Azby Brown

I wrote an article about Japan's traditional farmhouses -- minka -- and why they're important. The Wisdom of Wood: Why Japan’s Old Farmhouses Matter More Than Ever allabout-japan.com/en/article/1...

This is good model language for writers' contracts.

The new Santorum.

these guys are evil and dangerous but also just utter fuckin buffoons lol just such incompetent embarrassing boneheads

This entire admin in one story: www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

We need to start thinking about this now.

Oh, well that can be the first line of questioning in Jan. when they haul him up there.

Professor Snyder accurately describes the betrayal of democratic Ukraine by Donald Trump to help Putin. We have to defend democratic countries!

Ceaucescu’s palace became a museum of criminal dictatorial excess. So should Trump’s.

BREAKING WSJ: Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of the military-grade version of Starlink that Ukraine relied on.

The cleanup would have used industrial standards for this soil - that is, for workers who will be on site only part of the day. The residential standards - for people living there full time - are stricter. I would have thought that there should have been some notice to the public about this.

1/ The Musk-Trump decision to degrade Ukraine's Starlink access as a pressure tactic is a disaster not just for the United States' reputation but for the entire US defence industry. Musk's action may end up burning the whole industry. ⬇️

Or, with his trillion dollars, Musk could eradicate global hunger for 4 decades.

probably small comfort to ukraine but it is a little interesting trump and musk are blaming instead of trying to take credit which is usually something both of them can't help but do

Applebaum sets it out in clear terms.

1/ Trump's fuel deal with Russia will have two big advantages for Russian refinery operators, according to a Russian energy expert: it will help them to fund their own anti-drone defences, and also help to clear out their stocks of summer diesel in time for winter. ⬇️

On Monday, armed US Customs and Border Protection agents and CBP contractors wantonly destroyed the last of four very old cottonwood trees—possibly as old as the United States itself—on the edge of federal land near Lochiel, Arizona, to build a new border wall following 71 days of peaceful protest.

I have noticed in various offline circles — particularly media and political science — it is still considered rather inappropriate to acknowledge that the US President is evidently quite insane. It's not that these people don't *know* it; they clearly do. You just aren't supposed to *say* it. 🙃

Really funny. In a Norwegian way.

A Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29 destroys a Geran-4 drone at point-blank range with its onboard cannon, then flies through the resulting cloud of fire. Spectacular footage, but also a good illustration of why cannon interceptions are dangerous.

Interesting 🧵:

Roses are redde Violettes are blue Narratyves of inevitable acceptance of technologye Are an ideological tool

Just saying... Plague is a disease that is endemic in Asia, the western United States, and other places. We know how to treat it with antibiotics. It is not extraordinarily transmissible. There are 1000 to 2000 cases a year across the world, maybe 10 in the US.

Got your Super Intelligence right here at the origins of the Iran War. AI also implicated in the signature war crime the US committed.

“Annihilating Iran”—which can only mean the widespread use of thermonuclear weapons against Iran’s nearly 100 million citizens—is, I’m afraid, the Chekov’s gun of Trump’s second term. He has spoken too often and too explicitly about unleashing such wanton destruction for it to be an idle threat.

SCOOP: Valar Atomics is planning a massive nuclear powered data center on public lands in Utah. The 9,600 acre site would include 456 reactors, along with fuel fabrication and waste storage facilities. www.npr.org/2026/09/30/n...

A rare glimpse inside a Ukrainian FPV farm. Operators feed their flock a balanced diet of grain and lithium batteries. A few more weeks and they’ll be ready to leave the coop and hunt Russian equipment.

Doh.

This shows the reality of Gaza in shocking resolution. I've scraped and exported all the imagery, totalling around 2.5 billion pixels at 13cm resolution, for safe keeping, in case they decide to take this imagery offline. If this happens, keep an eye out for access.

Chyron wins the Internet

This is human trafficking on a massive scale.

With the midterm elections shaping up to be a massive reckoning for the Republican Party, it's worth remembering that they had a fairly easy offramp from Trumpism in the immediate aftermath of the January 6th riot but they completely chickened out.

Good.

More than 4 years on, Russia Today is still busy trying to deny the Bucha massacre, despite multiple investigations by human rights organisations, international bodies, and investigative journalists that showed Russia's responsibilities.

It is not humiliating for him, since he has no sense of dignity, but it is humiliating for the rest of us that the president of the United States serves as a subordinate press officer of the Kremlin. (1/2)

Considering the ongoing restrictions on information about US losses in the region, I think many people will find this very informative

I wonder if the NY Times has a Euphemism Desk to soften its stories. Trump lawlessness is an “expansive interpretation of presidential power”? A Trump-UAE crypto scheme “blurred the line between foreign policy and private enterprise.” This thread imagines history as written by NYT’s Euphemism Desk.🧵

The Iran Disaster Will Likely Be Job One emptywheel.net/2026/09/13/t...

Today @vantortech.bsky.social released hi-res imagery of damage to the Saudi East-West pipeline pumping station at al Mesba'ah (23.9565, 40.0538). The station looks largely destroyed. Saudi officials said the attack came from Iraq and there were injuries.

Very informative 🧵:

AfD’s new state MPs include ex-Stasi officer, former porn actor, neopagans and neo-Nazis www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...

OTD 60 yrs ago, French President Charles de Gaulle observed the 120-kt Betelgeuse nuclear test at Mururoa Atoll. Due to de Gaulle’s reported impatience, the balloon-tethered test proceeded despite warnings of adverse winds, showering Western Samoa, Fiji, and the Cook Islands with radioactive rain.

Today in 1945, one month after “Fat Man” devastated Nagasaki, selected journalists toured the TRINITY site in New Mexico (where the first atomic test had occurred seven weeks before) with senior Manhattan Project officials—a propaganda effort to discredit stories of lethal radioactivity in Japan.

Happy 72nd Birthday to Ruby Bridges, who at the age of 6 desegregated the New Orleans public schools. She’s younger than 30 senators and our last two presidents—and only 7 years older than Barack Obama. The past isn’t past.