I stumbled into One Piece on Netflix and it’s very good, even better because I had no expectations.

This is called “strategic defeat.” You have ended up in a worse position than before you began, with your adversary, while battered, emerging in a stronger position than before.

I’m sorry, what? Trump immigration militia will purposely go after the families of new service members?

“Hegseth’s broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF, the people said, shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran." Totally normal stuff.

I mean there it is.

This sucks.

Outright strategic defeat

I'm at a Staten Island event and the amount of Billy Joel I have heard so far should come with a safety warning.

Trump grand strategy in action.

My "We don't allow bets on assassinations and murder" ad campaign has people asking a lot of questions already answered by the ad campaign

Just to remind everyone that, per McRaven’s Theory, three key tenets of a successful special operation are speed, surprise & security 😳

Fed watching private credit sector for signs of trouble, Powell says reut.rs/4rZTNnF

Fed's Williams: "The significant increase in energy prices resulting from developments in the Middle East will likely boost overall inflation in coming months.”

"there is no evidence of a reduction in job postings for industries or firms which have higher levels of AI adoption. The overall slowdown in national job postings...does not appear to be driven (even modestly) by AI." AI Adoption & Firms' Job-Posting Behavior by Liu and @dougwebberecon.bsky.social

“And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward." (Matthew 6:5)

Two of the best musicans the UK has seen in decades.

White Lotus should do a round in Tulum since the influencers destroyed that place.

The Knesset passed a bill today mandating the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terror - but not for Jews. There is a word for a legal system where different legal standards apply to different categories of people. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

World War Trump An analysis by The Intercept reveals that the “peace” president has embroiled the U.S. in more than 20 military interventions, armed conflicts, and wars. theintercept.com/2026/03/30/t...

Less than a year after Lockheed's Precision Strike Missile entered low-rate production, CENTCOM used the weapon to hit a rec center and school, killing 21 civilians including young girls playing volleyball. Story w/ my friend and colleague @trbrtc.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/w...

Separation of church and state update.

Checking in on the Dark Enlightenment

U.S. Army opens investigation into attack helicopter activities at Kid Rock's home, No Kings protest www.newschannel5.com/news/newscha...

Theocracy watch

Fed’s Powell on massive U.S. government budget deficits: “It will not end well if we don't do something fairly soon.”

Fed's Powell on who pays the tariffs: They "have largely fallen here in the U.S. and not abroad."

This. The dream of the 90s is dead. Cheap rent enables every kind of creative work and nothing else can substitute for it.

Fed's Powell with another quote for our current moment: "It's very hard to build great democratic institutions and...much easier to to bring them down."

Fed's Powell: "On regrets? I don't allow myself the luxury of that."

Fed's Powell with a quote that covers a lot of territory right now: "Confidence is what you feel before you really understand the problem."

Powell started out on elite guitar gear: “It's fair to say that my freshman major was acoustic guitar. My parents gave me a Martin D 35 for high school graduation. They must have regretted that, because that's what I was really working on mostly.”

Second this: Religious rhetoric from military leaders isn’t uncommon. What is uncommon: SecDef creating his own Pentagon worship service and delivering religious rhetoric on camera from a lectern that’s also functioning as a literal pulpit, all while aligning w/self-declared Christian nationalists.

World leaders voice concern after Israeli police prevented Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Sunday.

Exactly this:

WSJ: “President Trump is weighing a military operation to extract nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium from Iran.”

Full on brawl in the FDNY vs. NYPD hockey game

All this to build the hallucination engines.

As a baseball fan of many years, I’ve never seen anything like this before. I love it. Normalize giving your fellow humans hugs.

NYPD officers ignore transgressions by drivers if they happen to be listeners of right-wing radio host Sid Rosenberg, according to former Chief of Patrol John Chell.

Wherein I write about the step beyond Google Zero and imagine the AI information ecosystem collapse: mattdpearce.substack.com/p/who-really...

How will the American political system react if Trump sends thousands of American soldiers to a catastrophic outcome?

My concern, from a purely military perspective, is that someone in the Pentagon is telling Trump he can do a lot with a little (in terms of ground force) and if that doesn't turn out to be true, they're exposed and any reserves to help them out are still halfway around the world.

War, like government, is serious business for serious people.

"In conversations with more than three dozen oil and gas traders, executives, brokers, shippers and advisers over the last week, one message was repeated over and over: The world still hasn’t grasped the severity of the situation." -- www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

"I'm a cop, I don't understand law" definitely captures the vibe correctly at least

Via @apnews.com: Israeli police prevent Catholic leaders — *including Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and the head of the Custos in the Holy Land* — from celebrating Palm Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem apnews.com/article/isra...

Pope Leo: “(Jesus) does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: 'Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’”

Trump just posted a letter from Franklin Graham assuring him that says "you commented to the media that you might not be heaven bound. Maybe you responded in jest, but it is an important issue to know for certain that your soul is secure and will spend eternity in the presence of God."

This is what they are doing to NORWEGIANS, y’all — the very immigrants Trump claims to want more of. Imagine what they are doing to everyone else.

The NYT says today’s #NoKings protests had “no shortage of skeptics,” and then quoted exactly one of those skeptics: The chairman of the Ole Miss College Republicans (as of 2025.) But of course, the Times doesn’t ID him as such. He’s just a Concerned Youth.