Fair
nuclear weapons, foreign policy, Korea, the left - occasional antiquity and cocktail posts Words: Nation, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, NK News, US Institute of Peace, Jacobin, New Republic, elsewhere seniores tollunt omnia
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Fair
I have often wondered about this - seems like a downside
Everything related to polyamory just seems like a ton of work
Kim Jong Un visits Beijing - and brings his daughter, Ju-ae en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN2025...
Hey you know your missile defense scheme that is expensive, infeasible, and dangerous? What if we made it even more of those things? spacenews.com/golden-dome-...
"Hicks - who voted for Donald Trump - said he has sent dozens of letters to the president, Tennessee's senators and lawmakers in other states with major weapons facilities. "I've contacted politicians and the White House and haven't heard anything back." www.reuters.com/business/hea...
"These efforts don’t just erase Black military history; they erase the fullness of America itself. And they send a chilling message: You were good enough to serve but not important enough to remember." www.military.com/spouse/we-ha...
Vance follows a coterie of online Nazis on X, has described Curtis Yarvin as a major intellectual influence, and openly attacks immigrants in blood and soil terms. The response of most of the political press? "Doesn't look like anything to me."
100%
Forgot that the hypothetical bible seller in Chapter 3 uses his money to buy schnapps
I know we’re all tired of pointing this out but it is so maddening that these guys are open fascists and we can’t get a major news outlet to cover their influence on the regime
“study Lycurgus” = watch 300 again
Wasn’t this bad but this dynamic existed at my kid’s elementary school and it was completely nuts. The bus comes to your neighborhood! Make things easy on yourself!
It means a lot to me that you appreciate this terrible joke
The existence of Alexander Protopopov implies the existence of an Alexander Post-Popov en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexand...
I do think “X breeds mysticism” is an under-examined aspect of the Musk takeover
Yeah this stuff is so annoying - it’s like the never-ending hangover of Bush v. Gore, even though it doesn’t even make sense in that context. Cranky left/progressive types are reliable Dem voters!
I have some bad news
The only good thing about Starmerism is that it’s failing so completely that it may convince other center-left parties not to go in that direction
A swaggeringly self-satisfied swan 🦢 strutting her funky stuff at the centre of a 4th century #Roman mosaic from Barton Farm #Gloucestershire Found in 1824 and on display in the ever wonderful @coriniummuseum.bsky.social 📷 August 2022 Be more swan this September #MosaicMonday
#MosaicMonday 🏺 Marine theme in vestibule of Domus M Caesi Blandi, centurion of Praetorian Guard, #Pompeii. Two dolphins + sea serpent beside a trident, around a ship's rudder topped w bird, + fortifications on threshold panel above. Perhaps a tribute to source of family fortunes. #Roman
“The Middle Ages couldn’t survive on Catholicism, nor could the antique world survive on politics.” - Marx on why the concept of modes of production applies to pre-capitalist societies
Would imagine this could lead to fewer misreadings of the commodity fetishism section - but on the other hand, the leading one (“people are obsessed with commodities, maaan”) seems to stem from people not reading the text at all.
It’s still no cakewalk, but the famously difficult opening chapter (“The Commodity”) seems a lot more straightforward in this translation.
She’s explicitly said that she does *not* want to end right-to-work, which I think is ridiculous. Which part of it does she support?
Man I love the regular kind but I bought a bottle of Cynar 70 for my partner and good lord it is bitter
Engels: “Only barbarians are able to rejuvenate a world in the throes of collapsing civilization.” We could use some!
The people wrecking our country are not barbarians - if anything they’re late (Western) Roman rulers, which I assure you is far worse.
Kinda want to start a “suburban noise” movement whose sole proto-political purpose is to encourage people in the suburbs to hang out outside and make noise.
Our military power would be instantly obliterated!!!! (except for the $1 trillion we just gave to the Pentagon and will almost certainly give again)
Trump seizes control of MPAA, appoints inventor of motion smoothing as agency head
Starting to dig through the new Capital translation and I thought Paul North’s editor’s introduction was very good - would work well for a course on the text
“Method is educated anger.” - Paul North
I think this is an important and useful jumping off point! “man” can be in contrast to “woman” but it can also be in contrast to “boy”
“Trusting the experts is a feature of religion” - incredible
One of my favorite movies! got to see it on the big screen a few years back, which was incredible
Who are the productive members of society in this situation? www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...
Also - on nationalist revival: "It is so evil because, in the age of international communication and supranational blocs, nationalism cannot really believe in itself anymore and must exaggerate itself to the extreme in order to persuade itself and others that it is still substantial."
So many insights: the problem with merely renewing social bonds, the fascist defense of hazing rituals and bullying, the ambiguity of sports, the need to puncture fascist "absolutes" by teaching historical contingency... "education must transform itself into sociology"
Ransack mankind, my friend, and find all those With honour--the sense of shame--still in their eyes And on their tongues, who never could be bought For any price: one boat would hold the lot. - Theognis
This is good in its own right (especially with RFK Jr.), but there is also a wider political benefit to forcing resignations. It keeps the regime off-balance and disorganized, much like last time. Dems in Congress (and groups on the outside) should press for more. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/o...
it’s true
The right seeks to—and does—shift the terrain on which we fight and live. We can either seek to do the same or be perpetually losing ground.
*rudely devouring a delicious sausage* This is excellent - very Promethean
Fennel is the most hardcore herb because Prometheus used it to steal fire
Like I wrote this when people on the left were (rightly) concerned about nuclear risks but also using them to argue for abandoning Ukraine: “Burning ourselves out with alarmist terror isn’t a recipe for action — it’s a recipe for political paralysis.” jacobin.com/2022/10/ukra...
There are some nuances that you don’t always see among liberal voices but in general people have been very clear that the war is a flagrant act of imperial aggression by Russia and that supporting Ukraine’s defense is fully justified.
Also the (admittedly not huge) left foreign policy community has been pretty consistently pro-Ukraine from an anti-imperialist perspective bsky.app/profile/matt...
“Might will be right, and shame will cease to be.”
Hesiod’s description of how the iron age of man will end sounds…familiar
kinda gives the game away
Hey if it gets him to do something decent I’ll be happy but man I am so tired of the notion that bipartisanship is by definition Good
“rejecting bipartisanship” ugh
it’s state and local GOP governance on a national level - do literally nothing productive, just make life worse for the other team
people.com/nancy-reagan...
So if the diplomatic window opens again, the US will have even less leverage for a deal that will almost certainly be worse than the one it previously rejected. We’re told that no deal is better than a bad deal - but the US needs to recognize that a bad deal now is better than a worse one later.
In 2018-2019, North Korea wanted major sanctions relief in exchange for shutting down their Yongbyon nuclear facility. The US rejected this proposal, earning Trump praise for walking away from a “bad deal.” Now they’re expanding Yongbyon and have an economic lifeline thanks to Russia.
One for the “take the bad deal with North Korea because it will be better than any future deal” file www.nknews.org/2025/08/nort...
solidarity
It’s funny how your commentators swing wildly from “it’s anachronistic to say the Roman Republic had politics” to “WOKE SULLA”
Today in “isolationism”
Enjoyed this interview with @ositanwanevu.com: “The ancients took it for granted that there was a connection between the amount of economic inequality that prevailed in society and the way that their political institutions worked, and I think they were right.” www.bostonreview.net/articles/dem...
They’re doing everything they can to signal and people are doing everything they can to ignore it.
Congratulations to Sean O'Brien! www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/u...
Calm down guys - we’re just undermining your sovereignty www.bbc.com/news/article...
Once again: The refusal of this administration (like its predecessor) to enforce legal restrictions on the use of US-origin weapons (e.g. war planes and munitions) is also a rule of law issue. No way these airstrikes are "legitimate self-defense" as required by the Arms Export Control Act.
I also don’t think we have enough of an anti-monarchy national ideology. It exists to some extent, but it’s also really hollow.
From Chris Wickham - this is an early and probably oversimplified form of the argument but it is an important (if nuanced) element in Framing the Early Middle Ages too
But grasping the intricacies and interaction of claims is essential for things like doing a lit review and writing a research paper! The body of research about a given subject can't be slotted into some facile for/against binary. I blame cable news.
Also: the "debate" framework is an impediment to learning how knowledge production happens. When I taught basic research methods to undergrads, they'd often enter thinking there were two sides--and only two sides--to every topic. Many struggled with the notion of multiple perspectives.
Usually this is the point when someone goes “but debating is a great way to learn!” and I cannot stress enough that whatever learning gains there might be in individual cases, these are clearly offset by the terrible results of framing anything and everything as a political debate. Look around you!
Not everything is up for debate. Some views are just incorrect and there’s no point in debating perspectives that are not grounded in reality. That’s how we got here in the first place!
I also think we need to keep hammering home that you don’t go to college to “debate.” You go to learn, which is not the same thing.
And for many, civilian academics are the epitome of this intellectualism who get in the way of “WaRfiGhTiNg” and “LeThAlItY” it was only in the last 30 years that civilians could find permanent academic jobs at the academies
I actually think the story here isn’t so much about Hegseth and co. as much as it is about military officials in and around the academies using it as cover/an excuse to push out civilian professors altogether
“The Biden administration was totally feckless when it came to holding the Netanyahu government to the standard of American law and the standards that we claim to apply to every other country in the world when it comes to the duty to provide humanitarian assistance.” Senator Chris Van Hollen.
Such a retrofitted BS excuse too - Israel attacked Syria, Lebanon, and Iran!
remember folks, we cant have gun restrictions because if we do the federal government will occupy our streets, imprison people without due process, ship dissidents to foreign gulags and things of that nature
the other thing is that this is so easy to predict and the only reason so many of our pundits have a hard time with it is because they have fully bought the idea that Trump is some pure representation of what the Volk wants.
also, the insane racism of this aside, "the black and white culture of louisiana is completely different" is something you can only believe if you've never stepped foot in louisiana (this applies to much of the south)
I’m going to simply say as ever that the ostensible identity and inscrutable motives of any given mass shooter are of vastly secondary salience compared to the obvious structures and clear social priorities that make their act thinkable in the first place
Pro-crypto government sanctions international actors for engaging in crypto's one clear use: crime en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN2025...
Gun control? I don't support that. If we really want to stop mass shootings, we've got to fund mental health programs - which I also do not support.
Another day, another example bsky.app/profile/john...
Dying at the opening line of this self-serving op-ed: "Space isn’t science fiction anymore." It never was? www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/au...
North Korea calls Lee Jae Myung's talk of denuclearization a "futile delusion" en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN2025...
one thing i've taken away from surveys asking the public to evaluate trump's most authoritarian moves is that the ordinary americans have a much clearer sense of what's happening than most professional political observers
Is a 22-point swing against you in nine months good?
Wow so grateful we have National Guard troops guarding the very scary metro station Farragut West
It’s always been crony-y but I also think there are periods of greater and lesser cronyism
??
G.M. Goshgarian on Althusser and...mayonnaise
And I’m not saying it’s the only or the best framework - but it’s attractive to people because it hangs together as a reasonable explanation for what’s happening
