How exactly is Iran collecting tolls from the Strait of Hormuz, given its exclusion from the dollar clearing system? How are their oil exports to China and goods imports from China settled? Questions we're all* wondering! This Atlantic Council explainer is great:

New — I wrote about the terror and loss of the last few days, mostly so we don’t forget. www.thehandbasket.co/p/trump-iran...

who has a book coming out that people can preorder so they have something to look forward to and then be pleasantly surprised when the book just shows up on their doorstep

Shameful, short-sighted, and profoundly un-American. When you just don't know - or just don't care - what makes America great.

They’d rather the country be poorer and whiter than rich and diverse. Of course when the pie shrinks, the rich will demand the same amount and will tell you the crumbs you’re left with are because of immigrants or trans people or DEI. bsky.app/profile/apne...

Way to go UConn!

Worst-case scenarios are usually least-likely scenarios so the more likely version is that you just get hemmed in, a lot, in ways you eventually normalize--and then you will one day remember what, say, 2013 was like, and be amazed at how much worse off you are.

It would've been reckless and inexcusable to cause generational damage by illegally defunding USAID, NIH, HHS, Dept of Edu, and so on just to reduce the deficit... ... but spending and the deficit are both higher than '22, '23, '24. It was all just harm for harm's sake. The cruelty was the point.

Not generally a Dylan fan, but this seems fitting today. youtu.be/5y2FuDY6Q4M?...

Well, that sucked. Credit to VCU.

Sigh

Sad to see the Ides of March becoming commercialised like this. I really feel like we're losing track of the true spirit of the holiday. It's not about how many knives you can stick in a tyrant all at once, it's about the whole community coming together to stab the tyrant as many times as possible.

Evergreen. youtu.be/fGv2VqE3xbY?...

Often nature moments are envisioned and waited for. You see something or imagine it might happen, and you have to plan and return multiple times Often it never happens Then there are the completely unexpected encounters Like a baby goose hopping on mamas back And it's FUCKING ADORABLE! 🪶 🐣

Anyone have friends in Yerevan, Armenia? Asking for a story. If not, will you repost for signal boost?

Mood.

From The Archives:

This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won’t

New: Radiohead tells Trump's ICE to take down a video using their song "We demand that the amateurs in control of the ICE social media account take it down," the band says. (DHS/ICE didn't immediately return a request for comment.) www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/...

Thoughts and prayers for @atrupar.com folks. He is doing the Lord’s work.

All of the political power that billionaires have in America is only a small fraction of what they could have if they really start spending money. www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/they-haven...

Every IPE prof should be allowed to take the rest of the day off to run down the SCOTUS rabbit hole. Just one woman's opinion.

The Landgericht Halle (Regional Court) in Halle (Saale), Germany

The FAA urged aircraft operators to ensure they have enough fuel in case they are put in a holding pattern due to a rocket explosion. We found that several planes ran low on fuel after the Jan. 2025 Starship incident. At least one declared a mayday and crossed the no-fly zone to reach an airport.

Go Seahawks!

This is the epistemic cliff that American normie shitlibs are all peering over this morning. It appears to be literally true that our entire political discourse for the last 15 years is just rich sex monsters who are also 4chan edgelords. It is all posting. It’s posting all the way down.

Walz: "To Americans who are watching this, I've got a question for you: What side do you want to be on? The side of an all powerful federal govt that can kill, injury, menace, & kidnap its citizens off the streets? Or on the side of a nurse at the VA hospital who died bearing witness to such govt?"

Good time to turn off auto play folks

Tomorrow's front page of the Minnesota Star Tribune: Jan. 24, 2026

Tomorrow’s front page of the Minnesota Star Tribune: Jan. 23, 2026

What a bummer.

The application deadline for our PhD Program is tomorrow. And the hits just keep on coming. www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

If there's one empirical insight I'd want everyone to understand about American politics, it's this: America's problems are solved problems. Just not here. What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵

Listen to this. As loud as possible. youtu.be/NWKf2VhnoHE?...

Internal documents and former company executives revealed how Cigna doctors rejected patients’ claims without opening their files. “We literally click and submit,” one former company doctor said. (Published March 2023 w/ @capitolforum.bsky.social)

RIP Chris Rea. youtu.be/OcW-BSEB3ng?...

Can't help but root for Old Man Rivers.

O, horrible, O, horrible, most horrible!

i’m convinced they bulldozed the east wing so fast so they could ward off this kind of opposition by basically saying “but we CAN’T delay the ballroom and just leave everything a mess like this”

Announcement: Please note that the JOP will be on hiatus from December 17 to January 12. During this period, we will not be accepting new submissions.

Universities are assembling larger and larger teams to deal with academic integrity issues--mostly focused on AI--while simultaneously holding AI "writing" contests, AI-themed events, "hey, come play with these fun tools!" The messages are so mixed, it's criminal. Because AI is bloated with money.

Really important to stress that the Crown Jewels of the US higher education system were never the Ivies or elite SLACs (other countries have equivalents of these) but the well-funded, large, cheap, and excellently staffed public state university systems bringing high quality education to the masses.

NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen. Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.

Whenever some sanctimonious Dem announces that America needs a functioning Republican Party, I always think “I’d settle for a functioning Democratic Party.”

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer. He is a computer safety researcher. And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine. In under 1600 words. aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

Not that he didn’t already know, but now Trump knows for sure he can roll the Dems every time and there’s no need to negotiate for anything

After Tuesday's glimmer of hope, this is deflating. And also completely unsurprising. Well done, Ds.

So it turns out... the US air travel system was incredibly, deeply dependent on federal funding to just run day-to-day all this time, to the benefit of private airline shareholders, when everyone thinks that state-run trains are leeching off the government. Weird!

Freiheit ist das Einzige was zählt. youtu.be/agKE1TuUOuM?...