Hari Kunzru

I too am thanking POTUS for appointing me special envoy for the shield of the offworld mining colonies

Ah yes this has the real flavor of Orwell via brainyquote - also attributed to Churchill but actually from a Washington Times film critic in a column titled ‘The Perils of Passive Sex’

If you're at the airport and Kristi Noem is doing the ominous little message from the TSA screens, you no longer have to do anything she says. Leave your laptop in the case, whatever.

It wasn’t the luxury jet with the his’n’hers bidets that did for Noem, it was the picture of her on a horse

The moral of the story is that you can steal as much as you like, but don’t spend $200 million on an ad campaign that upstages the boss.

Neither did Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the nation’s top diplomat.

FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

Neguse demolishes Noem (2/2)

New Thesis: fact-based feeling
Antithesis: feeling-based fact
Synthesis: science fiction

Thesis: fact
Antithesis: feeling
Synthesis: fact-based feeling

WELCH: Mr. Yoho is also the husband of your former spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin?

NOEM: Yes

WELCH: So your former assistant and her husband are the ones that got the DHS no bid contract for $143m. Any dispute about that?

NOEM: No.

I am not enjoying being stuck between two groups of theocrats in the grip of hazy apocalyptic fantasies

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed.
Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

I have to say the Post chose a hell of a moment to lay off all their foreign correspondents

2003 and I’m looking at yet another Middle Eastern country being bombed and Tom Friedman is in my feed. 2026 and I’m looking …

ADD war

US can throw ordnance at Iran but no ‘boots on the ground’ for months even if that is indeed the plan of MARALAGOCOM. Why do this *after* a round of resistance has just been crushed? Seems just as flimsy and theatrical as Venezuela. Made for insiders to make prediction market bets on

Vibe-strategized? Reading milbloggers seems like vibe-logistics, certainly.

“Structural: SCIFs require vault-like doors, locks, and hinges…
Visual: SCIF design must ensure individuals outside the facility cannot see into the space…
Acoustic: SCIF perimeters must ensure any sounds are inaudible to the human ear outside of the facility”

Two photos. The first shows Catturd tweeting: Name one US inspired regime change that hasn't ended in absolute disaster The next tweet shows him posting an AI illustration of Khamenei turned into a pile of dust. It says "I'm eliminated."

Two tweets. The first shows Laura Loomer promoting her show, where she says "A message has been sent that we are not interested in going back to the way politics were prior to Donald Trump, prior to 2016. We don't want warhawks. We don't want any more Neocons. We want American First. Period. End of discussion." The next tweet says: Today is a great day. Our military is amazing. @PeteHegseth is an absolute killer. Now you see why the Deep State worked so hard against him. It’s great having a Sec War who has Infidel literally tattooed on his body. He actually gets it. God bless him.

Two tweets. The first shows Will Chamberlain tweeting: The Republican Party is no longer the party of regime change and endless wars. If you want to be its standard-bearer that is a non-negotiable position. The next tweet shows him posting "Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead." The tweet has a USA flag attached.

Two tweets. The first shows Gunther Eagleman tweeting: "Warmonger Lindsey Graham just rushed to Fox to advocate for U.S. involvement as soon as he could. He is also pushing for a US-backed regime change in Iran. I would like to renominate Graham to get a one-way ticket to the frontlines of every war he wants America involved in." There's an attached video of Graham speaking. The next shows Eagleman tweeting: UST IN! President Trump is HARD AT WORK all weekend after the massive strikes on Iran! He’s already on the phone with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte! Trump is a machine!" There's an attached video of a news segment about the war in Iran.

manufacturing consent through lowly paid influencers

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

No words can ever describe how massive the collective 2016 media’s failure of imagination was.

Venezuela, now Iran. We’re in the era of vibe-coded warfare.

This seems thrown together, relying on the military's professionalism. But this is still an inexperienced team with contempt for experts and bureaucrats with experience. It rests on no base of stress-tested assumptions, cost-benefit calcs, plans for after. 2/

Zooming with a friend in Doha who is sheltering in place and believes she saw a missile intercepted a few hours ago. Only a few months ago Trump met the emir and talked about how he has brought ‘peace to the middle East’

Chuck Schumer: ‘The American People Deserve A President Who Can More Credibly Justify War With Iran’ WASHINGTON—In a pointed critique of President Trump’s foreign policy leadership, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stated to members of the press Thursday that “the American people deserve a presid...

This is what we’re dealing with theonion.com/chuck-schume...

Primary this guy. Announce it today. Trump is an existential threat and we can’t fight him without clarity

Get Your War On three panel comic from 2001. “Oh yeah operation Enduring Freedom is in the house…”

The Groundhog Day War

Copy of Manuel Delanda’s War in the Age of Intelligent Machines

Some of us have been scared of this since 1991

So now the most careless people in history will have fully autonomous weapons that use janky AI to pick targets: Altman joining Hegseth to commit war crimes.