Able

The eventual Nuremberg-style trial of Pete Hegseth for war crimes is going to be must-see TV.

you actually don't have to make up war crimes to denounce a war of aggression launched because the president wants to cover up his rape of a 13 year old

Remember how this guy lobbied hard to get a pardon for a war criminal who slaughtered children? Turns out that’s literally his entire philosophy of armed conflict

Stop saying Iran will be like Vietnam or Iraq. Those were done by dumb people. Now we got a guy who uhh thinks you need ID to buy groceries

"A U.S. diplomat who was in the embassy when McGurk arrived found his steady advance astonishing. “Brett only meets people who speak English. … There are like four people in the government who speak English. And somehow he’s now the person who should decide the fate of Iraq? How did this happen?”"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_...

sundowner from mgr

> this guy's views used to be considered a comedically exaggerated take on american foreign relations

real talk: a lot of the mil youtubers and a subset of OSINTers are just the Yankee version of the Russian warbloggers

Girl they're gonna look at that one enlistment where you somehow made E5 without earning a single award aside from the ones you got automatically awarded for graduating your initial entry training at the time and say "um, the Army is full, actually"

So let me get this straight ...

1. US bombs Iran
2. Oil price goes up a bit, benefitting Russia's petrostate
3. Russia gives Iran targeting info
4. Oil price shoots WAY up
5. US unsanctions Russian oil

Hungarian government when they see money that wasn’t embezzled for the purpose of buying zebras

Gaddafi smiling up from Hell

as it turns out, wiping 14% of the world's energy supply (7%pt of global oil production and 7%pt of the world's natural gas) out by shutting hormuz has negative consequences

The Army hopes to lure civilian tech workers by letting some join as captains The focus on direct commissions expands on a program that saw four Silicon Valley executives join as lieutenant colonels last year.

My counter-offer:

Let them join as 2LTs instead. Do the work. Learn the lessons. Take the hits. Figure it out first.

They are not special and valorizing "tech" is some Brotherhood of Steel cult behavior.

Anyone involved in this should be ashamed of themselves.

tech CEO in 2026: My computer has anxiety.
venture capitalist in 2026: Here, have 200 billion more dollars.

child in 2006: My NeoPet is angry at me.
mom in 2006: No it isn't sweetie, go to bed.
mom to dad in 2006: We have an idiot boy. Our boy is a little idiot person. It's too late to fix him.

SHOULD THE U.S BLOT OUT THE SUN AND USHER IN AN AGE OF ETERNAL DARKNESS? - Gallup 2/20/26-3/5/26

NO - 41%
YES - 38%
UNSURE - 21%

Falstaff had a few words to say about that:

Donald Trump: renewable energy's strongest soldier

Perhaps my hottest mech game take, though, is that we need one with obscenely autistic armor mechanics and realistic weapon performance. Let me get legged or my cockpit penned by a single AT round or ATGM fired by a mech or infantry squad in a woodline, I’m ready

both sides are basically playing chicken: the iranians are betting the US will capitulate and quit bombing as the economy shits the bed, and the US is betting the iranians will disintegrate if we keep killing them.

there is no way to climb down from this.

there's a thing I like to call "load-bearing assumptions", that you don't notice until they're suddenly gone (e.g the air you breath has oxygen in it).

the post-ww2 order is a load-bearing assumption for basically the entirety of american life. trump took a sledgehammer to it in the last 90 days.

The Trump administration took your money illegally.

They won’t give it back.

it's insane that my country's current position is that, if we don't like the leader of a sovereign nation, not only do we get to kill them we get to pick their successor

this sounds like them trying to get a palace coup that keeps the repressive government in place with a pro-US ayatollah

Asking the median voter to “sacrifice” for more expensive car juice?

I'm a liberal and I say [redacted]

I go to bed and wake up to $90 Brent crude, this guy really is the fucking anti-Christ

The insane jingoism of Iraq and the GWOT was driven by genuine popular pressure and widespread support, now we've decided to let a senile gangster redraw the world map and most of us neither know nor care what we're doing or why.

Yellow bird with black face and red eye, all puffed out and slightly damp.

Let me start a belated thread of Aotearoa New Zealand silvan birds.

To lead things off, a New Zealand Bellbird photographed on Kapiti Island.