If Russia collapses, can we just not give the next smaller Russia a seat on the UN Security Council?

Crux of the argument: “...the United States should pare back Golden Dome and adapt the endeavor to prioritize national-scale preferential point defense (PPD), prioritizing a narrow set of military, critical infrastructure, and nuclear command, control, and communication targets.”

Too many “self-reliance” folks tend to tout the virtue of being able to do everything for yourself. This can lead to an antisocial worldview. Knowing “how stuff works” on the other hand can mean you know how to value essential trade labor and you build relationships with experts to maintain stuff.

What was the last idea that changed U.S. nuclear strategy for the better?

Swamp Thing. His roux has the gumbo filé that brings the lowland’s funk.

The US, Venezuela, UK, and the IAEA collaborated to remove legacy HEU fuel from the RV-1 reactor (decommissioned in 1991). The fuel has arrived in the US, where the plan is to recover the uranium and downblend it into HALEU for reuse www.iaea.org/newscenter/p... #NukeSky

Stark contrast with Russia who make nuclear threats when oil gets too cheap.

This is a threat to use nuclear weapons because oil is getting more expensive.

This amazing image really captures the Tennessee fight and it's all over the internet. I am reposting it to encourage people to credit photographer Nicole Hester and the Tennessean.

Rough day to be a Tennessean.

If folks were honestly assessing LLM human-like qualities and not projecting/reflecting our own desires, it would probably be addictive-borderline-multiple personality, narcissistic, nihilistic, sociopathic, sadistic, manipulative, obsessive compulsive, co-dependency. Still untrue but honest.

Dawkins as the professor from The Blue Angel (1930)

$4.34 a Gallon in Flyover Country.

OK, this is genuinely hilarious and amazing. Watch and listen for 20 seconds or so. This is the sound of THE FUTURE. Anyone who doesn't want more of this is being LEFT BEHIND.

when we mourn le guin, we mourn one of our greatest writers & thinkers. but we also mourn one of our all-time greatest haters

The real seashell assassin remains at large! Would be really great if they spent months tracking them down to testify, and it was like a tribute to the 86 members of their class of ‘47 that joined the Navy.

Up until last year, I thought it was universally understood w/o any controversy that the term 86 as used in restaurants means to remove the dish or ingredient from the menu until you restocked. In a political context it might mean to make sure a candidate isn’t an option. Impeachment does that.

Local communities should decide what they want to live near, but this isn’t a secret nuclear op. “using advanced computation to ensure the safety and reliability of our existing stockpile” actually is “weapons research.” The author suggests there’s a bait and switch, but these are the same thing.

Frank Miller & Frank Rose argue to make NNSA an independent agency reporting directly to POTUS with clearer budgetary procurement in Congress. They also do the thing: every policy argument is required to say POTUS could do something no one else could do, define a legacy, be bigger than Reagan, etc.

If publicly traded companies leave billions on the table from illegally collected tariffs to appease Trump, can shareholders sue them?

Why decapitation complicates war termination: "We saw that there is an absolute fracture inside Iran between the negotiators and the military — with neither side having access to the supreme leader, who is not responsive" www.axios.com/newsletters/...

The WaPo editorial board when Republicans gerrymander in Texas versus when Democrats gerrymander in Virginia.

REDISTRICT EVERYTHING ESCALATE TO DE-ESCALATE GERRYMANDER EVERY SINGLE STATE IMMEDIATELY CREATE A DELICATE BALANCE OF TERROR NOW RESTORE DETTERENCE

Work with the prop dept from For All Mankind to reinvent the chonky iPhone/iPod from first principles.

Officially announcing: Tritium Matters Working Group (TMWG) Thanks to @carnegie.org and @virginiatech.bsky.social I’m also grateful to everyone who has supported my tritium research especially the founding members who joined TMWG at this critical juncture for tritium futures. Big things ahead.

A Primer on Just War Theory and the Iran War Assessing the Trump Administration's Response to the Catholic Church By @mikeschmitt.bsky.social www.justsecurity.org/136692/just-...

The blockade is blockading. And if the USN is hitting engine rooms, they'll need some tugboats pretty soon.

I NEED HELP! Please take this quick, meaningless 19 question survey so I can get data for my students to learn stats! I did a similar version a few months ago but missed an important question type. Even if you did the old one, please do it again! Please circulate widely!

As a NEW alum from a “related discipline,” I highly recommend those outside poli-sci and international affairs to apply. The Bridging the Gap tent is big for good reasons. Apply and get plugged-in to this dynamic network. Happy to answer questions in comments or DMs.

This question is open to everyone: I’ve tried to understand the Catholic requirements for a “Just War” but keep getting hung up on who determines alignment? And secondarily what is the moral responsibility of individual members in nation-state militaries, conscripted or otherwise?

Further proof that Catch-22 was creative nonfiction.

What are your favorite space movies? I'm not talking far future stuff, but stuff like "Contact," or "Apollo 13," or "The Martian." Stuff that is two steps into tomorrow.

This is one of the most hopeful and remarkable geopolitical developments in years. Huzzah! And hooray!

"Given an arsenal of hundreds of deployed warheads, the stakes of failure to modernize are that, in the event of the worst war humanity has ever known, some warheads might fail to detonate, letting millions live." www.popsci.com/technology/l...

Trump will discuss a potential US withdrawal from NATO with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced.

We now have: - a revolutionary Iranian regime still in place (more hard-line than before) - still in opposition to Israel - degraded conventional deterrent - intact nuclear knowledge, centrifuge components, and, of course, HEU - more case than pre-war for seeking the bomb I'm concerned.

The reason that the US President has the exclusive authority to order the use of nuclear weapons is because Truman set up the system along those lines after WWII. This is often depicted as either a power grab, or because in the nuclear age such decisions "must" be made quickly. This is false.

hey look there’s video! watch alito on the far left (also enjoy the cute callout to separation of powers — that’s something we used to respect, kids)

More on the U.S. laser enrichment ambitions for SILEX and Paducah, KY. There’s a lot to unpack in the speculative comment on WIPP disposal, but the article offers good commentary and links on where things stand at the moment.

OK folks this reads to me like a stacked pile of nothing put in a box labeled 'wow, so interesting!' and if there is something anyone thinks I am missing (I'm talking to you, bluesky-doesn't-get-AI guys) I would like to know what it is. Here's how I read it: 1/n www.anthropic.com/research/emo...

Yes. I'm asking for more money. Not for me, but for help to London's homeless. www.justgiving.com/page/dan-kas...

I went back to capture what the astronauts said in full when the clock was stopped at T-10 minutes and they were asked if they were go for launch: This is Victor. We are going for our families. This is Christina. We are going for our teammates. This is Jeremy. We are going for all humanity.

Wang makes her best point, which was made in one of the briefs: Babies of Japanese citizens born while their parents were INTERRED during world war 2 were [wait for it] US citizens. That history ALONE should be dispositive.

This careful political statement from Foreign Minister CHO Hyun should be read alongside this recent RAND commentary on the U.S. perspective and a detailed infrastructural overview on ROK-US dynamics of technological and burden sharing.

NASA is launching four astronauts on a moon mission in less than nine hours! Take a look back at how we got to the Artemis II mission and catch up on all our coverage here: www.scientificamerican.com/report/nasa-...

This careful political statement from Foreign Minister CHO Hyun should be read alongside this recent RAND commentary on the U.S. perspective and a detailed infrastructural overview on ROK-US dynamics of technological and burden sharing.

US jet fuel production is about 6 million tons/month and closely matches US demand, with US stored inventory declining in recent months. Europe consumes 4 million tons/month, about 1.5M of that imported from the middle east.

Over the weekend, LeMonde and @francoisdm.bsky.social published a VERY interesting image of what appears to be some of Iran's highly enriched uranium enroute to a secure base in Isfahan last June. Amidst all this talk of seizing Iran's uranium, it's worth discussing in a little more detail...🧵

The “so what?” reality check 🧵 on Iranian nuclear weapon capabilities.