Ryan Humphrey

Given how the initial strikes targeted the leadership and their families, everyone calling the shots in the IRGC has probably lost people close to them too

Its a sad reality that keeping a few radical activists in rural constituencies happy is probably more vital to her keeping her job than providing good governance to the rest of the population

The NDP was opposition leader a decade ago, and they had no issue getting their security clearance then

If a future government wants to use extralegal means to attack the opposition in the future they will. That’s no reason to preemptively dismantle norms and expectations based on fantasy scenarios

I kind of feel like if you’re close enough to see the military drones with your own eyes, you’re too close to the front lines

Even then, good luck persuading the crew and captain.

Also what you’d get if you’re working to formalize a bunch of oral history and are trying to normalize the contradictions between a bunch of different stories that may or may not be referring to the same guy.

One of the names in the complaint tablets is a wealthy guy with a name in the same root family that gives us “Abraham”

So you’ve got a guy in the right place, at the right time, with the right name, and from the right class

It’s almost certainly not him. But it would be hilarious if it was.

Theres some good stuff if you Google it, but the basic idea is that, to the extent that “Abraham” was a specific person rather than a composite of historical and mythical figures, one of the leading candidates for his location is the same city of Ur of Ea-nasir, and with overlapping date ranges

My favorite biblical factoid is that it's vaguely plausible that we have surviving writing by the prophet Abraham. However, if we do, it's on one of Ea-nasir's complaint tablets. not joking in the least

The second column isn’t real. Any boss that might qualify is actually a worker in the first column, and thus the one on the chopping block

Also needs a third column. “Can a consultant convince my boss that AI can replace me?”

From what I understand, Alberta‘s internal for-profit energy market that relies on independent producers is a bigger problem. Their contracts don’t allow for them to be undercut by outside producers. Alberta can’t set up the sort of at-cost swap that would make sense

Airships are *slow*. At that point I think some of the modern ocean liner concepts become cost, emissions, and speed competitive

There’s a reason that, historically, you’ve had absolutely zero people say “now that the glorious revolution has succeeded I can put down the fight and fulfill my dream of being a farm worker“

It’s much like the tolerance paradox isn’t actually a paradox. Tolerance isn’t an inflexible ideal, it’s a social contract, and the people who reject that contract do not get its benefit

People who reject the legitimacy of a pluralistic political system do not get the benefit of assumed good faith

He’ll try anything… as long as it’s what he’s already doing

The USA is obvious, but the same pattern is clear in the UK, France, Germany, etc

It’s reductive, but I can’t escape the observation that in conservative movements around the world the strongest predictor has been racism and bigotry. Over and over they shockingly reject some long-held ideal. It’s always because they had to choose, and don't hesitate before choosing bigotry

How many of those fragments stay constant over, say, 50 years even without an ideological collapse?

For example, I think it’s fair to say that alignment with oil & gas interests has defined many conservative parties over the past decades. I could easily see that jettisoned 30 years from now

For example I know a bunch of “progressive“ Greens whose fundamental temperament is absolutely small-c conservative. That they are also fundamentally incompatible with any of the “conservative“ movements doesn't change that.

All comes down to defining terms. Is “conservatism“ a general worldview, or is it the collection of ideological fragments that have accrued to the parties generally thought of as conservative?

The first is obviously going nowhere, the second can obviously die without necessarily being replaced.

I think LLMs have also made mass producing targeted attacks feasible in a way they weren’t before.

The easy way to square that circle is to acknowledge that conservatism as an intellectual movement was already dead before Trump came on the scene. He just committed indignities on the body

They’ve been functionally operating as a western regional party that happens to win some seats out east for a while now. That had to catch up eventually. However, the only way to fix that is for the western base to compromise, and I think any leader who tries to tell them that will be out of a job

Fundamentally impossible

I think he’s going to smash the system, to the extent that he can. I don’t think it’s going to get him what he wants, but that won’t un-smash it

Right? I’d expect most “youth” and young adults to still get a “Batman Begins” reference.

Kids in 2026 are absolutely still broadly familiar with the equivalent biggest hits from 2005. They’re just not watching I Love Lucy from 69 years ago

The original Muppet show came out in 1974. All those actors had significant hits within the previous 10-20 years

It’s like being surprised that kids in 2026 are familiar with Iron Man (2008)