John Ma 🇺🇦
@nakhthor.bsky.social
Chinese-American anc historian, Columbia. Antiochos III & the Cities of W Asia Minor (1999), Statues & Cities (2013), Aršāma and his World (2020, co-ed), Polis: A New History (2024). Guggenheim Fellow.
If it's true that China is sending sophisticated weaponry (including MANPADS and presumably other air defence systems), then China is using Trump's war in Iran against the US just as the US used Afghanistan against the URSS: as a proxy war to weaken a strategic adversary.
Christopher Nolan, just in case he hasn't already mentioned it:
Sen Adam Schiff (D-CA) is final speaker before the vote Here’s Schiff’s statement about Todd Blanche: “He’s sought to compensate cop-beaters with your money”
I mean... Relatable.
Pixie Casey@pixiecasey.bsky.social · yesterdayin insane local news, the 26 year old director of a rocky horror production was arrested for sending threatening messages to himself in order to get the play shut down bc he didn’t want to deal with cast drama www.mynbc5.com/article/rock...
Republicans love pushing vocational-only education instead of comprehensive-education because they want a healthy supply of low-cost servants and less competition for the professional and boss jobs they want their own kids to have.
Seth Cotlar@sethcotlar.bsky.social · yesterdayIn a college sociology class in the late 1980s I was assigned a Marxist analysis of education that argued that the US education system is designed primarily to produce efficient workers for the labor market. And now Trump’s Department of Education is just tweeting it out.
“.. Trump has leveraged his control of the federal government to instead escape the scrutiny that every other modern president, not to mention every other regular taxpayer, has been subject to.” @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/b...
every day he finds new ways to degrade the united states
The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d agoPresident Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v
The great historian Robert A. Gross, author of the prize-winning, The Minutemen and Their World, has written a historically-informed, nuanced rejoinder to J.D. Vance’s use of U.S. history as a tool of blood-and-soil nationalism. theamericanscholar.org/gratitude-is...
Gratitude Isn’t Everything - The American Scholar
The revolutionary Patriots owed much to their forefathers, but their fight for universal rights embraced a wider mission
theamericanscholar.org
This is a fun illustration of why the DSA types have been able to make some gains this year: voters basically assume being more lib = being more left = being more anti-Trump.
Joey Politano🏳️🌈@josephpolitano.bsky.social · yesterdayDSA-aligned Democrats are now the most pro-free-trade voting bloc in the United States, in an incredible turn of events www.theargumentmag.com/p/who-suppor...
Modern Denmark's particularly reactionary approach to migration is especially grating when one considers that its economy is one of the healthiest in Europe. You can absolutely afford to crack the door open, you're just too racist for it.
By "we," Bessant of course means here "they"—Oman and Iran—since the US is not in the room.
FinTwitter@fintwitter.bsky.social · yesterdayU.S. TREASURY SECRETARY BESSENT: WE MAY HAVE IRAN DEAL TOMORROW TO OPEN HORMUZ -CNBC INTERVIEW
Judge Williams SPECIFICALLY said it was illegal under 26 USC 7217 for Blanche to immunize Trump on tax crimes. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Sen. Rand Paul: "I've had the debate with this administration ... they told me this isn't a war. I said, why isn't it a war? They said, 'Well, a constitutional war has to have significant casualties' ... initiation or declaration of war is *before* the casualties."
Dreamt that I bought a t-shirt for the first day of classes that says “Maybe WE are the Sea Peoples” and honestly need to make this happen.
The ICC chief prosecutor has been sanctioned by the Trump administration and also debanked. Worth listening to in full because this is being done in our names on behalf of Israeli war criminals:
The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · yesterdayICC CHIEF PROSECUTOR: “Oppose Israel and we will go after your family — You have been warned. Rubio, McConnell sent me a letter… what’s liberating is accepting mortality.”
Don't miss this vile story: MAGA is raging at DHS chief Markwayne Mullin for admitting migrant farmworkers can beneft our economy. This means his devotion to ethnic cleansing is in doubt. He must be excommunicated! I wrote about the collapse of MAGA mythology here: newrepublic.com/article/2138...
My thoughts on Bluesky not being welcoming to Republicans is Trump blocks disaster relief to states voting blue, & is also legally codifying anyone who opposes him as a terrorist deserving violence, & his kidnapping brute gangs terrorize the streets, & there's much more but I'm out of characters
Ciara | Ciaraíoch 🎨@ciaraioch.bsky.social · yesterday"Bluesky is a political echo chamber" okay but I'm mostly here to chat with fun internet people and post art and make jokes, I cannot stress how much I don't care
Everywhere should be a hostile place for Republicans. They should not be able to find a friend anywhere. They should lose all their professional and familial relationships. They should be blocked from signing up to social media platforms, clubs, and yard sales. They should be ejected from fairs.
bring back shame www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...
How Can We Live Together?
Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.
bostonreview.net
A.R. Moxon@juliusgoat.bsky.social · yesterdayEverywhere should be a hostile place for Republicans. They should not be able to find a friend anywhere. They should lose all their professional and familial relationships. They should be blocked from signing up to social media platforms, clubs, and yard sales. They should be ejected from fairs.
there is a strain of lefty discourse where you can’t come to any unflattering conclusions about the populace—those must be explained away by how they are being acted upon by capital—but I think you’ll understand things better if you understand capital can also exploit weaknesses it didn’t create
when people say "do your own research" they generally mean "do not trust anyone with any relevant training or experience"
Marc Veldhoen@marcveld.bsky.social · 2d agoI'm a full Professor of Immunology and fully vaccinated. I didn't get vaccinated out of obedience, but after decades of studying the immune system and evaluating all evidence. Calling that "lack of critical thinking" is not an argument. It's ideology masked as pretend intellect.
I'm going for a healthful constitutional in the 90+ heat. Good luck everybody, it's a fascist cultural revolution with Trumpian characteristics.
The news story about Donald Trump being desperate for immunity for tax fraud & the news story about Donald Trump being kicked to the curb by Capital One for widespread money laundering are RELATED.
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 agoIran'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
America’s concentration camps must be shut down now They are sites of horror: torture, rampant spread of infectious diseases, inadequate sanitation, hygiene, & medical care, & a mounting death toll Just as “better training of guards” wasn’t the answer to Auschwitz, you can’t “reform” these camps
Shawn Connery @shawnconnery.bsky.social · 2d agoImmigrant Held at Delaney Detention Center Has Died, Officials Say The mayor of Newark identified the dead man as Edwin Lopez-Cornejo. The federal New Jersey center has been the focus of intense scrutiny for its treatment of detainees. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/n...
NOTE: The lawyer/law firm that represented Trump in his Capital One money laundering lawsuit is the same lawyer Judge Williams referred to the bar for disciplinary action in the bogus Trump IRS lawsuit that resulted in the slush fund and tax immunity.
Please stop flying your personal drones over wildfires. They can ground or collide with our firefighting aircraft, disrupting time critical firefighting and threatening people’s homes. Your photos are not worth someone’s home. If you fly, we can’t.
