I read @timmohr.bsky.social’s Burning Down the Haus, a microhistory of the punk scene in East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall, a few years ago when judging the HWA nonfiction crown. It’s gripping. I just googled it again & learned that the author died last year; I’m very sorry to hear that.

😠 Russia has carried out over 13,000 chemical attacks since the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s General Staff says. In March alone, nearly 400 cases were recorded, with gas grenades and chemical agents dropped by drones, and usage expected to rise in warmer months.

a thing i think about from time to time on the topic of Women in Science is that at the time my father attended Caltech it was all-male anyway it's pretty cool that Christina Koch is going to the moon

The political map is completely broken: Across much of the West, the real divide is between democratic reformists occupying a broad center spanning left and right and authoritarian collectivists on both extremes, creating a horseshoe pattern that leads to fascism

The previous administration made frustrating mistakes with Ukraine, but $67 billion in military assistance is vastly better than nothing. The current reality is a nightmare. Trump has cut off the aid and proved disastrous for Ukraine’s survival

Happy Birthday to the late great Gregory Peck, born Eldred Gregory Peck 110 years ago today

🧵

A month ago, Iran’s opposition in exile was punch-drunk on war fever. Yet as the American and Israeli campaign continues many have become queasy

You know, you can be against a war without wishing for American airmen to get killed or captured.

Two of the latest polls, from previously quite accurate pollsters, show a Tisza lead of ~20pp in Hungary. But can the opposition really win? Why is Orban on the backfoot? And what happens after April 12? 🇭🇺Hungary elections thread 🧵

Many of the folks from this group I've conversed w/over the yrs remain *adamantly convinced* that—somehow—socialism/Marxism during this golden period was really & truly making life better for ppl in Soviet or Soviet-aligned countries. It's hard to convince someone who insists on being THAT wrong.

i believe this is inextricable from their anti-anti-trump tendencies. they are too devoted to the idea - which his supporters share - that the peak of american and human society was reached at some point between 1948 and 1970.

The US military's tactical capabilities at the other end of the world exceed those of most of the world's militaries within their own sovereign territories. Truly astounding, but even more astounding is how little strategic acumen there is in determining how, why and where it is put to use.

Soaring electricity bills in Virginia are being driven less by unavoidable energy costs than by unchecked data center demand and a regulatory system that lets Dominion Energy earn inflated profits

Captain Szilveszter Pálinkás, Hungarian Army officer: What causes me difficulty is understanding which side this government is choosing. It portrays Ukraine as an enemy, while in reality, in this military conflict, Ukraine is a victim, because Russia attacked Ukraine. This is common knowledge.

Pope Leo XIV carried the cross across all fourteen stations for over an hour. The prayers named children who had been “taken away and imprisoned during protests, deported by policies devoid of compassion, shipwrecked on desperate journeys of hope, killed in war zones, and wiped out in death camps.”

Russia's most popular bloggers all progressively getting on the same page, talking up a new invasion of the Baltics as a "more promising direction than Ukraine".

Amid mass displacement and collapsing trust in institutions, digital wallets are becoming critical conduits for aid, connecting diaspora donors directly with communities on the ground. www.wired.com/story/with-o...

WSJ has a piece on the merchant sailors stuck aboard ships inside Hormuz. There are 20,000 of them (many from less privileged nationalities), effectively held hostage and running out of food. www.wsj.com/world/middle...

Evergreen

Happy Easter,friends! Warmest wishes to everyone celebrating today Life overcomes death.Love&goodness overcome evil These are dark times,but in our hearts live hope and prayer-that peace will come, that the war will end,that soldiers&prisoners of war will return home,that families will be reunited

They just sit in Beijing, quietly smiling, not quite believing the gifts the US government is bestowing on them, but happily taking them.

Science pre-eminence will be hard to re-establish as it's built in part on openness to foreign talent. Even if Trump/MAGA goes, the uncertainty injected into prospects for funding, political interference, immigration will remain as everyone worries about MAGA 3.0.

This thread is shocking in the best possible way.

They are complementary. There are essentially 0 drugs approved that didn't rely on NIH R&D. But NIH funding alone cannot deliver drugs, because NIH funding discovers new biology, but pharma R&D discovers the actual **drugs** (small molecule, monoclonal antibody) that modulates the biology.

(I do think folks really miss how much of the economic gloom is that house prices are so high, and that the way out of that is for someone to run for president on an "I will build a major new city in every state during my term of office")

“It’s okay to do a little two minutes hate as a treat” is just bad and makes the world (and social media) a worse place, regardless of the target.

What did y'all think "unitary executive" meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays?

TNG is overrated; I'd say it's the 3rd or 4th best Trek show and its best film is a bit better than STV, the 2nd-worst original cast film.

I refute it thus.

I used to write the WaPo editorials on US-Africa policy, as well on as human rights and politics on the continent. To describe hundreds of thousands of deaths on the continent as “messy” is an absolute abomination.

Timothy Snyder leveled two explosive accusations against Trump: that his proposed 50% defense budget increase could be a bribe to secure military loyalty for a coup attempt, and that a staged domestic terror attack is his best remaining path to nullifying elections. www.rawstory.com/trumps-milit...

“Hundreds of videos circulating on Russian social media reveal horrific punishments by superiors extorting money from their men. Soldiers report being locked in cages, electrocuted & sexually assaulted. Those wounded, but lucky enough to survive, must pay thousands more to be declared unfit…” 👀

No, I vividly remember buying this one.

So is South Korea's former president who declared martial law in 2024. At least there are some countries who know how to deal with insurrectionists. I'm hopeful we may yet join the club.

By Ukrainian cartoonist Maksym Igorovych

Perfect no notes

First new photo from the moon:

“Three Hundred Habeas Cases in Which the Government Has Defied Court Orders” An extraordinary database of non-compliance, from @katherinepomps.bsky.social and @benjaminwittes.lawfaremedia.org for @lawfaremedia.org. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/thre...

Am I to understand that the Correct Socialist Position™️ is to simply let the Russians take over Ukraine

And they wonder why so few people take the DSA seriously.

I'm shocked that a guy belonging to this faction has Ukraine derangement syndrome

not sure if I'm OK with somebody who wants to "liquidate" the USA and it's constitution (especially if they mean Liquidate in the NKVD sense of the term)

Fascist imperialism and genocidal wars of aggression & conquest are, apparently, just fine if it's Russia that's doing them.

Tbf these people /are/ explicitly anti-democratic scum

"we don't have a murder fetish" which is why I talk like an NKVD chief reading charges to the Poles at the Katyn Forest before summarily executing them

Emmer: "Our president didn't start this war. He's finishing it."

So they’ll deny funding to Iron Dome. Certainly that means they favor ending missile defense funding for the UAE, Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia too, right? Right?