Remarkable the degree to which the IRGC is just not going to let Trump walk away with anything he can call a win. I scoffed a little bit when some security experts said that basically 'humiliation of enemies' was an Iranian regime pattern in terms of aims, but that doesn't seem far off.

Shipwreck@shipwreck75.bsky.social · 2d ago

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) carried out an attack on a US base in Kuwait using three drones, according to a source familiar with the matter.-i24 News

@dicknixon.bsky.social Sir, it appears that if only Nixon could go to China, only Rubio could make an oppressive regime run by faceless octogenarian bureaucrats sound like the Sex Pistols

Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism - United States Department of State

Cuba’s assault on the United States was never, at root, a quarrel over economic policy or sovereignty or even ownership of a particular territory. It was a revolution against Western civilization itse...

state.gov

Favourite recent Robert Smith moment - on the red carpet at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, distinct 'Good God, why did I come' expression - WOMAN WITH MIC. Congratulationsss! The Cure, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame! Are you as excited as we are? ROBERT SMITH. By the sounds of it, no.

“It pains me as an American to say this because as an American I’ve been used to countries that love us, hate us, criticize us. I am not used to being an American when the reaction of other nations is to pity us, and that feels a little uncomfortable.”—Tom Nichols @radiofreetom.bsky.social

Note that nowhere in our statement do we encourage complacency or sitting still. They will act. But you should understand they don’t have the power they want you to think. When they do act, you will be equipped to respond.

Lindsay Graham was, I think, one of the most contemptible figures in US politics, a titan of respectable bipartisan foreign policy for years who displayed no principles, no insight, and no beliefs beyond a gleeful and vicarious love of violence. An indictment of every institution he served in. RIP.

This post went viral recently on IG/FB because it was blowing Gen Z minds that this is how jobs used to work. And this is precisely how we were able to have such helpful store weirdos: Being a vacuum cleaner weirdo at Sears was a legit lifelong career!

brickonator@brickonator.bsky.social · 4w ago

A nice thing is that it also probably meant that weirdo had been employed at the place long-term. Even when you get human service now, it’s a contract/gig worker who understandably just can’t do the same things an entrenched, secure person can. (can you tell I wish I was permanent at my job lol)

It wasn’t just geeky stuff like movies/comics, 20th century brick-n-mortar stores used to employ all kinds of weirdos who knew everything about something and LOVED to help. Radio Shack had circuitry weirdos! Sears had vacuum cleaner weirdos! Shirt weirdos! Garden weirdos! Hat weirdos!

A thing that made the old Internet good was all the world’s weirdos came together to offer their deep expertise on niche subjects. Now it’s so much harder to find that online, and we’ve destroyed the weirdos’ natural habitats. Netflix homepage could NEVER recommend a film like a video store weirdo.

Chad Ecto One@horrormoviebbq.bsky.social · 4w ago

Wait til they all find out about video stores

Saw a meme of GenZ baffled by how pre-internet travel worked, and realized we’ve crossed an enshittification threshold where IRL services that once seemed outdated, like travel agents, now seem luxurious: “You meet with a human expert who plans out your whole trip with you” sounds incredible now tbh

Jay Willis@jaywillis.net · 4w ago

You guys are never gonna believe this, but going to a brick-and-mortar running store and getting sized by employees who know what they're doing and can recommend brands and models for you is a WAY better strategy than Googling "Nike running shoes" and buying whatever's on sale

my father-in-law is a “I know a guy” Guy. sadly all the old Guys are aging out of the Guy Economy. Guys are fundamentally incompatible with Hustle Culture because it’s not about “winning” a deal, it’s about collecting favors and goodwill in a mutually-beneficial cycle. protect your local Guy Economy

stupid libs, calling a guy a Nazi rapist because he has a Nazi tattoo and he raped a woman. for shame!

also, if you have a net worth of more than a billion dollars and you show up to a public event wearing a fucking t-shirt and a leather jacket, i should have the legal right to rob you at gunpoint

GOLIKEHELLMACHINE@golikehellmachine.com · 4w ago

it’s not like it would make me any more sympathetic to them, but a decade ago, these same billionaires would have at least tried to argue that their wealth allowed them to create jobs and tax revenue and bolster the economy and they don’t even really bother with the attempt now

you have enough money to have the greatest tailors on earth make you a brand new bespoke suit every day of the year for the rest of your life which you will wear exactly once and you dress like a divorced guy who bought a motorcycle before the ink was dry but doesn’t own a bed

People will cope how they need to but “Look, some people pushed a candidate who is elderly, others pushed a totally unvetted rando with a known Nazi tattoo who turned out to be a rapist, I think we can all agree there are no clean hands here” is an objectively hilarious line to take

How I feel when people say a liberal politician is pro-trans only because they want my donations and vote:

The skeleton key to understanding this is a lot of folks want revenge for having to support a bizarro-world version of Biden constructed out of negative sentiment they were force fed on X, & they're angry that we don't share the alternate reality they lived in while being clicker-trained by Elon.

Michael Paulauski♨️@mike10010100.com · 4w ago

I think that's my biggest issue here, a *ton* of people tried to pull a "there is no red line for VBNMW", and that was clearly BS from the start, a tactic used only to make liberals and normie Dems squirm. Now they're sighing with relief because someone stepped in to save them from themselves.

The GOP nominated Ken Paxton 6 weeks ago

Acyn@acyn.bsky.social · 4w ago

Kevin McCarthy on Platner Allegations: That one thing I know about Republicans is when we had a very bad candidate, we didn't vote for that person. We walked away.

I don’t think people need to be “crucified” for thinking Platner changed or whatever but I do think they should engage in serious self-reflection and humility, such as not referring to themselves as being “crucified”

But Michael, what if Hitler was the Democratic nominee? Woudja vote for him then? Huh? Gotcha!

Yes. You rarely get to change the world overnight. It's rarely a good idea, even if you did. You change it in degrees and bring people around to your way of thinking. Then you remind people all along who did it, and what more can be done. That's politics.

kyle tear down that highway lucas 🏳️‍🌈@itskylelucas.com · last mo.

My not-so-hot take is that what Mamdani is doing *IS* incrementalism, and the bar is so deeply in hell that a politician just doing *anything* good consistently is a total anomaly for people. And I think for now that is good and fine, because it is restoring people’s faith that better is possible.

Compare Alito's description of Trump's racist statements (on the left) to Justice Kagan's anthology of Trump's racist statements (on the right). These are passages from this morning's opinions in Mullin v. Doe.

Every time people say that Elon Musk and Peter Thiel support technocracy, I feel compelled to defend its honour despite my opposition to it. Technocracy is not stupid tech billionaires running the world, it's an Anthony Fauci bio-Promethean vanguard state with a Jerome Powell Fed. Have some respect

Let’s check in on how Jared and Ivanka’s luxury Albanian resort is doing…

The anti-incumbent discontent seems to happen to almost everyone. Starmer, Trump, Macron, you name them. Noting this, and recognizing that it’s an important and mysterious trend, doesn’t mean you’re endorsing every politician affected by it. (I was not a Starmer fan in any way.)

Your now-monthly reminder that "normal" people in both the Early Modern Period and Middle Ages married at roughly the same age as we do, and that to the best of our knowledge *no* Western European society has *ever had* an average age at first marriage below 20 years old:

Goldstein@goldstein.latinsky.app · 2mo ago

Misogyny is a helluva drug.

Digital enclosure of the commons, on top of all these open-source AI models being used to automate attacks on open-source tools and extensions. Building anything independent of the biggest corps on earth is becoming unsustainable and I'm furious about it. Setting fire to the commons.

Luiza Jarovsky, PhD@luizajarovsky.bsky.social · last mo.

Suraj has a point.

when does the cat become prime minister

JCPOA was only possible because of the threat of American coercion was taken seriously. The correct Democratic position here has nothing to do with Iran but rather saying that under Donald Trump, America has suffered it's most humiliating defeat on the world stage, surpassing even Vietnam.

Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I think the proper line here is “Trump lost a war with Iran, and foreclosed any possibility of military solution; now we need an administration that can move forward with a productive framework like we had with Obama’s JCPOA”