Tapper: This is one of the documents the DOJ released. It’s 100 pages. It’s all black. That’s the transparency we’re getting.

Cuando veo a los franceses agobiados porque acaban el año sin presupuestos generales.

if tumblr dies I need this video to make it's seasonal rotation here instead just in case, Happy holidays 🎄

A return to Cold War practices: The Norwegian Armed Forces now assess the need for built-in features to ease demolition of new bridges and compliant bridges have been built. Regulations (again) allow for emplacing charges in peacetime according to VG. www.vg.no/nyheter/i/73...

Rob Reiner: I'm going to make a coming of age drama, a fantasy adventure story, a romantic comedy, a psychological horror and then a courtroom drama. Us: Across your entire career? Reiner: In a 6 year period. Us: That sounds- Reiner: -Each one will be arguably the best movie in that genre.

The US is much richer than Europe, but less so when you adjust for them working more. Despite being poorer we're not converging with them. Despite being poorer we live longer and quality of life is better under some measures. There you go, job done, no need for 3000-word essays to explain this.

But I digress… modernism is about gesamtkunstwerk, a “total work of art”, and Domenech i Montaner designed everything, from the layout of the buildings in the campus to the specific trees that were planted. All in the service of health. Round buildings, for instance, avoid accumulation of dirt.

As promised, here’s one of the corner buildings of the Sant Pau hospital, by the architect Domenech i Montaner. Together with the Palau by the same it’s a world heritage site. But this is a whole campus occupying a whole block. Parts of these building are still used as a hospital.

Esto es ❤️ neal.fun/size-of-life

It's not just social media. Looks like visitors to the US from Europe and other countries that are part of the visa waiver program will have to submit an enormous amount of data about themselves and their families, including DNA, if proposed new rules are accepted

Putin: "We've taken Kupyansk" Zelensky: "Here I am in Kupyansk"

¿saben ustede dónde no estaba la uco? en el banco hispanoamericano ingresando un cheque de diez millones de pesetas para sacar al betis de la uvi

499 years ago #OTD Álvaro de Bazán was born here in Granada. He’s one of the best admirals that Spain has ever had, with 28 victories (up to and including Lepanto) and retiring just short of the defeat of the Invincible Armada, that was directed by a weak and inexperienced admiral. Bad idea.

Bloomberg: "The result could be the biggest rethink of EU policy toward Beijing in at least a decade." I've been to Europe four times since October for government or government-related meetings, and all anyone wanted to discuss was trade. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

¿Lo hueles, muchacho? Es Anticorrupción registrando sitios. Nada en el mundo huele así.

A group of German journalism students investigated the drone sightings over military installations in Western Europe and in one instance tracked it back to three commercial vessels belonging to Russian services.

The mood in Sweden, across the political spectrum: "For Trump, European Democracy is the Largest Threat" - DN "Trump's New Strategy Drags the World to Hell" - Aftonbladet "The 'Donroe Doctrine' is a Threat to Europe" - SvD

putin is interesting, because even in the midst of a cataclysmic war, he has vigorously resisted even *calling* it a war. he needs the warm bodies, but he doesn't want mass political mobilization for the war. so it's all recruiting bonuses and volunteer-mercenary work--not Great Patriotic War 2.0

Alice Weidel and the AfD's Russia problem The dispute over how to deal with Russia divides the AfD leadership – and jeopardizes Alice Weidel's attempt to present her party as a force capable of governing. www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deut...

SKULL OF THOMAS AQUINAS: TAKE A LEFT NOW PRIEST: No, the GPS says we have to keep going— SKULL: I KNOW A SHORTCUT PRIEST: Do you remember the last ti— SKULL: FOR THOSE WITH FAITH, NO EVIDENCE IS NECESSARY; FOR THOSE WITHOUT IT, NO EVIDENCE WILL SUFFICE

Cómo Europa puede aprovechar su poder económico agendapublica.es/noticia/2045...

An official website of the United States Government.

DENMARK INTELLIGENCE REPORT: “.. The United States uses economic power, including threats of high tariffs, to enforce its will, and no longer rules out the use of military force, even against allies.” @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/w...

As an aside, I just noticed that if you google a font, google displays the entire results page in that font. Which is neat.

The advantage of a democracy is not that the people never make a bad choice. The advantage is that no one is stuck with the bad choice for decades unless they *keep making it.*

Doubtless, advocates of authoritarianism will in the future point to Trump as the reason why democracy cannot work, because the people elect insane fools. But Russia's insane fool has been running it for 25 years. It's less obvious because authoritarian regimes limit visibility, not insanity.

1/4 The IMF formally recognizes that it is a depreciating RMB, not rising manufacturing efficiency, that drives China's growing trade surplus. www.ft.com/content/9c92...

La voluntad del pueblo británico hace unos años era irse de la UE y ahora es claramente volver. Maravilloso gráfico de @peterkellner.bsky.social www.thenewworld.co.uk/peter-kellne...

congratulations to Rand Paul on inventing *checks notes* single payer healthcare

Este fragmento de la sentencia es un saludito a los cuñaos de TVE

Se está hablando mucho sobre el periodista Miguel Ángel Campos de la SER. Es la persona que no se acordaba de haber llamado al Fiscal General del Estado hasta que lo evidenció el registro de Movistar. Poco después fue el primero en publicar la noticia.

Resumen: el fiscal general recibe el email en su Gmail personal (que luego borra) y en menos de hora y media lo anuncian en la SER, junto con la información de que va a salir una nota de prensa (que aún no ha dictado el FGE a su subordinada). La nota también revelaba datos reservados.

Gaudì was, indeed, not only a great ant immensely talented architect who looked at Nature for inspiration, but also an amazing engineering, with an understanding of forces that went way beyond that of his contemporaries; he used experiments with chains and lime-soaked ropes to find shapes and forces

Despite seeming a Frank Gehry-esque (rest in peace) excess, the shape is actually quite functional, offering the maximum space at a minimal cost. The interior structure uses just three load-bearing columns with a single beam; the surfaces are “conoids”, distributing loads. And simple brick walls

Very good Keith Bradsher article on the undervaluation that dare not speak its name. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/b...

Yes, this was presumably the Soviet playbook. Their RORSATs could locate a carrier strike group and if they were quick, they could lob ICBMs with large warheads against it. The big problem in a non-nuclear option is at the front end of the kill chain: timely target location data.

This is just how we do mergers now. "Paramount executives also plan to argue their deal will have a much shorter regulatory approval process given the company’s smaller size and friendly relationship with the Trump administration." www.cnbc.com/2025/12/08/p...

Paramount's entire sales pitch is the US government will do our bidding AND they are paying the president's son-in-law: Trump Family's corruption is magnitudes more than anything else in US history.

Over on Xitter, Kirill Dmitriev, whose country censors Xitter entirely, is on a 7-plus tweet rant about the EU enforcing transparency rules on Xitter.

By contrast the legion was structured from a very early point to be able to function as a large-scale work party and of course famously did so every evening when on the move, in laying out the marching camp. Roman foraging operations are similarly very well organized, as far as we can tell.

6/6 That's why the only stable trading systems involve either a)all countries choosing global integration over economic sovereignty, b)penalties against countries that use trade to export their domestic imbalances, or c)all countries controlling their external accounts.

5/6 giving up manufacturing share. This is just arithmetic. As Joan Robinson explained, when some major economies control their external accounts and others don't, the resulting beggar-thy-neighbor imbalances will eventually force the latter into protectionism.

4/6 If China's strategy is to continue expanding its share of global manufacturing, and the US strategy is no longer to accommodate that expansion but instead try to reverse the decline in its share of global manufacturing, some other country must accommodate these policies by...

And the thing is, there's little cost to insulting the EU. Elon Musk doesn't go after the Chinese Communist Party because doing so would destroy his business. But Europe has independent courts and checks and balances and it's not a dictatorship so he can send mean tweets with little consequence

American tech billionaires hate the European Union because Brussels is willing to impose regulation or fine their companies. The European far-right hates it because of migration. Moscow hates it because dealing with one European bloc is more difficult than bullying dozens of small countries

if you want an overview of where humanoid robots are at right now — what's hype and what's real — then check out my long read for @harpers.bsky.social. here's me teleopping a humanoid, and yes i was told MANY times "do not take off the headset until you've disconnected" harpers.org/archive/2025...

can't stop watching this clip of a tesla Optimus teleoperator taking his headset off before properly logging out the robot

From the @wsj.com chief foreign correspondent

Muchos detalles interesantes en este texto. Las tensiones entre los países productores y la caída estructural de la demanda son conocidas, pero una cosa de la que hablamos menos es que no es lo mismo el crudo que el producto refinado.