This one's looking like it's gonna have the goods youtu.be/q-Nn1B52Mx8?...

I once let two Mongolian dudes smuggle me through a Chinese border post fence

All this sounding super-familiar to people who paid attention to what was happening in Xinjiang in 2017-2018

Bluesky usually not great for this but trying anyway: anyone out there know of any experts on Taiwan defense procurement policy?

Brb sending this to everyone I know

Hate watch time

Begging any geopolitical "expert" saying "now is when China makes its move on Taiwan!!!" to Google basics such as "when is the weather good in the Taiwan Straits"

Let's play two :)

Checking in on the plan to preserve our finite, precious munitions stocks for Taiwan by denying them to Ukraine

If there's no boots on the ground it's not real war it's just sparkling hostilities.

Rip to one of the greats arstechnica.com/culture/2026...

The most interesting thing about this for me is Anthropic's judgement that an open rupture with the current admin is probably not a net negative for their business--very different from virtually every other major US tech company.

anyone out there seen any compelling applications of AI tools for open source research? specifically, surfacing sources or information that aren't easily identifiable through quick google searches. extra points if it's social media or China-related.

Kansas is doing Nazi stuff to transgender people. This is not about minors having surgery. This is about adults having the most basic civil rights.

Also I assume the women are gonna get like 6 foot tall towers of sushi and other incredible shit in Vegas lmao

Please note the MAGA voices celebrating Alysa Liu 🏅because her father fled China after protesting CCP policies would not allow her father to enter the U.S. today (Trump had stopped all refugee admissions except for some white South Africans).

Maybe. But something I've seen mentioned on Twitter but not yet here is that Alysa Liu's father, Arthur, was forced to flee China due to his involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. And that he successfully fled by way of Operation Yellowbird, a Hong Kong operation.

Over on the other place there's a lot of weird little guys who've spent the last week fixated on Eileen Gu, are now hailing Alysa Liu as the anti-Gu, and will turn on Liu immediately after she makes some vaguely political remarks at a press conference.

Once again, I am promising Democrats there are literally thousands of former department of justice people who will crawl over broken glass to prosecute this administration given the chance

“Oh! Uh, hey there, we were just taking a look at Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians and didn’t hear you knocking,” Danish skier Christian Borgnæs said

Someone (to whom I am very grateful) finally pointed me in the right direction on this one. Apparently is a designation under Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) archive.is/hLbJ6

TIL that the NYT savaged the 1908 play that introduced the term "melting pot" to the American lexicon. Bless the grey lady she has been forever herself.

Stealing this from a friend whom I think would prefer to remain uncredited, but the EU has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever

Maybe it's because I just finished The Mirror and the Light but Trump as latter-day Henry VIII feels...not totally un-apt?

BROKE: Australia should not develop nukes WOKE: Australia should develop nukes BESPOKE: Australia already developed nukes with the assistance of Aum Shinrikyo, as evidenced by the Banjawarn Station incident of 1993

maybe a quaint question at this particular moment in American history but does anyone know if there's an actual law creating the designation "supply chain risk" and allowing the Pentagon to impose the penalties this article cites? www.axios.com/2026/02/16/a...

Just doing my part of boost the Streisand Effect. www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ...

Might be time to update my favorite meme with a new mascot

Almost all the SOHO buildings in Beijing Zhang built with her husband were striking on the outside and absolute nightmares on the inside--dirty, dingy little spaces with tiny elevators, slapdash fittings and incomprehensible layouts. Utterly uninterested in her thoughts on urban administration.

Reread finished. The best Culture novel and the high-water mark for the space opera genre. Banks at the absolute peak of his powers.

Post an image you can hear.

Biggest surprise from this is Palo Alto having a fairly substantial corporate footprint inside China. Having a hard time understanding why a cybersecurity firm would make that call.

this may draw a lot of mockery On Here but it's true, the u.s. build a mount everest of soft power that it is now in the process of burning to ashes

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The moment you realize you're probably not going to finish the book

After defenestrating the National Endowment for Democracy--which was designed and run along expressly bipartisan lines--this is what they're replacing it with. Swapping democracy for MAGA about as on the nose as you can get.

Justice for USAID

What petition do I sign to make this happen?

C'mon arizona we were doing so good

Yeah so human beings might fly around the moon next week for the first time since 1972 (I think?) but there's so much going on that I'm not even sure people even know about it. gizmodo.com/nasa-picked-...

Excuse my language but why the fuck is Foreign Policy publishing an essay by Adam Tooze on the PLA purges? He has nothing of value to contribute beyond "he's pretty smart, I guess", and anyone paying the smallest attention to his X presence knows the guy has gotten the full United Front soapjob.

If this is true we're getting into some rarified air of PRC elite politics upheaval. Nothing will ever beat the Cultural Revolution, but even there Mao didn't purge the entire PLA top leadership at once.

Writer in the top 1% of writerly success: "Can't wait to alienate myself from my peers and audience to work with literally the worst boss in the world for a cool 80k a year."

No idea what Danny McBride is getting up to here a stone's throw away from Times Square but viral marketing campaign starts here I guess

I've been saying this for literal years, but American journalists desperately need training in how to report safely under authoritarianism because buddy it is here.

OH heyyyy! Where’s Mike Benz? Where’s Shellenberger? Where are the “CiA CIa ciA” screamers who should be horrified by domestic action? Tulsi is doing this so she can claim Venezuela etc helped rig the 2020 election. When you see her deployed, know she’s about to lie. www.wsj.com/politics/ele...

For many years the work of Washington Post foreign correspondents has been essential to my work and to my ability to understand the world at large. Its loss would leave us all--Jeff Bezos included--so much the poorer.

NYC five days after snow is still pretty beautiful as long as you don't look down