I am an historian of the Cold War.
One of my major (if obvious) takeaways from having studied that period is that fomenting a civil war in another country is evil. Full stop.
Wars are extremely hard things to justify. It is intrinsic to what they are that they tend to death, destruction, and misery. Given this and some knowledge of history, one's default attitude towards powerful people purporting to do the world some great benefit by war should be extreme scepticism.
Turkey is considering deploying four F-16 fighter jets to northern Cyprus as the conflict in Iran has spurred tensions on the divided Mediterranean island.
NEW: The bad news about international-student enrollments at American colleges just got worse. An exclusive @chronicle.com analysis of just-released State Department data shows new visa issuances in the summer of 2025 dropped by more than a third. www.chronicle.com/article/the-...
During daylight
*The WELL State of the World for 02026 is off to the races.
https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/561/State-of-the-World-2026-with-Bru-page01.html
Paracetamol remains an important option to treat pain or fever in pregnant women.
Following rigorous assessment of the available scientific data, we find no evidence that taking paracetamol during pregnancy causes autism in children.
Read more 👉 www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/use-...
Fascinating article: The research team of the new NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory just posted its first paper on 3I/ATLAS, reporting the first exquisite imaging data from an 8-meter class telescope, taken between June 21 and July 7, 20 avi-loeb.medium.com/trading-opti...
New BBC podcast about the space shuttle open.spotify.com/episode/4VBW...
Some good news. First-ever opinion on climate change, seen by many as a historic moment in international law. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
My initial reaction is that the effects of US strikes on Iran's nuclear program will not be worth the cost in geopolitical position and eventual retaliation, and boy the team running this is a bunch of amateurs...
Iran has one of the most beautiful film cultures in the world w/among the most courageous & committed filmmakers. It was a cultural hub - it's worth looking into who overthrew their democratically-elected government when it refused to cede oil rights to the UK & installed a radical quisling puppet.
The NPT & IAEA have served as one of the most effective global & planetary regulatory regimes in history, having held the number of nuclear armed powers to under a dozen.
But at bottom this regime was a political construct — and as such has always been vulnerable to being blown up.
It’s a good thing Congress isn’t alive to see this
Five things to remember about war:
Well, apparently the Marines are headed to LA. It's not even a riot at this point. Trump is using this to test the public's response to authoritarian control.
There is no bigger story right now than the White House asserting that California residents are in a state "of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States."
“Tasted a little tear gas— tasted like fascism”
The federal government is moving to take over the California National Guard and deploy 2,000 soldiers.
That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions.
Now that’s what I call a Special Military Operation…
The geographic scale of these attacks are extraordinary. Irkutsk is 3,000 miles (4,900 km) from Kyiv, at the same longitude as central Mongolia.
Put it another way, that's like Anchorage successfully launching an attack on Indianapolis.
The Security Service of Ukraine sent a barrage of drones to attack four military airfields in Russia, hitting 41 of Moscow's strategic bombers, an official with the service told POLITICO.
UNHQ has a liquidity crisis so bad it may not be able to run past the fall—not due to mismanagement but because members won't pay their dues. to save money they're doing everything from giving up NYC leases to considering moving offices out of NYC & Geneva www.globaldispatches.org/p/is-the-un-...
The best Star Wars story in a decade ❤️
NOAA has canceled the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative. NCRC was @cig-uw.bsky.social’s largest source of funding to work with rural communities and Tribes across WA, OR and ID to adapt and build resilience to climate impacts such as extreme heat, flooding, drought, and sea level rise.
Exclusive: National Science Foundation staff were told today that the agency’s 37 divisions—across all eight directorates—are being abolished and the number of programs within those divisions will be drastically reduced.
BREAKING: A major power outage has been reported in Spain and Portugal, including their capitals. The countries have a combined population of over 50 million people. It is not immediately clear how many people are affected.
So the Pope dies a day after meeting JD Vance. And the new Chat GPT cannot stop talking about the immaculate conception of Mary.
Has this happened to you or anyone you know? Please let the folks at @sydmorningherald.bsky.social know here: travellerletters@traveller.com.au (PS anyone thinking about travelling to the US should read this and spend their money elsewhere)
a nice interview with @planet4589.bsky.social on his life in space and upcoming move to the UK
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/12/s...
