"As per the Iranian request" Yeah I'm gunna need to hear verification of that request chief.

Story has almost no details, but I would love to know how this would not be an Antideficiency Act violation.

hey your kid died fighting to free the straight of hormel from iraq or iran or something. tyfys, sorry or w/e

ALL ABOARD THE AMERCIAN LNG TRAIN CHOO CHOO

i don't much like platner for the same reason i have rapidly come to dislike annie andrews and the same reason i don't like newsom — values matter, and throwing out homophobic or misogynistic or transphobic "jokes" display contempt for the values the overwhelming majority of party voters live by

the idea that Israel - which isn't even a treaty ally! - is the US's "closest ally on the planet" is obviously insane, but which country actually is? Or at least, was until Trumpian reconsiderations? I'd make a case for South Korea first, Canada second, Japan third.

"This person is not screaming into the void therefore they are laughing" is a real Bsky moment.

Trump is leaning towards a major ground operation in Iran as he is convinced that the country will then capitulate, an official from one of the countries mediating between the US and Iran said.-Times of Israel

Among the priorities for the 2027 Texas House: Studying whether parts of New Mexico can secede and join Texas.

legitimately all they know how to do is whine

When the history books about this period are written I have a feeling Rubio is going to be one of the most ridiculed figures. *HORMUZ COULD BE OPENED TOMORROW IF IRAN ALLOWED IT: RUBIO

it is also somewhat hilarious how his followers (and Candace's, let's be real) basically go full conspiracy mode in the replies of his videos now like what the fuck is this

Tucker Carlson's trajectory from being employed by neocons at the Weekly Standard to what he is now is genuinely such a fascinating (if bad) trajectory

instructions unclear, Moyn has decided to do another event with Patrick Deneen

we need a “shut up and dribble” for law professors. why do i have to hear what sam moyn thinks, he’s been wrong about everything for a decade. stop sharing your opinions. go teach civ pro to a 24 year old.

See:

every few months another study comes out that makes it clear we are DECADES from an actual, long term human presence in space but this one is particularly funny, because you *know* the tech bros seriously think they're gonna be fucking in space real soon www.popsci.com/science/zero...

The Millennial slopulist version of this is gonna be like, requiring schools to teach nine year olds how to play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3.

just omg c'mon www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

mr vance i think you're imagining the plot of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (the original)

I admit I am not a PhD physicist, but, nuclear suicide vests are not a thing.

120/day is normal levels. This 8 will probably be 1 a day for 8 days

Josh Shapiro for president: what if we let The Atlantic run the country?

lmao americanmind.org/memo/from-al...

anyway i am sure he will studiously ignore the fact that trump — who he does *not* support, of course — is bent on territorial acquisition

case study for a person who doesn’t have real political commitments as much as they have axes to grind against professional rivals

Sam Moyn is not seriously at risk of existing in an exploitable grey zone of being stateless, so none of this really matters to him. Like many academics, the materiality of politics is just a fun thought experiment for him to grind an axe about whatever current thing annoys him from a colleague

additionally, this distinction between "scholarship" and "politics" is artificial. honest scholarship has political implications! both in the everyday sense — i read bernick, i translate him into arguments for a broader public, etc. — and in the larger sense of shaping the terrain of discourse.

i have been thinking a bunch about this dispute and among other things i find it extremely odd to critique legal scholars for doing scholarship and not politics while writing as someone who is disengaged from actual political work AND indifferent to the political consequences of their work.

congrats to sam moyn on getting the coveted "even the liberal [blank]" endorsement from reactionaries eager to destroy equal citizenship

there's a smaller contingent of people who genuinely don't like Trumpism but who have to imagine some kind of rationality to it because confronting the truth that the most powerful country in the world is in the hands of a senile racist lunatic is too psychially painful.

there is a contingent of people who want both to pretend to be 'serious' thinkers in the DC think tank world and to suck up to Trumpism for funding or career reasons, they do this largely by playing make-believe.

if think tanks acknowledge what trumpism is (incoherent and vibes-based), they have to face their own crisis of relevance as institutions that pump out policy papers and provide advice to movers and shakers. pretending there's some policy process that makes sense is a way to avoid grappling w this

I'm never certain when Americans talk about 'cursive' whether they mean just, you know, handwriting rather than printing (which does not require a significant teaching investment of time for kids to pick up) or formal pensmanship (nice for cards, bad teaching investment)

I also conclude this because when I tried to honestly, but respectfully, engage with him, he ignored me except to quote post me with a random quote about history’s ever present contestation. That’s cheap. That’s dismissive without reason. And, plainly, a little rude for a colleague you just blasted.

If Sam believes that the search for truth or intellectualism must take a back seat to partisan politics, he’s as deserving of the same criticism I’ve launched at Wurman, Barnett, Lash, and Epstein. I’m literally doing my job— that I love— to teach, to learn, and to inquire into the nature of things.

So basically a Hobbesian anarchy

And you can say "who cares? we have problems to focus on at home" but you not being interested in foreign affairs doesn't mean they won't be very, very interested in you

Whoever ends up as the Dem candidate isn't just going to have to try to rebuild the country after Trump, they're going to have to have a pitch for rebuilding the global order, and that is going to be a very tall task, especially with Dems not really being interested in foreign policy as a party.

This is quite something from Singapore's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vivian Balakrishnan, in an interview with Reuters. The end of the post-war order, diagnosed in technocratic language. www.mfa.gov.sg/newsroom/pre...

Great powers, for some reason, seem to have come to a renewed belief that they can do as they wish and the world will suffer them as they must around the same time it became possible for smaller foes to just fuck their shit up with a couple thousand dollars worth of drones.

Since he apparently likes talking to himself, I’m inclined to let him. I am done with Sam Moyn.

Out of sheer curiosity, I checked to see whether he followed up with any substantive engagement or just more abstraction and evasion. I’m now fresh out of interest

"My house made out of wood shavings and fireworks being on fire is exactly what the fire brigade wants."

is that good www.ft.com/content/c526...