Jesus, thanks mailing list for feeding me three columns by LinkedIn Veterans telling everyone THEY know how to fix PME, which of course they never mention things like Goldwater Nichols or anything silly like that, just it requires hard men making hard choices in hard exercises. Thanks man, useful.

"It is easy, sometimes, to feel the wonder in places like this and forget that they need us," columnist John Archibald writes of a recent visit to Lake Mitchell with Coosa Riverkeeper. "It is easy to forget that we need them." Read it 👇

I really want to just really hammer home the basic fact that this person just does not want to learn. What they are describing- struggling with words and phrases, unpacking themes, etc.- is actual learning and growth they are denying themselves. It literally defeats a huge part of the purpose here.

Matt Pearce@mattdpearce.com · 14h ago

I’m learning that the people who gamified paragraphs are having trouble reading books. www.axios.com/2026/08/11/r...

I got curious and checked “Last of the Mohicans,” and while it’s true that the prose is starchy, this opening paragraph is a banger and you should not deny yourself the pleasure of the effort.

I don't understand why you would do this? Like, it's genuinely completely alien to me.

Matt Pearce@mattdpearce.com · 14h ago

I’m learning that the people who gamified paragraphs are having trouble reading books. www.axios.com/2026/08/11/r...

I loved this joke so much I ran an insanely long Stellaris game based on it.

Wilde Butch@wildebutch.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I talk about Crabitalism enough that it's a saved word in my phone and I love that about me Big thanks to @paperbackparadise.bsky.social for making one of my favorite jokes ever

I think if there's anything that's guided me from military tech journalism to foreign policy advocacy it's broadly this: "getting the violence of war to end has to come from a place of understanding why it continues," which is a metric useful across conflicts, like in this on Sudan:

Congress Can Still Act To Prevent Atrocities in Sudan - CIP

To meaningfully stop the violence in Sudan, Congress needs to condition arms sales to those supplying the civil war.

internationalpolicy.org

This adds historical depth to the knowledge that Africans tamed wild animals: Lions, Leopards, Zebras, Elephants, and Eland (A king of Buganda kept a menagerie of these) But Africans knew these animals couldn't be domesticated, something colonialists only discovered after failing to do the same

Isaac Samuel@rhaplord.bsky.social · 17h ago

In 1621, King Susneyos of Ethiopia sent a zebra to the Mughal ruler Jahangir 1257, King Dunama (Kanem) sent a giraffe to Tunis 1360, Mārī Jāṭā (Mali) sent a 🦒 to the Marinid sultan 1402, Dawit (Ethiopia) sent leopards to the Doge of Venice 1415, Malindi (Kenya) sent a 🦒to the Yongle Emperor, China

Despite other sectors of the economy having challenges, the last few years have seen an unprecedented boom in the manufacturing of hot dog suits.

Timothy McBride@mcbridetd.bsky.social · yesterday

Now he has concerns? Cassidy blasts vaccine order, saying Trump has no 'expertise to make these changes' thehill.com/homenews/sen...

i would simply choose diplomacy. the diplomacy:

This is our money we are supposed to be using to build and protect our parks, our heritage, for a ballroom we were told was going to be paid for by private donations.

MeidasTouch@meidastouch.com · yesterday

NEW: Internal National Park Service records obtained by MeidasTouch’s Scott MacFarlane reveal more than $400 MILLION has been steered toward Trump’s White House and D.C. projects, while funding for major national parks is being slashed.

RBADVISERS: “.. Yet another inflation impulse. The US basically has NO STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE (SPR) anymore.”

Not a professional but isn't the obvious response to this A) we _are_ seeing it more in older groups but B) generally the people getting evaluated are school children?

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · yesterday

RFK Jr on autism: "'Oh, we're just noticing it more.' But this is an absurdity ... if we were just noticing it more, we would notice it in older groups. But we're not ... so something happened in the mid '90s that changed our children"

Lololololol unserious.

Republicans Against Trumpism@rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social · 2d ago

Remnick: So we shouldn't send weapons to Ukraine? DSA co-chair Megan Romer: No! Remnick: So, just allow Russia to overrun Ukraine entirely? Romer: We should be sending huge teams of diplomats. We should figure out how to negotiate.w

The last time I was on a committee, we had at least four candidates who would have been excellent choices and several more who were above average. We only had one opening.

BeijingPalmer@beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 2d ago

of course he wasn't 'more qualified than every other candidate' because *it's very rare that that kind of clear distinction actually exists in hiring, especially in oversubscribed and underresourced jobs like academia.*. It always becomes somewhat arbitrary at the end.

BBC reports South African SOF charged with murder of a police officer who was investigating an ISIS moneyman—who SADF SOF had flipped, lost control of, killed, then used his phone to call an associate in Somalia—who may have been the big ISIS financier JSOC killed a month later (Jan 2023) in a…

Every. Single. Academic job I have ever gotten has been me being selected against a pile of people I would say were just as qualified as me if not moreso.

BeijingPalmer@beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 2d ago

of course he wasn't 'more qualified than every other candidate' because *it's very rare that that kind of clear distinction actually exists in hiring, especially in oversubscribed and underresourced jobs like academia.*. It always becomes somewhat arbitrary at the end.

They cancelled it. www.msn.com/en-us/entert...

of course he wasn't 'more qualified than every other candidate' because *it's very rare that that kind of clear distinction actually exists in hiring, especially in oversubscribed and underresourced jobs like academia.*. It always becomes somewhat arbitrary at the end.

Joe Stieb@joestieb.bsky.social · 2d ago

So tyler harper was a DEI hire but he was also highly qualified? Which one is it?

Alright, I'm putting a line in the stand: No more 'why I left academia' takes from dudes that never got their monograph out (in book fields). 'oh sure, I got a gold-plated academic job and bailed out in advance of the tenure decision without a book out, but it was BECAUSE OF WOKE!!' Sure, buddy.

So tyler harper was a DEI hire but he was also highly qualified? Which one is it?

Joe Stieb@joestieb.bsky.social · 2d ago

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202... So i guess tyler harper is choosing the Academia is Too Woke lane of the Grift Derby.

But they were all of them were deceived, for a fifth loco was made

Shoshana 🏳️‍⚧️@shoshana.bsky.social · 2y ago

That's a weird label for a bottle of Bucky (For those who don't know, Buckfast is blackcurrant wine that's 14.8% alcohol and has 90mg of caffeine per 5oz. This bottle is the size of a can of Coke and has 210mg of caffeine compared to 32mg in a can of Coke plus the alcohol of 4 glasses of wine)

“The evidence is pretty unambiguous that one of the United States’ superpowers is its ability to attract the top talent from essentially every other country in the world and put them to work here for a time, if not for their full careers,” Gross said. “I think that’s what’s at stake right now.”

Michael Clemens@mclem.org · 2d ago

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of our future innovation capacity, prosperity, and national security crumbling. Shattering our university research system and international student pipeline will harm all Conservative & Liberal Americans. From the American Institute of Physics—>

Hey @vasabjit.bsky.social since we are getting the African Airpower book out of the door, I think I'll have some focus to get over to this way too delayed project! dailynews.co.tz/tanzania-ind...

Tanzania, India deepen defence industrial, technology cooperation - Daily News

DAR ES SALAAM: TANZANIA is seeking to deepen defence industrial cooperation with India through technology transfer, local production, skills development and joint ventures as the two countries strengt...

dailynews.co.tz

No it isn’t. That isn’t true

well that's not great

Dale @dalejohn.bsky.social · 3d ago

The USDA is projecting the wheat harvest to be cut by almost half in the US. The state of Kansas is the largest producer of wheat and it is projected to harvest 44% less than from 2025. The American Farm Bureau sees a continued increase of Chapter 12 bankruptcies from 2025 as well.

We cannot allow the civil service to be ripped apart every four years and expect to have a functioning government in today’s highly complex world.

This too runs through court reform, as SCOTUS in its current form has effectively decided that NOT letting the executive dismantle whole administrative agencies while awaiting a court date is irreparable harm. But it is all of a piece at the moment if we want a functional government.

Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 3d ago

The idea that deep institutional damage can be easily rolled back seems like a very odd take for a conservative. The damage to the civil service system is huge, and legislation is needed to reassure future hires they won’t be fired on a whim.