NeoTiamat

....okay now I want to know which book.

...this is the kind of response that would be a bit intense if you'd actually lost family members to Israeli soldiers.

(By the same extension, by this point I don't particularly want to hear from anyone who isn't a veteran middle east expert on the topic. So many stupid takes on all sides.)

My take on it is basically that I/P is one of the most complex geopolitical snarls in the world, and so beyond a basic "no killing civilians" stance I don't feel qualified to opine.

And I am actually trained in international relations - I have just enough expertise to know *how* tangled it is.

1. He has no legal way to stop them - states run elections, not the federal gov't.
2. He has no practical way to stop them - there is not enough ICE, and the military hates him. He hasn't got the goons.
3. This is defeatist talk. Don't obey in advance.

During World War II, the US had as I recall about 8.3m people in uniform, out of a population of 140m. Scaling to the modern size of the US, you could presumably get up to ~18m if people were sufficiently motivated.

It's that "if sufficiently motivated" which is the tricky bit.

Pigeons in center of a magical circle

Powerful magic

The darkly fascinating thing is also that it's almost certainly going to get worse, not better. *Particularly* if gas prices shoot through the roof, which seems very likely at this point.

There's some low-hanging fruit (VPNs, Signal), but in practice if a government wants your data badly enough, it can and will get it. The only real safety, such as it is, is in not being worth the effort.

I swoon over the dialogue. Just absolutely brilliant wordsmithing, one marvelous line after another, sold by top notch actors.

A bit more recent, but a fascinating and disturbing experience is walking down a street in China and correlating age and height.

The oldsters who grew up during the Great Leap Forward famines are *tiny*. People who grew up in the 80s, short. Teens growing up post-Deng, bunch of NBA forwards.

A lot of Decisions sure were Made here.

[stares at Graeber's books]

Hoooooo boy was he not a historian.

What was Krugman's line? The American government is an insurance company with an army. Everything else is basically a rounding error in the budget.

I'm going to take the easy bet and put a twenty on "Hitler did nothing wrong but Leftistly"

A painting of Voltaire

Happy #WorldBookDay2026. The French writer and philosopher Voltaire once said 'Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.' 📚

He also drank up to 50 cups of coffee a day, often mixed with chocolate.

I think we're onboard with this.

Firefly lived due to the genuinely incredible skill and interpersonal chemistry of the actors.

The plot and world building got worse with every minute you actually think about them.

I strongly suspect that this is why transphobia is much less popular in the US relative to the UK - "Guy who gets very weird about LGBT people" is a recognizable right-wing/evangelical Type of Guy in the US, and left-of-center voters want nothing to do with that.

We need a few stories of heroic Internal Affairs investigators taking down rabid street cops.

At least wait to be actually betrayed before you start whinging about betrayal.

This is a very odd statement considering the Biden admin was pointedly the least austerity-brained government in the world after COVID, to general economic success.

You really do need to write some sort of family memoir in the Gerald Durrell vein, god knows you've the material for it.

I mean, I'm happy about this because I have friends at a small-ish publisher that got hit *bad* by the tariffs, so I'm hoping this keeps them in business.

Myself personally, if I see even a dime I'll be shocked.

Grandpa #1: Architect
Grandpa #2: History teacher -> high school principal

For added fun: Three of my four grandparents were card-carrying members of the Communist Party. (The fourth was, alas, entirely too Jewish to be let in). Soviet Union!

You'd think farmers would understand reaping and sowing.

a pack of kittens closes in a a large dog standing on a chair

David Attenborough [whispering]:

“As the predators close in on their helpless prey, we can only watch in silent horror, for it is not man’s role to interfere in the hierarchy of nature.”

I spent *so much* time on the original DOTA when I was in high school. Played much more of it than actual Warcraft 3.

Somehow we need to turn your powers to good.

War is always tragic, and that this is such a bungled, stupid, pointless war only sharpens the tragedy.

...you joke but a game where you play a deep cover agent running a societal influence op has some interesting potential.