Straits of Hormuz

2026-04-09T00:00:00Z

I’ve been feeling pretty bent out of shape this week for, well, obvious reasons. When the current cretin in the White House is threatening to eradicate one of this planet’s oldest civilizations because he isn’t getting what he wants, it has a way of… focusing you, shall we say, on concerns you didn’t think you’d worry about.

Aside: I really shouldn’t call Trump a cretin, that’s a specific disorder that is caused by a lack of iodine during fetal development. Also, cretinism might make a comeback because people think it tastes bad! Which it doesn’t! Fun!!!

For example:

My mother asked if there was an app that would let us communicate if the internet went out across LA, you know, just in case.
My aunts called asking if they should take all their cash out of the bank just in case.
I asked my husband if we should really be going to my sister in law’s wedding in Alexandria, again, just in case.

(I’m writing this on the plane there, btw, so I’m not freaking out. Not anymore, at least)

Btw, notice how no one complains about the GAYS of Hormuz? That’s because they’re always open! Also, Trump deported them so Iran could execute them.

Life isn’t guaranteed; anything could happen at any moment. It’s just not likely to. The Culture isn’t going to send Special Circumstances to take out the global cabal of pedophiles that run most of the world. I’m not going to lose 50 lbs tomorrow (short of cutting off a major body part). And the Straits of Hormuz aren’t going to reopen to free traffic any time soon.

I’m pretty pissed at the US Navy, btw. This has to be the most evitable-yet-foreseeable conflict ever to happen, and two decades of procurement and planning failures mean that we have zero capability to regain control of the Straits. The signs have been clear:

US mine warfare vessels are horrifically out of date, and have been for years
We’re replacing them with one of the worst procurement boondoggles ever to happen
Rather than build a sensible, right-sized escort, the Navy decided it wanted an Arleigh-Burke-lite, leading to a cancellation of the program in favor of a ship with zero VLS capability
And all of this at the cost of billions and billions of dollars, and time we don’t have!

One is put in the mind of the Churchill quote about Americans and doing the right thing - except clearly all the other options haven’t been exhausted yet. It’s a particular blindspot of our country: safe inside our hoarders’ bedroom of the western hemisphere, bundled up in the comforting blanket of the Atlantic and blanketing comforter of the Pacific, we are free to dispatch missiles, ships, and aircraft - like a dashed-off rage-bait tweet - to exercise our will on the world and think that no one will touch us, while we watch the chaos erupt. Is it uniquely American hubris or all-too-human blindness?

I don’t know. I like to think it’s human - that the inevitable sense of doom barreling toward us at breakneck speed means we hide and hope it’ll go by us like deadlines did to Douglas Adams. It would certainly excuse some of my own procrastinatory behavior, like putting off checking to see if my 15-year-old suit will fit for this wedding I’m heading to, or spending most of last year pretending that LLMs weren’t coming for my job. (another aside: I have a lot of complicated feelings about LLMs and so-called AI that I will unpack in a future post.) And it would explain a lot of the way we behave w/r/t climate change and anthropogenic extinction.

I’m very close to entering middle age now - I’m 36, my bald spot is expanding, my gut is stubbornly refusing to shrink despite the wonders of modern medicine - and quite disappointed that my personal tendency towards ostrichmode hasn’t gone away with age and experience. Things keep appearing on the horizon, I keep getting scared, I ignore them and they either work out or not. The human race at-large, America, and I all keep letting ourselves get into situations of our own making and marching, lockstep, towards a state of (questionable?) ruin.

I’d like to think that I, personally, wouldn’t do something that causes the death, ruin and destruction of pointless wars or climate change, but frankly, I’ve played enough Civ, Hoi4 and Vicky 3 to know that my decisions could lead to the death of millions. (Sometimes they also lead to FALGSC too, but I’m not so perfect that I can make it happen consistently, even in a video game.)

Things I Watched This Week

I need to write up my thoughts on this, but Tom Nichols’ video on the world’s reaction to Trump’s threats made me think a lot about how we all need to stop letting dotards run the world’s major powers
I want to recommend Atun-Shei Films’ old but excellent “CHECKMATE LINCOLNITES!” series, which I spent too much time watching all week. I had no idea how it would end, but a battle between a Nazi necromancer and the Witchfinder General of Massachusetts Bay was not on my list.
I’m doing my best to temper my media diet with both AI-boosters and skeptics, and these two videos on Claude Mythos were pretty interesting takes on a model none of us have seen yet.

Housekeeping

Finally, in the spirit of avoiding procratination and achieving pErSoNaL gRoWtH, I’ll be trying to write at least something every week. Stay tuned, you can watch a crazy [fella] fall apart in front of you!

Much love, Julian

Julian Hicks - Writing

Straits of Hormuz

Things I Watched This Week

Housekeeping