Nexus of transnational organised crime - Trump, Netanyahu, Putin. They play triangulation games.

very funny to watch the right construct these weird socio-racial categories like "heritage americans" just like the left did a decade ago. in both cases the effect is to divide their party

Europe has totally failed to preserve putin's sense of masculine self worth. When russia is forced to use nuclear weapons we'll know who to blame

why is it always “I’m against nuclear war so I think Ukraine should surrender” and never “I’m against nuclear war so I think states shouldn’t threaten nuclear war”

"Everything is absurd, but nothing is shocking, because everyone is accustomed to everything." Rousseau 260 years ago

too soon to say this was wrong?

I think this is what immunizes me from reactionary nostalgia: I had a miserable childhood. No thank you, I had my fill of leaded gasoline fumes and second-hand smoke the first time.

nostalgia becomes reactionary when it takes on a sense of entitlement: this was taken from me, and I want it back. But you can never get it back! It's like there is a very weird self-infantalization happening, everyone wants to go back to being a child and it's awful

a failed academic with a 25-year old grudge? yep checks out

A non-existent paper attributed to ‪Ben Williamson‬ has already been cited 42 times. It's like Scholarly Communication has been injected with misinformation bombs. Events are totally out of control. No one has a handle on its extent. And, there's no plan to stop it. @benpatrickwill.bsky.social

Seva Gunitsky argues “facts will not save” us, and that Historian and Translation roles might be the first jobs to get fully automated, but only because the “interpretative element of their labor” goes under-appreciated and gets dismissed as “bias.” buff.ly/6SeawVD #artificialintelligence #TechNews

was looking at some old files and wanted to share my academic job application record. I was on the market in 2010. 112 applications, 3 fly-outs, 2 offers. it was never especially easy, and I consider myself very lucky. but note the high denominator - that's just not possible today

russia saying the west is a bunch of degenerates yet still sending all the elite's children to live and study there remind me of magas who despise multiculturalism but love their tacos and pho; enjoying the fruits of liberal society while railing against its existence

russia really brings out the worst people from all sides, the tankies and the maga chuds united in defending one of the worst regimes on earth. best example of horseshoe theory since molotov-ribbentrop

Stalin, a supremely paranoid man, was positive Hitler would not invade Russia in 1941 because a two front war would obviously be very dumb. But it turns out dictators do very dumb things.

As someone who doubted that Putin would invade until a week before he did because he simply did not allot enough troops to achieve a stable occupation, the core lesson from 2022 is that even if a course of action is strategically stupid doesn't mean that a solipsistically deluded leader won't do it

ok so maybe I was wrong when I said Putin would never invade. and maybe I was wrong when I said Putin will win in a week and we should not help. But now we’re here, and I'm going to tell you what putin is thinking, and I’m going to do it in the most patronizing way possible

people ask me my political affiliation. I belong to an obscure branch of marxism that completely rejects marx

good time to remember that trump's only objection to the war on terror was that we "didn't take the oil", like some kind of absurd parody of the bush administration

one of the ways that Joe Manchin was very damaging to the Dem party as a whole was the way he'd go on television all the time to talk about how the rest of his party sucked nobody should ever make the mistake of thinking MTG is on their side but "Republican on TV saying Republicans suck" is helpful

Everyone wants to make “sense” of things, but we are all currently hostage to an irrationalist epistemic environment. You might as well just read the entrails of a slaughtered goat to divine where events are headed.

the return of anti-semitism is probably permanent due to a confluence of several structural reasons: - fading of the living memory of the holocaust - the end of liberal hegemony - Israel's behavior (esp when it equates zionism w judaism) - tech-driven conspiratorial epistemic fragmentation

Terrific litte piece. Made my wife Sara laugh out loud several times when I read it to her.

I think it is possible that Russia might invade European countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, primarily because the Russian state keeps saying it wants to invadw European countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland

Short. Brutal. Excellent.

THEY are lying to you. But if you follow my strategy I will lead you to a better life. open.substack.com/pub/hegemon/...

kind of surprising given attention span trajectory that short films have not become more culturally relevant

don draper's handsomeness is too overwhelming on first watch so it took me until the second watch to realize he's actually kind of a loser

In the U.S. students get the chance to experience mass shootings at multiple education levels. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

you hate chomsky for posing with bannon, i hate chomsky for denying genocides going back decades we are not the same

just realized truman capote, oliver sacks, david cedaris and jonah lehrer were all New Yorker writers. maybe time to put its “vaunted” fact-checking reputation to rest

a big mistake liberals make is assuming their opponents are capable of shame. erase that thought and proceed accordingly

Hugely important though because we thought this era was about geo-political competition, but these guys do not care about national self-interest so this neo-royalism or emergent network of personalist authoritarians may be as if not more important than US v China or US v Russia.

This is why many consider Nazarbayev one of the statesmen of the era

learning about how Nazarbaev prepared for his famous drinking bouts with yeltsin. he would line his stomach with olive oil and step away occasionally to throw up. rinse repeat. this is the president of Kazakhstan btw yeltsin would just slam the vodka and pass out like a simple soul

why the fuck does every coffee shop feel like an airport lounge. metal on white on blonde wood. I want the maximalist old couches vibe of the '90s. I am becoming a coffee shop reactionary

a friend complained that professors are too anti AI. There’s a good reason! We’ve been swimming in AI slop before most people knew what it was. oh you were upset the Boston Review or whatever had an AI book list? we’ve been reading slop essays by the hundreds, let us complain a bit while we adjust

i asked chat gpt to fact check an article for me

it is now more important than ever to become an enormous snob

Not only is this 100% correct, but because of the ultra-high net worth individuals we’re dealing w/what you have is a gigantic insider threat & counterintelligence problem. 1/

very stupid for any democrat to be performatively blasé about dearborn. at the same time, it would be nice for the left to display an iota of self reflection and occasionally admit they were wrong

Computer, please summarize everything PG Wodehouse ever wrote in ten seconds

one reason "great power competition" is a bad description of the emerging order is that an interlinked global kleptocracy does not care about national interests or rivalries

who would win in a drinking contest between hegseth and medvedev

A chapter in Hegseth’s book is literally titled “More Lethality, Less Lawyers.” It’s almost as if there were signs!

Seems like a weird thing to tweet on the day when your boss said he’d pardon someone convicted of sending 400 tons of cocaine into the US.

marxism for me is the ultimate "love the band hate the fans" school of thought. the Tool of ideologies

the real question is how long russia can keep jangling keys in front of trump's people

My microwave sings a little song when my Hot Pocket is done. Should it have the right to vote?

in the course of musk's pronatalist crusade he implemented one of the largest single policy inflicted child death events of the 21st century so this is par for the course