I didn't know who @polphilpod.bsky.social was before this year, but he's rapidly become one of the few writers who consistently makes sense to me. Feels like stumbling on a oasis in the desert. Anyway, I strongly endorse every word of this piece:

“The strong do what they can" is what Athens said right before destroying itself. New piece on the Carney Doctrine, Vaclav’s grocer, and American hubris. hegemon.substack.com/p/the-strong...

Hoewel ik mensen ken die via zo'n programma goed terecht zijn gekomen, strookt dit wel met wat ik gehoord heb over deze industrie. Je moet er alleen maar ingaan als je ook een degelijk exit-plan voor ogen hebt, want je wilt er echt niet op langere termijn in vast komen te zitten.

The New World asked me to speak to some British trans women about what life has been like for them over the past few years - here's what they had to say, in their own words: www.thenewworld.co.uk/marie-le-con...

Apparently some people have been wondering lately about whether it's OK to despise Americans as a group because of the actions of their government, and I'm going to stick my neck out and say no that is not OK

It's so exhausting to to be constantly told by American leaders that the defining policy of the 80 odd years during which the US became the most wealthy and powerful country in the history of the world was a grossly unfair failure for them.

New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

THIS btw, through every study that’s ever been done on it, has been proven to be the biggest cause of piracy.

Daniel Hannan in the Mail turns fully against Trump. It’s easy to mock - any idiot should have seen this is where a 2nd Trump term would end up, and his cheerleaders were his enablers. But if you truly want to defeat MAGA you need to hope millions of people (and papers) make a similar pivot to this

Undefeated 👇 -- in a brief polisci blog comment, a classical music composer was more insightful than most of my field's textbooks.

I think a lot of Americans are unprepared for how insanely bad things will get if Trump actually goes for this, but conversely a lot of people on here are underrating how fast things will get memory holed and smoothed over if there’s a climb down

In a speech to the World Economic Forum, Mark Carney says middle powers such as Canada must accept that the rules-based international order is effectively dead, and great power rivalry with is here to stay. Key excerpt:

De logica achter China’s gezinsplanningsbeleid was van meet af aan wankel, net als de cijfers die het decennialang legitimeerden. De 35 jaar durende eenkindpolitiek onthult een dodelijke systeemfout in het Chinese bestuur — waarvoor het land nu de rekening betaalt.

5/ The irony is, of course, that the vision of USA as global village mayor offers the most possible international influence for US elites. But as the total political hegemony and total economic dominance started to fade, a layer of IS capital started to back this vision of US as local mafia boss.

Be yourself AND be a unicorn.

Government as the ultimate mutual aid, cooperation, consent, and sexual autonomy are concepts that don't make sense in a worldview where only the strong survive. There's so much to do to educate the bystanders and the malcontents about what the right wing is doing. Please share if you could! /end

my experience rewatching both armitage poly-matrix and the armitage III OVAs makes me feel that "sound premise, good art direction, and memorable characters can rescue a fundamentally inert plot" is a generalizable lesson for a lot of anime

Fascinating, and reminds me of the Glorious Revolution. Anglophone histories oft view it as a domestic affair, framing William III as acting at the behest of parliament. Whereas Dutch sources reveal the GR as a carefully orchestrated hostile takeover by William III with parliamentary collaboration.

Nature valentines. This comic is now available as a set of 6 Valentines cards: topatoco.com/collections/...

Surprised to find of myself that I in fact on the whole enjoyed Starfleet Academy ep.1. I continue to think that the thing New Trek writers have been best at is goofy humour, and it contained plenty of that. Lean into your strengths!

/4 There’s not a lot of point in engaging with people about their emotions outside a therapeutic or relationship-based context and it seems like a poor use of time to do so.

This is actually a huge and underreported aspect of this situation. WE ALL HAVE SHIT TO DO. Got to work in the morning. Got to get our kids to school, if in fact the schools are open. Life was hard ALREADY and NOW we have to live with THIS taking all our valuable time, energy, and brain space.

I honestly don't care. My politics right now are "do they seem like they will fight back against MAGA" and I don't care apart from that. There's plenty of leftists hiding under the bedsheets and moderates actually doing things, as well as vice versa.

“This tribe hopes to ward off multiple catastrophes at once by following its trusted method: wait until adversaries act, then respond feebly. … All have been rigorously trained to think inside the box.” Not sure whether I should nod along, or feel seen. By @simonkuper.bsky.social

@jessiegender.bsky.social made an awesome overall view of the first 6 episodes of Starfleet Academy.I left my personal comments on the video... as usual, a well worth the watch video. And in today's economy towards creators, leave your view and leave your like <3 www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HqV...

Deze week in @groene.nl, mijn analyse van de nu toch echt verschuivende norm rond alcohol. De industrie maakt zich zorgen...

Before publicly celebrating terrible things happening to bad people, maybe don't just ask yourself if such statements are "fair" or if those people "deserve" what's happening to them... Maybe ask yourself: "Will this help?" and "Is this healthy?" And take a moment if the answer to both is "No."

This scene is not actually in my memoir—it’s from the anthology The Out Side—but it’s in the spirit of the book

Bari Weiss Is The Symptom - defector.com/bari-weiss-i...

It's actually a good thing that previously apolitical normies are finally getting angry and starting to speak out. We need the numbers in the streets and at the polls. If your response to them is "no, fuck you, too late," then you don't actually care about stopping Trump. You're just preening.

Try to make it a welcoming place for them with civil discourse, even if you disagree with them. By all means make that clear but do so courteously. Let them see what they’ve been missing and make this the best place for political discourse.

"if there is a sickness eating away at American democracy, it is our culture of elite impunity. Trump is at once a symptom of this disease and its apotheosis" www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/o...

If you are anxious and sad about the state of the world, that's fine, and there are plenty of strategies for dealing with that. But I think you already know that drive-by online dooming isn't a strategy. It's selfish and adolescent. It's a contagion that only spreads the worst of you, not the best.

If I can make something that helps someone else create the space I have when I read a book or whatever I'm doing to rest, then I have to do that. I can't not do that, especially when what I do feels pointless.

Editorial in the National Catholic Reporter: "The vice president's comments justifying the death of Renee Good are a moral stain on the collective witness of our Catholic faith. His repeated attempts to blame Good for her own death are fundamentally incompatible with the Gospel."

No one who treated "wear a mask when you enter this store" as horrific tyranny actually believe in deference to state authority. It's Schmittian friend-enemy politics all the way down. "We" should be able to do whatever we feel like without consequence. "They" should be harassed, repressed, killed.

Thucydides did not write the Melian Dialogue for people to forget Athens lost the Peloponnesian War.

I understand disagreeing with Yglesias on all his takes. I don't understand what path to victory is being imagined by the people on this site who can't even share a social media space, let a lone a political coalition, with centrists like him.

Yes, so while some people are saying this aggression is caused by US economic interests I would turn that causality on its head and say that existing US economic strength is merely the underlying enabling context which allows this kind of Kraft durch Freude to manifest in a seemingly untethered way.

some identify publicly with the left because they hate oppression, others because they hate being oppressed. things will make more sense when you keep in mind that these are not the same - or even similar

Trump’s populism isn’t totalitarian – but Hannah Arendt’s writings shows why that reassurance can be dangerous. A timely warning for global politics. @eastangliabylines.co.uk

I am again tapping the classic movie clip: youtu.be/PDBiLT3LASk?...

The winning move for Germany, of course, would have been to leverage trade and industrialization to become the economic powerhouse at the center of a Europe at peace. Which was also the winning move in 1914, alas, not taken then either.

It's worth reading the whole interview in full. It basically verifies that the NYT has spent the past decade-plus doubling down on top-down narratives for coverage, getting more intense over time. Sulzberg personally picked & chose whom the news apparatus would target and whom it would kiss up to.

Going to mentally slot in “voluntarily reestablish social, economic, and political guardrails” just after @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social’s “bring back shame” in my mental model of the way out of this. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/o...

Something which appalls me every Christmas and New Year in the Netherlands: how many people seem to think it’s fine and normal to drive home after 3, 4, 5, 6 drinks. It happens constantly. No-one minds. But YOU’RE GOING TO FUCKING KILL SOMEONE you fool. Get a lift, or call a cab. It’s not hard!

Eindelijk kan Balkenende terugblikken op zijn vier kabinetten. De documentaire De storm van Balkenende geeft soms onthullende inkijkjes. Niet zozeer dankzij als wel ondánks de oud-premier.

Trots en ontroerd www.theguardian.com/music/2025/d...