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Freelance Journalist, Professional Interpreter @ForeignPolicy, Journal of Burma Studies, Honorable Mention “Japanese Carp”-75th Writers Digest Competition, https://aabastian.com Rep'd by Amy Collins: The Dispatch: Rogue Americans in 19th C British Asia
As someone whose second book is forthcoming, I'm still smarting from how hard it was. So here's a new addition to #teamsecondbook resources: the Omohundro Institute's summer workshop for second (etc) book writers, The Historian's Writerly Craft. Apps due 4/20 (lol)
oieahc.wm.edu/events-overv...
The man who just experienced his own regime change not too long ago
Should know he needs to withdraw based on free oil tanker passage alone.
And being indirect and holding your cards close to your chest is far more likely to allow room for maneuver.
Isn’t this how Trump is dismantling American democracy.
Yet there usually is a sales pitch that works. Trump is accustomed to hostile sales takeovers. Where his team goes in to find the pain point and the lure price that will move the needle.
Leaving the business in tact enough to make it an asset rather than a deficit.
2) On Iran’s side: electing anyone but the predictable successor is too hard to test. Americans are already angry about the war
2 angles for my analysis. 1) Since Trump’s model is to leave political infrastructure in place but apply pressure to root out an ally,
Then looking for substantial change in regime succession as a metric of success is wrong.
A regime as unbending as Iran’s would produce a predictable successor.
Yeah I strongly dislike the left anti tax movement. There's no having a society just on the back of soaking the rich, even people far lower down the inequality ladder have to contribute. That's fine. We're all in this together.
YES. In the same sentence he said the war was complete, he proposed a policy that would vastly enlarge the war! Media reported the first half, and then later reported a different part to make it seem like a change! But it was incoherent, nonsensical slop all along.
This, too, is sanewashing!
The irony here is that Trump lived to another term on HIS OWN disinformation that he was the clear successor.
Enough people believed the blatant lie, and he actually did become the president.
The irony here is that Trump lived to another term on HIS OWN disinformation that he was the clear successor.
Enough people believed the blatant lie, and he actually did become the president.
Iran could sustain/maintain their government/leaders, and still be spreading disinformation about how secure that transition really is.
The biggest mistake on the American side, I think, is Hegseth shewing away embedded reporters at the Pentagon.
Because now only stories that escape the concrete can get out so dis/misinformation is filling the void.
...Iran's president video telling neighbors not to help Israel and the US and that it isn't a "war", is more telling.
That Iran made some bad decisions, too. And that it had to resort to pandering.
Trump needs a real win here and just like the election, he'll want to rise again. Iran could last...
Surprised at how easily Americans bought the Iran "defiance" signal in choosing a new successor. I think the dislike of Trump fuels a belief that he will fail.
Naming a successor doesn't necessarily mean anything about Iran's position.
Iran's president sending out a video telling neighbors...
Having suffered the pain of a tooth infection I can unequivocally say that this man died in absolute agony. The type of nerve pain that will have you screaming and wondering quite rightly if you’ve gone insane
This man was tortured through neglect, and everyone involved is an irredeemable monster
Sign language interpreter
What we can learn from scientific analysis of Renaissance recipes. Multispectral imaging, proteomics, historical texts yield new insights into 16th-century medical manuals. arstechnica.com/science/2026...
Amidst all the horrors, it’s still Hina-matsuri. Here are my dolls, reaching out to comfort the little girls murdered in Iran.
Breaking or Facing:
Norms of democracies v autocracies in war
Technology with cheaper remote dimension
Core versus periphery fighting
Firing the experts
Less people-power/obstruction
Strategic Clarity/Ambiguity
Not Sharing with Congress all the cards
Video game mentality
Iranian people slaughter
We need to be prepared that they are breaking enough norms that there is very little precedent to predict outcomes.
That there will be multiple people who will be partially right. But not because they knew but because they accidentally guessed.
this one fucked me up so much. guy turns his life around after a drug conviction, becomes a happy, beloved, pet rescuing houseboat dad who undersells his mechanic services so poor folks can afford them. ICE grabs him one day out of the hospital for heart problems which then kill him. horrifying
Please understand that China is an actual place with its own structures and problems and not some pendulum that swings only in reaction to US actions.
In this blog post, Richard Ansell (Birkbeck, University of London) discusses how the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) is contributing to his research on non-elite travel writing as part of ‘Written Worlds: Non-Elite Writing in Seventeenth-Century England’
I don't buy the idea that Bezos is intentionally killing the Post. If he wanted to do that he could have just bought it and shut it down. Plenty of rich people have done that. The problem is he hired a Murdoch tabloid team to manage it and it's not a Murdoch tabloid and you can't run it like one.
hot take: newspapers should not be run by people who dislike reading and thinking
Thank God there were people filming. This administration would have said Alex Pretti pulled a handgun, a package of fentanyl, and a signed copy of the Communist Manifesto if they could.
Like two years ago when she told me: don’t sit on cold concrete even when you’re dressed warmly.
I figured it out about 20 min later.
And now I believe.
My Russian housemate today said this was “medium” Russian winter.
And of course I followed her advice on all things cold.
Furious debate has arisen this morning.
Does this joke still work once you realise that it’s one rebel speaking to the others?
People who aspire to be academics: I wish to live a life of the mind
Actual academics: