Mihai

@mihailim

Just some random person. He/him. Fabricati diem, punc! Illegitimi non carborundum. GNU Terry Pratchett

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Mihai@mihailim· Jul 10

I mean

Cover page of the Chewniverse: Chicken Is Doom hardcover tabletop RPG expansion book.

Mihai@mihailim· Jul 10

And it's even basic understanding of the flow of time that's being brutalised here. "incubating a violent nationalism that may one day explode into conflict" -- as opposed, we're expected to think, to the *CURRENT* violent nationalism that already HAS exploded into conflict. Twelve years ago.

Or Russia could come under the thumb of foreign powers. It may be dominated by China, which could use it to supply raw materials and serve as a buffer against America. Or, after a war of attrition, maybe Russia will exist on the periphery of Europe, an impoverished dependant. Both outcomes would breed resentment and discontent, he predicts, incubating a violent nationalism that may one day explode into conflict.

Mihai@mihailim· Jul 9

Trick question, it was FIFA.

Photograph by Martin Liebscher,
FIFA Boardroom, 2017
Lambdaprint, Aluminum Dibond
59 1/10 × 118 1/10 in | 150 × 300 cm
Edition of 5 + 2 AP
Source: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/martin-liebscher-fifa-boardroom

Mihai@mihailim· Jun 25

If you see this, post an Archer.

Malory Archer, looking vaguely annoyed and holding a drink.

Mihai@mihailim· Jun 16

Oh for *fuck's* sake.

The painting "Ship of Fools" by Hieronymus Bosch.

Mihai@mihailim· Apr 22

I feel left out. On the _other_ hand, had that account muted anyway...

Mihai@mihailim· Apr 20

Welp, status.bsky.app is now saying unironically

Mihai@mihailim· Apr 20

Being wobbly. status.bsky.app says somewhat ironically:

Summary: "All systems Operational"
And immediately under that, ironically: "We are seeing elevated errors and timeouts on some Bluesky-hosted services, and are investigating. April 20, 2026 at 19:06 GMT+00:00"

Mihai@mihailim· Apr 12

I don't think that going back to normal is even on the table. And for example the US Energy Information Administration has this to say in their short-term forecast at www.eia.gov/outlooks/ste... -- *in the very best case* (!), the ripple effects will subside somewhat by end of this year.

Forecast overview
Global oil production. Oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz continue to be limited causing oil storage to fill quickly in countries that rely on the waterway for exports. As a result, we estimate that Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain collectively shut in 7.5 million barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil production in March. We assess that production shut-ins will rise to 9.1 million b/d in April. In this outlook, we assume the conflict does not persist past April and that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz gradually resumes. Under those assumptions, we expect production shut-ins will fall to 6.7 million b/d in May and return close to pre-conflict levels in late 2026.
Crude oil price forecast. The Brent crude oil spot price averaged $103 per barrel (b) in March, and we expect it to peak in the second quarter of 2026 (2Q26) at $115/b before easing as production shut-ins slowly abate. We maintain a risk premium on crude oil prices throughout the forecast period as we expect uncertainty around future supply disruptions to keep prices above pre-conflict levels. We forecast the Brent crude oil price will fall below $90/b in 4Q26 and average $76/b in 2027. This price forecast is highly dependent on our assumptions of both the duration of conflict in the Middle East and resulting outages in oil production.

Mihai@mihailim· Mar 24

As an amusing aside, here's an accidental mislabeling that's metaphorically correct...

A screenshot showing an accidental mislabeling by @facelabels.bsky.social, identifying the picture of Orban as "Contains Trump's Face".

Mihai@mihailim· Mar 23

Repost with alt text and source attribution: no01.substack.com/p/march-19-2...

Friday’s press gaggle. Barely exaggerated: at 12:03 PM, President Trump told reporters he wanted a ceasefire with Iran. At 12:05 he declared victory. At 12:07 he announced he was sending Marines. At 12:08 he said no boots on the ground. At 12:11 he said he did not want a ceasefire. At 12:16 he declared victory again. At 12:17 he asked for a ceasefire. At 12:23 he told NATO they were cowards. At 12:29 he said Iran was begging for a ceasefire. At 12:31 he said everything was perfect. At 12:36 he said $500 oil was a good thing. At 12:37 he demanded Iran open Hormuz. At 12:39 he said Hormuz was never closed. At 12:41 he said the US was not at war with Iran. At 12:42 he declared victory in Iran.

Mihai@mihailim· Mar 21

What makes it even more hilarious is that Herbert had mostly JFK in mind as the blueprint for Paul Atreides. From Brian Herbert's 2007 introduction to Dune Messiah:

Among the dangerous leaders of human history, my father sometimes mentioned General George S. Patton because of his charismatic qualities—but more often his example was President John F. Kennedy. Around Kennedy, a myth of kingship had formed, and of Camelot. The handsome young president’s followers did not question him and would have gone virtually anywhere he led them. This danger seems obvious to us now in the cases of such men as Adolf Hitler, whose powerful magnetism led his nation into ruination. It is less obvious, however, with men who are not deranged or evil in and of themselves—such as Kennedy, or the fictional Paul Muad’Dib, whose danger lay in the religious myth structure around him and what people did in his name.

Mihai@mihailim· Mar 17

Not bad, right, right. It's not like he'd openly acknowledg--oh, wait.

Screenshot of a quote from Dune Messiah reading:

“Ghengis . . . Khan? Was he of the Sardaukar, m’Lord?”
“Oh, long before that. He killed . . . perhaps four million.”
“He must’ve had formidable weaponry to kill that many, Sire. Lasbeams, perhaps, or . . .”
“He didn’t kill them himself, Stil. He killed the way I kill, by sending out his legions. There’s another emperor I want you to note in passing—a Hitler. He killed more than six million. Pretty good for those days.”
“Killed . . . by his legions?” Stilgar asked.
“Yes.”
“Not very impressive statistics, m’Lord.”
“Very good, Stil.” Paul glanced at the reels in Korba’s hands. Korba stood with them as though he wished he could drop them and flee. “Statistics: at a conservative estimate, I’ve killed sixty-one billion, sterilized ninety planets, completely demoralized five hundred others. I’ve wiped out the followers of forty religions which had existed since—”
“Unbelievers!” Korba protested. “Unbelievers all!”
“No,” Paul said. “Believers.”
“My Liege makes a joke,” Korba said, voice trembling. “The Jihad has brought ten thousand worlds into the shining light of—”
“Into the darkness,” Paul said. “We’ll be a hundred generations recovering from Muad’Dib’s Jihad. I find it hard to imagine that anyone will ever surpass this.” A barking laugh erupted from his throat.
“What amuses Muad’Dib?” Stilgar asked.
“I am not amused. I merely had a sudden vision of the Emperor Hitler saying something similar. No doubt he did.”

Mihai@mihailim· Mar 15

Specifically this quote:

An executive at a large global hedge fund with a presence in Dubai said: “We have been exploring how to evacuate people but it’s not easy.”
He added: “It’s pretty scary — this is going to have implications for some of my guys . . . The trade was not that you were getting exposed to geopolitics when moving to Dubai. It was not a consideration. People have moved families. This element of concern is new.”

Mihai@mihailim· Feb 9

Same legibility issues here. There's a "High readability text" option on the lower left side under the settings icon which improves things to some degree. Ironically, the placement of the settings icon makes it easy to overlook.

A screenshot of the aforementioned "High readability text" option on the lower left side of the https://bluesky-map.theo.io/ site, with red arrows pointing to the relevant items.

Mihai@mihailim· Nov 3

There's a non-trivial chance you're replying to an inauthentic account there given its posting patterns, see the labels in the screenshot below. It's this labeler, btw: @stechlab-labels.bsky.social

Mihai@mihailim· Sep 11

pterry had multiple hilarious takes on it as well, for what it's worth. My personal favorite being

He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he’d lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read ‘Endeavour to be the one inside’ he’d rather lost heart.

Mihai@mihailim· May 24

Not at all coincidentally, Eco listed this as one of the characteristics of Ur-Fascism.

11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.

Mihai@mihailim· May 18

This is how it looks like right now, FWIW:

Romania round 2 presidential election partial results as of 2025-05-18 20:14 UTC with 96,53% of votes counted:
1.
NICUȘOR-DANIEL DAN
5.511.715
+883.798
54,36 %
2.
GEORGE-NICOLAE SIMION
4.627.917
45,64 %
TOTAL
10.139.632
100,00 %

Mihai@mihailim· May 7

Hm, must be due to something ancillary, maybe to force a push for something internal. Only comments have changed relative to last year, this is the diff to a 2024-06-26 copy:

Diff output showing only comments changing between the referenced root hints file and a copy from 2024-06-26. Full diff:

--- root.hints 2024-07-03 21:02:00.000000000 +0300
+++ tmpfile 2025-05-07 21:33:00.000000000 +0300
@@ -9,8 +9,8 @@
; on server FTP.INTERNIC.NET
; -OR- RS.INTERNIC.NET
;
-; last update: June 26, 2024
-; related version of root zone: 2024062601
+; last update: April 25, 2025
+; related version of root zone: 2025042501
;
; FORMERLY NS.INTERNIC.NET
;

Mihai@mihailim· Nov 13

Gotta love Bluesky, didn't even get to manually do it :)

Mihai@mihailim· Nov 9

Looks like Ms. Thompson's analysis being validated yet again then... harpers.org/archive/1941...

Extract from "Who Goes Nazi?", by Dorothy Thompson, Harpers Magazine, August 1941 issue:

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.
Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.
Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi. It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big party you go to.

Mihai@mihailim· Aug 26

rys.io/en/171.html

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak @rysiek@mstdn.social :
#Telegram and #Durov are once again in the media, so I translated my May piece about the service to English:
Telegram is neither "secure" nor "encrypted"
https://rys.io/en/171.html
Calling Telegram "secure" or "encrypted" is misleading, and is journalistic malpractice.
Telegram itself seems to mislead about it on purpose.
Telegram's encryption protocol is suspicious and transmits cleartext device identifiers with every message.
They have been called out for it many times, and refuse to change.

Mihai@mihailim· Aug 20

And since this universe runs on a mix of narrativium and irony, that response was dropped into the middle of *my* feed 😁