One of these things is not like the others.

Turkeys were first domesticated by Mesoamericans in what is now Mexico before the arrival of Europeans.

Landing of a must-read thread.

I refuse to link to something like this, but the Olivia Nuzzi glam blonde puffery posing as journalism on the display page of the nation's leading newspaper is a self-indictment.

The flagrant corruption of this administration is shocking and also totally out in the open

Once again, any U.S. attack on Venezuela would be patently illegal.

So much of what we're seeing in US and European politics right now is driven by status anxiety. And so much of that perceived loss of status is based on the West's distorted view of itself and the rest of the world, and of how global inequality became the "normal" field on which history plays out.

Nuzzi reminds me of Harry and Meghan, in that she is very clearly being ill-served by her own ego, but also by the LA entourage circuit that has a short-term interest in their 15% cut regardless of any long-term impact on her reputation and ability to be seen in public without shame and opprobrium.

One of the more subtle but insidious impacts of Trump is that everything is now filtered through the lens of Mob references. The Godfather is not a healthy model for a democracy.

this is a far more explicit death threat from people with the actual means to carry it out

🤨

The headline is malpractice, but the column, by John McWhorter, manages to be the most unsophisticated, two-dimensional treatment of this subject I've come across. And the fact that there is a lot of reading to choose from contradicts his entire thesis.

JP Morgan analysts calculated "AI products would have to create an additional $650 billion a year, indefinitely, to give investors a reasonable 10% annual return. That’s more than 150% of Apple’s yearly revenue, and a far cry from OpenAI’s current revenue of about $20 billion a year." (🎁)

This is what I was talking about in a different context in my Journal of Democracy article about how AI’s most likely effect would be to tilt the balance further to offensive state actors

Trump II will leave behind a gaping hole in the archives, not only by not complying with legally required record-keeping to cover up its crimes, but also in removing records from preceding periods for capricious reasons.

"[A]ttackers used the company’s artificial intelligence tools to write code that directed Anthropic’s A.I. agent, Claude Code, to perform the attack. The company said human operators accounted for 10 to 20 percent of the work required to conduct the operation." Great job, everyone!

Willing to bet that what most low-information voters retain from the Starmer/Reeves reversal is that Labour broke their pledge and raised taxes.

democracy and democratic values, and beyond that even contact with reality, cannot survive being tied to a project that requires the subjugation of another group of people

"President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday South Africa will symbolically hand over the G20 presidency to an 'empty chair' in the absence of U.S. leadership at the summit next week, while stressing the need to repair trade ties with Washington." Fair play.

Someone at the AP keeps putting Columbia University basketball news in their Latin America feed, and I can't tell if it's a wry joke or a blunder.

I think my concern would be over her cognitive functioning, more than work-life balance.

Las Vegas 1957: a more innocent time, when atmospheric nuclear testing was something to feel good about.

Beautiful piece, both intellectually and in terms of its prose, and one full of moral clarity, purpose and -- in spite of everything -- hope. (Translation in Alt text.)

Le Monde commissioned then rejected this piece from Sari Hanafi despite the fact it argues armed struggle against a nuclear power is an impossible battle and that politics and political imagination are needed to enable Israelis and Palestinians to live together. Pretty shameful from Le Monde imo

Your periodic reminder that the rocky shore upon which every prediction of 🇨🇳 seizing hegemony crashes is that every single problem folks are now worried about in 🇺🇸 - authoritarianism, personalist rule, corruption, debt, censorship, etc. etc. - is actually even worse in 🇨🇳.

Banal observation, sorry, but conversations in Prague really brought home to me that while countries come and go, cities have a historical existence and character that typically is far more resilient.

All of Trump II is based on the premise that, to paraphrase Nixon, when Trump says it's legal, it is. But while the Supreme Court has granted wide immunity to a president for illegal acts committed as part of his or her executive duties, that is not the same thing as stating those acts are legal.

For all I have criticized Ezra Klein of late, this is a very insightful and informative interview with @lioneltrolling.bsky.social. The headline doesn't do it justice, as it gets deep into the roots of the intellectual history behind the Carlson-Fuentes encounter, and why it's so significant.

Might be the most appropriate use of the Drake meme ever.

Now that we know what they mean by "the workplace," it's clear that women really did ruin that.

It's a mashup of the Bush family's greatest hits.

Also the best case for the reunification of Yugoslavia

it's so funny that alex jones was totally right about everything, the government is a bunch of drug-addled pedophiles and masked regime thugs are grabbing people off the streets, and now he has to pretend it's all a hoax

There's something about the way Jude Bellingham uses his body to dance with the ball that reminds me of Zidane.

Next year is the 20th anniversary of the first North Korean nuclear test and the G7 is out here acting like total disarmament is a real near-term possibility en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN2025...

"A Pentagon intelligence report says China could try to acquire advanced F-35 technology in Saudi Arabia if the Trump administration sells jets to the kingdom." I can think of a lot of reasons not to sell the Saudis F35s, but China getting their hands on the tech isn't one of them.

in online corners like these I think people largely recognize how credulous, unprincipled opposition to "wokeness" functioned as lightly papered over defenses of impunity, but it's one of those drums people should probably start beating for normies

"The European car industry’s response to the EV challenge is a metaphor for the EU’s approach to geopolitical challenges. It’s capable of building a highly complex well-engineered system which makes continual marginal improvements. But faced with rapid systemic change, it has great difficulty."

Something about those Napoleonic jewels, so hard to keep ahold of.

It's hard to believe this too was a decade ago already. Just as 2015 marked the high-water mark of the liberal international order, it also marked the turning point in the West's gradual abandonment of that order. And this was a big part of that shift.

Trump I and Biden were already accelerating a bifurcated global order. Trump II is accelerating a bifurcated West.

The sporting incarnation of America's unipolar moment, and arguably the high-water mark of American soft power.

Chaser: A little over a generation later, three out of the four best players in the NBA are European, and the fourth is Canadian. Shot: The Dream Team.

What if instead of Cyber Monday (aka Daddy Bezos Day), we did a Support Indie Media Monday? What are your favorite indie publications? Who are some of your favorite freelance and indie reporters and commentators? Can we make this a thing?

Reading about the rapid collapse of Eastern European governments in 1989 as completely rotten and corrupt leaderships disintegrated when people realised fear was all that was holding them up. Apropos of nothing.

It took me until just now to realize why the BBC kept referring to "Andrew Mountbatten Windsor" in their coverage of the Epstein emails. I thought it was some sort of tongue-in-cheek formalism, rather than the very serious formalism it is.

BBC just did the same.

The release of this Epstein information about Trump does now put the Democratic Party retreat into a rather different context from a few days ago. Everyone in the Dem leadership would have been aware about what was about to drop.

I'd just like to point out that we spent an entire shipment of air defense interceptors' worth of money on new signs for a name change that isn't even legally the name of the DoD. Ukraine is currently experiencing rolling blackouts from Russian strikes, btw.