I think Bolton's views are bad and his books tendentious, but we're better off as a free society having people like him keep diaries and write memoirs. On balance, I tend to think the benefits of open debate outweigh the imperatives of secrecy.

I continue to think the appropriate punishment for mishandling classified information is the loss of access to classified information, but not criminal prosecution unless the person commits espionage. How did I end up defending the Rage Walrus? Fuck 2025.

I understand why some see a parallel in WW2 with events playing out in today's world (which I do see, also), but I think we should reread the history of what was happening in the world in the run up to WW1.

“The Democrats need to empower messengers that the establishment is scared of, people who don’t delight megadonors. Democrats need to stake their claims on a set of strong beliefs, and see if Americans will follow.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/04/o...

What did Amnesty do to Ukraine? Publish report after report of Russian war crimes and abuses and one report based on interviews with Ukrainian civilians where it was stated that Ukrainian forces had stationed themselves in some occasions on civilian neighbourhoods, leading to civilian losses.

One mother told how her adult son had used to take food to Ukrainian soldiers whose unit was stationed near their home and her son was killed in a Russian attack against the unit. And this upset Ukraine and its supporters abroad who wanted the war to be seen as Absolute Evil vs Absolute Good.

And so we got the hate campaign against Amnesty from Ukraine and from its fans - not supporters, but adoring fans is more appropriate term - who couldn't handle what was a very modest criticism based on interviews of Ukrainian civilians. You people demanded that Amnesty should be shut down.

There has never been any prolonged war where both sides - no matter how wrong and abhorrent one side's aggression and how justified the other's defence - wouldn't have committed actions that can and should be criticized. But you couldn't accept that. You wanted the war in Ukraine to be a fairytale.

Every single post by Amnesty on Twitter got hateful replies from supporters of Ukraine, just like every single post by UNRWA was attacked by supporters of genocidal Apartheid Israel. When human rights in China or Iran were criticized, you people were demanding that Amnesty should be shut down.

You people wanted all the good work that Amnesty does to be destroyed because it had dared to interview Ukrainian civilians and report what they told. You didn't care what that would mean, how oppressive regimes would benefit and human rights would suffer. That was utter disgrace from you people.

New from @mattduss.bsky.social for @cipolicy.bsky.social: following President Trump’s meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House, and the Trump administration’s release of a “21-point plan” to end the conflict in Gaza.

My review of ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, with a look at the influence of Thomas Pynchon on the movie and a response to criticisms of the movie for historical anachronism. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaWr...

please click through the bullshit content warning and explain to me how this skeet, let alone their whole account, qualifies. this is just #racist crap. @moderation.bsky.app is doing whatever #zionist dipshits tell them to, the end. if this doesn't sit well with you email [email protected]

1/ 2 Love pours in for a dying octopus as she tends to eggs that will never hatch

“How to Fix America” 🎧➡️ @mattduss.bsky.social joined @gideonrachman.bsky.social on the @financialtimes.com Rachman Review to discuss the challenges defining America’s future. www.ft.com/content/4581...

1/4 I see Christian Davenport has just come out with a new book "Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos, and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race" focusing on Bezos and Musk

1/10 Here's how the winding path of inquiry goes. Wanted to check just how the Disney "Pocahontas" movie diverged from the reality, so I decided to read up just a bit on Jamestown. In the process, what caught my attention was the mindset that created the whole Jamestown venture from the beginning

“they” “they” “they” not even an attempt to make a factual assertion. just argument by fabrication

kirk was killed by a dropout engineering student afflicted by brainrot but to the free press that is no reason not to slander the nation’s institutions of higher education

the person behind this unhinged, anti-factual editorial is set to decide coverage at one of the nation’s major news networks

Just feels like this whole set has decided editors are woke. "Campuses" shout down speakers they disagree with? Is this like a collective primal scream situation, or what?

First time I've ever seen public condolences offered by @jay.bsky.team in all my time on here

🚨🚨🚨🚨 This is a photo from a few minutes ago in Tulkarem in the West Bank. Today, Israel abducted over 1,500 Palestinians in the West Bank, the largest number since 2001.

THIS:

UC Berkeley betrayed their own faculty, including Jewish academics like Judith Butler, to the Trump administration www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Israeli settlers are attacking Palestinians and their homes in the West Bank, unchecked and with impunity. These acts of violence are thuggish and inhumane. The silence of the international community is a disgrace. Shame on this world.

📽️ Watch the documentary film by the AJ Fault Lines team: The Disappearance of Dr Abu Safiya www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BFh...

New from Drop Site: The Disappearance of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya He tried to keep Kamal Adwan hospital open as Israel invaded. He has been imprisoned ever since. By Amel Guettatfi 🔗 Read: dropsitenews.com/p/the-disapp... Watch the AJ Fault Lines documentary at the link below.

"Trump’s remarkable threat somehow did not get much attention. It should have." Thus writes @sbg1.bsky.social. I feel validated! www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

Wow, y’all really went from “we have confirmed it was an antifascist trans person because of markings” to “we have zero comprehension of this clearly random and incomprehensible act” as soon as it turned out he was a white right-winger.

From me: It's maybe bad for the future of entertainment that nascent media mogul David Ellison, who plans to join Paramount & Warner Bros in a 5 to 4 merger of Hollywood studios, literally derives his fortune from AI. On top of his willingness to appease Trump by MAGAfying CBS (and maybe now CNN).

At an Iran conference in DC, reference was made to trying to assess the thinking of the supreme leader. It didn’t mean Ayatollah Khamenei.

It's a whole thing

Based on the description at the UT press conference just now ("an up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol, and three down arrow symbols."), the arrows interpreted as "transgender ideology" by ATF were likely a reference to a code in the video game Helldivers 2

So either the authorities mistook arrows possibly referencing a video game as “transgender ideology,” or someone deliberately tried to mislead the public and shape the narrative to incite *more* violence — and the media and right-wing figureheads eagerly went along with it

In related news. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

could have been us...but...

They are going to be eating our lunch for decades but it’s a net positive for the planet

China arguably being the front runner in the fight against climate change was not on my bingo card ten years ago but I'm glad at least one superpower is taking it seriously. They're also doing it for soft power and everything of course, but I'll take that over performative half-measures any day!

Our Energy Sec just criticized the UK for relying too much on Chinese sustainable energy technology. Instead of developing our own green energy sector to compete (as Biden was trying to help do), we are telling the UK to frack and "drill, baby, drill." The US is trying to pull the world backwards.

there is something so disorienting about living in a world with miraculous progress in all kinds of stuff, including an Industrial Revolution-scale transformation of industry and energy, while US politics is *consumed* with the dumbest, most pointlessly awful shit imaginable bsky.app/profile/ryan...

at this point a moderately good-case future scenario would be a China-EU tacit alliance to sanction the US over refusing to cut emissions. we asked for it!

I thought Biden's China hawk stance would work as a way to cement a domestic climate constituency, but now, fuck it man. it's the biggest problem on Earth and they're the only ones making serious progress

"Foreign direct investment by China’s green-technology industry since 2022 has hit between $227 billion and $250 billion. That’s roughly the size, adjusted for inflation, of the post-World War II Marshall Plan that cemented the alliance between the US and Europe." h/t @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social

the amount of Chinese investment in green tech around the developing world is simply mind boggling www.netzeropolicylab.com/china-green-...

@thomaszimmer.bsky.social's analysis of the danger of the Administration seizing on this as a Reichstag fire moment (plus the discussion of the assassination of a German diplomat in 1938 leading to Kristallnacht) is a very compelling frame. Highly recommended read. substack.com/home/post/p-...

@bluesky moderation is suspending people for posting Kirk's own words which tells you everything you need to know.

NEW: Bryan Hooper Sr., another wrongfully convicted Black man in Minnesota, walked out of Stillwater prison last week after serving 9,999 days of a life sentence for a murder charge that was dismissed by a judge on Sept. 4, 2025 after the state's key trial witness confessed to the murder in July.

Big story. Very big story.