do not understand why the new york times considers it important to maintain ideological neutrality towards an ideology which would fill a mass grave with the staff of the new york times

"did you try to bribe the president of the united states by giving him your nobel peace prize so he will declare that you are in charge of venezuela after abducting its leader by military force" is just a thing that someone can be asked in an interview now and we all have to deal with that

Fake judges no juries

Gender studies really is the quintessential "useless" major that correctly explains basically everything that's going on in the world right now

Feminist IR explains the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Trump administration

Loss of memory and more explicit challenges to the racial and gender order, and the radicalization of American right and center elites (multiple exogenous causes) have opened the floodgates.

We got lucky-ish from 1945 to the 90s for obvious reasons, but even then racism and sexism were there, even in polite society and elite sentiment, with 'acceptable' levels of each but an agreement against extremes and definitional conflict.

Not humans, conservative humans. The majority of human beings are content to just live. I've come to realize that *the* great problem of democratic politics, and really faced by every human society, is what to do with conservatives.

Read it and shiver in contemplation of the monstrous consequences of this immoral and profoundly dangerous world view, the one that now guides the most powerful nation on the planet.

immigration courts aren't courts and immigration judges aren't judges. it's a con that we even call them that tbh

Here is the Trump Doctrine, as articulated by Stephen Miller in his truly frightening interview with Jake Tapper this afternoon. It is very much like the doctrine of the dictators we fought and defeated in World War II and of Putin today. It is un-American at its very core.

It is wild that the dude who literally said GO’s had to go out and undermine the president if the policy was “wrong” does like one interview every 6 months and is like, “maybe Donald can maybe rein it in a bit”

It's just the age-old popular caricature of atheists being Secretly Religious Too. If we admit the crushing banality of it, then *heads explode*

The degree to which Pascal's Wager depends on a sucker God who you can lie to without consequences astonishes me. A wager for people who see not just the mortal realm, but Heaven itself, as a swindle waiting for them to seize it.

love to create power vacuums and then just let things play out. expert planning, sir. strategic mastery.

Absolutely. Was thinking about this in terms of the really creepy AI girlfriend apps:

“PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REFINE THIS DOGSHIT OIL PLEASE I NEED THIS I NEED TO BE THE GUY WHO STOLE OIL TO PUNISH THE RACIAL LESSERS THE WAY THAT THAT HIPPIE COWARD GEORGE BUSH WOULDN’T PLEASE IN SATAN’S NAME HELP ME OUT HERE I’LL GIVE YOU ALL THE MONEY FOR THIS PERVERSE GRATIFICATION”

"When people are—essentially randomly—either approved or denied for SNAP, workers who get access to SNAP work *more* over the next three years." donmoynihan.substack.com/p/when-volat...

Republicans got the SAVE repayment plan nixed through the courts and then enacted a replacement repayment plan in the big beautiful bill that will make borrowers pay nearly four times as much per month.

The student loan stuff was worse than that. The fact that they loudly (and persuasively!) let it be known that they thought Biden's moves were bullshit directly led to a bunch of GOP state AGs to sue the whole thing, and now the system is *much worse* than it was status quo ante!

The student loan stuff did it for me. They could not give one shit that poor people were getting their loans forgiven and just straight up lied about it happening at all. Shows that a lot of support for M4A would disappear as soon as they saw their taxes.

Wait, did Sky Marchini get brigaded into deactivating because people were mad that Sad Trombone Karl, famous occupier of space and consumer of time, got himself suspended for threatening to dox people? What the hell?

Also keep in mind how Trump lunges from chaos scenario to chaos scenario depending on who is pushing and pulling him among the factions around him. He mentioned at least 7 different potential military targets for the US and Greenland was only one of them.

as the saying goes, soft times make dumb men

yeah like, the Dems retaking the House would be good but if SCOTUS e.g. overrules the ICA and we treat post-midterm stuff as status quo....

The reason I love this Reductress joke is that it gets to the essence of what "The Doomscroll" actually is. It's not simply a parade of disinterestedly reported news stories with sober headlines about tragedies. It's everyone else's *commentary* about them.

One guy tried, unsuccessfully, to blow up a plane with a bomb in his sneakers, and everybody had to take off their shoes at the airport for the next 20 years. Chatbots have a collective body count equal to Richard "The Night Stalker" Ramirez, and they're trying to put them in schools.

I have this thought every time my wife tells me about Elder Scrolls lore too. If God were actually speaking to people and granting combat buffs I'd kinda be forced to believe in him, and act accordingly

I think it’s safe to say the international rules based order is looking a little worse for wear. “Moreover, when NATO’s credibility rests in large part on American military power, what credibility does NATO really have when the United States is one of the security threats to NATO?”

Kaiser Wilhelm II Thought.

>Be SEALs >Takeover a USMC mission at the last minute >Don't do the reading >Promptly get wiped by maybe 20 Talibs >One of your squad bugs out during the ambush with full mags >Writes memoir about how you fought off 2 gorillion Talibs before falling valiantly >Turn it into a major film

SEALs is less "inter-service" as it is "everyone else regardless of SOF, non-SOF, Army/AF/Marines/Navy, whatever" fucking hates the SEALs specifically

one of the stranger joys of the internet is being able to peek into the subcultures with their jargon and stereotypes that you are only barely aware of and be a kind of fly on the wall. my latest example of this is military people talking shit on SEALs

I am genuinely at a loss for a precedent here. Very, very few states in history ever enjoyed the success of the USA even on a regional level and I just can’t think of any of them dynamiting it all for absolutely no gain

i don't like having to view americans as anglo vatniks :(

My favorite part of Wealth of Nations was Adam Smith saying that Spain, whose empire was already an albatross by then, would’ve been way better off if they had just traded with the Aztecs and Incas instead of slaughtering them

i like his voice lines

kind of darkly funny that "gender studies" is the stereotypical "useless degree" because gender studies will help you understand a large and important chunk of the current psychosis in american life

sure sure you can have hegemony by trade, ideology and cultural influence, but does that make your dick hard?

they're doing it for gender, imo

every local vote i can cast is going solely to candidates who vow to protect and increase transit funding at the expense of drivers

You think sanctions resulting in food and electricity being more expensive is the collective punishment and the worst thing imaginable for you because your hometown being on Bellingcat is incomprehensible

You empathize with the Russian volunteer making the sign of the cross in a ditch before he gets droned because it's easier for you to imagine yourself in that ditch than it is to imagine having to kill someone trying to take your home

I remain convinced that the "oh no those poor Russian conscripts (who are all volunteers)" thing out of Americans is an expression of imperial solidarity because the worst thing they can imagine is dying after being sent to a far away land to kill the people who live there

Truly one of the most wonderful stories of 2025, a glimmering reminder that good things can happen and places can be made better even through steep national opposition

A devastating story about the life and death of Lia Smith, a transgender woman and college student targeted by conservatives online because she briefly participated on the school's diving team. Lia was found dead by suicide last fall at the age of 21. (Unlocked article below)

Not that bigotry ever makes sense, hate is irrational, but the guy is living the suburban California life and is just spewing mad about Hispanic janitors at his school. He needs a doctor to probe him.

Starting a book on the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. One of the most important recent wars in world history, oddly obscure, and I'm glad I was able to find this book as even if it's 12 years old it's one of the best recent books covering it.

Grim irony in how much one man's vanity cost Iraq and the world and yet this is an accurate 'for want of a nail' description of where all that started and where it wound up.