can't make this sh!t up:

A reminded that Giorgio Agamben doesn't mess around.

Not the Onion. Dropping the olive branch from the dime isn’t just a design choice: it’s a cultural signal.

History is full of regime-change attempts that assume removing a leader will spark quick transformation. More often, it collapses authority and produces fragmentation, conflict, and long instability. smallwarsjournal.com/2026/03/12/w...

Can Franz Ferdinand--this time--help avoid a World War? “These warmongering murderers are using our music without our consent. This makes us both nauseous and furious. Kind of typical though, isn’t it? To strut up and take what isn’t theirs with a vile arrogance…” www.nme.com/news/music/f...

Sapir & Whorf argued that language doesn’t just describe reality; it helps shape it. Sometimes a language gives you a word for an emotion you’ve carried for years without knowing its name. It makes it conspicuous. It makes it real. It can even let you articulate it to others.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But not all problems are the same. In LOTR, when faced with a problem force he can’t solve, Boromir uses force anyway —because it’s the only solution his system recognizes. smallwarsjournal.com/2026/03/06/w...

I don't think these people misunderstand who the bad guy is. They idolize the obvious villains because they aspire to *be* villains.

A public park in Tehran may have been bombed after an AI system flagged the word “Police” in its name. I’ve written about AI-mediated and human-in-the-loop targeting systems where hierarchy can push ethical decisions downstream. From January: smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/30/c...

It's always easier to predict the past than it is the future. But, the best predictor of the future is often past behavior. This piece is from back in December. smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/12/w...

As Patrick Porter observes, regime-change ops frequently reflect “a whiff of...hubristic swagger." Policymakers assume that removing leadership will produce political transformation. In practice, however, it often produces fragmentation, internal conflict, and prolonged instability.

Iran is the baby in Solomon’s court. Some are willing to see it cut in half—war, sanctions, chaos—if it means they might inherit the pieces. But Solomon’s wisdom echoes across time: Love that is willing to destroy the child in order to possess it is not real love at all. #Iran

Lazio fans' graffiti about their hated club owner. #SSLazio #Lazio

"The descent into Hell is easy." —Virgil, The Aeneid, book 6

Los Angeles is called Tehrangeles b/cause when the Shah was overthrown, his lackies fled there. They used official positions in businesses, the Shah’s court, & the gov. to line their pockets. Many had houses over here already. After the Revolution, they took whatever else they could and fled. 1/2

Bombs move faster than bad intelligence. A war that doesn't, or can’t, tell a military base from a girls’ elementary school isn’t strategy—it’s a moral catastrophe. newrepublic.com/post/207199/...

Between the Jallad (Butcher) Khamenei regime and its lies and the insipid bloodthirsty monarchists in the diaspora and the treacherous MEK clowns in Albania, I feel like I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

Khamenei’s death does not mean the collapse of the regime—not yet anyway—because its security, bureaucracy, and ideological institutions are deeply entrenched. 1/2

Who are the in-groups, whom the law protects but does not bind, and who are the out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect?

"Israel says" is not serious journalism.

The findings that come from an DNA studies fascinate me. The fact that DNA can even be extracted from ancient bones (and sometimes teeth) is amazing. Ancient DNA Reveals Europe’s Last Hunter-Gatherers Survived Thousands of Years Longer Than Expected share.google/WJYszOE4b4PE...

NEW: ProPublica recently reported that the U.S. Forest Service knowingly issued protective gear containing PFAS to wildland firefighters. The agency says it has now stopped distributing those garments. By @abestreep.bsky.social

Finding it hard to respect Il Capitano Paolo Maldini more than I already did, but there we go ⬇️🫂 #FreeIran #IranMassacre So many people quiet but he is using his voice 🙏🏻

My latest argues that ethical failure under authority is less about blind obedience than about judgment being forced too quickly. Ethical failure isn’t blind obedience. It’s certainty that arrives too soon. smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/30/c...

My latest #SmallWarsJournal. The old U.S. security theology is fracturing, while Washington still navigates by a broken mirror. smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/17/b...

Peter Thiel (2010): if your ideas are too toxic to win votes, use technology to bypass democracy and seize power.

I feel seen.

Behind the high walls of their $3.6m lakefront mansion lies a dark-guarded reality: “Peter” is actually Parviz Sabeti, the head of SAVAK & chief torturer of the Shah, now facing a $225m civil lawsuit in Florida for atrocities committed in Iran. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Easy wins can teach the wrong lessons. My latest piece looks at Japan’s rise and fall, and what it teaches us about Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Iran, and the shifting balance with China. Hubris, not defeat, is often the fatal blow. smallwarsjournal.com/2025/09/15/e... #FragileAdversary #Meiji

Finally, science confirms what politics and dating apps have hinted at for years.

Thrilled to see @patporter76.bsky.social's new book "How to Survive a Hostile World" coming out. At a time when ideologues, charlatans, and worse peddle rhetoric and false comforts, this promises to be the realist’s healthy antidote. I have already ordered it!

We have liftoff! With thanks to @stanfordpress. To be launched in Oxford with @OxfordCCW, details to follow. Coming in October.

My latest: "Note how hard it is not to slip into considering leaders and followers as being opposites, if you’re not a leader—then you must be a follower. This isn’t really true, for both are roles in a setting...trying to achieve some common goal." smallwarsjournal.com/2025/08/20/c...

Ozzy Osbourne Prince of Darkness, voice of rebellion. You shook the world and never bowed. Bit the bat by mistake, broke the rules on purpose, Pissed on the Alamo, Raised hell—and sometimes, made it beautiful. Rest in Peace.

America confuses destruction with leverage. Iran confuses survival with sovereignty. Somewhere in between, deterrence mutates—and diplomacy dies on the vine. My latest piece elaborates: smallwarsjournal.com/2025/07/17/i...

Three-parent babies: because nothing says progress like rewriting the human blueprint before we’ve fixed daycare. www.bbc.com/news/article...

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” -Greedo, probably.

I've waited a while to publish this. A Persian-born sharpshooter, he fought in the US Civil War not out of nationalism, but forged by camaraderie, ritual, and shared struggle. His story invites us to stop thinking like states—and start thinking like soldiers. smallwarsjournal.com/2025/07/11/j...

Careful what you wish for, it might become true. www.bbc.com/news/article...

The Green Berets don’t face an identity crisis, they face meaning creep. Quiet influence drifts to kinetic validation. SF’s core problem isn’t what they do, but why. Mission hasn’t changed, meaning has. We argue it’s time to reclaim their unique space. www.jsou.edu/Press/Public...

Schrödinger's foreign policy: Burn the bridge, rebuild it, then charge tolls.

You would think that it would be important to note that this point also works in the opposite direction. That it's significant to address it. But, I guess that is beyond CNN's [checks notes] "journalism."

If you care about real political change in Iran, you should welcome the ceasefire. War stalls the grassroots and demographic shifts reshaping Iran from within. But the real obstacle now is the deep trust deficit—the Iranians see little good faith now from Israel or the U.S.

Orcas with loofahs?! Scientists just caught killer whales red-handed... using kelp to groom each other. Tool use in the ocean just got way cooler. theconversation.com/drone-footag...

So much theater on all sides—the ghost of Baudrillard is here.

Kierkegaard’s Parable of the Clown-A fire breaks out backstage. A clown warns the crowd but they think it’s part of the act. He pleads; they laugh louder. Ends w/ this chilling line: “That’s how the world will end. Not with screams, but with applause—from people who believe it’s all just a joke.”

Israelis calling on ethnic minorities in Iran to rise up likely don’t even know that khamenei and the current president (and the leader of negotiations who was murdered) are all ethnic minorities.

The world: teetering on nuclear war, climate collapse, and AI doom. Antarctica: sends mysterious signals defying physics. Me: Things were already spiraling. If it's Cthulhu stirring, I say let it wrap us all in its mighty tentacles. www.livescience.com/physics-math...

This article reads like a victory lap for a specific geopolitical imagination—one that believes in neat endings, in the idea that military strikes erase ideology, narratives of meaning, and that firepower equals finality. 1/6 t.co/PsmlarqFj1