David Lance Callahan

How Iran war may accelerate the fall of US empire This conflict could prove to be Washington's most perilous adventure yet - the classic story of a superpower overreaching

‘Suez did not end the British Empire overnight. But it exposed something fatal: that military capability without political legitimacy and force without restraint accelerate decline rather than prevent it … Iran may yet prove to be Washington’s Suez.’

I’m realizing that, at some point in seeing the Gaza genocide, a flame went out in my heart I haven’t seen since. A steady drumbeat of atrocities and brazen sadism rewarded with, at best, tacit complicity, if not open bloodlust and frothing glee, eventually deadened something in me and left me cold.

The White House just posted a video mixing real footage from the Iran strikes with a killstreak animation from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

x.com/WhiteHouse/s...

“He had a feeling” is a crazy reason to start a war

John Rentoul @rentouljohn.bsky.social • 3m Will the Iran war be the making of Keir Starmer?

If we mean “making him into a balloon animal”, then yes.

YouTube video by MariaBCVEVO Maria BC - Night & day (Official Video)

This new Maria BC LP is incredible, like a reticent, minimalist Talk Talk. Impending doom with disorientating reverb and sourceless clanking sounds, all with a dark weight holding it down. You certainly can't shuffle dance to it:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOqB...

U.S. sub sinks Iranian warship off Sri Lanka, killing 87 and expanding war zone A U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, killing dozens of sailors and dramatically widening Washington's pursuit of the Iranian navy.

A US submarine sinking a lonely, dinky Iranian surface ship an ocean away from the theater of the main conflict—and 9000
miles from North America—makes it pretty clear the US is fighting a general war, without the declaration required by the Constitution. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

i wind up tweeting this basically every time there's an article like this, but the fundamental thing to me: ask yourself whether you earnestly believe there's more social pressure to be trans, or more social pressure to be cis. it's actually a super easy one!

This is exactly what the Israelis did for two years in Gaza. Mass displacement under threat of indiscriminate bombing.

"Israeli officials.. are looking to do enough damage to Iran's police state from the air that the people can take over on the ground." Degrading state capacity increases likelihood of state failure, not democratic change -Israel fine with chaotic collapse, US/Gulf not.

Seems to me like a real good time to have a think about how happy we are setting half the planet on fire, just so that Israel’s genocidal, expansionist, fascist government can seize, depopulate, bulldoze and settle even more territory from its neighbours, without facing effective resistance.

"Israeli officials.. are looking to do enough damage to Iran's police state from the air that the people can take over on the ground." Degrading state capacity increases likelihood of state failure, not democratic change -Israel fine with chaotic collapse, US/Gulf not.

Collapsing Iran into feuding warlords means tatty-bye for good to all that expensive des res Gulf real estate, by the way

Bella and Esther, 1987-1988 by Lucian Freud

German-American fashion photographer Horst P. Horst

Model pondering Pavel Tchelitchew's "The Head of Gold", Vogue, 1947
#Photography

Loose Talk of ‘Fake News’ Is Bad for Democracy The secretary of defense shouldn’t pit the military against the media.

My latest in @thebulwark.com www.thebulwark.com/p/loose-talk...

YouTube video by MariaBCVEVO Maria BC - Night & day (Official Video)

This new Maria BC LP is incredible, like a reticent, minimalist Talk Talk. Impending doom with disorientating reverb and sourceless clanking sounds, all with a dark weight holding it down. You certainly can't shuffle dance to it:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOqB...

Screenshot of an X post by Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom). The post says Trump is calling journalists to workshop different timelines and goals for his war, listing varying reported aims from the Washington Post, Axios, the New York Times, and ABC, including “freedom for the people” of Iran, ending it in “two or three days,” possibly “four to five weeks,” and mentioning “three very good choices” to take control in Iran before saying those choices were killed. The post concludes that he doesn’t sound convinced and is “throwing spaghetti at the wall,” suggesting he wants to say he solved a long-standing problem.

He has no idea what he's done or what to do now. Heavens help us all.

🧵The US Consulate in Dubai has been hit by an Iranian drone. The Trump administration was led into this war by Israel, the UAE, & Saudi Arabia, & they did NO non-military planning.

War is an unpredictable, awful business- but you enhance the odds of horror without planning & deliberation.

Françoise Hardy has a great idea! 📸 Jean-Marie Périer, 1968

Françoise Hardy, 1968

Sen Ruben Gallego slams Netanyahu pushing for war in Iran: "I guess we are not a world power anymore...I remember Netanyahu coming to testify in congress and advocating for us to invade Iraq...I'm seeing it again now. Young American men and women are dying because of these idiots."

Behold the First Realistic Depiction of the Human Face (Circa 25,000 BCE) In 1894, archaeologist Édouard Piette discovered the 'Venus of Brassempouy,' otherwise known as the “Lady with the Hood.” Unearthed in southwestern France and dating to around 25,000 BCE, this carving...

Behold the First Realistic Depiction of the Human Face (Circa 25,000 BCE) www.openculture.com/2026/03/beho...

Credit to ‘em, about half of the public seem to have realised America’s wars are insane and murderous, and that they need to be opposed. Not that this has done them any good because the governing class and their media allies have just imposed whatever shit and shenanigans they’ve wanted throughout.

Private eye reported 110 corrections had to be made by the Torygraph in 2025 by mid December

Assume it was a bit more than 110 by 31st Dec more as that mag came out mid December 🤭

IPSO have published their verdict on The Daily Telegraph’s fake £345,000-a year banker couple who claimed they couldn’t afford five holidays.

The paper declined to explain to the watchdog how the article came to be published - but our reporting at the time sets it out…

I wonder if “We remain in a military alliance in which the most powerful member state is headed by a degraded paedophile who not just drags us into pointless wars of aggression *but regularly threatens to invade and occupy other members of said alliance*” will long remain the sense position.

Honestly this stuff is so sneering and despicable, because the UK public, in general, is both generally against following the USA into shitearse foreign wars, specifically against doing what Trump wants, and never consulted about either of those things.

JG Ballard would’ve had something to say about this, I reckon

Nor, of course, does the media have any incentive to help voters correct their errors. Quite the opposite. For newspapers, the incentive is that for any declining industry - to hold onto existing customers. And these are increasingly disproportionately older right-wing people who can afford to live in a bubble of illusion. The upshot is that the papers pander to their prejudices rather than try to correct them. Hence columnists like Allister Heath or Daniel Hannen staying in work despite being consistently demonstrably provably wrong.

IMO this is technically correct right now, but misses the bigger picture that for decades hacks on the highest circulation newspapers have been incentivised to give their readers news that will impress their editors & proprietors, whom are simply bad people
chrisdillow.substack.com/p/bad-incent...

Shameless brazening it out is now a career option.

They are correct – this record is fantastic

Maria BC : Marathon | Album review | Treble Trading lengthy soundscapes for shorter songs on 'Marathon,' Maria BC retains their sense of affecting poignancy

Woven into Maria BC's 'Marathon' is not only its urgency, but a deeper sense of dread from pushing too far. @sacredbones.bsky.social

Dom Lepore reviews

www.treblezine.com/maria-bc-mar...