs and drones. Maybe they think they can defeat Iran easily, even if their generals tell them otherwise. And they believe that they need to clear the board before engaging with China, to pick off China's potential allies ahead of time.

The only evidence I can give for this hypothesis is that they do seem to believe that by giving Ukraine an unlimited number of missiles, that Ukraine can expel Russia from its borders. That is without going into the absurd predictions being made at the onset of the war about Russia's imminent total economic and industrial collapse. They have not (recently) proven themselves as being able to, uh, calculate.

I'm not of that age, but imo it's more a technological thing than a generational thing. People, of any age, cannot put their phones down. I personally have to make the conscious decision to disconnect if I'm going to read something or watch a movie or whatever. I imagine that for people who grew up with smartphones, that's like cutting off a limb.

Every day I wake to the news that Biden hasn't yet contracted ebola and feel dispair.

I thought it was because videogames toned down the jiggle physics or whatever.

That's a good question. You are right that if we wanted to see the extent of Anne's vapidity we could just read her book. Speaking for myself, I was never going to do that. While I'm sure most here figured her out a long time ago, seeing her talk at length like this was eye-opening to me at least. And probably the same for a lot of people whose only exposure to her is from the odd piece in the FT or whatever. Honestly, if someone wanted a primer on how and why western hegemony is failing, I think an hour of Anne Applebaum discussing her honestly held views is as good an explanation as any. In this respect, I prefer a guest like Anne Applebaum over a Mehdi Hassan if only because the former embodies the actual values of the state rather than the professed values represented by the latter. It really is something to behold the emperor without any clothes.

But, if it's telling you something you already know, it IS pointless and counter-productive. There are people who will watch it and think, "Gosh, she's right, Poland DID do well in its transition to neoliberalism and therefore the system is sound and was implemented with good intentions and Russia is just innately full of bad people who can't succeed". Is it acceptable to allow obvious falsehoods like that to be stated without any pushback? Ehhhh....

Bastani never asks tough questions, he just lets his guests speak at length. That's his style. Applebaum is hard to take at such concentrated doses, but I do think it is an insightful glimpse into the diseased and delusional mind of the imperial elites.

The later entries in the series from the looks of it lean heavy into the Shonen look with weeb fanservice.

Artstyle wise, maybe, especially 2. All three have a lot of Saturday Morning Cartoon nonsense going on, though. Silly schoolyard bully villains hamming it up, lots of "fights" that involve characters standing around and talking about their Special Power or whatever.

3 probably has the least of that, and of the "fanservice" of the type I think you mean, and is possibly the most like Xenogears. But still not the same thing (but maybe if Xenogears was made today it would be like Xenoblade anyway - maybe the real difference is in fidelity and amount of acting etc., I dunno! Some things that work when read don't when heard...). Honestly, I think the biggest similarity between 3 and Gears is that the makers once again tried to do something immense and profound and kind of whiffed. But still totally worth experiencing even though it's compromised. Pretty pro-communist as well. Amusingly so.

On , I saw people clutching their pearls at the chant and explaining that it is a terrorist rallying cry, and that even Wikipedia mentions the connection.

But also, what if he had been a Muslim immigrant? That obviously wouldn't justify anything that had happened. And so the race, religion and nationality of the attacker are entirely irrelevant.

I wonder why the government is having a difficult time signalling to its population that collective punishment is unacceptable...