"My message to the people of the UK is that I'll train the new guy but you're going to have to stick with one of them eventually."

Remember: If you are not Odysseus, it's just a Sparkling Journey.

Why I’m a fan of the Oxford comma.

Did this particular type of inorganic behaviour suddenly drop on January 8th and only come back up a couple days later? Because in that case, I have a pretty good idea who is behind it.

Oil refinery, huh. It *is* within the range of Ukrainian drones... Any idea if petrochemical products from this refinery were exported to Russia?

2/ The US-Iran memorandum of understanding (MoU) requires Iran to engage with Oman to determine the “future administration” of the strait, but recent reports indicate that Iran and Oman have different visions for the future management of the waterway.

Interstellar (I don't watch films all that often, and certainly not in theatres.)

ADDENDUM: $1500 is technically still outside my budget right now though, so if anyone can throw a few bucks it would be appreciated. I’d prefer my mother not have to cover $1000 of this, given that she’s already paid for a lot of expenses associated with the move to Anchorage.

New machine has been ordered, and I’m going to try to pick it up later today. I’ve received around one-third the cost so far. Ideally I’d like to get a bit more, if possible.

If I click on your newsletter for the first time and am immediately forced to acknowledge a full-screen interstitial asking me to subscribe—before I’ve ever been allowed to see an example of the content to which I’d be subscribing—I’m gonna immediately close the entire page and never look back.

If everybody else could send Wynn some money too, much appreciated!

If you happen to know anyone who may currently be in Moscow, like a foreign correspondent, someone in the opposition, or diplomat, tell them to not go outside today. The smoke and fumes from that burning refinery genuinely is some of the most toxic crap you can inhale.

Die Islamische Republik hat auch seine Version der Absichtserklärung zwischen den USA und der IRI über die offizielle Nachrichtenagentur IRNA veröffentlicht. Die beiden Texte sind weitgehend identisch, weisen jedoch einige Unterschiede in der Formulierung und der Gewichtung auf:

Well! I was wrong. Now I know, And knowing is half the battle! (See, random Internet people? You do not HAVE to double down! You can just say “I was wrong” and move on.)

Ehm, reading this thread I get the impression you Americans normally have locks on interior doors. But that can't be standard, right? There's no need for them.

@dienst-toeslagen.bsky.social Ik kreeg van jullie een nieuwe voorschotbeschikking met daarop de zin "Wij hebben geen, niet tijdig of onjuiste huurgegevens van u ontvangen." Dat is ook juist, ik woon nu in mijn eigen koopwoning, en ik heb de huurtoeslag ook stopgezet.

A little timeline cleanse: The first 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Scottish BABY SLOTH! 🥰 Hoping that this will make up for the fact that my TL is currently so full of funding cuts and the demise of science at the moment. Space wonder and awe will eventually return, I promise! www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3Op...

Wenn deine Frau zur Meme-Vorlage wird. 🙃

It has now been over 60 days since the new supreme leader of the revolution was appointed. Not a single recent video, picture, or even a voice recording has been released.

Someone needs to remind Trump that there are other actors who get a vote in all of this… IDF confirms: We struck in Dahiyeh of Beirut the commander of the Radwan Force, Hezbollah's elite unit.

Last year, more than 30 million Iranians, one-third of the population, were in absolute poverty, unable to meet minimum daily calorie requirements, a figure likely to have risen significantly due to recent inflation. In the same year, malnutrition accounted for about 35 per cent of deaths in Iran.

Very informative thread, this!

Is it just me, or did Bsky suddenly require everyone to log-in again every single time they open the website?

"The Royal Navy - and later the United States Navy - should always win. This is the entire International Maritime Law; the rest is commentary."

Then he raised up both his hands, and in one chord, deeper than the Abyss, higher than the Firmament, piercing as the light of the eye of Ilúvatar, the Music ceased.

Ignore the rhetoric, watch the signals. WSJ:

So, if the US and Israel have stopped bombing Iran, then who - if anyone - is currently bombing Iran? And if nobody, why are there then no civil flights now that the airspace is open?

Important context, this.

“This is the best ceasefire ever. It’s a very big beautiful ceasefire. No one has ever had such a great ceasefire. Only I, Donald trump, could get us such a great ceasefire. Oh, believe me, it’s gonna be better than ever before. We WON and those woke liberal mullahs are TOTALLY DEFEATED!”

I suspect the thing to watch in the coming days is the re-opening of airspace over Iran. Will we see an exodus of regime-aligned figures leaving? Sure, some are religious nutjobs, but the ones in it for the money may want to take a suitcase with hard currency to Moscow or somewhere similar.

In which the pedant - as usual - manages to completely ignore the domestic situation in Iran.

So, we have Vance, the one person in Trump's cabinet who didn't like this war from the start. On the Iranian side we likely have someone from Pezeshkian's orbit. They're mediated by someone with good reasons to de-escalate. How likely is it that Trump and the IRGC will actually abide by the result?

The question is does the IRGC concur?

People are still thinking this is more than ramblings that are barely connected to reality.

“I will NOT sacrifice the Oxford comma. We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They assimilate the em dash and we fall back. They capture ‘not just X but y’ and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!”

Well done sir, you win the internet for today!

The toddler king is too stupid to be able to understand that there is no pressure tactic sufficient to make the suicidal IR regime fanatics give him a face saving off ramp. And the fanatics are too stupid to be able to understand that he’ll never stop without one. Buckle up.

And the Trump administration plan being laid out to turn things around - hitting bridges, powerplants - is to try to coerce the Iranian regime through civilian suffering. If the Iranian regime cared about civilian suffering, we would not be in this situation in the first place.

Reminder: including alt-text on your images is helpful in many ways! It increases accessibility, can add context/detail, makes search more effective, & can improve your reach (a lot of us won’t re-share images without alt-text). If you set it as required in accessibility settings, you can’t forget!

I wonder what the Omani response to this will be.

Much of what you’re seeing from the US, and from Trump, is deliberate noise. The meaningful indicators lie in force movements, not in whatever is selectively leaked to the press.

Kharg was always a diversion to pull forces away. All of Trump’s bluster was a ruse to distract Iran from the real objective: the Strait of Hormuz islands. Everything over the last 48 hours has been staged as cover. We’re moving on the SoH, and it could begin as early as tomorrow.

Might this be an (overly optimistic) Intelligence Community assessment of the situation, as filtered through Trump's brain? It sure matches with some of the things in the rumour mill. A thread. 1/7

Now, what are we going to believe: Trump's ramblings, or all the reports about marines on their way to the middle-east?

Big mountain, hilly desert, massive cave system, crocodile-infested swamp. This place has it all! www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCHn...

Alphabetic sorting is generally bad, the best example yet: boat.horse/clock/

Overall Trump's statements during this war should be more treated like Medvedev's vodka-fuelled ramblings about nuking the UK: certainly indicative of the man's character and priorities but not necessarily actual operational planning

Crazy theory: Trump's negotiators have been talking to Reza Pahlavi's people, without realising they aren't actually in power at the moment.