Flew Midwest between Kansas City and DC a number of times when I was teaching in Leavenworth. MD-80s (ok, 717) with 2x2 seating instead of typical 2x3 and comfy. Really liked it. And yeah, they couldn't make it work long term.

Wow. I don't have a strong opinion other than my instinctive doubt of anything where the promise is we'll do something else faster and cheaper because New Ways Of Doing Business along with a helping of Tech Buzzword Of The Day. That said, sometimes it works

As always, Drudge shows how the press would cover Trump if Trump were a Democrat and/or they weren't afraid of him.

⚡️ In a new Drop Site investigation, Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain reveal that Jeffrey Epstein quietly helped Alan Dershowitz orchestrate the smear campaign against John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s 2006 paper “The Israel Lobby,” newly obtained emails show. The scholars had argued in the paper...

Would like to thank countries from Iceland to Botswana, from Lake Baikal to Loch Lomond, for letting me visit their scenic destinations for much lower fees than this.

JD Vance and Peter Thiel are running a sustained operation out of the White House designed to acquire Greenland, either voluntarily or by force. Thiel has laid out plans for what he intends to do with the island nation in past writings. It doesn't entail the consent of the Greenlanders for anything.

Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea

In light of the claim that civil service protections are unconstitutional or even just problematic to the presidency (see the next post for a link to the new OPM claim) -- here's Gerald Ford in 1974 in the wake of Watergate.

That moment when the book is actually real! @lindsaypcohn.bsky.social and I really enjoyed working on our chapter on the future of the Total Force.

The Trump Admin has conducted 21 unauthorized military strikes in the Caribbean & East Pacific—killing 83 people—without giving Americans a full explanation. I’m leading my colleagues in demanding the declassification & public release of documents justifying these airstrikes.

Super excited that a new edited volume, Bend But Do Not Break, is coming out, edited by Jaron Wharton, @klkuzminski.bsky.social @jkdemp.bsky.social @mzmargulies.bsky.social Keith Carter, and @carriealee.bsky.social And it’s apparently doing well on the amazons

I am stodgy about dressing decently on planes -- not dressing fancy, just covered up and clean -- but I consider it a matter of interpersonal respect and kindness, not a matter of patriotism? Anyway, thank me for my service I guess

I do not follow UK politics closely lately but it seems Labour's intent is to strangle higher ed to keep up old age payments, while also not allowing housing construction or immigrants? Pensioner popularism? What the heck is their ideology?

💯 As someone who teaches culture and human terrain (including the banned knowledge of gender), people do not realize how much being unprepared and unequipped to deal with this stuff really screwed people up, impacting morale and effectiveness. I hear this constantly: "Nobody prepared me for that."

Winston, remembering he's a cat, ponders jumping on top of the bookshelf. After winding up 5 or 10 times, he decided against and id back on the floor as usual

Easier to vent than to bail out for real ofc but some anon House GOP telling Punchbowl members are so fed up there might be more immediate departures beyond MTG, maybe even giving the gavel to Dems this term.

The super cool AI use case for a middle aged trillionaire is you could take a pic of a fellow party guest and Grok will spew clever vulgar insults about the person's appearance? Jfc what a sad stunted man he is.

Though triggered by an Andrew Tate post, good thread on why, in this complex world, a global military can benefit from some understanding of gender roles and relations and how they vary

Project 2025 and Heritage in general have long called for basically eliminating research and public health programs against all STIs since those diseases are (in their words) "100% avoidable" and also that the govt should not subsidize promiscuous lifestyles

In the miserable annals of the Earth you will be duly enshrined, Charlie Brown

The short-lived live music/cocktail bar down the street finally reopened as an upscale dining + live music place after long renovation and I hope it works out. Before L and new upscale (they say 'upscale' a lot) R. Layout doesn't exactly prioritize music venue but we'll see how they do

From hells heart I stab at thee, Charlie Brown

I came into this business with SDI and Iran-Contra so I guess in my later career it makes sense we're back to space-based missile defense and Elliot Abrams trying to overthrow a Latin American government (not that he stopped wanting to in between) www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

We all saw one self-motivated guy with a rifle get a shot off at Trump at a rally in 2024. Is it really so hard to believe that one self-motivated guy with a rifle killed JFK in 1963?

SLAC and Ivy-ish alum here, and I 100% endorse this view

1/Russia-Ukraine diplomatic freelancing underscores transformation of neo-royalist order. Courtiers can strike deals but also stir up confusion. Witcoff edition. www.reuters.com/world/europe...

The particularly interesting RUMINT here is "Vance - Rubio relations awful" as there were several press articles in the Sept-Oct timeframe suggesting a Rubio - Vance - Miller foreign policy axis had sort of gelled, Rubio in WH more than at State HQ

Must read from @apnews.com on Border Patrol transforming into a whole-country domestic intelligence agency (not unique to Trump), with a secret network of license plate cameras, linking to social media data, and help from local law enforcement apnews.com/article/immi...

Difficult to overstate how profound a failure DOGE was. Spending in FY2025 was not only than in FY2024 – but higher than it was projected to be when Trump first took office.* The little bit of spending DOGE cut has already killed hundreds of thousands and will eventually lead to millions of deaths.

It is remarkable, while not zero, there's probably less than Reagan did for Grenada. That public case started months in advance including in Oval Office TV addresses, and it was a much smaller operation (probably) FWIW Grenada was NOT to distract from the Beirut bombing, timing just doesn't work

Have leaflet drops ever led to actual political change? Would the idea be to goad Maduro into a mistake or does someone think this will work?

😯

Huh. Lasts for 90 days too.

okay so here’s the actual bad part of the article “oh it never affected my coverage” horse and also shit and what the fuck is Lizza doing sitting on this while RFK takes a buzz saw to American health so he can sell substack subscriptions ghouls, the lot of them

The good AND bad news is that Dems seem disinclined to do Merrick Garlandism all over again. But that means they’re going to have to prepare for a plot against America that’ll make the subversions of 2016, 2020, and 2024 seem quaint. www.offmessage.net/p/maga-disar...

Is this ICE or Border Patrol? But either way, much as 'abolish' was too simplistic sometimes 'reform' may not be possible short of 'fire them all and start over'

Also another reminder that <10 people in Washington - all of whom are Republicans & all of whom keep getting total daily free passes from the media about their cowardice - could end most of the madness tomorrow by simply caucusing with the Democrats & giving them control of both the House & Senate.

Pope Leo gives a video greeting to a 'DJ Priest' event with EDM and lasers and fog machines, conservative Catholic mag scolds that the Church should avoid worldly spectacle, as it has traditionally... (AI but makes the point)

You tell me who won 😁

The thing is... THIS IS HOW MUSK ACTUALLY SEES IT Musk at least is convinced humans on Mars asap is more important than anything else to 'save humanity', and may believe his destiny is birthing sentient computer life that exceeds humanity a billionfold. A million dead kids is nothing.

I dont have a photo, but Winston's latest is he lays down on the desk between keyboard and my chest, then reaches up to claw into my shirt collar (or my neck) and pulls me down til I'm hunched over snuggling him. 🐼

"Challenge scientific orthodoxy," is a funny way to say "Ensure people die of preventable diseases because he's a mentally-ill eugenicist."

New analysis of Cassini mass spectrometry of ice grains that were geysered out of Enceladus underground ocean only minutes earlier(!) show an even more diverse and complex stew of organic compounds than had been previously confirmed astrobiology.com/2025/11/cass...

Former ambassadors and senior State Department officials — including Steady State members — warn that the U.S. is targeting foreign students and scholars for their lawful speech, undermining free-expression principles and harming America’s global standing. drive.google.com/file/d/1GIq2...

I really wish I'd made actual bets with the Musk fans back around 2016 who all said I was a moron and Luddite and 'just a political scientist' when I doubted that Starship would be in routine trans-Pacific passenger service by 2025 and put airliners out business by 2030.

Ooof. And there are firms raising money for orbital data centers that assume being able to book *hundreds* of Starship flights by 2030 (in addition to having the ability for robotic assembly of structures a mile or two on a side by then)

So, I have read articles written by people who claim that the entire concept of modern medicine is bad, because "artificially" saving people's lives has put a stop to human evolution by letting genetically inferior people breed. Great that those folks are in charge of the CDC now.

SpaceX's latest upgraded model of the Starship booster exploded on the test stand in Texas overnight -- event happened while being fueled for pressure & structural testing, not actual engine firing. www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLoun...

Some former Biden administration officials are suffering from the policy equivalent of battered wife syndrome when talking about the Trump administration’s policies, and I ain’t having it. danieldrezner.substack.com/p/the-trump-...