stories like this are a useful reminder that a) Chinese people love goofing around and b) the CCP really distrusts people goofing around.

She ran a CrossFit gym, which is basically a swinger's club that produces orthopedic injuries

I thought I heard the old man say Leavitt, Johnny, Leavitt For tomorrow you will get your pay And it's time for us to Leavitt

MS NOW@ms.now · 7d ago

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will step down from her role at the end of the month to spend more time with her family, President Trump announced in a post on Truth Social.

Look, I was a TA and I had enough first-year sociology majors coming to me to fix their Marxist analyses of The Lion King (1994) to sympathize with Tom's desire to disenfranchise students, but ultimately rights are rights and everyone gets them.

Tom Nichols@radiofreetom.bsky.social · 6d ago

Well, that's a new one. "College kids should be able to vote to overcome the wishes of the people who actually live in the place where they go to school"

FWIW, I think the question of "Did Woke 1 go to far?" it depends on where you ask! On college campuses? Sometimes. In making cops responsible for bad behavior? Obviously not! In holding sex pests and criminals to account? Clearly incomplete, look at the damn White House.

"But birb, why would ICE agents want absurdly large shoes?" To prepare for a career in politics, of course.

Birb_at_Arms@birblib.bsky.social · 7d ago

Though, if we're marketing glorified hand buzzers to ICE, I can see an excellent business opportunity in marketing other clown products. For example, maybe ICE would pay for improbably large shoes or like a badge that squirts water when someone leans in to get a closer look at the badge number.

That awkward feeling when you're using your zap gloves to torture a guy for the crime of looking uppity while brown, and your nose starts to itch

CJ Ciaramella@cjciaramella.bsky.social · 7d ago

I triple-checked to make sure this was a legit NBC News account, and unfortunately it is! x.com/JuliaEAinsle...

Today in "Iran likes to respond symmetrically"

Aaron Schaffer@aaronschaffer.com · last wk.

🚨 Contradicting public statements, Trump took secret flight from Turkey amid Iranian threat wapo.st/4i1OByh

I appreciate that it can seem weird that the Trump administration is not acting in its own apparent interests, but it's not confusing at all to me. They simply do not understand how their jobs work at a level that would allow them to do this, and their incentives discourage them from learning.

James@gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social · 2w ago

I find this administration’s complete inability to politically calibrate on a single issue utterly baffling. You’re going down in flames on absolutely everything with Nixon-tier approval numbers and their only strategy is to just try to beat people harder with a stick.

The British media doesn't want you to know this, but you can walk with a stick if you want. They're legal everywhere and some kinds literally grow on trees.

Nick Barlow@nickbwalking.bsky.social · 2w ago

In a move that will surprise absolutely no one who's been paying attention, Stock has decided that women with disabilities are suffering from "social contagion"

Bon Cop Bad Cop, the 2026 TV show, is quite enjoyable but it gets thoroughly unbelievable in some of its portrayals of Canada's various ethnic divisions and regional politics. For example, the Prime Minister in the show is from New Brunswick.

I feel like it's a pretty established pattern that Iran likes to respond symmetrically whenever it can, or as close to symmetrically as possible in cases where it can't. Which has... implications.

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 3w ago

(NYT) - The scope of cyberattacks on U.S. water systems has grown to include at least seven states and may be far wider, officials and experts warned .. @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/u...

This is partly inspired by the (excellent) @bretdevereaux.bsky.social series on pre-modern armies and part just something I've been interested in for a while. When discussing unit cohesion and morale in a military context, it's common to talk about combatants as if they have lost rational thought.

Collections: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part IVb: Cohesion

This is the second half of the fourth part (I, IIa, IIb, III, IVa) of our honestly-who-knows-how-many part series laying out some general guidelines for how pre-modern armies are organized. Last we…

acoup.blog

I wonder if our particular collective fear of venomous animals is related to the tendency of many to overestimate the relative effectiveness of chemical weapons. Because while there are some nerve agents out there that can kill you in comically small doses, you can prevent that with a goofy suit.

Birb_at_Arms@birblib.bsky.social · 3w ago

Lol I've heard Australians say that it's a lot easier to get treated for a snake or spider bite than it is to get treated after being ripped in half by a grizzly bear

The people you meet on here, man

Sort of interesting that the author ties this (ridiculous) trend back to the dynamics of dating sites. Women get more attention than men, leading to a surplus of options. To pare down the list suitors to something less overwhelming, women often filter men by fairly arbitrary traits like height.

Playboy@playboy.com · 3w ago

What are the incel men up to over on X? Focussing on a quirk of women’s bodies most of us have never even thought about before now. Our take? "Making women mad and getting likes from fellow incels is all they have going for them." Read now: www.playboy.com/read/sex/the...

I have one of those target dummies and you're supposed to put gravel in the base to stop it from falling over. They clearly haven't done this, and even balanced the dummy precariously on the edge of a desk. So I think the ramming drone is actually weak as fuck and won't stop anyone able-bodied.

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 3w ago

Schools are adding pepper-spraying drones to help combat active shooters The plastic, non-lethal aircraft, which can smash windows and ram attackers will be at the ready at certain schools in Colorado, Florida and Georgia www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/...

Given how the rest of the quote sounds like she's having a stroke, I assume she meant "defund the police" but at this point, whatever.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3w ago

Sen. Deb Fischer on Democrats: "They want to demilitarize the police. It's everybody's worst nightmare on what this society would become ... people have deep knowledge of what happens in countries that say they are democratic socialist ... look at Russia"

There is a nasheed on the youtube account of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Allahumma salli ala Muhammad. Заслужений академічний Ансамбль пісні і танцю ЗСУ

YouTube video by Генеральний штаб ЗСУ

youtube.com

A bit close to the wind for a man who committed treason against the US government and appears to support the invasions of several US treaty allies, Mr. Musk.

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · 2mo ago

X owner Elon Musk indicates he would prioritise political violence (assassination of pro-migration politicians is the common sense meaning) over violence against "invaders" (refugees, asylum seekers, maybe ethnic minorities generally) while endorsing call for violence (killing) against both groups

Once again, it is 1) A land of 23 million people with their own institutions, customs and culture not "5 randos" 2) It has never been part of the PRC.

VonDonDolo@vondondolo.bsky.social · 3w ago

I held a democratic election with 5 randos nearby and we all say you owe me money. Am I practicing self determination right? If Taiwan, a province of China, wants to secede from China, they either need to cut a deal with Beijing or defeat Beijing. They got this far on the premise that Beijing can't

One of my favorite types of concerts is one where they sing older working songs or sea shanties or whatever, because they'll be like "this is a song about a really special woman, anyone here love your girlfriend this much?" and it's clearly a song about a prostitute

I've been catching up on @bretdevereaux.bsky.social 's posts about pre-modern armies and was particularly interested in this section of part IVa on leadership that specifically dealt with written treatises. acoup.blog/2026/07/18/c...

Not to say this isn't culture war nonsense but veterans have been doing the "military went soft the moment I left" thing since Babylon we just have craven outlets willing to let them write articles instead of bitching at the Legion or writing letters that get ignored.

Toby Buckle@polphilpod.bsky.social · 4w ago

our elites want to abolish hard men

Really an enormous part of the problem here is that Americans indeed stopped taking their government seriously (see also Sen Moreno's bill to sanction Canada). But the rest of the world still has to.

James@gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social · 4w ago

It’s essential to understand people like Elbridge Colby fall in a long line of a sort of guy in DC for whom national security is a hobby for cocktail parties rather than a professional field that determines the fate of millions of people. You’re not obligated to take them seriously in any context.

Fuck elbows up. Dump your bucket and drop the gloves

Mark Carney@mark-carney.bsky.social · 4w ago

My statement on the United States administration’s intention to impose new tariffs on Canadian goods:

Also, I didn't realize this until double checking some details just now, but Viktor Tsoi's surname is a corruption of the Korean "Choi" which means "high" or "tall" One of his inspirations was Vladimir Vysotsky, whose surname means the exact same thing except in Russian (and other Slavic languages)

Birb_at_Arms@birblib.bsky.social · 4w ago

I'm sometimes reminded of how Viktor Tsoi - easily the greatest rock star the USSR ever produced - had to get a side hustle as a boiler technician to support the band and avoid being charged with parasitism

"Ungrateful colonials!"

I'm increasingly fond of @polphilpod.bsky.social 's concept of conservativism as the belief that: A) there are natural laws outside of human control that don't and cannot be changed B) people may deviate from them at their peril C) the role of the state is to keep society in line with these laws

The Fig Economy@figgityfigs.bsky.social · last mo.

Genuine question: is everybody who says Nolan is a conservative because his characters believe they have a moral duty or whatever also self-applying the label (if not why not?), and defining a rhetorical opposite to it (liberal doesn’t capture it, neither does radical, nor reactionary quite)?