A wild guess: The small expeditionary force of marines being sent to the Persian Gulf will be used to seize Kharg Island. With that in hand, Trump et al will send Special Forces "operators" to the Iranian coast to raid missile launch and drone boat redoubts.

The 'time is a flat circle' award of US military propaganda: William Westmoreland and his body counts, Pete Hegseth and his target strikes.

...marine insurers have halted coverage for any voyages in the area, leaving transporters exposed to massive risk premiums or outright refusal.

Many survivors attempted to return home only to discover their belongings had been stolen and their properties vandalized or sold, effectively erasing their existence from their neighborhoods. www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/artic...

Ignore the fear-hype headline. Good info here: How contemporary military action meets the financial system, how it effects Iranian students (up to 10,000) and thousands more with Iranian surnames or any tangential financial contact with Iran. Price of oil on Monday? www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGiS...

Well, shit.

Kitchen staff got leftover cake to take home to the families. Put away the guillotines.

Basically Trump’s Davos speech is just a thousand Twitter comments in a trench coat.

It's always a good time for a fox in the snow, rendered lovely (corrected from lovingly, but I suspect lovingly is true too).

The Guardian knows how to write about Donald Trump: "Trump is now banging on about how green energy is a fraud." Also ➡️: "And lurching into language popularised by England’s football fans, Trump tells WEF..." He's the human personification of a fucking lurch. www.theguardian.com/business/liv...

BP/ICE aren't cops or soldiers. They're federal govt. CIVIL enforcement agents vested with limited policing powers for the purpose of enforcing customs & immigration laws Harassment of, attacks on & kidnapping of citizens isn't their purpose nor charge. Neither are street executions for disrespect

Gift link wapo.st/3Z3WrN3

USPS quietly changed its postmark rules — mail is no longer dated when you drop it off. The “official” date is when it hits automated sorting — sometimes days later Which could have major implications for mail in voting — it’s a clever way to disenfranchise voters that’s going largely overlooked

Gift link www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...

"This is swing voters responding to chaos. This is the suburbs recoiling. This is not the MAGA base defecting." Yep. cmarmitage.substack.com/p/stop-waiti...

"Many of them, he said, held legal status, but were unable to immediately produce their documentation to the agents. “Some people left their property, their work permits in their lockers here,” [their boss] said. “I could bring it to them and get them released. But I don’t know where they are.”"

By today, nearly 11 million SNAP participants should have received *full* benefits for November. They haven't. By Friday, this jumps to about 20 million. (estimated using state participation data and issuance schedules from USDA FNS) 🥗 🛟 🩺📊 #econsky

Scott Jennings melted down on CNN over Zohran Mamdani’s likely win — ranting about “socialists” and tossing out a bizarre new slur, “Islamo-Marxist” Then David Hogg calmly torched the whole charade: “People are tired of being lectured by men with Rolexes on CNN about affordability in this country.”

Gift link “Aristopopulism” wapo.st/3Jsvgrl

Gift link “As we’re seeing our world warm and water vapor in the atmosphere increase … it activates something that doesn’t look like anything most humans have seen before.” wapo.st/4oklfvh

"The inflation report was delayed due to the government shutdown and the White House said there will likely be no report next month..." www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsA3...

From August. The trouble with Argentina. www.npr.org/2025/08/13/n...

$40 billion isn't enough. Trump will have to keep pouring US tax dollars into Argentina to keep it afloat. www.digitaljournal.com/business/arg...

Gift link www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

“You don’t have to squint hard to see that extreme weather events are […] affecting labor markets, supply chains, insurance markets, and inflation dynamics in ways that are pronounced, prolonged, and pervasive.” Senior Fellow Sarah Bloom Raskin, in @bloomberg.com

... www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

“These individuals have a heightened risk of long-term health complications...their classification as having obesity is clinically appropriate.” I get it, but a public policy hater reads this and thinks: We can eliminate hunger by declaring everyone obese. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Under a regime of massive, ideological-driven deregulation it's reasonable to expect we'll see more, probably many more, toxic industrial disasters at factories, processing facilities, and on surface streets and interstates -- and along every other mode of transport. www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/n...

The value of U.S. beef sent to China fell to just $8.1 million in July and $9.5 million in August, Chinese trade data showed, compared to $118 million and $125 million in the same months a year earlier.

👇👇👇

Nails why accusations of hypocrisy never land with MAGA: “But the real secret is locating the animating impulse behind contemporary fascist sexuality: Hedonism for me, puritanism for thee.”

Will the real Victor Davis Hanson (lol) please stand up?

No paywall, gift link wapo.st/4nidndf

Your health care bill is about to explode. The notices will start arriving next month. A $7,000 bill could jump to $24,000. Democrats are fighting to stop this. Republicans are fighting to guarantee your costs go up. We need to fix this. Now.

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people… www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

Yeh! Good news.

seems to me the main reason bluesky has a lot of desperately unhappy people freaking out about politics and world affairs on it instead of being like twitter was in the middle of the last decade is that you are using and discussing it in 2025 instead of in the middle of the last decade

KASH PATEL: you falsify that evidence with messages that are anti-ICE in nature yet? LOW LEVEL FBI AGENT: sure did, boss. wrote the words "ANTI-ICE" on them nice and big, just like you asked KASH PATEL: what

it's just a fact. you can't have a global hegemon who every few years is at risk of electing a lunatic government that will undo treaties, start murdering people in international waters on a whim, stop aid programs, and slap wanton tariffs on the world capriciously. we have no credibility anymore

Zombie apocalypse test of true character and true friendship: I won't tell the others you're hiding a zombie bite. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bu7...

Data’s striking on metformin to avoid chronic illness from Covid. Two papers on people w/BMI >25 cut risk by up to 64%: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37302406/ academic.oup.com/cid/advance-... One on low-risk ppl didn’t meet primary endpoint but cut Long Covid dx by 50%: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

The Death of Democracy

Haven't read because I don't like being compelled to give up my email address but from reading the quote-posts, people are missing that this works both ways. If a US citizen has their passport revoked while traveling outside the country, they have been effectively exiled.

Lies.

Truth.

Wildflowers too...