47 hours from ordering to delivery.
Hardest part was figuring out the mount. Had to find a youtube video for that.
Powered it up, put it in the driveway and using the app it was running in maybe 10 min. Couple updates and a couple reboots and we was cooking with gas.
Speed tests were anywhere between 60 and 150mbps.
After that, I put it away, closed up and went home. it was hot, i was tired, thirsty, and no one to assist mounting it on the roof.
A comment appeared recently under a Kuwaiti news article about tensions with Iran: “Maybe Kuwait should stop supporting America’s attacks against Iran?”
It’s a revealing sentence. Not because of its policy suggestion, but because of the mental model behind it. The commenter assumes a clean, two-sided conflict in which Gulf Arab states are either with the United States or against it. Kuwait, in this framing, is essentially a supporting actor in an American production.
This view is common. It also happens to be badly mismatched with reality.
As of mid-July 2026, the situation is not a straightforward U.S.-versus-Iran showdown. It is a genuinely multi-sided conflict with overlapping but distinct interests:
Ali Al Salem Air Base, frequently mentioned in reporting, is a Kuwaiti base that hosts U.S. and coalition forces. It is not an American base on Kuwaiti soil in the way many imagine. Kuwait maintains sovereignty and primary control.
The original comment cannot easily accommodate these facts because it operates inside a binary frame: America is doing something, and everyone else is either helping or obstructing. Once you accept that frame, Kuwait’s actual behavior — condemning attacks on its territory while pursuing diplomacy — becomes confusing or suspicious.
This is not just one bad comment. It reflects a broader pattern in American public discourse.
Many Americans have difficulty processing conflicts that involve three or more significant actors whose interests are only partially aligned. We tend to flatten complex situations into two opposing teams, then assign moral and strategic clarity to those teams. This habit shows up across the political spectrum:
Both versions struggle when reality refuses to cooperate. In the current Gulf situation, Iran is not simply reacting to American aggression — it is also actively targeting Gulf Arab states that have their own independent reasons to fear Iranian power. At the same time, those Gulf states are not simply American puppets. They have their own histories, threat perceptions, and diplomatic calculations.
This binary habit has several sources. Decades of Cold War framing trained generations to see the world in two camps. Modern media incentives reward simple narratives over messy ones. Online discourse, especially, punishes nuance because it doesn’t travel as well as outrage. The result is a widespread inability to hold multiple, competing perspectives in mind at once.
When people default to binary thinking, several distortions follow:
The same pattern appears in other conflicts. Ukraine is frequently reduced to a simple Russia-versus-the-West story, even though European states, Ukrainian politics, and various non-Western actors all have distinct interests. Middle East conflicts are routinely flattened into Israel-versus-Palestine or America-versus-Iran, despite the involvement of multiple Arab states, Turkey, Iran-backed groups, and shifting coalitions.
A better approach starts with a few basic assumptions:
Applying this lens to the current situation makes Kuwait’s position more intelligible. Kuwait has longstanding reasons to be cautious of Iranian power. It also hosts U.S. forces and faces direct Iranian retaliation. It has therefore condemned attacks on its territory while supporting diplomatic efforts to limit escalation. None of this requires Kuwait to be a simple “supporter” of American policy.
The original comment couldn’t reach this understanding because it never left the binary box. Once you accept that a conflict can have multiple semi-independent actors with overlapping but non-identical interests, the picture becomes more complicated — and more accurate.
That complication is not a bug. It is the actual texture of international politics. The refusal to engage with it is what turns difficult foreign policy questions into simple morality plays. And morality plays, while emotionally satisfying, are poor tools for understanding what is actually happening in places like the Persian Gulf right now.
A Note on Perspective
My own view of these dynamics is shaped by having lived for many years among Gulf Arabs rather than alongside them from behind the walls of a military base. As a contractor working with U.S. forces, I was not subject to the same movement restrictions that keep most American service members largely confined to secure compounds. This gave me the ability to live in local neighborhoods, eat in ordinary restaurants, shop in local malls, travel between Gulf countries, and follow regional news through local newspapers and radio in ways that are largely unavailable to troops on standard rotations.
This is not a claim of cultural expertise. It is simply an acknowledgment that daily, unfiltered exposure to Gulf societies produces a different picture than the one formed inside the wire. Most American military personnel see the region primarily through the narrow aperture of bases, convoys, and official interactions. By contrast, contractors and others who live and work among the local population — oil workers, long-term residents, and certain categories of civilian support staff — encounter the ordinary texture of life in these countries on a daily basis.
That difference in vantage point matters. It makes it harder to reduce Gulf states to simple supporting roles in an American story, and easier to recognize that these are societies with their own internal debates, historical memories, and strategic calculations. The binary frames that dominate much American commentary often reflect not just ideology, but also the limited set of experiences through which many Americans encounter the region in the first place.
I needed one last item to complete an order for a brick paving machine. Unfortunately, due to a miscommunication with the staff, I neglected to order the molds. To be honest, I didn’t even realize molds were included in the quote.
I went online to buy them, but the seller can’t ship until Saturday. Waiting on shipping creates a logistics headache: I could either send the big machine by truck and arrange separate courier delivery for the molds, or delay the entire shipment and push back collecting payment.
Another option is to just bite the bullet and make the drive myself. Sexytary and I could pile into the car for a four-hour-each-way road trip to pick them up in person. The seller offered to accept online payment and ship via bus, but that still only gets the molds part of the way—and since I don’t know this person, I’m not comfortable sending money and hoping everything arrives.
Whichever way I slice it, this oversight (which is at least partly my fault) is going to cost money—probably around a hundred dollars in travel expenses. On the upside, since we’ll already be heading out that direction, we could turn it into an overnight trip and hit the beach while we’re in the area.
Either way, mistakes like this happen. They cost time and money, but they’re also a good reminder to double-check the details before pulling the trigger on a big order. update Upon further thought, a more profitable venture would be to do the trip and see the chemist for the microfilm project on the way back.
umm and saw this for sale... divide by 61 to get dollars.
KUWAIT: Kuwait on Monday strongly condemned an “aggressive assault” by Iran and Iran-backed militias in Iraq, accusing them of attacking border posts and an offshore drilling platform belonging to Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), leaving people injured and causing material damage.
The foreign ministry said the continuing attacks by Iran and its proxies constitute a flagrant violation of Kuwait’s sovereignty, pose a serious threat to the safety and security of citizens and residents, and represent a blatant challenge to international legitimacy and UN Security Council Resolution 2817 (2026). The ministry added that the attacks undermine regional and international efforts to promote security and stability. The ministry reaffirmed Kuwait’s inherent right to take all necessary measures to safeguard its sovereignty, security and stability in accordance with international law and the UN Charter.
In a separate statement, the foreign ministry also condemned the continued attacks targeting Kuwait’s Consulate General in Basra, describing them as an unacceptable violation of the mission’s inviolability and a breach of Iraq’s obligations under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, particularly Article 31, which requires host states to ensure the protection and security of consular premises.
While acknowledging the Iraqi government’s efforts to confront the attacks, the ministry urged Baghdad to take immediate and decisive action to hold those responsible accountable, prevent further incidents and guarantee the safety of Kuwait’s diplomatic and consular missions and their personnel in Iraq.
Separately, the General Staff of the Kuwaiti Armed Forces announced that the military intercepted hostile aerial targets within Kuwaiti airspace. It said any explosions heard were the result of air defense systems engaging the incoming threats and urged the public to follow safety instructions issued by the relevant authorities. — KUNA
meanwhile.. Why is the USGOV exporting high tech jobs to the Philippines???
Woke up this morning feeling like absolute death — the kind of hangover that makes everything feel heavier. The strange part? I haven’t touched alcohol in weekd. Must be the stress, the weather, or just life collecting its debts.
I was looking forward to a simple breakfast: a little tuna salad on a tortilla. Nothing fancy, but after the rough start it sounded perfect. I turned my back for one second to pour the tuna juice into a bowl next to the cats’ food bowl. When I turned around, my big yellow Persian had already claimed the prize. Two cans of tuna — ruined in seconds.
Tuna isn’t cheap these days, and I had genuinely been looking forward to that meal. Instead I got nothing, and both cats bolted out the door to avoid my wrath.
I ended up choking down some random leftovers from the fridge, cleaned up the mess, and headed to work. There’s a brief gap in this endless train of typhoons and tropical storms today, so I figured I’d better use it.
To survive the morning and put on my enthusiastic face for two government delegations visiting, I knew I’d need a Red Bull. Possibly two.
Last week I spoke at a university conference on Urban Mining — recovering value from waste. During the closing remarks, the main funder of the event turned the cameras off and gave the activists in the room some straight talk. He told them to stop playing around, organize themselves like a real business, take it seriously, and start sending him plastic to recycle so he doesn’t have to keep importing it from Malaysia.
It was blunt, but it landed. Good intentions don’t build systems. Whether it’s cleaning up after a cat or building something that actually works at scale, sometimes you just have to fix your shit and deliver.
