Bashing on regardless

He knows once he's out, everything he did will be torn down and removed. All the gold shit and stuff he named after himself will be gone. But a finished ballroom will be used by future presidents. He won't be forgotten like all the other losers.

Some notable things in what's being called the "Trump peace plan" but which could not have been more clearly written in Moscow if it came with a 2 for 1 deal on tickets to the Bolshoi Ballet. 🧵

www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

It's not "crossfire" when it's one person who was *aiming* at your camera operator.

“Be warned: Trump is expecting resistance. You will not be heroes. You will be the pretext.”

Mr Dutton, thanks for your time. No worries, I'll have no shortage of that after tonight. Your party must be disappointed with the result. Delighted, Brian, DELIGHTED. What? You really think that a party that wanted to WIN would make ME its leader AND jump on the Trump bandwagon? #auspol #binnight

The Trump 'peace' plan for #Ukraine is no such thing; it is an instrument of surrender. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Carl Sagan explains how the ancient Greeks knew the Earth was round and calculated its circumference over 2,000 years ago.

val kilmer’s turn in TOP SECRET is one of the single best comedy performances ever committed to film, both in terms of comic precision and mechanical virtuosity. just watch this whole clip in its entirety; it’s stunning

An actor who makes any movie better: Sir Alec Guinness.

RIP Group Captain John Hemingway DFC, the last of 'the few.' Survived several mishaps as well as being shot down 4 times. Lived to 105. www.bbc.com/news/article...

You can design one that's less susceptible to authoritarian incursion, and many places have such systems.

At 15:15 in the video here, President Trump says he's heard President Zelensky had admitted "he didn't know where half the money [US Aid to Ukraine] is." Via Politifact, it's another conspiracy theory pushed by Elon Musk. www.politifact.com/factchecks/2... www.c-span.org/program/whit...

The Rotting of the Conservative Mind: the Tory party bends the knee to Donald Trump. A disgrace and one for which they deserve to be judged. open.substack.com/pub/alexmass...

For eight decades, alliances have formed the bedrock of American foreign, trade and cultural policy. But not any more. Europeans, but also America's Asian allies, need to accept this new world, and learn how to live in it. www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

yesterday?

I’m George Takei and I approve of this message.

The NATO big 'uns minus the US need to get together and plan to back Ukraine to the hilt, pronto. Don't waste time with the EU or wrangling other nations. Tell those to either get on board or get out of the way.

A Secretary of Defense who knew what he was doing would have read that speech before he gave it and then made sure to coordinate with the White House and NSC before reversing some 80 years of U.S. policy and leaving Europe in the lurch while the biggest war since the 1945 was underway.

To the right-wing pundits crowing over Vance's speech: if you are really "less worried" about a dictator-state that's invaded its neighbour, killed tens of thousands of people, reduced cities to rubble & engaged in mass rape and child abduction, than you are about "wokery", then you are truly lost.

The healthcare system of the nation that leads the world in medical research is now governed by cranks who believe in incantations and magic potions. Me in @TheAtlantic on COVID's 5th anniversary www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

A reminder: Vladimir Putin could end the war in Ukraine right now, just by ordering his soldiers to go home. No need for treaties or negotiations.

A fundamental story of the last decade is that a lot of basically incompetent people got fed up by competent people telling them they were wrong, constructed a more welcoming alternative ecosystem of competency cosplayers, and then somehow turned the whole government over to them.

Just relentless insanity

We've reached the chapter in Gibbon where the mad emperor is appointing magicians, acrobats, and paid agents of the Persians to the highest offices of state.

The costs to American consumers are real. The concessions by Mexico are fake. How Trump lost his trade war - and how China won. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"America First" becomes "America Alone" from @davidfrum.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

“Toward the end of the November dinner, Trump raised the matter of the lawsuit, the people said. The president signaled that the litigation had to be resolved before Zuckerberg could be “brought into the tent,” one of the people said.” They’re in the tent now. Cowards.

No. The “CIA” doesn’t favor it, Trump appointee John Ratcliffe does. And, buried 14 paragraphs in: “The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete.”

It will change it a little bit in that these traitorous shitbags can now recruit and act again and the message sent to new recruits is that they can get away with it so long as Trump is in power.

Look at this disclaimer. Fucking bonkers.

It's now 1/1/25, so happy 124th birthday, #Australia.

Here are the most appalling clichés of modern political economy writing, that it's possible to read everywhere all the time. 1. Inequality is always getting worse and we never talk about it 1/

I love how much Alec Guinness loved Wallace & Gromit

Yes. It’s a narrative that infantilizes them.

Typically persuasive stuff from Daniel Finkelstein: www.thetimes.com/comment/colu... (non-paywalled version here: archive.is/IxquW) but its most potent value may lie in having attracted this comment, which captures the nature of populism in 2020s Britain even more eloquently than the column itself.

I'm sorry, but I couldn't unsee it.

Things Which Are True Concurrently: 1. Hunter Biden was given an extra dose of persecution on account of his surname. 2. Pardoning your son is a disgraceful move. 3. The whole thing is a great example of the "If the other team did it, what would you think?" game.