Hi, political scientist here. Did you know we have an extensive body of research and theory that says if people believe you will violently betray them, they are less likely to enter into an agreement with you? I swear to God I have a real, non-bullshit job.

It's day 1488 of the 3-day special military operation. A good day to remind señor Fuentes that his side is losing.

It's simpler than that: we just don't want a supposed ally, for whom we have sacrificed our own soldiers in the recent past, to side with our mortal enemy, threaten our territories, and start trying to destabilize our governments. Not much to ask, is it?

Let me begin with stating two numbers. 450 and 1 200. Please make those two manifest, because they will be important. I know you care about Iranian women in particular, and Iran in general. Which is in a way commendable, especially the first part. 1/16

What was that comment today about Pearl Harbour?

1. Britain has very much *NOT* always tolerated minority faiths. Just ask Jews and Catholics. 2. The idea that religious expression should be "in conformity with our values, our norms, our beliefs" should worry every faith group, starting with Christians.

more broadly, if you as an otherwise completely uninvolved American have an emotional support overseas independence movement/ethnic conflict I think that needs to be a real hard look at the question of “hey is this something I should have this much of an opinion on” and the answer is generally no

Dear US, sorry we couldn’t send anyone to help you in Iran, we were too busy defending Greenland, from you. Europe.

The only thing you need to know about the Aztecs is that pale creatures from the unknown came bringing plague and demanding everyone consume the flesh and blood of their dead god and swear allegiance or perish and people were like “they seem more reasonable than the other guys, let‘s hear them out.”

re: IRA discourse i have only one spicy take to contribute and it is as follows. it is quite funny that an average American Provo respector will absolutely lose their mind if they see one (1) Ukrainian waving a UPA flag

I think a key and under discussed reason for the relative ascendancy of conspiracism is the simple fact that neither the US nor Israel are actually acting all that rationally and a lot of people have internalized a framework of mind where a state acting against its own interests isn't possible.

Does the war go against any and all liberal ideals of international law? Yes. Is it a high risk that could substantially backfire? Yes. Are the justification for starting this war suspect? Yes. But... I really fucking hate the Iranian regime.

all my homies hate the great male renunciation

The only thing worth saying here is that in truth, I'm sorry, but we /do/ have to police the language of the victims of genocide. It's that simple. Being a victim of a horrible crime does not entitle you to One Free Incitement To Hatred card.

IRI's response to Ukraine sending the gulf states drones is just another data point to why Ukraine is the only country which I am basically okay with just letting do, um, you know, /anything/ to the regime in Tehran. They are the one country involved in this thing where Iran definitely started it.

They're bad at messaging this because stuff blowing up gets them so hard they can't fathom how anyone could have any questions left after seeing footage of it. Like a broke dad who leases a $300k Ferrari and doesn't understand why the kids keep asking how he'll pay for it despite hearing it rev.

the most dead-eyed soulless capitalists can read fossil fuels’ writing on the wall and are investing in clean energy. the problem is there are more people exist who romanticize fossil fuels because coal miners and roughnecks are men

"But you'd have to be a subliterate, brainless, incurious, uninformed moron with the mind of a small child to think that's how the world works." Yes, have you not been paying attention to LITERALLY EVERYTHING THE PRESIDENT DOES AND SAYS, IN PUBLIC, ALL THE TIME, FOR A DECADE

"It's not fair to hold the oppressed to a higher standard" It is, because we are better people

This was particularly profound imo in the Kursk Submarine Disaster scene, and how it was set immediately after depicting him doing press releasey chummy chummy things with the occupying army in Chechnya: he only cares for his own soldiers when he can get something out of them.

People who don't know much about him perceive Putin as an unreadable darkness whose plans are measured in centuries. Law depicts that mask and then rips it well off to show the real man: a petty arsehole driven mostly by a tendency to perceive slights in absolutely everything.

There’s a big and underappreciated rift between what liberation means to people shaped by Eastern European history, where the US did not intervene but was often yearned for, and elsewhere, where it did intervene, often with disastrous consequences.

Do not let pro-Putin voices exploit current events to launder their own agenda. You can be against American intervention without dismissing years of documented war crimes committed by the Russian state. (1)

the honest opinion of basically everyone in the broader US aligned alliance system on this is "I mean of course I wish he hadn't done it, these people are obviously fucking insane so figure it out dems, but come on, you want me to shed tears over the *Iranian* regime??? bffr"

Literally every country involved in this stupid war has a government I’d love to see removed from power, and for none of them is the right way to do it military action by the other two.

The right are furious that a white, English tradesperson got elected.

Hannah Spencer walking into Westminster, sucking her teeth, tutting, and muttering "tell you what, you've had some cowboys in here."

Death to the Russian Federation.

I think there’s sort of a Danegeld theory of centrism in certain elite circles and on behalf of the trans community, I request we uncancel Kipling until such time people have read the rest of the poem.

Your Bluesky experience will be immensely improved simply by browsing Will Stancil’s replies and blocking everybody being a freak. This takes out like 90 percent of the shittiest people on the site and makes everything better.

As a massive nerd criticising Matt Goodwin, I want to assure him that the cool kids are only abstaining because they don't know who or what he is. Idris Elba is not sitting by the phone waiting for a dinner invite to discuss how he's not really British.

I'd rather have both freedom and hospitals, but if I have to choose, I'm going with freedom, because I'm not a fucking moron.

under most circumstances a gun will not make you safer. it will be used as evidence that your death was justified.

is there a law against mark carney becoming British PM

the nationalism of the person under tangible military threat is not really comparable to the nationalism of the person making those threats, sorry

People need to stop posting that myth about Trident being unusable without a US say so. It's literally just not true.

Nigel Farage promised Brexit would help you. Nigel Farage stood down 319 Reform candidates to help Boris deliver THIS SPECIFIC version of Brexit. So if he's convinced you to blame other people for the fact that this Brexit hasn't helped you... You're as thick as frozen shit.

"Dear brown person living under a sadistic and cruel dictatorship. You must sacrifice your dignity, rights, wellbeing, and possibly even your life, so we can feel virtuous in praising your regime for being anti-Western"

Get. Off. X. This isn’t a moral thing. This is a protecting yourself thing. If you go over there to “verify” something and end up inadvertently viewing and thus downloading illegal images, you have – pay attention now – downloaded illegal images

This.

Maduro is a brutal and oppressive dictator of Venezuela. Trump has no legitimate legal basis for military action against Venezuela under United States or international law. Both of those facts are simultaneously true.

Future historians will wonder why the victims of colonialism sided so cheaply with a white coloniser who rules 1/3 of the Asian land mass from a city in Europe.

The part in the Gospel of Matthew where the holy family just kind of hunkers down and waits for the tyrant to die is officially the most relatable version of the Nativity story this year

I feel sorry for those Polish troops they sent to Iraq in 2003. The deal was that Poland would pretend to believe aluminum tubes posed a threat to the safety of the free world in exchange for us being there when Ivan came knocking and now the president is like “Well, Ivan *does* have a point.”

me when an ex-catholic or a jew makes a joke about the catholic church being a giant child abuse ring: haha ye so true me when a prot does the same: now listen here you thrice-cursed schismatic

i love it when americans comment on the euro because you know who else has a single currency for 400 million people in regions and states with wildly varying economies and drastically unequal levels of wealth and development...

you have to be a motivated asshole to not understand what’s happening in ukraine. there are ukrainians on here that regularly post things like “wow power went out again. guess that boom i head was russia bombing the power plant” followed by 30 hd videos of the power plant being bombed

Idiots are again arguing ‘Kyiv has so few civilian casualties, Russia must be intentionally avoiding them’ So let’s repeat: Kyiv probably has the most experienced AD of any city in the world right now, & The civilians have nearly unrivaled experience with & access to bomb shelters

And Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, but slumbers eternal until the stars are right.

If I am ever shot for a political reason I would just like to be clear here that I don't care about those reasons because I have still been brutally murdered