there are no deals, commitments are meaningless, but the ironclad principle of the new diplomacy is if you flatter him and make him look good he just might be nice to you. whoever you are. and if you give him an opportunity to look good, if he can take credit, he might do whatever you’d like done.

Many of the worst crimes are perpetrated —by purposeful arrangement—in third countries. Auschwitz wasn’t in Germany. “Extraordinary renditions” weren’t to the United States. A green light into black holes. www.stevevladeck.com/p/161-the-co... ht @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com @jamellebouie.net

whenever i hear the expression "drill baby drill", i think of the dentist.

remember when we used to worry about "loose nukes"?

America is admired for its openness and calm self-assurance.

i see mockery of fears that selective service registration could cease to be a mere formality and conscription could return. i agree that it’s far-fetched. but it’s a bit less far-fetched after the Russia-Ukraine experience, who expected the return of manpower-intensive trench warfare. and yet.

what if we traded, regime change here for regime change there? seems fair!

whose birthday was April 20 again, Elon? even if it was just a marijuana thing, you’ve been confronted with this by now. the kindest interpretation is you’ve taken a puerile stand against having to take this information into account. the worst is it’s why you chose it in the first place.

coalition of the who the fuck even knows anymore

mb kind of a moral version of a Veblen good. it’s hard to know what will actually deliver power, but ambitious people do/promote evil as a price of power sometimes they use this price in evil as a proxy for or measure of how effective an approach must be at delivering power. and so look to pay more

“Put simply, the destination envisaged for the US is Russia 2. This move is thus a repudiation of the history of the US, including the distinctive features that made it successful. The transformation it aims at is truly revolutionary but its destiny is decline not greatness.”

the end of history was boring, but history is worse than boring.

the Iranian people should overthrow the regime, then join the EU and impose a digital services tax.

neoconservativism first time as tragedy second time as ???

as an ersatz version of the song “Barbara Ann” goes through my head, i feel like nothing has changed in my long lifetime.

“It isn't the people who use the term who are expected to be uncomfortable, after all… don't expect a report any time soon confronting the uncomfortable truth that white ex-public schoolboys are disproportionately involved in City fraud and suggesting that Eton and Harrow have questions to answer.“

“There is a popular myth out there that public agencies ought to be able to finance themselves with user fees. Unfortunately this principle is never applied consistently. It is used to target institutions disliked by the Right.” ~Max Sawicky sawicky.substack.com/p/get-on-the...

re-upping that i think what a lot of politics-knowers describe as “status quo bias” is not that at all, but rather an artifact of an electoral system that channels punishment for bad action much more effectively than rewards for good action. drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/12/24/w...

after seeing a lot of videos, i’ve come to the conclusion that blonde chick from Battlestar Galactica was perhaps the most prescient take on AI.