…I know

but...

…bro?

pete hegseth embraces the warrior spirit of the hagakure

Office studio. Tons of makeup. Soft lighting. All important SecDef job requirements.

Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) 2026-05-11T23:50:19.922Z

bro…bro

This is the whole issue that I suspect is underlying the markets being quiet: the strait will open because the strait not opening is really bad.

Raffi Melkonian (@rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T17:30:07.416Z

…bro

We’re getting there.

Trump’s “pool guy” who never did a pool and never worked for Trump. And never did a big government contract. When the real story eventually comes out, it’s going to be a doozy.

The No-Bid Contract That Is Turning Washington’s Reflecting Pool Blue [NYT]

…bro?

Congrats Taylor Sheridan, you got exactly what you’ve wanted!

Secretary of Defense Rock (@sodrock.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T21:26:26.042Z

…bro

…bro?

…bro

…bro…bro

It is ridiculous to pretend X moved to the right because people left and not because it got bought by a neo-nazi who deliberately runs it with the overt goal of promoting his views and suppressing those he dislikes.

Andy Craig (@andycraig.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T21:05:12.723Z

You can't have influence on X, The Everything App by design because it was purchased with the explicit goal of keeping you from having influence on there, no matter how much less important you feel here. That's the end of the discussion.

Cooper Lund (@cooperlund.online) 2026-05-12T21:02:09.626Z

watching one Robert Altman movie all way through without their phone would send these people into a full-on dissociative coma

I dunno. Maybe because that's a stupid thing to want?

Don Bones (@donbones.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T17:10:21.352Z

We Are All NPCs in the Eyes of the Lord: an essay on the films of Robert Altman

…bro

This awful movie isn't a national security film. It is THE national security film. It's one of those dumb films that accidentally stumbled into multiple prophetic insights, like Demolition Man. The big thing everyone already knows Toys got right was drones, but it called a LOT of things.

Dark Laughter (@darklaughtertdb.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T20:47:48.093Z

…bro?

Once again pointing out that the plot of Sicario was CIA/Spec Ops shit into Mexico really being cover for a conspiracy to return power to larger and more powerful cartels further south. Which, well…

Zeddy (@zeddary.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T22:47:56.296Z

…bro…bro…bro?

Trump has publicly championed the U.S. steel industry, and yet, the White House just secured tens of millions of dollars worth of donated foreign steel for Trump's $400 million ballroom project.

Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T22:30:42.172Z

…bro

This Sicario business is like a perfect storm for the Subset of BlueSky. Throw in a little JJA, Berlin, a Phantom, Holosuns, Georgetown vs GWU vs Johns Hopkins, counter-intelligence vs counterintelligence and the servers can melt.

Robert Wilson (@frcolumba.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T22:22:11.272Z

…bro

There’s a really good Rand report from early 2000s about how we / COLAR crushed the cartels and as a result FARC took over production and distribution and almost captured Bogota. I think about it a lot.

Holy shit, the CIA is doing targeted assassinations in Mexico now, like, semi-officially:

Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T21:25:46.553Z

Not only that, but they carried out one of these extra-judicial killing by blowing up a car on one of the country's busiest highways.

Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T21:26:56.853Z

They shot artillery over I-5 just to give The Keggerator a hard on.

ploeg (@ploeg.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T21:38:05.611Z

Shit, they shut down El Paso airport to do Live Action Balloon Fight.

ploeg (@ploeg.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T21:40:40.654Z

…bro

This is a terrible idea. Setting aside the geopolitical implications of the CIA killing people on Mexican soil, and the potential for the cartels to retaliate against the US, blowing up a car in traffic is asking for a mass casualty event that takes out innocent bystanders.

Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T21:39:24.250Z

…bro

It also effectively invites other countries to do the same on our soil.

Critical Rationalist (@noncynic.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T21:58:28.786Z

…bro…bro

Trans rights are human rights and this administration is an abomination of hate and greed.

Chris Kluwe (@chriswarcraft.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T22:18:37.470Z

…bro

Literally a heist from government coffers and/or de jure instead of de facto impunity for tax crimes. We fought a revolution to not be ruled by a king.

Brendan Nyhan (@brendannyhan.bsky.social) 2026-05-13T02:51:53.220Z

…bro

THIS IS WHAT RIGHT WING EVANGELICALS ACTUALLY BELIEVE — "personal relationship with Jesus" translates to an unlimited and unqualified indulgence for wickedness, at least if you're a powerful white man who serves their cult.

mtsw (@mtsw.bsky.social) 2026-05-13T01:55:22.922Z

…bro…bro…bro?

When TBS started airing reruns of SEX AND THE CITY in syndication, they couldn’t air curse words or graphic content, which meant that Samantha was essentially not in the show anymore.

I dunno. Maybe because that's a stupid thing to want?

Don Bones (@donbones.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T17:10:21.352Z

…bro?

Congrats again to the 99 Senators who voted to confirm this guy because it’s a Big Club

I'm struggling to understand why dressing up as the foreign leader you kidnapped is cool. Like, even if you think abducting Maduro was great, why would you want to walk around in his clothes? What's the message exactly?

Kevin Rothrock (@kevinrothrock.me) 2026-05-13T05:06:41.309Z

…bro…bro…bro…bro

Pentagon Comptroller Jay Hurst said the estimate increased “because of updated repair and replacement of equipment cost and also just general operational cost.”

Forbes (@forbes.com) 2026-05-12T14:10:04Z

…bro?

I kinda love that even the most practical ideas like "we need hulls, so buy overseas designs that can be made quickly & relatively cheaply in those countries' shipyards" can mutate into stupid shit like "build nuclear capital ships in foreign shipyards that have never done anything like that before"

Chatham Harrison dba TRUMP DELENDUS EST (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T17:00:05.666Z

…bro…bro…bro…bro…bro

New piece by me reflecting on an article @leahsottile.bsky.social recently published about what it’s like to be in your early 20s and to have always lived inside an era of mass shootings, climate change, unaffordable housing, and Trumpist rage.
https://rightlandia.ghost.io/recommended-reading-leah-sottiles-recent-article-about-the-students-in-my-history-of-the-far-right-class/

As Leah points out in her article, the class she visited was very much about HISTORY, not current events or politics. Here’s a thread where I talked about the idea behind it…each student did an independent research project on one far right activist from the Cold War era.

It’s a class on the history of the far right in the US and each student will design and execute a research project on a Cold War era figure about whom almost nothing has been written, but for whom there is an enormous primary source archive available to work with. 1000s of pages of FBI files…

One sub-theme in the course was about the history of “far right watchers” like Leah and other journalists, activists, and scholars who take it upon themselves to keep tabs on the “far right” actors of their day. Leah wrote a great article about this in 2022.
Hunting hate: what it takes to be an extremism reporter
Exposing uncomfortable truths requires a constant search for happiness and light to prevent it from tainting the way one sees the world [Guardian]

The premise behind this work of “watching the far right” that groups like the SPLC have done (and which the ADL used to do), is that movements organized around white nationalism and/or Christian Nationalism pose a threat to US democracy as it’s generally been defined since WWII.

White nationalists and Christian nationalists have long resented groups like the SPLC and ADL which kept close tabs on them, because their political strategy depended heavily upon them being able to duplicitously pass themselves off as “normal” participants in democratic politics.

The right’s derisive term for this sort of “far right watching” today is “Antifa.” But as Steven Ross documents in this excellent new book, keeping tabs on anti-democratic movements has long been an important form of democratic activism in the US.
The Secret War Against Hate A USA Today BestsellerFrom the author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Hitler in Los Angeles, the definitive story of the intrepid activists [bloomsbury.com]

Back in the 1980s, a “conservative” organization run by a secret neo-Nazi named Willis Carto published a book that laid out the same case against supposedly tyrannical “far right watchers” that we hear today–they hate free speech and are trying to silence us!!!
The Far Right Genealogy of Today’s Dopey “FrEe sPeAcH!” arguments “There is a CONSPIRACY in this country to limit public comment and discussion to what a small but powerful… [rightlandia.ghost.io]

Just as Donald Trump refers to accurate reporting he doesn’t like as “fake news,” right wing actors have long referred to accurate reporting on their activities which make them look bad in the eyes of the portions of the public they’re trying to recruit as “radical left lies.”

…bro

…bro

A flat circle

…bro…bro…bro

It's hard to believe, but this really is the official position of our country's Very Serious Financial Analysts: "it would simply be too horrible if the strait stays closed, so … [closes eyes tight, taps heels together] … it won't!"

David Roberts (@volts.wtf) 2026-05-12T17:35:15.770Z

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha

(Analysts at JP Morgan get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to write this bullshit.)

Just to be clear:

The dynamics of inventory depletion leading to price increases and economic pain which then contribute to pressure for resolution are valid—and I had, perhaps incorrectly, assumed are obvious.

The assumptions for the base case are what I find ridiculous.

…bro

This is the whole issue that I suspect is underlying the markets being quiet: the strait will open because the strait not opening is really bad.

And I suspect the unspoken assumption is that Trump will declare a fake victory and make a deal. But Trump is very dumb and Iran is really feeling its oats.

Raffi Melkonian (@rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T17:31:11.173Z

But if I had to guess, yeah, Trump packing it in is the most likely result, so it’s not a crazy assumption if you have to make one. But it be wrong very very easily.

Raffi Melkonian (@rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T17:48:09.983Z

…bro?

I think this is true. When the GOP breaks the rules, it’s (obviously wrongly) seen as a Dirty Harry antiheroes who break the rules but get stuff done type thing whereas Democrats breaking the rules is seen as a hypocritical hall monitor and/or women and minorities not knowing their place thing.

Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast (@irhottakes.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T18:02:04.734Z

…bro

Microsoft researchers find that for non-programming tasks, LLM agents aren't ready for work. For long, truly complex work, they're only currently ready for Python programming. It's great that MS researchers have the independence to publish papers like this.

Matthew Sheffield (@matthew.flux.community) 2026-05-12T17:31:55.109Z

…bro…bro…bro?

Q: To what extent are Americans' financial situations motivating you to make a deal with Iran?TRUMP: "Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody."

Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T18:25:16.746Z

bro

There are going to be so many nasty ripples hitting highly salient corners of industry and daily life over the next 6-8 weeks that simply cannot be drowned out with press conferences and Fox News programming, and are increasingly likely to leave Trump’s presidency mortally wounded by Labor Day.

Nathaniel William Horadam (@horadam.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T18:16:50.144Z

bro

By sheer coincidence of timing, my and @cshalizi.bsky.social new @knightcolumbia.org piece on how bad ideas about AI helped fuel the DOGE madness knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-a…

Henry Farrell (@himself.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T18:31:17.335Z

bro

A lot of the complaints about public health officials are people wondering why they weren't treated like adults, and then turning around and demonstrating why they weren't treated like adults by completely misunderstanding and misrepresenting what's going on and blaming someone else for that.

Cooper Lund (@cooperlund.online) 2026-05-12T18:43:40.865Z

bro

I know we keep saying it over and over again but Trump is an explicitly unique individual in American history because the media by and large abjectly refuses to cover him the way they would any other human being who has ever lived. Any other human being and this would be a gross outburst.

ArgellaStone (@argellastone.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T18:28:14.766Z

bro

…bro

bro@*#^@

me after I sow:

…bro

Don’t assume that I don’t know how to read merely because I’ve massively misinterpreted what you wrote. I actually understood it perfectly, I’m just also annoying

It’s not that I don’t care I just don’t give a care

when you think about it actually it's your fault that I've chosen to interpret your words this way

Micah (@rincewind.run) 2026-05-12T22:25:23.689Z

[…for the purposes of clarity…any resemblances to other dialogues, discussions, comments, threads, persons, personages or applicable online peroration…living or dead…or live…or unalive…throughout the hypothetical myriad realities embraced in perpetual fractal recursive parallel entropic pathways of quantum collapse by various theories of branching dimensionality in all their foamy fuzzy quarky ways…is entirely co-incidental]

[…like…I’m not having a dig at anyone…that I know reads this stuff]

[…it just…look…maybe it’s…better…this way…& not with what would otherwise be where all the bro’s are…& maybe joke’s on me that way…but…it seemed funny to me…not sure if it seemed funny enough to justify beating it over & over that way like a point that didn’t need to be labored in the first place…but…well…I guess but a couple of things…one of which being…on my end…doesn’t even make pareto compliance for the why-would-you-even…the other…would be a whole other post…about a series of posts…that have since been removed…about the story of a lady who wrote a story about being a parent & one way that had been pretty scary & how in the end when it didn’t go as bad as it could have they looked at some things in a different light…& of the internet…& the sort of people who read more outrage-bait posts for longer than it would have taken to read the thing they were baited to be outraged about which would avoid them doing things like calling a generally pretty nice-seeming lady a bad mother & having her have to admit that might be the limit for her not doing things she generally would never…like call someone a stupid c-word for not fucking reading the shit they think it’s ok to claim gives them the right to say some shit about on the internet where any fuckwit might find it…&…that would involve posting a bunch of stuff that lady has subsequently removed from visibility…& also be way the fuck longer & angrier than this was…& most ways I can look at that it seems like the person in that picture I feel bad for wouldn’t appreciate that…so…I…needed something else to do…& wasn’t sure I trusted where I’d wind up if I started…you know…typing?]

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