Ive pretty much always lumped 1,2, and 4 together, but in this scheme I’m in 4 (if I do say so myself) and so are 90 percent of the people I respect most. “No power” is overstating it under normal circumstances, but 4s are always outplayed and outmatched in the halls of the ministry.
We don’t talk enough about how morally depraved the tech industry turned out to be. Every single ounce of their self-regarding statements of values was an outright lie.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
💯
The raw materials for this exist! They are ignored, vilified, or downed out and largely focus on non-defense issues but they are there. And many of them are now unemployed. They worked at State, at USIP, at NGOs, and even at a few think tanks.
In which someone vastly more prominent than me also doubts The Gizmo Cult and its promises of miracles.
🧵Feels like shouting into the void, but it is essential to note that the Trump/Rubio gutting of the State Department and blowtorching of US diplomatic capacity and credibility is an accelerant to this spiraling war and will seriously undercut US/allied efforts to pick up the pieces after. 1/
We’ve seen what Yale law school does to people.
You’ll never guess when in this chart we were obsessed with recession, stagflation, & the terrible economy…
1967 - Dystopian Sci-fi novel, Don’t Create The Torment Nexus published
1974 - Cult classic BBC mini series
1997 - BBC remake
2002 - Hollywood movie, upbeat ending added
2019 - Nexcon - A Torment Company IPO’s, $324 Billion market cap
2026 - Polymarket bets on who will be tormented next
Optical illusion of a woman bent over some papers. Her sunglasses are pushed up and she is wearing a hair band so the top of her head looks exactly like a Muppet face
Sorry I know the world is in a terrible fix but I've been laughing at this for ten minutes now
The White House has helped MAGA influencers escape the Middle East on a private jet while more than a million ordinary Americans are still trapped with no way out.
I have been pleasantly surprised to hear people openly talking about the end of institutional life as we know it (it’s been over. We’ve been living and working in zombie institutions for three decades now) and instead of collapsing at the thought they’re like okay let’s rebuild but better. More.
This is absolutely 100 percent correct and it’s a problem in every goddam aspect of foreign policy. Every issue is worked like an episode of the apprentice.
Screenshot of a 3hr old post from the GW Hatchet: “BREAKING: GW sold its Virginia campus to Amazon Data Services, an Amazon subsidiary that manages the company's data centers, for $427 million on Friday. The deed, obtained by The Hatchet, authorizes ADS to develop the campus into a data or information technology center. STORY TK”
GW‘s student newspaper appears to have broken the story that the institution has sold a satellite campus to Amazon to be turned into a data center, which is just about chef’s kiss for the state of American higher education rn
Prof. Robert Pape: In my book I invented the concept of Coercive Air Power as a cautionary tale
US Department of Defence: At long last, we have created Coercive Air Power from classic political science work Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War.
God almighty feel I’m just having the same bad dream every decade or so. Over and over.
Screenshot of text: First, it’s a mistake to say that Trump got America into war on Saturday. What he did was respond to a war that Iran has been waging against the United States since 1979.
Cool hey did anything happen *before* 1979 between the United States and Iran
I would remiss if I did not adequately amplify @cherylrofer.bsky.social's concise, clear, and unassailable summary of why one of the Trump administration's main rationales for its illegal war is bullshit.
Is U.S. foreign policy guided by Michael Corleone's dictum: "Today I settle all family business?" www.linkedin.com/posts/nikola...
Maybe mostly human rights and humanitarian or many of them not specialists.
I would add that much of this is about financial and career incentives. There are Democratic-oriented orgs and people who see this situation for what it is. But they have little pull or voice.
In the position of believing simultaneously that the majority of Democratic electeds are in fact qualitatively better than Republicans on the issue of criminal adventurism in the Middle East but also that much of the Democratic *foreign policy blob* is functionally identical to the GOP's.
Hello new followers. I’m John Horgan, a professor of psychology who studies terrorist behavior. Don’t believe anyone who says they know what is going to happen next. Nobody does. Believe the Trump administration least of all. The informed voices are out there. Seek them out.
Post a pic, no context, to bring down zen to the feed.
I wish this didn't seem so relevant so often: "In mainstream discourse, it's become standard to blame the excesses of the right on liberals, the left, feminists.... It's a way that the right is granted masculine prerogatives and the left feminine responsibilities for the right's behavior."
I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to
This war is dumb and illegal
I'm not going to say Harper is singlehandedly responsible for Trump's victory, but this *is* the phenomenon that resulted in so many Americans having no idea what they voted for.
Across mainstream media, pundits refused to draw a clear distinction between Ds & Rs and lay out Trump's agenda.
Time to go back to the classics.
