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Bennett Murray

@bdmurray.bsky.social

Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy candidate at the Fletcher School. Previously reported in πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦. Was also once @dpa Vietnam bureau chief.

107 Followers  |  65 Following  |  27 Posts  |  Joined: 21.11.2023  |  2.3222

Latest posts by bdmurray.bsky.social on Bluesky

Current master's student here. Getting my degree will be cool I guess but I don't consider it a personal rite of passage (at best it's a professional one). And even if I did, I'm not a little kid with divorced parents who needs my dad to show up to remind me that he still loves me.

03.06.2025 04:04 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

From the game's website. jfc

28.05.2025 05:12 β€” πŸ‘ 16    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1

I don't think JKR did this intentionally, but the Wizarding World only makes sense if you understand them to be a luddite society. Their tech is composed entirely of enchanted muggle inventions but for some reason they'll enchant a sword but not a Kalashnikov.

19.05.2025 03:56 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

IIRC Harry went into some detail explaining what a Playstation was in the letter. I think JKR realized several books in that she had failed to establish the historical setting she had envisioned so tried to settle the matter with a clunky tech reference.

18.05.2025 15:09 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

There's a moment in one of the books where Harry mentions in a letter to his Hogwarts friends that Dudley got so mad that he threw his Playstation at something, but the fact I remember that line suggests it may be the only example.

18.05.2025 14:58 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦πŸ‡¦πŸ‡Ώ and πŸ‡·πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦πŸ‡² are extremely common alignments in Ukraine and Russia respectively. Both tend to see Nagorno-Karabakh as equivalent to D/LPR, along with whatever that entails from their differing perspectives. Plenty of Russian mil bloggers have spent time in both.

08.05.2025 02:37 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

He's certainly been here long enough that his takes are counted in the American gross domestic take production.

28.04.2025 18:18 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Every Holocaust remembrance organization on the planet refers to the "deportation" of Jews to the death camps. I'd bet a high percentage of schoolchildren in this country learn the word for the first time in that context. There's nothing euphemistic about it.

28.04.2025 14:31 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Does Canada really charge a 270% tariff on milk? Trump blasts Canada's dairy tariffs at G-7 summit.

It all seems to come down to a dairy supply management duty.

www.farmprogress.com/management/d...

07.03.2025 07:02 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

AI is great for digging up relevant sources on complex topics. I treat it as a research assistance with an amazing talent for finding me links to cite but who under no circumstances is allowed to go anywhere near the final product.

17.02.2025 22:12 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I won't pretend to know, but whatever really is going on in the army (or in any institution) is more likely to be found in leaked internal documents than in whatever a PR social media account is blurting out.

15.02.2025 07:36 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

He'd also make an excellent fall guy, should Trump ever find himself in the market for one.

02.02.2025 04:30 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

There's also a real possibility that Trump will start hating Musk's face for whatever reason before all of this is over and he'll be left high and dry.

02.02.2025 04:16 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Trouble was that while the truth would have been bad enough to end a political career prior to 2016, Resist Libs couldn't help themselves but to push the envelope so far that nothing short of a shut-and-closed espionage case against Trump would have ever delivered what they promised.

31.01.2025 16:32 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

We are in such weird territory that at this point, I'm wondering if solidly Democratic state governments might be the best ones to put up that fight. Those are actual power nodes still under Democratic control.

28.01.2025 05:42 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

They unfortunately ran out of historically-themed rollercoasters to franchise. Maybe we can petition a Sherman's march through Georgia ride or, better yet, the Storm of Steel spaghetti coaster.

28.12.2023 01:54 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I feel vaguely protective of this car, as if it was an innocent piglet made sentient by its cruel master and transmuted into metal to do its evil bidding.

28.12.2023 01:36 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Yeah the Vietnam War comparisons only go so far.

29.11.2023 22:19 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Vietnam War wasn't ended by hippies waving NLF flags. It was ended, ironically, by the silent majority that by 1969 wanted to bring the boys home. In the depressingly unlikely chance a mass antiwar movement emerges in Russia, it'll likely look like that.

29.11.2023 19:25 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

They took liberties with some of the facts of the battle but essentially stuck to the spirit of the source material. Not sure how much control Gibson exerted over the script, perhaps not a lot.

29.11.2023 18:17 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I'd argue that there's a split. Some Russian liberals have just flat out decided that they support the Ukrainian war effort, while during the Vietnam War you had to look much further left for that sentiment.

29.11.2023 16:14 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I mean, that was also the impetus behind antiwar protests becoming a mass social movement during the Vietnam War as well.

29.11.2023 16:07 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

All delivered by an actor recruited in Vietnam speaking in a northern Vietnamese dialect, too.

29.11.2023 16:04 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

There was a split in the State Dept in 1945-46 between the Asia desk wanting to support Vietnamese independence and the Europe desk wanting to support France. Asia desk lost.

29.11.2023 16:03 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Weirdly enough, We Were Soldiers is the best I've seen in that regard. I once showed the Vietnamese dialogue scenes to my Vietnamese teacher in Hanoi, and she assumed it was a Vietnamese production.

29.11.2023 15:43 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

More from my last month's visit to the 28th Mechanized Brigade's artillery positions near Bakhmut, as well as a brief visit to the 47th Brigade in the Avdiivka direction.

www.sundaypost.com/fp/ukrainian...

28.11.2023 17:51 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

My latest from Ukraine:

β€œThey have two drones flying above us searching, maybe for us, maybe for somebody else, but we’re too beautiful to die today,” the young lieutenant said cheerfully as the shells whizzed above him.

thedispatch.com/article/insi...

21.11.2023 10:21 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

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