Holy shit this LRB article on the infamous Steele dossier, but more importantly, on the job of collecting business intelligence for clients is absolutely brilliant: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

It takes so little to have a life of joy: some green, the company of loved ones, a bit of art and music, something for the mind to explore, decent food, a place to sleep in safety. And we have a world, and all this. Makes you wonder about humans.

Signed on the International Trans Day of Visibility in India. Disgusting.

The Indian regime's anti-trans bill is now an Act. 'The President has signed the Trans Bill into an Act, despite thousands of letters from trans persons requesting not to grant assent to the Bill and instead send it back to the parliament.'

To be fair, this would make for a fantastic TV series. The getaway car would be EV Lamborghini, although I don't know how they would fit in the chocolates. Maybe hot air balloons? Man, I would do watch this.

The stupid choice of this war is only eclipsed by abominable conduct in war. I would say we're going to screw up the post bello too, but it doesn't look like we'll be the ones deciding that.

Israel has pushed ground forces into multiple areas of southern Lebanon They've displaced huge numbers of civilians... Yet it barely registers. Russia did the same in Ukraine and the world responded with sanctions, outrage and coordinated pressure The double standards are UNFORGIVABLE.

This is how you industrialise friendly fire

Alex Crawford: "Yet more ambulances are bombed to bits in south Lebanon & there are fears that more Israeli strikes will follow so they move quickly. This is daily life for first responders in Lebanon.. the Israeli military is bombing emergency crews & their vehicles relentlessly"

Reports on Trump's state of mind and musings on what he's thinking on Iran aren't helpful in understanding how the war on Iran ends. Or when. He's notoriously fickle, and surrounded by liars. As with tariffs and ICE deployment, real indicators are state of play on the ground. That's a quagmire.

It’s actually not okay to pay someone with a PhD $2500 to teach a college course

“Cleaning up” plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with giant nets will skin the sea raw, and plastic will continue to come. “Cleaning” the garbage patch has never been about healing nature. It has always been about cleaning our shame.

there's actually one guy named "claude" a hyper competent frenchman given a special cocktail of amphetamines that they keep chained up in a basement in San Francisco. the usage limits are because sometimes he dies and it's necessary to decant a new clone and give him more amphetamines.

My city finally recognising urban heat stress. "Measures include reflective 'cool roof' interventions for public buildings (such as painting hospitals and schools white), expansion of tree cover, and restoration of water bodies to reintroduce natural cooling." www.thehindu.com/news/cities/...

Umm, didn't they throw out the Associated Press from the White House briefings because they refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America"?

Interesting J Street poll. 80% of Jewish Democrats oppose unconditional military aid to Israel. 52% of Jewish Democrats sympathize with both Israelis and Palestinians equally, while 20% sympathize more with Palestinians. jstreet.org/press-releas...

Very important 🧵!!!!!

Dell Hymes is a foundational scholar in linguistic anthropology who sexually harassed his students and colleagues at Penn for many years before he was finally removed. I don’t cite Hymes’ work in my research and I don’t teach it, and I’m very open about why I don’t.

This is what you do with fame.

articles that write about how "important" immigrant workers are to "the economy" without ever acknowledging that the reason they are important is that they can be treated worse for less pay

If financial compensation figures into a Iran ceasefire negotiation, wouldn't be surprised if the Trump administration tries to commit Arab Gulf money. That's what the administration has done in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria – it promises Gulf, not U.S., money.

🚨 I'm heading to @notus.com! It's an honor to be joining a growing, hard-hitting team. Aggressively covering DC, its players & its impact feels more urgent than ever. I'm eager to see what we can do together I'll continue covering US foreign policy (keep up the tips!) and I'll continue focusing..

Guy was trying to be a street pharmacist for anti-tank missile systems (Allegedly)

The Clarion Clipperton Zone, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, contains one of the highest concentrations of polymetallic nodules. But whose nodules are they? theconversation.com/in-its-hunt-... 🦑 🧪 🌍️

"If I hear the phrase ‘forgotten’ with respect to Sudan one more time, I might scream" My latest on Sudan: thecontrapuntal.com/sudan-war-ya...

this is a concise description of the knesset death-penalty-for-palestinians bill adopted today, contrary to int'l human rights law on several levels. (source: haaretz)

y'all

Today the Knesset passed a deeply immoral populist death sentence law. Its existence is abhorrent, and its content is discriminatory and disgusting, and even if it's struck down its passing is a shame. I miss my grandfather. I think Israel does too. 2/2

Maybe the reason everyone has a different explanation for why everyone hates the Democratic Party is that there are a bunch of distinct factions & demographics in this country that hate it for a bunch of different reasons!

The "green" aluminum used in EV frames and batteries is now stuck behind the same geopolitical choke point as the fossil fuels it was meant to replace https://restofworld.org/2026/gulf-ev-aluminum/?utm_campaign=row-social&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_content=1774893663

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Easter Sunday in Harlem, New York, 1947

If Iran, through some miracle, turned into a full democracy, would the public vote for a nuclear weapons programme or not given its current experience? If the Gulf states were democracies, would they choose to continue to host US military bases? Do the US & Europe support democracy in West Asia?

Hezbollah grew out of the abandonment of south Lebanon to the Israeli occupation and what is being asked of Lebanon right now is to expect another occupation of south Lebanon and the entire country’s permanent subjugation to Israel. All of this will collapse. None of it will work.

Israel killed a Lebanese soldier and injured 5 more. The Lebanese army is expected to replace Hezbollah while also being unable to respond to Israel while also having no control over Lebanon. This is why there won’t be a resolution on Hezbollah’s weapons as long as Israel isn’t held accountable.

Every single target here is barred under the Geneva Convention

Ok another fun thing about this particular excerpt is that 1. It is from a chapter that is a serious revision of an essay that initially appeared in @thebaffler.com 2. People who got advance review copies of The Edge of Space-Time got a completely different version of this chapter lol

A friend sent me and @prisonculture.bsky.social a photo this morning of the Italian translation of Let This Radicalize You. Our friend has been traveling in Italy, and has talked to people there who have found the book meaningful. I am so honored that people so far away are finding our words useful.

12 metric tonnes. Huh. What an interesting and convenient coincidence.

Would I buy one of these Hot Priest™️ calendars that are on sale all over Roman tourist spots? No. Would I read the hell out of a long read about the Hot Priest calendars and what the hell is going on there? Oh God yes.

Glen Baxter

I find that I'm profoundly uninterested in a liberalism that's focussed exclusively on the US and its allies. If the "Free World" has no vision for freedom in the world it is merely slavery by another name. Hard pass.

Was this article written by the local mice population living in the datacenter walls? 9.1C is an insane number lmao

A new South China Morning Post reporting shows that glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalaya are melting twice as fast as they did before 2000, threatening water, food and energy security for more than 2 billion people.

Gani Harun Maman in Mitha Port colony, #Gujarat. The rubble is from ~700 houses—all paying taxes, govt bills—built over 100 years, demolished in Dec 2025. Nationwide, coastal homes are being removed for ports, reports Shreya Raman article-14.com/post/as-indi...

Don't think anybody truly understands what a break between Israel and the US would mean for the security architecture of West Asia, or the world. If, as is likely, the Trump administration dumps the responsibility of a failed Iran war on Israel, this break is a given.

For the extremists of the BJP-RSS, deleting voters and slashing state funds wasn't enough; now, they're inciting communal riots to win WB. And all of this is happening through the in-house EC of the RSS. They took control over the police and asked their goons to go on a rampage across the state.

There was this study that calculated how poor people prepare food. Given the option of eating a lot of bland food or small tasty meals, poor people choose the latter. Overwhelmingly. You are not "living" if you are not enjoying life. This is an assault on poor people's dignity.

Help me understand US strategy. Air operations that have failed to weaken regime continue, now with more civilian targets. - Other than punish civilians, strengthen Iran's belief that the war is existential, and incentivise it to attack civilian targets in Gulf states, what does this accomplish?

earlier this month, someone said i was going to fertilize soil, which gave me an idea for a story that i pitched to my editor. check out my mr. porter article on how to dress like a gardener! www.mrporter.com/en-us/journa...