Sorry but 'let's get Dan Brown in here' is better than any joke I could make about Weiss booking guests

Sarkozy is going to jail but he’s not the first one. In our new dataset we track modern leaders who have been prosecuted by their own states. There are 215 of them. Turns out leader prosecution is a common & healthy practice in democracies. Full access link: foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/28/d...

NO MORE BETS

Another egregious use of the notwithstanding clause. The right wing populist governments in this country are a scourge.

Let's be clear about what happened today. Premier Smith introduced a bill to strip Albertans of Charter rights, denied MLAs the opportunity to debate it and the courts the ability to scrutinize it, and did all of this from her seat on a jet to Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile in Russia: Sergey Karaganov, who heads the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, says that Russia's main goal is to terrorize America and Europe to the point of "animal fear," in order to force the West to stop helping Ukraine to defend itself. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrVl...

This Olivia Reingold video, posted by Olivia Reingold, is the cruelest thing anyone has ever put on the internet about Olivia Reingold.

Conservatives love doing the opposite of occam's razor. "Over 10% of people are on food stamps because over 10% of people are in poverty" is too simple. It has to mean there are actually half a billion people in America.

I didn't have 'the speeches of Ronald Reagan circulate only in samizdat form' on my 'what if Republicans control all branches of the government' bingo card.

"Mate, I can't do anything but tell it to you straight. This Canada thing is literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The Canadians ran an advertisement showing Ronald Reagan being against tariffs. Guess what? Ronald Reagan was against tariffs."

this is a wonderful thread for anyone who needs a break from anything and everything 🪶

The Democrats need to make Weekly Republican Sex Criminal part of their strategy

SM-3 is a very capable weapon, but historically America has made ~12 Block IIA missiles per year. They hope to make ~50 IIB per year. We'll see. More than half the stock of MOPs were expended in the Iran stunt.

About that protein powder study making headlines... My latest @opinion.bloomberg.com (gift link):

Meditations

Lump of em-dash theory

AI is creating Em-Dash Abundance

My mom txted this morning she'll be watching in Windsor via Detroit FOX. It's incredible people in Toronto can't point an antenna at the CN Tower and watched like old days. Public paid $500 billion for SkySome in 89! Corporate giveaways, taxpayer re-billing.

The term of art is "wrong-way risk"

Here's a gift link to the New York Times' coverage of the initial Tea Party rallies in April 2009 which inspired the media to treat it like a massive movement. Check out how tiny the crowds were: Philly: 200 DC: "several hundred" Boston: 500 Austin: 1,000 Houston: 2,000

Here is a long-ish blog post that is in fact a condensed version of an argument made in book form. Worth pondering. I liked "rebellion against executive function"! josephheath.substack.com/p/populism-f...

MFA of Ukraine 🇺🇦 Foreign Minister of Ukraine Andrii Sybiha emphasized that Russia continues to intensify its information warfare. Despite a certain reduction in military spending under the 2026 budget, funding for propaganda will increase by an extraordinary 54%.

The Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service has stopped sharing certain information with the United States: “Sometimes we no longer share things,” officials say, because the information has been finding its way into Kremlin hands. www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/n...

In Pokrovsk, russians are shooting civilians. The first photo shows man carrying a wounded woman in his arms because her legs had been shot through. She had apparently crawled along the street before he found her.

"Virtue signaling" ain't got a patch on vice signaling

Respect must always be earned, Mike.

I’ve seen enough, let Wikipedia volunteer editors run everything

If Trump wants to reward Putin‘s war crimes let him give away his own land. Starting with Mar-O-Lago

Russia-Ukraine is in the same place it's been this entire year, with Trump telling Ukraine to bow down to Putin or else, as Ukraine continues to stand up for its own freedom in the face of the best "or else" Russia is able to muster.

Aside from Yang-Mills theory and parity nonconservation, Yang made so many profound contributions to physics! One that deeply impressed me as I was starting grad school: a 1975 paper with T. T. Wu highlighting the role of fiber bundles in gauge theory. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/s...

Enjoyed the latest from @katewagner.wehwalt.net on U of C's finances Seems relevant that they also recently built an $80m parking garage (their fourth) Starchitects might be their second love, but the automobile and isolation from the neighborhood is their first. www.thenation.com/article/cult...

It is stunning just how bad the product of the Quincy Institute has become. This is essentially fan fiction of the Alaska summit. responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-tomaha...

heartbroken to learn the pope sympathizes with the poor. how can i continue to believe in god

Oh dear.

Was at an EIU conference once and they gave out free copies of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest. Saw a guy start reading it at the top of the escalator to the lobby only to then put it in the bin conveniently located at the bottom of the escalator.

UKIP's new logo looks a bit Far Righty.

Highway H2O revisited. There's much less traffic on the canal than usual. Wonder if that's tariff -related

So Russia says Trump’s intellect is not up to par, that he acts like a cowboy from a saloon or an infant, and that he is as simple as pocket change. They freely admit they have to stroke his ego and manipulate him. What does Trump do? He thanks Putin. 🙄

Argentina edition of Libertarian bible

The US trade war & annexationist push against Canada. H/t @sueinnovates.bsky.social. Apparently, Americans are the victims. Missing, except for a vague comment: 10 months in, there is zero acknowledgement of political agency or the possibility of change on the US side. www.cnn.com/2025/10/13/b...

We got pretty pissed at de Gaulle for this sort of thing.

This game is FAST The colour guys discuss “the can tower is 3 times as high as the space needle” which is RUDE but then says there is no animosity between these teams it’s just baseball.

The prize for 8,000th place is 8,000 AI books.

I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.

I love reading about the condottieri, but as God is my witness I did not know about the back side of the Montefeltro portraits.

Getting into these tech trees. The US is trying to discover God King but they are simultaneously trying to forget Code of Laws so it shouldn't be possible since it is a prerequisite

This. This. This.

Estonia has urgently closed part of its border with Russia following the appearance of armed "little green men," ERR reports‼️

Highway H2O