I think it might be even worse than that. It's a war for nothing at all.
A defense analyst said, "we can't be sure that the administration has met their war aims" and it made me scream at the radio. What aims? They didn't even bother making something up. At least Bush 2 respected us well enough to lie. I have no idea what any of this is supposed to accomplish.
You're watching a nuclear power putter around a marina with fifty brawling toddlers climbing all over the tiller.
Well oil is frequently trotted out as a reason to do this, so we certainly can't take oil out of the discussion, whether it feels like it's an obvious bad reason or not.
It's been all throughout the news throughout March and April, here's some examples (please excuse the LLM summary, but summarizing lots of repetitive news links is actually one thing that LLMs do not hallucinate on often):
> March 29-30, 2026: Trump told the Financial Times that his "preference would be to take the oil" and discussed seizing Kharg Island, which handles over 90% of Iran's oil exports.
> April 3, 2026: In a social media post, he claimed that with more time, the U.S. could "OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE".
> April 6, 2026: At the White House Easter Egg Roll, Trump told reporters, "If I had my choice, I'd keep the oil," but noted that he hadn't fully done so because he wanted to "make the people of our country happy" who wanted the war to end
They’ve also said it was to stop their nuclear weapons program, the same program they said they destroyed at the beginning of the year.
They additionally said it was to free the Iranian people from the oppressive regime, and later said we would end their civilization if they don’t agree to a cease fire.
I’m sure obtaining their oil is a goal, but it’s not their primary goal.
Well even "a" goal is a big change from "obviously not".
Historians will debate the true reasons for this invasion, but in the end I think they'll conclude it's just the random actions of a very incompetint and not very intelligent person that acts with pure id.
If I go to the supermarket for groceries and fill up the gas in my car to get there, my goal wasn’t to get gas, it was to get groceries.
The historians are already saying this war is for Israel, that’s what John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs are saying. I’m sure the companies that produce the textbooks will find a way to say how it’s all rather more complicated than that though.
I mean it's not clear the current state of things was the ambition before the war, a while back they were talking about seizing Kharg island which indicates capturing oil resources was an objective
No - it indicates gross incompetence of the people in charge of the war and its communication.
Any media worth its salt spend a brief time explaining why invading Kharg would mean mass US casualties, while having no critical objectives only achievable by seizing Kharg.
If one of your media sources only echoed "reports of the US looking to seize Kharg island" without that context it was wasting your time for attention.
The oil is a secondary objective to keep markets stable so there’s less dissent domestically, the primary objective is to weaken Iran so that Israel can continue their expansion in the Middle East with less resistance. Their goal for decades now has been to become a world power like the US, Russia, and China and they manipulate US foreign policy to achieve these aims. This isn’t even a secret, you could read the Clean Break memo or read Israeli news where they talk about this somewhat openly.
The war will continue at least up to elections, maybe longer since Zionism has bipartisan support in the US, but they’ll at least have to change the messaging or approach somehow. These ceasefire negotiations are a farce and will invariably fall through. The US will get no benefits and the spin will be how incompetent the Trump administration is for creating another quagmire but there was never anything for the US to gain from this and the real objective of exhausting the US military resources to undermine Iran will have been achieved. They ideally would still like to install the descendant of the last Shah as the new prime minister, but if that can’t be accomplished they’ll just reset the Iranian civilization back 20 years by destroying infrastructure, oil fields, and killing influential and popular leaders.
The only redeeming factor of the Trump admin is that they are genuinely incompetent so this hidden hand influencing our foreign policy is more apparent but they’re not so incompetent to have started a war they have nothing to gain from.
I think we need an official HN response. This is a legitimate video game, which happens to be satire. If we as a community cannot handle this, I don't know if I want to be a part of it anymore, even though I've been here since 2014.
This is one of those submissions that will invariably descend into a flame war if someone dare criticize it and infringe upon the consensus joy of others.
They were actually called Kings Quest and Leisure Suit Larry. There was also Police Quest and Space Quest. Sierra Online really had some of the canonical adventure game series.
Flagging this as off-topic according to guidelines:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I know this is frowned upon on HN, so feel free to vote me down.
But it only works on Firefox for me, not on Chrome.
Error Message on Chrome:
Error: Failed to initialize graphics.
at SceneManager.initGraphics (rmmz_managers.js:1957:15)
at SceneManager.initialize (rmmz_managers.js:1929:10)
at SceneManager.initialize (CGMZ_Core.js:1662:41)
at SceneManager.run (rmmz_managers.js:1918:14)
at Main.onEffekseerLoad (main.js:150:22)
at _onRuntimeInitialized (effekseer.min.js:35:44)
at effekseer.min.js:35:327
at Module.onRuntimeInitialized (effekseer.min.js:15:164351)
at doRun (effekseer.min.js:15:164904)
at run (effekseer.min.js:15:165064)
Many an ISP these days blocks domains that have been registered less than a month ago because most scam campaigns have to cycle through domains way faster than that time.
Check if you have enabled some sort of "malware protection" at your ISP, because that usually is based on DNS filtering.
It's great except the war is obviously for Israel not oil, we had more access to oil before the war
I think it might be even worse than that. It's a war for nothing at all.
A defense analyst said, "we can't be sure that the administration has met their war aims" and it made me scream at the radio. What aims? They didn't even bother making something up. At least Bush 2 respected us well enough to lie. I have no idea what any of this is supposed to accomplish.
You're watching a nuclear power putter around a marina with fifty brawling toddlers climbing all over the tiller.
Oil prices going up is “good” for petrol states who aren’t blocked.
But yeah fair callout about Israel.
Well oil is frequently trotted out as a reason to do this, so we certainly can't take oil out of the discussion, whether it feels like it's an obvious bad reason or not.
It's been all throughout the news throughout March and April, here's some examples (please excuse the LLM summary, but summarizing lots of repetitive news links is actually one thing that LLMs do not hallucinate on often):
> March 29-30, 2026: Trump told the Financial Times that his "preference would be to take the oil" and discussed seizing Kharg Island, which handles over 90% of Iran's oil exports.
> April 3, 2026: In a social media post, he claimed that with more time, the U.S. could "OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE".
> April 6, 2026: At the White House Easter Egg Roll, Trump told reporters, "If I had my choice, I'd keep the oil," but noted that he hadn't fully done so because he wanted to "make the people of our country happy" who wanted the war to end
March 29 - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-pre...
April 3 - Trump posting on social media https://uk.news.yahoo.com/trump-makes-cryptic-social-media-2...
April 6 - https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/06/trump-says-he-would...
They’ve also said it was to stop their nuclear weapons program, the same program they said they destroyed at the beginning of the year.
They additionally said it was to free the Iranian people from the oppressive regime, and later said we would end their civilization if they don’t agree to a cease fire.
I’m sure obtaining their oil is a goal, but it’s not their primary goal.
Well even "a" goal is a big change from "obviously not".
Historians will debate the true reasons for this invasion, but in the end I think they'll conclude it's just the random actions of a very incompetint and not very intelligent person that acts with pure id.
If I go to the supermarket for groceries and fill up the gas in my car to get there, my goal wasn’t to get gas, it was to get groceries.
The historians are already saying this war is for Israel, that’s what John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs are saying. I’m sure the companies that produce the textbooks will find a way to say how it’s all rather more complicated than that though.
They say Palantir israeli good software ;)
I mean it's not clear the current state of things was the ambition before the war, a while back they were talking about seizing Kharg island which indicates capturing oil resources was an objective
No - it indicates gross incompetence of the people in charge of the war and its communication.
Any media worth its salt spend a brief time explaining why invading Kharg would mean mass US casualties, while having no critical objectives only achievable by seizing Kharg.
If one of your media sources only echoed "reports of the US looking to seize Kharg island" without that context it was wasting your time for attention.
The oil is a secondary objective to keep markets stable so there’s less dissent domestically, the primary objective is to weaken Iran so that Israel can continue their expansion in the Middle East with less resistance. Their goal for decades now has been to become a world power like the US, Russia, and China and they manipulate US foreign policy to achieve these aims. This isn’t even a secret, you could read the Clean Break memo or read Israeli news where they talk about this somewhat openly.
The war will continue at least up to elections, maybe longer since Zionism has bipartisan support in the US, but they’ll at least have to change the messaging or approach somehow. These ceasefire negotiations are a farce and will invariably fall through. The US will get no benefits and the spin will be how incompetent the Trump administration is for creating another quagmire but there was never anything for the US to gain from this and the real objective of exhausting the US military resources to undermine Iran will have been achieved. They ideally would still like to install the descendant of the last Shah as the new prime minister, but if that can’t be accomplished they’ll just reset the Iranian civilization back 20 years by destroying infrastructure, oil fields, and killing influential and popular leaders.
The only redeeming factor of the Trump admin is that they are genuinely incompetent so this hidden hand influencing our foreign policy is more apparent but they’re not so incompetent to have started a war they have nothing to gain from.
Trump meeting with China this week, China maybe part of the calculus
Wow - the writing in this is fantastic. This is genuinely hilarious!
Is this post shadow-flagged or something? It’s off the front page.
They needed to make room for more AI posts
Okay it’s now explicitly marked as flagged at least
makes sense political
Political doesn’t equal not relevant to HN
It's generally not curious discussion however, which is a pillar of this community.
Why was this removed from the front page? It was number one just a couple minutes ago
I think we need an official HN response. This is a legitimate video game, which happens to be satire. If we as a community cannot handle this, I don't know if I want to be a part of it anymore, even though I've been here since 2014.
Political satire. People who take themselves and their political alignment too seriously will inevitably flag it.
Can't rock the boat too much, when the captain has a lot of money
This is one of those submissions that will invariably descend into a flame war if someone dare criticize it and infringe upon the consensus joy of others.
here for this comment
Who remembers the Newgrounds games making fun of Bush during the Iraq war?
I was unsure if this was a legit propaganda piece for the first few seconds!
"Hold Hands" > GAME OVER
Absolutely brilliant and I'm amazed at how current it is. Huge kudos to the developer.
Here's hoping there are expansion packs (and that Mexico will pay for them).
Hilarious. I played through it twice. I think I found everything except for the vial of measles. Maybe it was never meant to be found hahaha
Anyone finish burning the files yet?
I tried... but it looked like it would take awhile...
I decided to get the diet coke and call it "enough" for the day.
For what MAGA views as good for the USA is actually a deplorable loss for the civilized world.
Excellent. I remember King Quest, Larry Quest and the rest and it immediately gave me the same nostalgic vibes.
They were actually called Kings Quest and Leisure Suit Larry. There was also Police Quest and Space Quest. Sierra Online really had some of the canonical adventure game series.
And Hero's Quest, later known as Quest for Glory. This was arguably more fun because it added RPG traits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_Glory%3A_So_You_Want...
Space Quest was my absolute favorite!
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of Lounge Lizards, if we're to be pedantic, with episode subtitles like Love for Sail :)
This would be perfect on a play date
I should have gone ahead with the diet coke
It's rpgmaker which might use the "local storage api" for some state management depending on the exact version.
I can't believe we're so beyond parody at this point. Also, instant game over from trying to hold Melania's hand lol
Try again, fighting the Pope is worth it.
Wait, I thought the game just loops and you're stuck getting lube.
You get lube the first time, then collect TP (and fight the pope to get one oll of TP). Then back to lube, but slightly different. I stopped there.
Idiocracy was supposed to be a warning, the GOP took it as an instruction manual.
It’s the easiest way to make money!
It’s so hard to parody these mfers, like AJ - no matter how outrageous, could very well fit in their actual week
I think we know why Trump needs three barrels of lube... for his best friendstein!
For context, this is made by https://www.thesecrethandshake.com/, the same group behind the Trump + Epstein statue at the National Mall.
Amazingly high-effort art.
love the music
Does the game just loop? I got the lube, then the TP, then the lube again, then the TP again...
I mean it'd make sense for it to loop, but I'm just wondering if I'm missing something or should I just call it there.
Man no ball room?
If Iran would have ball room, Khomeini would be still alive.
Reminds me of that Alex Jones shooter
this game has been deployed IRL to arcade cabinets and troops have been spotted playing the cabinets
source: https://i.redd.it/v5dmdpof1q0h1.jpeg
Flagging this as off-topic according to guidelines:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I know this is frowned upon on HN, so feel free to vote me down.
But it only works on Firefox for me, not on Chrome.
Error Message on Chrome:
> it only works on Firefox for me, not on Chrome
Sounds like a feature, not a bug
Try going to chrome://gpu and looking for red text or error messages
epicfurious.com is blocked by my service provider. It’s a small, local, fiber company called mornington.
They do not say why in the returned html.
I do not approve of such blockage.
Nevertheless. Knowledge is knowledge. So I post for everyone’s sake.
I was going to say that political censorship is out of control in the US, but that appears to be a Canadian ISP?
A DNS WHOIS [1] shows what's likely the cause:
> Important Dates: Created 4/28/2026
Many an ISP these days blocks domains that have been registered less than a month ago because most scam campaigns have to cycle through domains way faster than that time.
Check if you have enabled some sort of "malware protection" at your ISP, because that usually is based on DNS filtering.
[1] https://who.is/whois/epicfurious.com
Useful - thank you. I will contact them.