John C

AO3 writers are cracking their knuckles

I just keep thinking of that line from M*A*S*H where Klinger says “ if it’s a police action, why didn’t they send the cops?”

oh.

the next six months are crucial

big week for Lloyd's of London

a. so iran is clearly serious about closing the strait
b. adrift container ship is itself going to close the strait because you can't exactly risk driving into the thing

"...The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over."

There's also the point to be made that just because you can do something militarily doesn't mean you should.

closing the strait of hormuz is kinda a "welps that was a mess, we got it reopened (dragged out that wreckage...), stuff is moving again" problem.

abqaiq is a facility in saudi that ~85% of their oil has to pass through. it's a complex desulfurization plant. How long would it take to rebuild that.

I think people imagine a billion dollars as way more than it is in scale terms for U.S. govt. for comparison purposes, the *federal* government spends about $5 billion on healthcare a day.

I'll be in my office.

Because gender is a performance, and the critics have apparently decided that big burly manly man with beard that says incoherent shit is the best way to perform masculinity

Something I’ve said as a queer person many times is that people really should not mistake my softness for weakness

This is basically my attitude.

Sinking an enemy warship is not an illegal act, even if the war itself is illegal and unjust. The Argentine seizure of the Falklands was illegal and unjustified; the Argentine sinking of HMS Sheffield was not.

We could fix everything if we took the phones away from the kids and gave them tamagotchis

Small Brain: The Cold War never ended

Big Brain: The Cold War began in 1919

Planetary Brain: The Cold War began in 1854

Galactic Brain: The Cold War began in 1830

Half the fun of writing internet smut is the comments

grateful to see so many children dressed as Marie Le Conte, the main character in Escape: How a Generation Shaped, Destroyed And Survived the Internet for World Book Day, think the tabis and the large black iced coffees are always a nice touch

when someone asks why collective security pacts exist:

Migration is part of what makes this country great.

We're not an island of strangers - we're an island of neighbours.

The Green Party will always support fair & managed migration.

It's kind of incredible that that expedition is remembered for that and not the bungled attempt to occupy and burn down Baltimore

"we should join the US in an offensive war that violates the UN Charter" -> the UK op-ed class

Hi! Immigration lawyer here! Mahmood's view of the Refugee Convention as providing temporary protection just isn’t correct & AFAIK isn’t one anyone has ever adopted.

On the contrary, the Convention is clearly predicated on a long-term need for protection.
1/🧵

My two cents on the Iranian attack on Azerbaijan
1) IRGC is losing control?
2) Azerbaijan won't join the war
3) Aliyev's extremely harsh reaction is for the internal public (same as the downing of the AZAL-jet)
4) Iran diplo backchannels will say sorry soon

The Tories didn't even bother to have a policy aimed at young/very young voters in 2024 and used them as a punchbag to shore up their core vote against Reform, but the Tories and Reform are going to try and be on the offensive in 2029 so they will presumably have an offer, and it will be cooked

the Canadian electorate after Pierre managed to stay on as leader:

Goodbye, Farewell and Amen good sir

with a slight slip into a sort of Liverpudlian Harold Wilson

Listening to the IWM interview with Billy Strachan and it is incredible how much he sounds like David Niven