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A strong argument for the existence of a diety is hilarious-if-true outcomes like the Ayatollah getting to have both oil & lithium to remain fully hedged throug
by steveBK123 4y ago
A strong argument for the existence of a diety is hilarious-if-true outcomes like the Ayatollah getting to have both oil & lithium to remain fully hedged through the EV transition.
Too improbable for a fictional movie, but here we are. Life, as always, is stranger than fiction.
- rcme 4y agoIt doesn't seem that improbable that at least one place on Earth has both large oil and lithium reserves.
- Gravityloss 4y agoIsn't it the opposite. Oil found somewhere -> countries get really interested at invading. Finland found nickel in Petsamo in the thirties...
- themitigating 4y agoSo this "diety" is helping the Iranian government but not the people?
- steveBK123 4y agoNever assume the best outcomes
- akiselev 4y agoGeography is destiny.
- newsclues 4y agoGeopolitics is so fun. Turkey had a great position controlling access to the Black Sea during a major conflict, then Earthquakes happened. Given the oil and Americans in the region, I wonder if they are fracking....
- Tuna-Fish 4y agoNot that kind of earthquake. Fracking does not and cannot cause large, deep earthquakes like the one recently in Turkey, in which plates significantly move in respect to each other. They can cause very shallow, weak earthquakes, where the top of earth's crust slightly moves.
- Someone 4y agoShallow, weak (in magnitude) earthquakes can do significant damage locally because the intensity of an earthquake (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_intensity_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_intensity_scales) decreases with distance to its source. https://www.insidescience.org/news/2019-year-fracking-earthquakes-turned-deadly https://www.insidescience.org/news/2019-year-fracking-earthq...: “The Feb. 25 earthquake was only a magnitude 4.9, which would not traditionally be considered very dangerous. But it was able to destroy older and more vulnerable buildings because it was so close to the surface -- only about one kilometer deep according to the new study”
- matthewdgreen 4y agoThe degree to which we’ve been blessed with resources and opportunity to do the right thing (and have consistently chosen to do the dumb thing) never fails to amaze me. Infinite power from the sky that’s cheaper than fossil fuels; vast reserves of lithium to help oil-producing nations smoothly transition us away from oil; huge and unusually-enriched Uranium deposits we could use to build power (but instead used to build bombs) etc. It’s easy to see where the Garden of Eden parable came from.
- redeeman 4y ago> Infinite power from the sky that’s cheaper than fossil fuels but it isnt though, if it was, it would be happening all over, without massive subsidies and strongarming from government.
- ag315 4y agoCorrect--while the sun sends an enormous amount of free energy our way, it's maddeningly diffuse and requires enormous investments of energy and materials to capture it in a usable and reliable form. The Wynn in Vegas has a 160 acre solar farm in some of the sunniest land in the country and it provides...almost enough energy to power a single large hotel. None of this is to say that solar power is bad, just that we should have measured expectations.
- causi 4y ago1,370 watts per square meter isn't what I'd call diffuse. We're just not good at harvesting it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ArnoVW 4y agoA typical nuclear station genrates 1 Gw. You'd need 1000000 square meters (=1000 sq km) to generate the same thing. Oh and we can only capture 20-30 % of the energy of the total light. We're going to need solar power, and fossile fuel is madness. But to deny that solar power is not 'dense' seems irrational.
- vegardx 4y agoI don't see how this is a strong argument. You could just as easily make the same counter claim about Norway, both rich in minerals, oil and gas.
- wongarsu 4y agoPraise Odin
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoPraise the all-father
- throwntoday 4y ago[flagged]
- yakshaving_jgt 4y agoYou could have gone with an oppressive regime brutalising its own citizens on the basis of a fundamentalist interpretation of a religion, or that they are helping to arm a country currently engaging in imperialism and genocide again under the pretence of a holy war, but instead you went with “racism”. Nice.
- nerpderp82 4y agoMaybe go up the build tree a couple levels.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Waterluvian 4y agoIt feels off-brand for a deity’s existence to be suggested by how much they behave like Santa Claus.
- cnity 4y agoIt depends on how much Terry Pratchett you have read.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gpderetta 4y agoOr Douglas Adams. Clearly such such a bizarrely improbable abundance of resources that are so mind-bogglingly useful could not have happend purely by chance so it is the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
- Waterluvian 4y agoAh my two favourite 40k authors.
- klyrs 4y agoReally depends on the brand. American consumerism (but not only American consumerism) has produced a peculiar brand indeed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
- eternalban 4y agoIt would be entirely foolish for one to confuse theatrical displays of piety staged in Islamic Republic for any substantial connection to the said deity.
- password1 4y agoSuch a weird take on this.
- steveBK123 4y agothank you, I try
- goodoldneon 4y agoIf I've learned anything from the Civilization games, you need to have top-tier resources in the desert hexes. Otherwise, the gameplay is too unbalanced
- jonnycomputer 4y agohah ha. but to be fair, calling Iran a desert is like calling the United States a desert. https://www.knowiran.com/iran-landscape https://www.knowiran.com/iran-landscape
- bombcar 4y agoHuge vast swaths of Australia and the United States are effectively deserts, but they don't "define" the country. It mainly comes down to what pictures you see in the news when something happens, and Iranian cities look "deserty".
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoThere's also a tendency in the US to conflate Iran with Arab countries.
- toyg 4y ago<Alien Guards>: "What's going on? The prisoners should be powerless against our anti-arab ray!" <Iranian Rick>: "I'M PERSIAN, MOTHERFUCKEEEEERS!" destroys the prison and flies away
- jonnycomputer 4y agolol
- surge 4y agoThis is the real reason, and I am guilty of it, it's because of the Persian cultural influences and some pictures, people just assumed, it wasn't until I saw some travel shows or more social media that I realized its closer to what I saw in Turkey.
- zpeti 4y agoWell this rarely translates into healthy societies, in fact it’s a curse usually to have natural resources. So your gods may be punishing you.
- recuter 4y agoAfghanistan has trillions in mineral wealth. And yet you still have to extract it somehow and sell it. Unlikely that happens any time soon if ever.
- Vt71fcAqt7 4y agoApparently chinese are try to extract it.[0] They also just got this oil deal recently.[1] I think the mineral extracting is actually good, regardless of who does it. It's increasing total GDP in any event. [0]https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-pursues-afghanistans-mineral-wealth-after-u-s-exit-11647172801 https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-pursues-afghanistans-mine... [1]https://thegeopolitics.com/chinas-540-million-energy-deal-with-taliban-in-afghanistan-what-does-it-mean/ https://thegeopolitics.com/chinas-540-million-energy-deal-wi...
- recuter 4y agoVideo essay on it by Caspian Report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9pOQioOEGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9pOQioOEGg I think you are being rather naive that the Chinese won't simply bribe the right people and any benefit from the extraction actually reaches the Afghan people or increases their GDP in any meaningful way. They can try anyhow, who knows how well that will go. Might be their turn to get stuck in a quagmire over there.
- panick21_ 4y agoAfghanistan is about the worst possible place to extract resources from. Yes, yes China is trying, but its China, its a billion people thy are trying literally everything everywhere. China will find Afghanistan just as useless as the US and literally every other empire for 5000 years.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoWonder what the deity was busy doing when the US and UK overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran to install a puppet regime that was so hated, that the current one was welcomed in?
- ch4s3 4y agoThe current government wasn't "welcomed in". They seized control by murdering all of the moderates and democrats.
- bolanyo 4y agoThis is not true. They were widely welcomed, including by many many people who quickly became disillusioned and/or left.
- ch4s3 4y agoThere was a whole series of other opposition groups that fought in the revolution and a whole clerical faction that backed other groups and opposed Khomeini, like Mahmoud Taleghani who mysteriously died in 1979. While Khomeini centralized the opposition, it wasn't without violence. A lot of people seem to have believed he was little more than a figure head for the revolution and would step aside when the shah was gone and that the Bazargan government would pick up where Mosaddegh had left off. Before Bazargan even stepped down the Revolutionary Committees were disappearing critics and the Hezbollahi were beating journalists.
- panick21_ 4y agoBasically every country has lithium. And lithium is just one of many materials needed for EVs. > Life, as always, is stranger than fiction. No it isn't. Lithium is very, very common. Pretty much every large country will find plenty of lithium if they go look for it. There is plenty in the US, plenty in China, plenty in Australia and so on and so on.