Finally cajoled the niece and nephew into a pre-Christmas trip to @themerl.bsky.social — so excited! The promise of infinity screen time later is worth it.

🇪🇪🇰🇷 Estonia has ordered six South Korean K239 Chunmoo rocket systems along with missiles. The €290 million contract includes the launchers, training, and operational support. militarnyi.com/en/news/esto...

The fun thing about long family holidays is you have time to realize that everyone else in your family has terrible taste in music. Or else the entire universe is working toward imagine dragons, which would be a time for the singularity.

Only the standard gingershapes

A little late with the stollen this year, but it’s getting done.

It’s not “escalating” “emboldened” or “audacious” to target the ability of the nation that launched an illegal war of aggression to finance its illegal war and deliberate target Ukrainian civilians. This is almost year 12 of the Russian war against Ukraine. Ukraine knows it is up to Ukraine.

When the fighting on the family Christmas walk stops

We’re watching Die Hard with my niece and nephew for the first time tonight

… except chevron, which has kept Maduro in power by investing in Venezuelan oil Chevron, which is now partners with its rival Exxon to develop offshore oil in Guyana, so they can all get along while Exxon helps backchannel talks to Russia You can read more …. /1 www.wsj.com/world/americ...

This article discusses seizing Venezuelan oil to cut off a crucial lifeline for Maduro (as markets game Ven debt) But Binance runs the crypto exchange that gives Venezuela access to capital — the founder of which POTUS pardoned after large “donations” from Binance www.ft.com/content/a8be...

🎶 our allies are moving on without us 🎵 But sometimes it’s glorious to watch This would be a good partnership in a new transatlantic alliance www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/26ffc6d...

The thing that shockingly few military/defense reporters are willing to say is the whole thing is batshit crazy and based on lies. Even if you hate Maduro — and who doesn’t?? — this 👇 is batshit disproportionate waste of US hard power assets Honest people will say this to you.

There are a lot of reasons POTUS is going to keep saying wild stuff about Venezuela. Perhaps best to understand them, as none of it will make America safer or leave it in a safer, more stable world where democracy still matters. www.greatpower.us/p/the-war-on...

A reminder: www.greatpower.us/p/the-war-on...

Just to be clear: if 'no one was ready' a lot of people fucked up, bc those of us who work on this laid out what was going to happen 8yrs ago. The twofold issue that 1)it's not just a tech problem, and 2) Big Tech allowed itself to be ref-worked into spinelessness. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/t...

Yep

Stephen Miller is employing state terror in service of the open goal of shifting the ethnic mix of the country. In numerous ways he's doing this at the expense of public safety. We spent weeks reporting on Miller's real aims. Here's the result. We hope you'll read: newrepublic.com/article/2041...

🎯 www.duffelblog.com/nation-that-...

Dragons don’t care for tinsel. They’re more interested in gold. According to legend, disturb a dragon’s treasure and you might ruin more than your holiday. This December, meet the dragon in Mythical Creatures at Colchester Castle: colchester.cimuseums.org.uk/events/mythical-creatures

Person woman man camera TV

Oh cool ‘cause what everyone wants for Christmas is to wake up in Man in the High Castle

“‘If there is one thread that connects all of these artists together, it is ‘persistence,’’ Trump said. ‘I know so many of you. Many of you are miserable, horrible people. But you are persistent, you never give up. Sometimes I wish you’d give up, but you don’t.’” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/u...

Hmm still haven’t banned telegram tho go figure PSA: don’t use telegram

Did a quick update for politicology this week on Ukraine developments, etc — listen in! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

The fundamental rift in how this document will be perceived is whether you believe America should act like a secure, confident nation that *is* strong or whether you think strength is whining about how everyone is taking advantage of you.

Did a quick update for politicology this week on Ukraine developments, etc — listen in! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

So I don’t like to be right about dire predictions but I did warn you this duginist realignment was coming www.greatpower.us/p/the-war-on...

“Four unidentified military style drones breached a no-fly zone and flew towards the flight path of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s plane at sea near Dublin Airport late on Monday night” Next time the meeting must be in a NATO country … www.thejournal.ie/drones-dubli...

You'd think us violating Irish neutrality in an apparent attempt to assassinate Zelensky by forcing his plane to crash would be bigger news. For the Irish for a start.

OTD in 1978 USSR & Afghanistan signed a "friendship treaty". We invaded them a year later. So you can trust us with a peace deal now.

Like something Dugin wrote www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

Today is the day Donald Trump finally becomes … wait, no, just forget it”

The red votes are a helpful pocket guide to which African states have Wagner coup governments

We reverse-engineered shaheds and can produce them for more than the cost of a shahed and we’re trumpeting it as successful defense innovation abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-...

Putin is attacking Europe and threatening them with war because Europe has his money and the only way he can get his money is convincing the Americans the Europeans are the reason there isn’t “peace” and getting the Americans to get his money for him www.politico.eu/article/jare...

Turns out riding a wave of misogynists into power doesn’t work out well for the ladies, or at least the ladies who don’t look like naughty prosecutor Barbie, whoever could have imagined this course of events

It’s like how baby airmen draw cock-and-balls on every airbase the US Air Force has ever inhabited

Trump has repeatedly said it’s up to Europe to find the money to defend and rebuild Ukraine. The most important thing Europe can do about that right now is make sure the frozen Russian funds are used for Ukrainian survival. It is not up to Moscow and Washington to negotiate this.

There was an old tumblr or blogspot called “Kim Jong Un looking at things” and it was nothing but photos of Kim Jong Un looking at things with the vague gaze of a forever-boy dictator and I feel like we need something like this for Mike Johnson not knowing things

Trying to decide if Pete Hegseth is the Kevin McCarthy of SECDEFs or if Kevin McCarthy was the Pete Hegseth of Speakers

A lot of people expressing shock that bayonets were being used for crowd control in 1966 A little background Until the late ‘60s, soldiers were not equipped or trained for riot duty. They used weapons of war for policing In Detroit alone in ‘67, troops fired 156,000 rounds of ammunition

“I might be second in line to take over the presidency from the oldest POTUS in history — but I have no idea what the laws of war are, nor do I read laws or the news, who has time — there’s all these tunnels here, I just wander the tunnels looking for empty cubbies to hide in”

Everything about this admin is the laziest reboot — but there was no accountability for anything they did, the made everyone deny 2016 interference, everyone deny 1/6 —and POOF they get to do it all over again because Americans have a 2 day attention span

Everyone is so eager to get something they want out of the president — and believe this is more possible now than any time in history — that the convergence of purpose is whipping us ahead toward Venezuela www.greatpower.us/p/the-war-on...

The focus is on “drug boat” strikes, but there are competing justifications for escalating military action against Venezuela — “cartels”, oil, bravado, liberation But the war on Venezuela isn’t about those things It’s about redefining—diminishing—American power www.greatpower.us/p/the-war-on...

It would be best for everyone if SECDEF stopped talking about this In the meantime, though, we should all understand what we are barreling toward:

Subscribers can enjoy these audio versions of our pieces: www.greatpower.us/p/the-war-on...

I was trying in vain to figure out what Trump's game was in Venezuela, and now @mollymckew.bsky.social has written a brilliant two-part piece explaining it all...and, spoiler alert, it's not good for America, but very good for Russia, and is absolutely terrifying. www.greatpower.us/p/the-war-on...

Much like the Milei bailout announcement, this is just overt election interference, and I’m just constantly surprised we don’t even comment on it anymore