"I don't know what weapons the next war will be fought with, but the one after that will be with sticks." "Because of nukes, right?" "No, because we decided logistics was woke."

every quantitative measure is actually a stack of qualitative assumptions in a trenchcoat

Another devastating week for humanitarians: three colleagues killed saving lives in Sudan, DRC, Lebanon. We grieve, we demand accountability and the protection that international law demands, and we continue the work in their memory.

Burning through 40% of the money taken from USAIDs annual budget in 11 days. For no apparent purpose except of killing more people.

And as always with this administration the question is: Incompetence, habitual lying or insider trading?

I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public. I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are. 1/ Here's what I can share:

As an IR professor, it's depressing that this is outperforming all others as the best theory of US foreign policy

Today, Switzerland is heading to the polls to vote on 4 national ballot measures. Yet national and int‘l media are already focusing on the next vote in June: a far-right proposal to cap the population at 10 million. It’s a telling sign how strongly the far-right SVP has come to dominate the agenda

Lol. This is academic publishing taken to its logical end.

The unifying feature of Trump administration foreign and security "policy" is a failure to understand anything at all about strategy, like even at a conceptual level

May I humbly suggest we dial back the hyper-fixation on how long the administration says war will last. No one ever knows because war is unpredictable & adversary gets a vote. Where the administration should be hammered is on the incoherent explanation of why they started the war in the first place.

On top of all the reporting that this war of aggression was planned well in advance, it seems that the reporting also indicates that the US political leadership are quite literally too stupid to understand basic diplomacy. I mean literally not smart enough.

Welcome to the FAFOcene. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

Hence it doesn't really have the scope for these weirdo fringe parties that other countries have; see also the Hungarian Two Tailed Dog Party who are responsible for one of the best shitpost political bits I have seen in my life

Brilliant. This is so good.

Is it still a Nobel Prize, if it is just for a prompt?

Musk also made the cuts in the cruelest way possible: Humanitarians had to stop activities from one day to the next. As if to maximize the suffering. No time to plan for it or to mitigate. Imagine any industry losing 30-40% of their market over night. The whole aid delivery system was damaged.

Today, @mckay4senate.bsky.social urges us not to forget what Elon Musk do to USAID, something that is still likely to have the highest body count of the administration’s actions. McKay documents just what Elon has done in detail www.liberalcurrents.com/what-elon-ha...

all the IR nerds are chanting "P - N - G"

Bored of Peace www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/u...

In this age of LLMs, it's trivially easy to get a Phd-level-expert™️ summary of any journal article that will extract the main arguments and findings for you and often even flags up the most relevant connections to the larger literature: just look for the bloody abstract, kid #AcademicLifeHacks

Note that it has taken the US Supreme Court and *not* Congress to assert the proper role of Congress in this matter.

Franzi Schimmer captured this Grizzly bear in Brooks Falls, Alaska just floating along, tippy-tapping down the river, browsing the salmon. Prior to hibernation, up to 40% of a bear's body mass is fat, which is less dense than water (~0.9 g/cm^2), so the murder-monster is also a floaty-boaty.

That's why Switzerland should not have signed one with them. They will ban chocolate and cheese any day now. Snow will be made illegal. And they will put a stop to picturesque landscapes and remove all mountain tops.

Bad Bunny dancing is a slap in the face of your 401(k). Got it.

Ian McKellen performs “The Strangers’ Case” speech from “Sir Thomas More” on Colbert.

"President appoints dead politician to South Sudan election committee" www.yahoo.com/news/article... My first thought was: This is a level of incompetence we are usually only expecting from the current US government. The times we live in.

Maybe they shouldn't have killed USAID and left all those opportunities to China.

X is hiring a creative writing specialist at $40 an hour to make Grok better at writing and a true LOL at the qualifications

“The investment in training new contract staff ensures that the final closeout of taxpayer-funded obligations is handled by a team with no prior experience in the matters being settled” Cruel & stupid is not enough. Implement it also with maximal incompetence. www.devex.com/news/usaid-b...

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

also @smotus.bsky.social, @dandrezner.bsky.social, @profsaunders.bsky.social #sorrynotsorry #actualgreatest

So that the world knows: people in the US are trying to so hard to stop these crimes, in spite of what some of their elected officials are doing

The most accurate headline yesterday on Davos came from the German satire magazine "Der Postillon" framing the Trump speech as a "severe security breach." It roughly translates as "Scandal in Davos: Confused old man storms the podium and rants for an hour" www.der-postillon.com/2026/01/davo...

Europeans after managing to prevent the collapse of NATO for another 1-2 weeks… #Europe #Rutte

I am positively surprised that Switzerland shows a spine here and commits to its obligations.

For the price of a Rolex watch and an engraved gold ingot he was willing to lower tariffs for the Swiss. He is clearly very fair minded and laser-focused on what is best for the USA. That really taught us a lesson and we immediately stopped doing that unfair trade thing, whatever it was.

2 push alerts already saying Trump declares he won't use force to take Greenland. He *made a trade deal with the EU* and *threatened new tariffs yesterday* - even if you take his words at face value and ignore the mob language ("I don't want to hurt you"), his word means nothing. Don't fall for it.

*Attenborough voice*: "Every winter, when weather conditions get tougher, the Bearded Texas Bustard individually migrates to take refuge in warmer areas, leaving behind his nest and his flock."

The Prime Minister of Belgium speaks:

This. And I thought it was just me. I think it felt too informal, quick and unvetted to be a means of communication between world leaders.

I am, I don’t why, surprised to learn that world leaders text each other.

Damn. He is onto us. Abort! Abort!

i just feel like america has no business starting fights with the country that makes ozempic

i feel like Americans don't get the level of eye-rolling this is getting from Europe

What Europe wants to hear is an unequivocal, unanimous statement from the congressional opposition that "If Trump attacks Greenland, we will do everything in our power and take any action available to stop him, including physically standing between US troops and NATO defenders if necessary."

Sweden. Not Switzerland. Very different countries when it comes to NATO and sending troops abroad.