(This is from more than a month ago, not “just.”)

This is why it's also important for domestic elected officials to condemn it as "illegal" and not just gripe about consultation. This is the stuff upon which international law is built. The prohibition against piracy wasn't some entity declaring it illegal worldwide, it was a custom built over time.

For nonlawyers, it’s worth noting that statements like this have—as a formal matter—important legal effects as a matter of international law. If such statements are *not* made, and in volume, future arguments that Trump’s invasion sets a legal precedent will stand on much firmer legal ground.

Either it was a limited operation merely to arrest Maduro and move on, or, it is an ongoing major regime change committment that will open up a transition including international and private sector partners. It really can't be both

a lot of interesting revelations between the lines of this story www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

The most disturbing presidential press conference I have ever seen. fallows.substack.com/p/blind-into... (First 3/4ths before paywall.)

The case of the Twitter purchase shows the bad media strategy from Biden-era top Democrats. They were “indifferent” to a far-right billionaire oligarch buying a key element of our information infrastructure. www.semafor.com/article/12/1...

Why would we expect anyone to rally around Trump in the first place? Nobody wanted this war. Nobody believes that Venezuela poses any threat to the US. Everyone knows we could walk away immediately and face no consequences.

This might be the only Democratic response I’ve seen that is appropriate

if marco rubio and pete hegseth die of natural causes it should be in the hague

News editor of @mississippifreepress.org with a much better sense of journalism than this guy placed by Bari Weiss in the anchor chair.

I mean given that he is constitutionally barred from re-election what exactly can you call this other than legalized bribery?

The split-screen here is unbelievable - first from yesterday, the others from 2017. Musk’s Twitter has truly driven us mad. People absorb far more of their beliefs from their social environment than they realize, and we’ve created an environment where being a gutter bigot is the baseline expectation

Would like to say this was my most prescient piece of 2025, but turns out I wrote it in 2024 😇 www.offmessage.net/p/the-new-gi...

Here is the editor of Tablet agreeably reposting someone calling nonwhite NYC immigrants "worthless biotrash." It's astonishing how quickly this stuff has escaped containment

People of significant influence, including official gov accounts, keep talking in ways that are deeply influenced by the neo-Nazi wing of white supremacy, and it's not major national story that this is happening. I read that as an indictment of the editors of national media orgs.

what’s happening with grok and nudity spam requests should be a global wake up call about AI image gen and instead very few media outlets have even covered it yet

AI companies are playing a game wherein these computer programs are presented to the public as autonomous individuals capable of issuing a meaningful apology. The machine is just a machine. Human beings owe the apology for building the machine irresponsibly and unleashing it on the world.

so x dot com’s ai generated CSAM and they admitted it may violate US law and … i haven’t seen in anyone in power say much at all or call to stop using the platform

Mamdani’s message is as American as apple pie, and that’s why he drives reactionaries of many different political stripes crazy.

Trump’s Tangled Web of Deal-Making, Policy and Riches An illustrated guide of the first year of profiteering. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

In July, Brian Beutler @brianbeutler.bsky.social wrote this excellent piece on why the Epstein scandal proves that Trump is unfit for the presidency and must be impeached: www.offmessage.net/p/trump-epst...

I'm entirely serious about this: until you internalize the view that urban America is Real America, you won't see the urgency of structural reform of an American government whose fundamental structures so disadvantage its population centers—the great engines of its prosperity, progress, & culture.

take them home, physicists

They're going to *throw out* one-of-a-kind NASA archives?! Not even a year since the Inauguration & we're already at the 2nd-time-as-farce version of the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

SMITH says he had evidence that Trump directly ordered alleged co-conspirators to call senators on the evening of Jan. 6 to try to continue delaying the vote ceritification. He also had evidence that Bannon said Trump was still "on fire" on evening of Jan. 6.

The GOP’s midterm strategy is literally just Comet Pizza

Everybody New Years Steve

21 predictions for 2026, low confidence but plausible, which I find is the best way to do predictions and then feign clairvoyance. www.offmessage.net/p/my-non-pre...

The plan here seems pretty clear: Deputize the right and turn right-wing cultural warriors into an occupying army.

Isn’t the product supposed to be good for a while before the enshittification phase begins?

WSJ breaks significant news reporting that Mar-a-Lago’s spa *for years* regularly sent young staffers to Epstein’s home purportedly to give him massages, contorts its scoop to find a more flattering angle for Trump, and still gets an icy blast of a comment from Leavitt. www.wsj.com/us-news/trum...

“having to mask made me go fash” is so common and it’s just baffling I mean, yes, it was annoying to wear one all the time? it also wasn’t that big a deal? if, today, someone asks me to put a mask on I go “ok” and put one on and yet so many people treat it as a life-ruining imposition

Newly unsealed docs show DOJ moved to prosecute Kilmar Abrego Garcia for smuggling only after it became clear Trump might not be able to deport him. Sure looks driven by a desire to punish him for fighting back against Trump/Miller lawlessness. Trump had to be right. www.cbsnews.com/news/abrego-...

My half-serious predictions from a year ago were actually pretty good! www.offmessage.net/p/brians-202...

During the first impeachment one thing we learned is there likely was stored information with similar kinds of corrupt exchanges with foreign leaders. We don't know the content of them, and the first impeachment inquiry made a conscious decision not to try to find out.

This is not hard. Artists are not responsible for ensuring the Kennedy Center remains relevant and successful. The center’s board is responsible for that, in a fiduciary way. All of this energy being directed at artists should be re-directed at the board.

But step back and look at the machinery and you see how sturdy this media/WH infrastructure is. If they want to make a humiliating Democratic scandal the biggest story in the country, they can do it. Dems who think it'll go away if they "win" with local media are going to lose.

[shoving yeats into a locker] how’s the gyre fuckass

This is *not* refuted by noting that McConnell behaved differently days later. The whole point is that the peak of his vulnerability to breaking from his partisan loyalty was likely in the hours after he was almost killed in an attempt to overthrow the government.

Agree. This is a bad video (from the generally strong WSJ news team) that takes McMahon/Trump/Fuentes "Oh, we care so much about antisemitism, let's fight Harvard" BS at face value. The paper and this reporter are generally better than this.

@wsj.com's video are usually well done. Not this one. Goes off the rails with Trump threats to university funding over "antisemitism." Sec of Ed tells a false story that Jewish students were locked in a Columbia library and terrorized. Never happened! Reporter Doug Belkin doesn't challenge it.

Here is Roger Ebert's review of Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo from 22 years ago. It was one of those movies which somehow insulted Rog in the way that would get him foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. www.rogerebert.com/reviews/deuc...

The president of the United States running ops with a former KGB officer in bare daylight.

Gen Z men learning that voting for "I can say the r-word now" is perhaps less important than "I have no savings and I can't get laid."

An entire feature-length profile about her in the New York Times, the paper of record, that not *one single time* mentions that she's a rabid antisemite. When she does her real apology for that wake me up.

“Teeth are a privilege.”

Julie K. Brown is a reporter for the Miami Herald who did groundbreaking work on Epstein beginning in 2018, including groundbreaking work on the disgusting coverup by Alex Acosta. Her travel itinerary was released with some of the Epstein files. It appears the DOJ was monitoring her in 2019.

It's important for everyone to understand that this was by design by The Powers That Be, who experienced existential panic in the first half of Biden's first term as workers had a favorable job market for the first time in two decades. They put in huge effort to stopping it.

It rules how we are six months out from trump going UHHH OBAMA WROTE THE FILES LEAVE ME ALONE, and we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg of the obvious reason why he did that, all while thinking You miserable maga hogs will gobble up anything lol