randy r. potts

‘I’d defend our nation’: Poles prepare for growing threat of war From digging trenches and building walls, to learning survival skills, Poland is increasingly aware of risks posed by its eastern neighbours

"The idea that Moscow and Minsk are weaponising migration was used by the previous, nationalist govt as the basis for a violent crackdown on migrants who crossed the border. Strikingly, since Donald Tusk’s progressive coalition took over two years ago, little has changed."

Very much this. I think there is a particular culture of upper middle class carpet bagging in high profile jobs that explicitly rejects local vernacular knowledge as having any value - you see it a lot in journalism but also roles like school superintendents and nonprofit ED's.

The Musk - Sikorski Twitter spat

After the little Musk-Sikorski spat this, and Musk's statement to abolish the EU (after the Commission fined X), let's ask ourselves simply:

HOW ARE EUROPEAN COMMISSIONERS USING X NOW?

In this 🧵 I'll document it, Commissioner by Commissioner. When did they last post? How often do they post?

then there's me, the tumbleweed

How Taiwan fights the disinformation war Newly inaugurated president Lai Ching-te will need to collaborate inside and outside the state to counter China’s cognitive warfare.

To avoid a hostile takeover of the hearts and minds of the electorate and government, as occurred in the U.S., European nations should follow the example of countries such as Taiwan and Finland, which have experience combating totalitarian information warfare.
www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpre...

ha, yeh for sure, as an Okie who works in national/intl media I agree with all of this - the transplants actively spurn the idea that there can even be power players from where they're from - that, say, a hick mega church pastor in Dallas could have more power than an UES denizen or a Brahmin

The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy

I know this is cheating, because it came out last year, but @jesspish.bsky.social's book is the kind you don't realize you had to read until you do. It's a brilliant, meticulously reported account of the contemporary US in all its rising authoritarianism, racial violence, and democratic fragility.

There we go - now we have higher ranking US officials campaigning publicly against the EU, European governments and the rule of law.

Here an example of pretending only diplomatic passport gives her the freedom to criticise an MEP.

niche post here, but Poland just signed a huge contract with Palantir just before Halloween - BOO! 👻

Seeing the richest man on earth and the mouthpiece of the country trying to erase my people in sync feels very,
very disturbing

dobre pytanie

your truly in a hat and glasses and bandana, t shirt says Study and Struggle, Kremlin is on the TV, computers in the background

Pentecostal Okie in the salt mines of Polish journalism on the Lord's day, the Kremlin always looming somewhere in the background -

thank you!

me too, I mean yeh there are people happy to swoop in and take advantage including mom but this stuff happens everyday, this student is everywhere, this is the kind of essay these students submit

ha, I think you hardly qualify, given the hours you've logged in the "flyover" lands, but yeh, in my 5 years on the East Coast 2 different times you realize it's just such a separate culture, even - or esp - at the better schools

Good thread. I’ve also seen a lot of folks trying to make comparisons based on their Jesuit Catholic education, and they are not the same sort of thing at all either.

Yep. That and the rich, “respectable” evangelicals knew how to launder their reputation in the legacy media by cultivating the right connections and funding the right junkets.

And playing themselves in the legacy media. Michael Gerson? Elizabeth Dias? Sarah Pulliam-Bailey? All Wheaton grads

this is not meant to be a diss against "East Coast professors," it's that these are just completely different ecosystems and the streams rarely cross - ofc that's one big reason the US media, centered on the East Coast, didn't recognize the flyover evangelical threat taking over the GOP for decades

the irony about MAGA hating on Europeans so much is that European governments have been getting more MAGA by the minute

the reason a catchall term like "evangelical" even exists is an attempt to recognize that, across many different Christian denominations, there is an anti-intellecual, vibes-based agreement on who Jesus is and how a student might best follow him - and - it's definitely not by sharpening their mind

places like Wheaton - where evangelicals do seek intellectual pursuits - exist but friends - Wheaton is an outlier - the type of evangelical student who applies to and then attends a school like Wheaton isn't even the 1%, it's more like the .01%

I've heard a lot of shock about how they've never encountered students this intellectually dishonest, incurious, etc, but these students are by far the majority among evangelical Christians in "flyover" country where it is a norm for Christians to, literally, protect their soul from their intellect

having seen a lot of East Coast professors commenting on the Oklahoma essay thing, one thing really jumps out: by and large, East Coast professors, particularly at the more elite schools, are not going to encounter the type of evangelical Christian who wrote that essay

on the bright side, kids really love to study this stuff - they like to decode things, they like to discover that there are attemtps to trick them and find out how to see through them, etc - studying "disinfo" is fun but also takes an insane amount of deep contextual knowledge

at its root, "disinfo" is basically stripping information, data, expression, etc of all context and repackaging it - if a student doesn't have the underlying context to begin with, you really can't get anywhere - and "context" truly is a fuzzy, cross disciplinary thing students only grasp over time

Teaching when to trust As fake news accelerates, we need to teach our children how to think critically. Finnish schools are leading the charge

related; one thing I learned when trying to teach media literacy to HS Seniors in my English class was that, as Finland recognizes, it needs to start in grade school and should be cross disciplinary - to spot "disinfo" you need an ability to comprehend art, science, math, history, literature, etc

My org @fightforthefuture.org has been “de-googling” for the last year.

We’re totally off Google suite, Google docs, Drive, Calendar.

We’re using Signal and Element for chat, Nextcloud for docs, etc

Planning to publish a “how to” guide for other nonprofits and activist groups soonish.

Polish/American relationship suddenly a country song

Polish/American relationship suddenly a country song

first stanza of pretty much every country song ever