These people are, to be blunt, substantially less intelligent than they believe they are.

Pretty sure the Kool-Aid man stayed in this hotel room once

We have the data. My longest columns have more readers, who read longer, and who share them the most.

Whats happening to Iran is sickening. These people are so evil.

"No stupid rules of engagement." — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, March 2, 2026 "The strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. conflicts in the Middle East." — Reuters, March 5, 2026

genuinely insane to watch so much of the media and political class repeat the same deluded fantasies about this war that they had about afghanistan and iraq.

some shit is about to go down

Venezuelans oil being used to make up for Iran being cut off. www.wsj.com/business/ene...

the effect that bob marley has on my six month old infant is incredible. one hundred percent success rate on instantly stopping her from crying. jah bless

There are so many Sudanese refugees in the Gulf and I really feel for them. Escaping a conflict, having to live in the shadow of a state that is enabling it, and now being plunged into conflict again.

EXCLUSIVE: At more than 30 installations, U.S. commanders told troops the war on Iran is a Christian war. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been “inundated” with more than 110 complaints. One NCO said they were told the U.S. war is to bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus…

As the laid off Middle East News Editor, I concur. Management eliminated the positions of every single staff correspondent and bureau chief in the Middle East.

normal caveats about wealth measures vs GSP aside, we should not be surprised that the elite impunity political environment has been good economically for the people on top, and that all of this is not solely about getting to say slurs during business hours

"This only feels possible because the U.S. government is only interested in regulating its perceived political enemies, and which only feels possible because much of the American economy feels held together by cope and the gobs of money being thrown into AI, data centers, and gambling."

Great use of illustrations to present the different types of ancestral fishing practices 👌🏿

Nice mention of our reporting in this very good @gizmodo.com piece on aggressive conservation enforcement in Africa gizmodo.com/the-war-on-p...

About 2/3 of the Sahel is governed by ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates with the other 1/3 by Russia-aligned military governments directly because of the last time the US and NATO did a regime change air war

I think this is actually revealing about trumpist foreign policy - they aren’t doing regime changes, theyre trying to cement a global oligarchy with the us/israel/gulf states in charge. kill/arrest the leaders of unfriendly states and say to their successors “fall in line or die too”

Good time to remember Mandela started uMkhonto weSizwe, ANC’s paramilitary wing, which destroyed apartheid ZA’s nuclear and energy infrastructure, made guerrila attacks against police stations and fought liberation campaigns in Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola. Pretty sure this is not what they want.

important to read max on the silicon valley political divide between awful nerds and evil nerds

“But the Iranian government sucks” come on people what are we doing here. Look at Libya. Goldfish memories i stg

We watch massacres we created take place from afar like we did with the Kurds in 1991

This administration is so nihilistic. There’s no vision of the world here, its just carnage as spectacle

“The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.”

The easiest path to power in the US right now is to go absolutely scorched earth on this unpopular administration and its deranged illegal behavior

This Time It Will Work

things every single republican president of your lifetime has done - started a war in the middle east - completely destroyed the economy

one way of seeing anthropic vs. the pentagon is as a fissure between the two silicon valley tribes most enthusiastic about ai: "rationalists" and "accelerationists" maxread.substack.com/p/what-anthr...

things can’t be this evil and this stupid at the same time

An unproven mining firm founded by U.S. special forces and intelligence officials is on the cusp of acquiring huge copper and cobalt mines in the DRC, after heavy intervention by Trump officials. My report for @mongabay.com news.mongabay.com/2026/02/us-f...

this is long but very, very good. maybe the most cogent explanation of the actual, mundane disaster the tech world is setting us all up for that ive read yet americanaffairsjournal.org/2026/02/unde...

Journalism job alert: @wired.com is hiring an experienced politics writer. I might be biased, but WIRED is doing some of the best political coverage out there. This is your chance to join our amazing newsroom! condenast.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/CondeC...

I think there's an argument for the Democratic Party's support for Israel's Gaza Campaign being an error on the scale of the Iraq War -- if not larger

great time to be in Michoacán right now

So we're just going to casually do another regime change war in the middle east, this time in a country with twice the population of Iraq, with no public debate whatsoever? www.ft.com/content/a7da...

I stared at that phrase for a very long time today before checking the Polymarket odds on how many measles cases there will be in the US by the end of February

Knowing who to be mad at really is praxis.

This is a truly horrifying memo. It says that the policy of the US government will now be to proactively seek out and arrest likely tens of thousands of refugees who entered legally under Biden and subject them to detention, where they will be interrogated about their status.

We won the George Polk Award in Foreign Reporting for our investigation on how powerful people and firms exploited East African women recruited for domestic work in the Gulf. Special thanks to the Polk jury and to everyone involved in this project from the start.

On the other hand, if the AI revolution is real and it plays out the way the billionaires are all promising - ie everyone loses their jobs - the left's argument that the future rests on political struggle rather than tech innovation is going to have a lot of new converts.

The left tried for decades to pass green energy subsidies, passed them, the subsidies worked, and now literally the entire planet's electricity grid is going to convert to solar+battery. It just doesn't feel like "tech" because it mostly produces kinda boring blue collar jobs instead of billionaires

New from me.

In the words of the great Too Short. RIP

A U.S.-hosted minerals summit signals a push to cut reliance on China by striking deals with African nations. Guinea and Morocco signed agreements, while a prior deal with the DRC, home to 70% of global cobalt reserves, faces scrutiny over human rights and instability concerns.

Lydia Polgreen hits on a dynamic I’ve noticed: That as news organizations grew more skeptical and more questioning of government over the last decades of the 20th century, audiences liked them less.

I think a lot of people's expectations for the media boil down to : "the place where i might some day get to see my name if i do really good"

It’s so funny to think about the fact that there’s people out there deferring every life decision to this

Someone tell European policy makers that climate change will not just be a poor country problem, and that the biggest risk with climate is not that people will migrate but that people will die.