A near-perfect microcosm of the postcolonial experience in one photo. After seizing a once-productive farmstead, a man rips apart the very bench he's sitting on to burn in the fireplace. The slow burn of a system already fueling its own end.

The new high priests are creating a liberal death penalty based on a utilitarian calculus. Very much unlike the right-wing death sentence based on lex talionis - the demands of order and retribution. Death is no longer reserved for the man who shed blood, but for the invalid, the useless, the old… or even one whose words lower social trust. It’s sacrifice under another name, and it will not stay confined to the willing. Their insatiable compassion knows no measure

RT @LancesLegion: "He literally kidnapped the president and took over their oil."

Not only I am tired of these wild AI speculations of impeding doom from self important people: I resent them. I actively resent people proposing to crash the economy or proposing authoritarian control over my life and other people's lives with idiotic and dangerous ideas like chip control or bans or tracking researchers. Every idiot in history who's taken the approach of "the ends justify the means" to solve an imaginary future disaster created the very disaster they wanted to stop. See Population Bomb leading to the one child policy and Communism leading to Mao's mass famines and Fascism leading to the death of tens of millions of people and war. These solutions are evil and worse than any disease that they propose to solve. It you believe you can actually predict the end of the world then you are as insane as the Heaven's Gate cult that killed themselves in the 90s thinking UFOs were coming to transcend them. Not only should we not take your policies and fear mongering seriously, we should actively throw out any and all of your proposed solutions because they come from a place of delusion. I don't give a shit that you work in the industry or think you saw something or that you want to virtue signal on X. You are actively contributing to a horrible future based on baseless speculation that has no grounding in reality. Don't confuse expertise in a domain with ability to predict impact of that domain or frankly to make predictions a decade out better than a dart throwing monkey. They are orthagonal skills. How's Hinton's "we don't need to train Radiologists anymore" working out? How did the Population Bomb work out? The global cooling second ice age? Peak oil? Just because someone is a bridge engineer does not mean they can predict the impact of bridges on society or that they have any actually useful insight at all on the complex, ever changing system called life. There are people dying in wars right now. Children starving. Homelessness. Dictatorships. In short, real problems. And we're supposed to drop everything to stop a made up problem in your head? Pound sand. We don't care. And we are not going to remake society based on you scary monsters under the bed delusion.

By overusing their ultimate weapon, the label of "extremist", the ruling elite has exhausted its rhetorical ammunition. Willing to monitor and label the AfD, but unwilling to swing the axe themselves. Once the stigma is no longer feared the establishment will lack the political cover required to crush the AfD. A ban attempt is now more likely to wound them than to kill the AfD. "if you are going to strike a rival, you must crush them completely so they cannot seek revenge"

Iran’s opportunity to strike a deal only lasted as long as they could pressure the strait. That was their only real leverage. The IRGC leadership read the WSJ, listened to Tucker Carlson, and treated it as confirmation America was on the verge of conceding failure. Instead of seriously negotiating for the best deal with their remaining leverage they decided to release Lego videos and claim victory. Now the Strait is open, Iran is blockaded, their proxies are spent, and Washington doesn’t need a deal. Iran forgot the first rule of propaganda: never start believing it yourself

The noise is typically less than most other light industrial buildings. Data centers are zoned light industrial, they aren’t plopping them down in residential zones. The big hyperscale ones aren’t built anywhere near residential areas. I don’t see how this is different from any other light industry. Water use, electricity consumption, light noise - those are standard across industry. None of these luddites are calling for people to drain their swimming pools or set the AC to 78 during the day. Living near a roadway is noisier, comparable to or quieter than a busy street The entire anti-data center movement is plagued by irrationality. Then on the right there’s a bunch of delusional “influencers” calling for a national socialist data center policy that would force companies to start building schools or whatever else. As if they don’t already pay taxes to local elected governments who then decide how it’s spent. They want a national policy of bribes. It’s working fine the way it is now. Local communities extract concessions during county board meetings or planning stages. Nonsensical ideas that only sound good on a podcast but fall apart in the real world.. It’s bleak now, but the tide will turn. Data will reign

I don’t understand people lamenting the use of weapons as some kind of loss of essence - a depletion. They’re being employed for their intended function. Every tomahawk, every bomb, missile and drone fired in anger is a glorious consummation of destiny. As if a weapon rotting in a warehouse has somehow attained its telos. No. The fire is the fatal fulfillment of its life’s purpose. Providence.

>vote against the bill >314 nays to 260 yays >needs 360 to stop it, regardless of yays >not enough votes against it >law passes because lack of opposition despite losing vote >go on X to complain >EU reads the complaint and sends a swat team >democracy

The real question on PF isn’t between “innocent group” vs “proven op.” It’s between “likely contains assets and is monitored” or “was created or is controlled as a strawman with obfuscated purpose”. I lean towards the latter position. “Innocent until proven guilty” is a legal standard for individuals facing punishment. It is not the right lens for assessing organizations in a post-COINTELPRO world. As we’ve seen with the SPLC, NGOs create, infiltrate, steer, and amplify groups to manufacture threats and sustain their own power/purpose. It’s unlikely that this behavior was a one-off. With genuine right-wing extremism declining due to shifts in ideology and public opinion, the COINTELPRO model had to evolve from simple infiltration toward control and sustainment, with the end goal to attract latent recruits and justify the operation.

A black liminal space straight out of their shared racial consciousness. Whites have infinite backrooms - empty office space; blacks have the shape store. It’s alive with pattern and color, packed with the kind of junk that screams “hustle this into profit” It’s genetic memory manifesting in real time. Their own racially distinct collective archetypes in cultural imagery and hustle behaviors. Kool pineapples are the Shape Store materializing in our shared reality.

It's been long established U.S policy that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Even the JCPOA followed that principle, though it was only designed to delay Iran's pathway to one (not allow it). The Biden admin didn't deviate from the policy at all. The US was always going to use force if Iran pursued one. JCPOA or not. It was up to Iran to decide whether it wanted to force a US response. They were enriching uranium, and negotiations ground to a halt. The Biden administration spent four years trying to negotiate while Iran was advancing its program. Iran walked into the negotiation with Trump's team and said it had enough enriched uranium for several bombs, the same assessment the U.S intel community came to. Trump spelled out exactly what he was going to do and even gave them a sample in 2025. Did they understand the scope of maximum pressure 2.0?

X lets us experience the depths of human insanity so disconnected from reality that any rational dialog is impossible.

The type of veteran who ends up on Caleb Hammer is also the exact type who scams the system or brags about their VA disability.

It centers on gaining leverage over the Europeans. To force them to align on the importance of U.S. maritime interests, and to extract concessions that would force the EU and IMO to accept the restoration of US shipbuilding. They are the ones who cancelled P&I insurance, which shut down Hormuz. It wasn't the Iranians through military might, but the Europeans through cowardice by insurance denial. We lost leverage with the Supreme Court Tariff ruling, but can regain it by fracturing the global energy market. European energy dependence will deepen, we gain leverage, we extract concessions. They'll be less willing to refuse the SHIPS act. x.com/johnkonrad/status/2034…