Minister Denby

It seems appropriate that his Obama era blog was short form essays and moderately vulgar anime girls.

He tried to do it to Zelenskyy and failed.

Looks a lot like the Inbit/Invid mecha from Mospeada/Robotech.

The C.I.A. Helped Pinpoint a Gathering of Iranian Leaders. Then Israel Struck.

Baffled by Iranian decision to convene a big leadership meeting when everyone knew an attack was coming, regime thoroughly compromised by Israeli/US intelligence, and Khamenei was the target.

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/u...

The so-called "humanitarian intervention" and "preemptive strike" were a push from the Saudis and Israel to attack Iran. U.S. intelligence assessments saw no imminent threat, but regional allies argued that now was the time to strike.
wapo.st/403tJwt

The Iranians aren’t just bombing US assets, you know. This conflict already has the character of the Middle East’s own world war, and framing it as a purely Israeli-led or America-centric action denies the Arab part of equation.

Mmmhmm.

Noticed that Hidetoshi Nishijima from Drive My Car is in Shin Ultraman. (Watching it now, it’s the only Shin film I haven’t seen.) Would’ve liked to have seen him in Shōgun season two but filming has started and the cast is already set.

I am so pleased that Tommy Fugate is in charge of assuring there will be no terrorist retaliation.

Both the Trump cold open and the Weekend Update segments felt extremely tired on SNL this weekend. Barely any laughs to be had.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you think the US is the Great Satan and both parties are warmongering imperialists and the concept of law is a web of lies spun by the wealthy and powerful to entrap the proletariat, then why exactly are we arguing about the wording of Democratic press releases?

I saw the Sky Marchini contraption open for Limp Bizkit on warped tour

But also without boots on the ground you can't do a regime change.

So what this amounts to is a very expensive campaign that amounts to nothing but pointless death.

Not to be overly contrarian because, and let me be clear, fuck this stupid ass war, but also Iran's military has no gas at all. No air defenses whatsoever. The best they can do is lob missiles and drones. As long as we don't put boots on the ground, they can't do shit.

This is exactly right. Carney endorsing the US strikes after his Davos speech six weeks ago is the best example I can come up with.

User Chris: What was the core difference why you think the DoW accepted OpenAI but not Anthropic Sam Altman: I can't speak for them, but to speculate with the best understanding of the situation. *First, I saw reporting that they were extremely close on a deal, and for much of the time both sides really wanted to reach one. I have seen what happens in tense negotiations when things get stressed and deteriorate super fast, and I could believe that was a large part of what happened here. *We believe in a layered approach to safety--building a safety stack, deploying FDEs and having our safety and alignment researcher involved, deploying via cloud, working directly with the DoW. Anthropic seemed more focused on specific prohibitions in the contract, rather than citing applicable laws, which we felt comfortable with. We feel that it it's very important to build safe system, and although documents are also important, I'd clearly rather rely on technical safeguards if I only had to pick one. *We and the DoW got comfortable with the contractual language, but I can understand other people would have a different opinion here. *I think Anthropic may have wanted more operational control than we did

I saw some folks asking what the difference was between what OpenAI signed with the DoD and what Anthropic said they wanted, and Sam more or less admits here the key point: OpenAI's deal requires them to trust the NSA. Anthropic's contract had real safeguards.

One of my colleagues wrote about this over 30 years ago, noting that Congress was all about "blame avoidance" in foreign policy, which basically made the president a king

Lolllllll that was fast.

Why are Chinese EVs cheaper than Tesla? Scale, low-cost talent, and in-house manufacturing account for most of BYD’s cost gap with Tesla.

State aid explains only a fraction of BYD’s cost gap with Tesla; the real advantage is scale, lower overheads, and tighter control of the supply chain https://restofworld.org/2026/why-are-chinese-evs-cheaper-than-tesla/?utm_campaign=row-social&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social

It's kinda funny how the "real" situation room is a bunch of curtains up in Mar A Lago and the one in the White House is the kiddie table where they leave JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard

if people are using classified information to place bets, then theoretically others can analyze betting behavior to find signals that reveal classified information.

Also lol (ugh) the missile strikes are happening anyway.

Bathrooms are slippery.

This looks like the soft focus photo you would see in the In Memoriam clips at the Oscars

Lucasfilm Games needs to revive the spirit of Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe with a new light sim called Secret Tanks of the World Wars.

latest update so far

www.jpost.com/middle-east/...

the honest opinion of basically everyone in the broader US aligned alliance system on this is "I mean of course I wish he hadn't done it, these people are obviously fucking insane so figure it out dems, but come on, you want me to shed tears over the *Iranian* regime??? bffr"

You know, @aiannucci.bsky.social could easily bang out a satire about a Trump-like president whose Mar-a-Lago-esque resort is filled with spies from around the world who are posing as hospitality workers. White Lotus meets Veep meets Death of Stalin.