They did it because they could.

Josh Marshall on the mistaken assumption that there is “a” reason why we attacked Venezuela. I have an odd perspective on this, since I spent ages fixating on the analogous question about Iraq. It started when I noticed that none of the books about how we went to war in Iraq mentioned a DECISION.

my sense is this: not only are trump and rubio and hegseth lying to the public about the purposes, impact, planning, etc of the attack on venezuela. they are lying to each other. they have no idea what they're doing or where this ends.

Screaming "wtf" and waiting for a spontaneous uprising is going to discourage you. There won't be a spontaneous uprising. That's just not where the people are at. Organize for the long term. Build community. Build resilience. Have a strategy for whatever corner of this thing you're working on.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act is a law, passed by Congress on November 19 with an overwhelming vote. Complying with it was not optional. The Department of Justice did not comply. I want to make sure this is very clear.

vibes-based international chaos

People acting like this is all new. America caused ALL of the problems because of oil. They first installed the dictator Shah in Iran in exchange for 40% of Iranian oil shares. He ruled and oppressed the Iranian people for 25 years, leading to anti-American sentiment

Literally a publication for eight-year olds 40 years ago

We keep trying to solve systemic issues with individual blame, and it just doesn’t work. Children are humans in our communities. They take up space. It is what it is.

The very things that annoy you about kids are the same reasons y’all get on here saying you hate small talk and don’t speak to your neighbors. It’s hyper-individualism. It’s easier to project that discomfort onto the most vulnerable rather than examine how disconnected we’ve all become.

I feel like letting every president of my lifetime get away with Unlimited War Crimes was a serious mistake

Laura Tingle with a bit of Australian understatement: “It’s not really legal to nick someone else’s head of state.”

"The Monroe Doctrine was basically a justification by the United States to exercise force in Latin America. And that was renounced by President Franklin Roosevelt as part of a shift away from the idea that states could use force whenever they wanted to." 🗃️

The Guardian just got a bunch of eminent international law people to comment www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

with alt-text:

Trump has no interest in governing - but he loves the pageantry of the presidency and the power to order violence while “looking strong.” He has no coherent ideology, but a worldview defined by reactionary grievances and an insatiable impulse to dominate. An incredibly dangerous combination.

Seen at an anti-war protest in Manhattan today.

the dooms not gonna scroll itself

I think it’s important to frame what’s happening as fully outside the realm of normal governance because framing it as a policy or even legal dispute grants it undue legitimacy. These are crimes that merit - require, really - a stronger response than a transition of power

I think the most straightforward framing that captures the severity of the situation is that the government of the United States has been seized by a mad authoritarian regime not meaningfully distinct from Putin or Kim or, well, Maduro, and its members must be brought to harsh justice

they have literally never gotten over the Obama situation room photo for the bin Laden raid

Impeach, convict, remove, imprison.

Been on my "AI" + magic + history +religious studies + philosophy + technology academic career bullshit for fully 20 years now. Huh.

In the last half of 2025, the President of OpenAI donated $25 million to the SuperPAC MAGA, Inc — the single largest contributor

Never ever teach the algorithm what you like

Sunrise is not the sort of place you visit with a grocery list. Rather, you show up with bags, check the wheel of deals and plan your meals accordingly. 🥬

✊✊✊

If, being incredibly charitable, you didn’t intend to make a CSAM robot, not immediately turning off the CSAM robot when you find out you accidentally made a CSAM robot should still get you put in the magnetic boots prison from Face/Off

Do people know that there are almost 1 million Muslims in NYC? Where are the stories about how Muslims are feeling about the first Muslim Mayor in NYC?

1. Headlines everywhere today read "Grok apologizes." This is bullshit. A chatbot is not something that can apologize. Pretending otherwise is simple laundering these companies' bullshit about what AI is, while diffusing blame away from the human beings that developed and released this system.

"AI" is and for a very long time has been a term used for obfuscation, occultation, and sleight of hand; but any sufficiently transparent magic is indistinguishable from technology. muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...

By the way...

This is a thread of major media outlets falsely anthropomorphising the "Grok" chatbot program and in doing so, actively and directly removing responsibility and accountability from individual people working at X who created a child pornography generator (Elon Musk, Nikita Bier etc) #1: Reuters

deleting a white supremacist dating site live onstage while dressed as the pink power ranger has got to be one of the most cathartic hacker experiences

For some reason I'm thinking of that time the Reddit CEO, unprompted and unforced, blurted out that she was at Epstein parties but never went to the Crime Area where they did crimes.

Like if an economic disrupting thing is hated and feared unusually vehemently by Americans you can pretty much always just be like "oh this is because of their lack of social safety net" and you'll never be wrong

“We will take all your jobs and destroy humanity and the Earth! Also we’re going to force this into everything now, and you have to use it to train your replacement or you’re fired. Oh, and it kills kids and makes CSAM and revenge porn, as a treat” Why don’t people like this? A mystery for the ages

Why do people set goals of the number of books they'll read? Is your reading a chore? Don't you enjoy it?

The biggest trending topic on social media is how Elon Musks’s generative AI tool grok is being used to make CSAM and other explicit and abusive content. But it’s not being covered by media or spoken by elected officials.

Pretty sure SCOTUS Bush v Gore is pretty directly responsible for a lot of this, in no small part by likely resulting in the much broader decision in Citizens United v FEC that made money speech for corporations. That not only led p directly to Trump winning but also rightward pressure on Dems.

In particular, every school shooting should come with a chorus of us talking about Scalia, Thomas, and Gorsuch’s ties to gun-loving billionaires and hanging the gun violence epidemic around their necks. As a parent who deals with shooting drills: parents are looking for people to blame.

As someone who grew up in red PA and did not hunt deer but won a rifle shooting Cub Scout trophy— My position is Dem politicians should lead with “the corrupt court made up a new 2nd Amendment while being bribed” as the way to explain the corruption to the public.

The liberal nonprofit and political world should be classifying each SCOTUS decision since Sept 29, 2005 when John Roberts took his seat. Classified as consistent with longstanding law and precedent or not. Made-up doctrines of the Roberts court like the MQD and gun “history and tradition” should

Here’s that speech from Raskin. Everyone should watch it. And especially every scientist should watch it, given the posture of the Roberts Court on administrative law principles that create the foundation on which #NIH and NSF are built. @altnih4science.bsky.social

I am a broken record but: this will require Supreme Court reform. There is no chance the John Roberts Six allow prosecutions of Trump officials to stand. 1/

My man looks like he has an anime body pillow he cheats on

Nothing is a given, but 2026 could be the year we break the regime. If nothing else, it comes to a head in November, when they try to cancel/steal/invalidate the midterms. The question isn't can we break them. The question is who stands in the way of moving forward afterwards. ../

Do we just reset to 2015 and go through all this shit all over again? And again and again? Do we get a second reconstruction agenda that puts us in better position to fight for still more? Or do we smash it all down and let a new earth rise? Who the fuck knows. Let's find out.