beware the detail-knowers

🗃️

“he prefers to dance, deflect, and obfuscate, so as to better conceal the savageries of actually existing conservatism. He is much more likely to billow forth a fog of counterfactual thought experiments and seen-it-all Weltschmerz, or to press the case against the case against whatever he is for.”

mayonnaise is a delicious condiment

🔥🔥🔥 www.ft.com/content/ad94...

but guess what for: ‘“These people should all be prosecuted someday,” Kammen says, portraying the administration’s assault on the environment as a crime against humanity. “I’m not joking. These people should be prosecuted.”’

Ask them why Falklands and British West Indies never fell under the Monroe remit

"The Monroe Doctrine was a policy born of US weakness and discarded as soon as the US became a world power" should be something that all journalists know

surely US officials conducting a law enforcement action would Mirandize an arrestee

when things are definitely fine

It’s easy in these moments to get exasperated by the UN, but the Charter does two key things that have helped define the post-1945 world: it outlaws the use of aggressive warfare as a tool for remaking international order, and it underwrites postcolonial sovereignty. US actions this week breach both

season 1 Star Trek: TOS is just too fuckin’ good

I read every post this Thor Benson guy writes. I think he's onto something

"The offer has been on the table for the last 10 days, the person said" seems like it should be higher up in the story

did he say “it’s not a blockade, it’s a quarantine”

You could have read that "This is what Trump’s “America First” means: a white America…living behind higher walls and screens, lashing out to prove its strength and then retreating again" if only you read an obscure publication like The Washington Post www.washingtonpost.com/posteverythi...

lol come on now

"The Monroe Doctrine was basically a justification by the United States to exercise force in Latin America. And that was renounced by President Franklin Roosevelt as part of a shift away from the idea that states could use force whenever they wanted to." 🗃️

History is just Big Globe trying to take your money.

first as tragedy then as farce. then as farce again. then farce one more time. a little more farce after that. then some farce. and then another farce and more farce after

“Rein in.” You mean “rein in.”

perils of the unqualified "this"

I bet Doug Feith is available

me, to all my early Republic historian friends on the occasion of the 250th: happy for you or, sorry that happened

people writing about the (Theodore) Roosevelt Corollary as if nothing happened to the Monroe Doctrine after that, smh

Yeah because we are still in the long 17th century 😂

Did you know? By replacing your coffee with green tea, you can lose up to 92% of what little joy you still have left in your life.

If “the GOP’s biggest donor ever built an international child porn machine” is a little too on the nose for you, let me propose that we are on history’s nose.

According to the new rules, if you and a few friends go to a defense contractor’s testing facility and you say “where are the missiles” and they don’t let you in then all federal funds for defense contractors will be frozen

Anytime some yahoo says, “all serious historians agree…” I want to say: 1. What is a “serious” historian? 2. Have you ever actually been in a room with more than one historian? We can’t even agree with how long the 19th century was.

Here we go

look when I retire it will be because I want to spend more time wearing flip flops and I won't write an essay about it

We launched Oakland Review of Books in 2025, starting with an events calendar and vibe reports and, as we've gone on, more and more blogs and reviews and even a few full-on bangers. (And The Oakland syllabus!) We've actually done a lot. But 2026 is going to be The Year of ORB!

"Alfonsi, displaying a maximum effort at transparency and credibility, spends precious minutes of screen time showing how investigators conducted the verification process for claims made about CECOT. This is journalism."

“Part of what was so terrifying at the beginning of the year was the way many elites acted as if Trump had won a landslide and had the widest conceivable support among the public. Many among the press, the universities, corporations, and law firms surrendered in advance”

🧵

It's in this article, though I got the idea of academic urban legends from the sociologist Ole Bjørn Rekdal, whose prime example was the idea that there is an exceptional amount of iron in spinach

“Their impunity traces back to two Supreme Court decisions that put far too much faith in ICE’s commitment to respecting people’s constitutional rights. As a result of these cases, people whose rights are violated by ICE agents have little to no recourse.” 🗃️

Little reminder: This is excellent (independent!) outlet could really use your help to support its work sharing news and voices from US territories. If you're able to help, even $1 makes a difference. **If you donate any amount, LMK and I'll send you a pic from my travels in the territories**

Won’t do a big thread of what I wrote this year because there’s not that much of it, but I am quite proud of this one

I have a paper on the "bankruptcy" canard ready to go for January. Tar will be the first of a series of projects around OASI by @rooseveltinstitute.org We have an interest in this topic for good reason.

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, Christmas 1941 🗃️

In the early 1920s the US armed forces tested the vulnerability of battleships in the age of air power. Here's a clip I've used in lecture showing the test bombing of the ALABAMA, with Gen Billy Mitchell briefly in it 🗃️

Because of a lack of awareness of the US territories, their citizenship status, and overall existence, a community of American Samoans in Alaska has fallen victim to prosecutorial overreach, facing felony charges for voting after being told by officials that they could. This is why our work matters.

Make Billy Mitchell Great Again

"we came upon a man-of-war…in the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing…Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech⁠—and nothing happened.

since 1937

I am always disappointed when someone I like and respect uses the word in the year 2025