https://xcancel.com/CarolinaLion2/status/2054549739199152231

Good piece on the enormous convoy of lorries that is now keeping the Gulf supplied amid the closure of Hormuz: “UAE supermarket chain Spinneys sent trucks loaded with British foods—including potato chips, porridge oats and children’s snacks—on a 16-day journey from Kent in the UK through Western Europe and then Egypt and Saudi Arabia to Dubai.” https://archive.ph/duwoH

Dubai is literally having to get supplied for basic essentials via truck convoys from Western Europe because air freight and ships are too dangerous.

IRGC claims that they recovered an unexploded MOP.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it has recovered a large amount of undetonated American munitions after the ceasefire with the US. The elite force says the weapons—including a GBU-57 bunker buster—have been transferred to units tasked with reverse engineering.

The IRGC’s Imam Sajjad Corps, based in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, announced on Apr. 26 that its bomb disposal teams had neutralized more than 15 heavy American missiles in Hormozgan Province, predominantly GBU and BLU-type munitions.

The Guard Corps said it had cleared a total of more than 60 missiles and drones—including bunker busters, cruise missiles and advanced drones—since the start of hostilities on Feb. 28, and declared bomb disposal operations in Hormozgan concluded.

I remember seeing a picture of an unexploded Tomahawk that hit a civilian building and was still largely intact.

Air travel is the thing that the ruling class cares the most about, so naturally refineries are starting to prioritize jet fuel. Who even needs diesel these days? Way overrated!!

To make up for the lack of jet fuel coming from the Middle East, America’s refineries pivoted to make a lot more of it to sell to global airlines-not out of the goodness of their heart either. The heavy, sour crude that comes from Canada, Venezuela, and the Middle East is great for making diesel and jet fuel. So with oil from the Middle East stuck in the Middle East, refineries on this side of the pond are stepping up.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, American refineries supplied 26,000 more barrels per day in the last week of April than in the weeks preceding. Unfortunately, there isn’t actually any spare refining capacity in the United States, so in order to make more of one thing, something else had to get cut. They decided to cut back on consumer-grade gasoline and diesel. That’s when basic economics kicked in, and gasoline prices are up 74 cents since the IEA warned about a jet fuel shortage in mid-April. Retail gas prices also rocketed more than 30 cents a gallon higher over the last week alone, and diesel is 16 cents away from a new all-time high.

Because of the output pivot, America’s fuel reserves are being drawn from, inventory has plummeted by 6.1 million barrels over the last two weeks alone, leaving the warehousing tanks about 2% their five-year average. Diesel is even harder hit, with stockpiles down 11%

lol, lmao

https://t.me/HezbollahMirror/15811

Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan

• Called “Stratos AI Datacenter”
• Will cover 40,000 acres / 62 sq miles
• Will need 9GW of electricity, more than Utah currently consumes
• Will need god-levels of water, pulling from Great Salt Lake and other sources already in severe drought, and would produce toxic dry-bed dust clouds as the lake disappears
• Will raise Utah’s pollution by 50%
• County commissioners approved project despite thousands of resident objections
• Is backed by Mr. Shark Tank himself Kevin fucking O’Leary
• “I don’t think there’s a bigger site in the world than this,” O’Leary told Fox News. “It shows the Chinese and the rest of the world we are not messing around, we are going to get this done, move it forward and provide the compute power to our AI companies that defend the country.”
• O’Leary claims people mad about this are professional protestors getting bused in lol
• “The network of industrial-scale fans needed to cool the datacenter’s hot pipes will result in so much waste heat that it could raise daytime temperatures in the surrounding Hansel valley by 2F to 5F (1.1C to 2.7C) and night-time temperatures by 8F to 12F (4.4C to 6.6C), according to an analysis by Rob Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University.”
• I just started reading BLAME!, here we go!

Ukrainians are stunned by the court reading transcripts of texts between Andriy Yermak, until recently the country’s second most powerful man, and his fortune-teller “Veronica Feng-Shui,” in which she advises him to get rid of his enemies in the media and parliament before it’s too late, and while he still enjoys Zelensky’s protection.

https://nitter.net/yarotrof/status/2054554877473460260

that’s neat

Stag-fucking-flation incomin?

US APRIL PRODUCER PRICES RISE 6.0% Y/Y; EST. +4.8%

https://xcancel.com/AnalyticaCamil1/status/2054344629521097101

NYT reporting on classified U.S. intelligence assessments of Iranian missile capacity reiterates that they maintained 70% of their missiles and launchers but adds that 90% of their underground storage and launch facilities are also still active. Iran had designed is missile program with the acknowledgement of not being able to protect its airspace and relied on hardened underground “missile cities” to compensate. U.S. and Israeli attacks apparently disabled the entrances to some of these facilities and hit surface buildings. But as many observed at the time the attacks were failing to actually penetrate the underground facilities where the operations were carried out and missiles kept in storage. Most problematically for a renewed campaign the missile complexes near Hormuz are almost all still active according to the assessment. If the U.S. intel assessment is accurate it also explains why Iran was able to maintain a steady rate of missile fire until the end of the war, and also suggests that the U.S. and Israel simply wasted a lot of top-tier standoff munitions firing at rock complexes that it failed to penetrate.

IMO, the funniest part of this entire war is when an OSINTer found a livestreaming camera that captured the region of sky just above one of Iran’s launch silos, and they watched it get bombed, fire off a missile, get bombed again, fire off another missile, and so on and so forth. https://xcancel.com/kimhvik2/status/2030352482640240668

Iran launched a ballistic missile from a site in Isfahan that has been bombed several times by the US and likely Israel. This just shows how long this is going to take. Just look at Hezbollah aswell that many thought were completely destroyed.

https://xcancel.com/JerkPup/status/2054359679590150297

I think that was from here? Eleven above-ground structures backed up by two vaults with six entrances, with one vault still under construction. Suppressing this site fully would require quite a bit of ordnance.

https://xcancel.com/ilmalfalcon/status/2054351268676526296

yk this is kind of worse than how most wargames went, at least the US had a chance to degrade iranian capabilities, rn, its basically done nothing💀. Everything bombed can be repaired in a week with chinese concrete, everything can be dug up in a day. Killed the entire government basically, and still nothing happened, its even funnier that all the US had to do was just wait it out, now any chance of any instability is instantly dead, IRGC gets to be as draconian as theyd like and theyd always have popular support. How do you even win this, how do you fuck up so bad?

And btw, even this comment about how the US underestimated Iran itself underestimates Iran, with the mention of “chinese concrete” - not only does Iran have its own concrete industry (I mean, obviously? what do people think Iranian cities are made out of, mudbrick?), but it’s literally a major innovator in developing new kinds of more resilient concrete! (Iran develops ultra-high-performance quartz-infused concrete) They don’t need to import shit, they’re actually ahead of most of the world in this regard

Nationwide USA Gas Prices: 5/13

Gasoline and Diesel have risen for the first time in 6 days by one cent

The previous wartime high was gasoline $4.558 and diesel $5.674 on 5/7

Illinois has become the seventh state to surpass a $5.00 average

Roughly 72 million people live in a state higher than $5.00

NYT - The Lecturer and Philosopher King: Xi Jinping Behind Closed Doors

Encounters with other world leaders reveal a side of China’s leader that the public rarely sees, and offer clues to how he will approach President Trump in Beijing.

I know complaining about the NYT is some low-hanging fruit but that “analysis” might as well have included the word inscrutable. The text is supposed to be news not an op-ed but it still made me think of this “egg roll” tweet.

Media is like:

Freelancer, $35,000/yr: “I self-funding a three month reporting trip to a warzone to capture the untold stories of the war crime victims”

Columnist, $300,000/yr: “China’s foreign policy is like an egg roll”

Tweet

This Bluesky hantavirus post by a science journalist gives a great reality check.

Remember that there are up to 200,000 [global] cases of human hantavirus infections each year. Probably many more, since especially old world Hantaviruses apparently often only cause flu-like symptoms. Testing for it may well ramp up now, so expect tons of unrelated cases to turn up over the next week.

https://bsky.app/profile/fischblog.bsky.social/post/3mlpjjqkkdc2p

Al Jazeera - Chinese supertanker reported to be transiting Strait of Hormuz. A Chinese crude oil supertanker, Yuan Hua Hu, appears to be sailing out of the Gulf region, marking a rare crossing through the Strait of Hormuz, according to media reports and ship-tracking monitors. Ship-tracking data shows the supertanker moving through the volatile waterway on Wednesday morning. According to the reports, the vessel passed Iran’s Lark Island on the eastern side of the strait while heading south away from Hormuz.

Al Jazeera - US offers $15m reward for tips on ‘illicit’ Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps oil shipments. A statement released on Tuesday by the State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program said it was offering the huge payoff, “if you have information about the IRGC’s oil shipments, the tankers or entities involved in such illicit oil transfers, or related activities or individuals”.

Peruvian Election Update

100% of the votes counted.

• Keiko Fujimori (Far-Right/Fujimorism): 17.17 % =0.00%

• Roberto Sánchez (Left-Wing/Democratic Socialism, this guy is supported by Castillo): 12.02 % +0.02%

• Rafael “Porky” López Aliaga (Far-Right/Incel): 11.90 % -0.01%

• Jorge Nieto (Center-Right/Neoliberal, Nephew of Montesinos): 10.97 % -0.01%

• Ricardo Belmont (Center-Left/This is a Rich TV Owner guy who has ties with the far-left Etnocacerist movement but he’s a SocDem): 10.14 % =0.00%

• Carlos Álvarez (Right-Wing/Zelenskism): 7.92 % =0.00%

• Alfonso López Chau (Center-Left/Social Democratic): 7.29 % =0.00%

Cuba denies receiving humanitarian aid from the United States - Prensa Latina