Nearly 10% of humanity (~800M people in 2025) struggles to live on less than $3 a day. It’s important for Americans to appreciate that reality — and the growing gap between the extremely poor & the extremely privileged — because, as USAID demonstrated, our nation has the power to change it. 🧵 1/8

Currently watching: NEXT TIME I'LL AIM FOR THE HEART/ La Prochaine Fois Je Viserai Le Coer (2014)

Would you look at that. Something useful on the internet. 🤔

For the night crew. 👇

I know I should give it a chance, but just reading a detailed plot summary made me feel a little sick to my stomach. It almost sounds like the filmmakers had wanted to adapt one of Westlake's Dortmunder books and this flick was a compromise with the studio.

Rest in peace, Renato Casaro

A roundup of the best French crime movies I've seen lately: 1. THE STRONGHOLD/ BAC NORD (2020) available on Netflix

Breaking: The federal government has shut down under Donald Trump again.

This is why "Egyptian cotton" is a thing now! Egypt grew a little cotton before all that, but not a "main export industry & household name" amount.

US farmers are saying they "just need temporary help, until things get better." Here's the thing. US farm exports- which are mostly soy- CANNOT get better. Other countries expanded their soy industries to fill China's demand. We've walled ourselves out of the global market, folks. This is it.

“I’m resigning from my position as Democratic leader and retiring from the Senate.”

This photo just about sums it up

I continue to think that one of the reasons this country is falling apart is the wholesale abandonment of public virtue as a broadly shared aspiration. Or even something people should be embarrassed about if they don’t have it.

Unarguably ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review for @reganmacarthur.bsky.social debut Lash novella from @pointofimpactbooks.bsky.social If you haven’t tried this pulp action series yet, do yourself a favour and grab a copy.

There are two basic types of military thinkers: the ones who believe in the glorious charge, and the ones who keep track of pussy things like “supply lines” and “logistics” and “what the weather’s doing”

It’s funny to consider that Hegseth is precisely the sort of person for whom Sun-Tzu actually wrote The Art of War, and is thus the kind of person who fundamentally cannot understand it

I can't emphasize enough how much this speech is just the monologue @kierongillen.bsky.social wrote for the titular character in 2010's DARK AVENGERS: ARES, which is supposed to be a joke

Art by Aykut Aydogdu

Most interesting part of the speech—a familiar MAGA tirade—was the audience reaction. Didn’t hear a single person applaud. Generals and admirals sat silently during this political lecture from a former National Guard captain. The right reaction.

New Alan Moore cover just dropped.

Dear Alan Moore, I completely get The Comedian now.

Research!

People of Illinois, we need your help. Get your cell phones out – record what you see. Put it on social media. Peacefully ask for badge numbers and identification. Speak up for your neighbors. We need to let the world know this is happening – and that we won’t stand for it.

The president is posting AI-generated meme content of congressional Democrats 26 hours before a government shutdown.

Maxwell Frost: "To be honest, this is something Trump said he would do. We all knew it during the campaign. He said he would be a 'dictator on day one.' The only thing he lied about is he meant 'I want to be a dictator for the entire term.'"

We found (or rather, conclusively identified via a wonderfully strange new method) some Denisovan skulls, recently. We did that. Did you know that? Did popular news even tell you? Or were they too busy with some other balloon juice techbro horseshit designed to give shareholders boners?

"I'd follow that man to Hell!" -no one, ever

I think the Trump admin assumed no one would try to find out who the people on the boats they blew up really were

"Where they make a wasteland, they call it peace." -Calgacus, a Caledonian warrior, speaking about the Roman conquest of Britain in the First Century AD, via Tacitus

ICE attempted and failed to disappear a food delivery guy. It needed to be scored.

The near daily barrage of deadly mass shootings in America feels like low level warfare against normal citizens who just want to live in peace. And because people keep electing Republicans who won’t do anything about it there’s no solution in sight.

The ice maker still works.

What would the reaction be if Democratic politicians went on TV every week to talk about how scary and dangerous Louisiana was, or how bleak and depressing life in rural Mississippi is, or how Oklahoma ranks last in education and “God, can you imagine being from there?”

I was lost for a while in a corn maze yesterday. It made me happy.

As a student of action scenes, I think: Writing a good fistfight is hard. Writing a good gunfight is even harder. But writing a good sword fight is almost impossible. Chapter 17 of L'Amour's THE WARRIOR'S PATH has an excellent sword fight.

the brain of the median voter needs to be studied for science

# of paragraphs for news orgs to mention there's no discernable need to deploy troops to Portland, Oregon The Guardian: 1st paragraph BBC: 4th paragraph AP: 5th paragraph Time: 6th paragraph Politico: 8th paragraph NPR: 9th paragraph CNN: 10th paragraph NBC: 12th paragraph Fox News: never mentions

It's like if Fredo Corleone had an account.

The thing every conman in history knows: 90% of marks will never admit to being conned. Especially to themselves.

An island of farm in a sea of suburb

"In some places, French postal workers now pick up prescriptions, return library books, and deliver flowers. Last year, only twenty eight per cent of La Poste’s revenue came from sending mail." Services can evolve in positive ways to meet new and growing needs.

“Hey you know that thing on LEVERAGE where you whip up a media frenzy with bots, is that real?”

"These were a...proud folk, not easily persuaded to any course not dictated by conscience, yet conscience could be a poor guide if accompanied by lack of knowledge."

It took just three days to get Sinclair to back down, and what it got in exchange for agreeing to put Kimmel back on the air was...nothing. This is not what happens every time you stand up to a bully, but if you don't fight back, you'll never know if you would have won.

"She hears a sound in the woods. She grabs her bow and hikes her leg over and slides down from the saddle to the ground. She nocks an arrow in the string and searches for a target. If she's under attack, she is going to put up a fight. If it's made of meat, she can make it die."

No matter what this meeting is about, Pete will always be a National Guardsman assigned to a Civil Affairs unit who got a bunch of crusader tattoos in his 40s because he wants you to think he's a cool, war-criming operator instead of an extremely online wife-beating loser

If this monstrosity ever gets built, it's where their Nuremberg trials should be held before we put them in jail & tear it down.

2025 & no EDIT button. WTF!!!

Legendary writer Robert B. Parker wrote an episode of a TV series for Burt Reynolds starring Ricardo Montalban as a James Bond-style villain? It's true. I wrote about it and other TV works by Parker and Elmore Leonard for @crimereads.bsky.social crimereads.com/elmore-leona...

World-building through casual dialogue is a beautiful thing.