Empirical Skeptic

Attempts to reframe this issue was certain to fail flat.
Likely, the recent incident of the USS Hampton breaking mission and surfacing off Greenland to enable medical rescue brought the existence of the hospital ships to Trump’s attention.

@en.afp.com on Bluesky 'No thanks': Greenland, Denmark reject Trump's offer to send Naval hospital ship. Trump said he was sending "a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there." Greenland has a free public health care system u.afp.com/S6bS

Healthcare in particular was an odd vector for Trump to use to attack Denmark ever GL. A) The American healthcare system is famously broken. 2) The hospital ships in question aren’t even ready to provide the proposed services.

As a consequence of elite overproduction and the subsequent jockeying for power among elites?

I wonder how Turchin would explain the present tendencies towards populist authoritarianism in the US?

I'm dismayed how much new coverage of Iran focused on Trump's unilateral actions against the regime, and nothing on what has Congress authorized.

Consensus still matters in determining what is most likely to be correct. Think of it like a market where a variety of biases offset each other to converge on a common metric of value.

For now it’s sufficient to say that you can find anyone who will say anything about a specific subject, even one who is a credentialed “expert”. Everyone is biased, even experts.

No, not going to let myself get sucked down the rabbit hole of toxicity that is 90% of #nostr on #science.

US can leave European security to the Europeans. Europe free-riding on US security guarantees, while necessary in the 1940s and 50s, is long past sustainable.

@joniaskola.bsky.social on Bluesky Ukraine continues to control all 23 regional capitals and special-status cities it held at the start of the full-scale war. 23/23! Russia is losing strategically

Trying to see the big picture. What I see is Russia has failed to achieve its objectives in Ukraine. For that it Putin has already sacrificed its global ambitions as well.

I’m struggling to see any national security objective involving Greenland that can’t be better achieved under existing agreements.

Seizing Greenland might be the least popular idea in American political history This foolish, bellicose idea is running up against the "Lizardman's Constant."

reason.com/2026/01/15/s...

Support for military conquest of Greenland is indistinguishable from noise or polling error. Maybe literally 5 people pretend to think it’s a good idea. Or maybe it just a negotiation tactic. But support for purchasing it is not much higher.

Had to disable Touch ID on my MacBook Pro M1 because it proved so unreliable.

I am pretty sure 2FA based on fingerprints is dead, gone, and buried. Good riddance.

Trump may be continuing to try to cut out Exxon. Ultimately 10’s to 100’s of billions investments will be needed.

Disinformation fatigue caused cynicism is a whole discussion on its own. Back to the original thread, WSJ and others are reporting the Trump-brokered sales of Venezuelan oil (under what authority???) is likely to benefit refiners more than producers?

That too. But I am just more interested in living in and discussing reality, rather than the fantasies concocted by those petty narcissists.

I think it’s just a negotiation tactic meant to apply political pressure on Exxon. Exxon knows he need them more than they need him. They are correct that Venezuela is uninvestible without serious reform.

We could beat them, just for one day.

What did he lie about today?

From Politico (credit where due).

Everything is going exactly according to plan, I would say.

State sanctioned murder of innocent citizens. Official denials that clearly contradict video evidence. Bureaucratic foot dragging to prevent accountability.

The streets of this Tokyo suburb are still much deader than I expected on Sunday morning at the end of the New Year’s holidays.

This gym is also nearly empty.

And I have little confidence in the current regime to run its own country wisely and professionally, to say nothing of nation-building in another country that it’s ideologically inclined to view in racist tones, and to denigrate as inferior or incompetent.

Transitioning the nation to a new government, while ensuring a stable environment for foreign and domestic investment, will be much more challenging, and the US’s track record here is very poor.

With all due respect to the skills of the US armed forces, who professionally disabled Venezuela’s air defenses and captured Maduro with minimal losses, decapitation was the easy part.

U.S. Constitution | Constitution Annotated | Congress.gov | Library of Congress The original text of the United States Constitution and its Amendments.

constitution.congress.gov/constitution/

I know the US Constitution is of little relevance lately, but:

Section 8
"The Congress shall have the power... To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;"

Arguably Russia would do more if it weren't completely preoccupied by it's "special operations" in Ukraine.

The Maduro regime is evil, amd the world will be better without him.

However, Trump’s military operations in Venezuela have not been authorized by Congress are illegal. I strongly oppose this illegal and illegitimate use of military force.

#venezuela #usa #trump