muninnhuginn | Network

nanila

Keiki and his espresso.

Girl and pengie by the harbour.

Kings of Trieste

Low sun on the water.

There was a jellyfish bloom in the harbour. Mostly barrels, but some moon jellies and others.

Wine is a good way to end the day yes yes.

lirazel

Trying to bring this back!

What I finished:

+ Disciples of White Jesus: The Radicalization of American Boyhood by Angela Denker. This was not exactly what I expected, which was a more sociological exploration of the way that white Christian boys are being taught white supremacist/Christian nationalist beliefs. Instead, it was a very personal journalistic exploration that drew on sociological data. Denker did things like travel to Columbia, SC to meet the pastor of the young man who murdered worshipers at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, talked to pastor teaching confirmation classes in rural Midwestern communities, and drew on her own work as a pastor to get an angle on what white Christian boys are being taught about masculinity.

This is very much a book for Christians; it is written from a progressive Christian perspective and as such would probably be annoying to people who are progressive but not Christian. Still, I don't regret listening to it and I am glad this resource is out there for Christians who are trying to combat extremism within the church.

What I'm reading:

+ Orlando by Virginia Woolf for book club. I'm about 1/3 of the way through, and I am glad this wasn't my first Woolf. The language and the flashing insights are gorgeous, of course, and I actually love how deeply weird it is with things like time--it's absolutely written on a mythic scale which I think is very cool--but I think if this was my first Woolf I would be more wtf??? about it. The casual racism is a lot!

I don't know that I will ever love this like I do Mrs. Dalloway, but it's certainly an interesting reading experience and I am enjoying myself! We'll see how I feel when I'm done.

+ The Magician's Daughter by H.G. Parry. Despite my intense annoyance at books about female protagonists whose titles frame them in relationship to a man, I checked this one out on a whim. It has the energy of an old-school YA fantasy novel (complimentary) and I'm enjoying it! It doesn't feel formulaic or as simplistic as most YA does today, even if it doesn't quite have the richness of my old faves.

I was taken from the beginning; the story starts out with a teenage girl who's been raised on a magical island in a crumbling castle, knowing nothing about the rest of the world except what she's read through books. Classic Lauren-bait, 11/10, no notes. Once we leave the island, things don't hit quite as hard for me, though I'm reserving my judgement until I finish it.

It turns out it's one of those "magic is disappearing!" books, which I think is an overdone trope, but this is certainly one of the better versions of that story I've read. The worldbuilding is quite fun, even if it isn't very innovative. There's no romance, the main relationship is between the protagonist and the man who raised her, which is well done. Hopefully we'll get some real emotional oomph in the last third of the book and I will be able to unabashedly recommend this to people who are looking for a light but not insubstantial read.

+ "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and 19 Other Myths About Fat People by Aubrey Gordon. I just needed an audiobook to listen to while I was cooking on Sunday, and I was like, "Wait! Aubrey from my beloved Maintenance Phase podcast has books! I can just listen to her read them!"

I knew a lot of this stuff already, but Aubrey is such a great person to hang out with--funny, compassionate, uncompromising when she needs to be. The work of fat advocacy she does must be exhausting considering the everything of our current culture (for a while there in the 2010s I really did think we were making strides on the topic of bodies, and then the one-two punch of Covid and weight loss drugs happened and now we're right back to heroin chic and it's so awful), but I admire her so much for doing it.

aurumcalendula

I finally got a chance to catch up on To Embers We Return and Dragon Subjugation Incantation's most recently translated chapters! I'm really enjoying both of them and am looking foward to seeing how how their plots and romances continue to develop!

I'm a bit annoyed there hasn't (afaik) been any announcements yet from Seven Seas re: baihe licenses. I'm hoping Rosmei does a decent job with their two (they released inital volumes of The Creator's Grace and At the World's Mercy recently, but my order from Yiggybean won't arrive until sometime in May).

Last night I managed to get a full timeline for my ClaireBell fanvid draft! I'm not sure if it lives up to the song I chose, but I'm really happy with sections of it.

james_davis_nicoll

Coco and chums have an innovative cure for the monster currently rampaging through town... an innovative cure from which a diligent cop is determined to protect society.

Witch Hat Atelier, volume 14 by Kamome Shirahama

rebeccmeister posting in

gardening

This is largely cross-posted from my personal blog, since I figure a lot of us spend a lot of time thinking about soil quality and composting! I love worm bins because they can be made to work for all kinds of lifestyles, including people who live in apartments, since a well-managed bin does not smell and can be designed to fit in all kinds of spaces.

I think I'm reaching the stage where there's something of a steady-state for managing my new-ish worm bin bench. To begin with, by myself I generate around 1 batch of kitchen scraps a week that can go into the bin. My kitchen scraps mostly include spent coffee grounds, banana peels, apple cores, and vegetable trimmings from whatever I happen to be cooking that week. Eggshells now get handled separately, and citrus goes into the yard compost outside because citrus is toxic to worms.

( photos and description below the cut... )

rebeccmeister

I think I'm reaching the stage where there's something of a steady-state for managing the new worm bin bench. It might go out the window once

scrottie returns, but for now I'm pretty pleased with things.

To begin with, by myself I generate around 1 batch of kitchen scraps a week that can go into the bin. My kitchen scraps mostly include spent coffee grounds, banana peels, apple cores, and vegetable trimmings from whatever I happen to be cooking that week. Eggshells now get handled separately, and citrus goes into the yard compost outside because citrus is toxic to worms.

Here's what the worm bin bench looks like, in situ, in our basement cluttered with other things and projects:

( more photos and description below the cut... )

ionelv

I posit that the Bible’s evolution is a simplistic attempt at tackling chaos and entropy:
* The OT conjures up an ultimate Maxwell’s demon of sorts that is attempting to coral chaos and entropy by inadvertently introducing more chaos and entropy into the system (predictable as the “designers” of this demiurge barely understood the difference between the Earth, the Moon and the Sun, never mind the human mind or more abstract concepts like chaos and entropy).
* The NT conjures up a smarter assistant to Maxwell’s demon that merely promises to do away with chaos and entropy at an indeterminate future time (anywhere from within a generation or two for his most supporters to “never” for the few skeptics).

scaramouche

Books in the old unread pile: 7

Asian Folk Tales and Legends, retold by Suzee Leong and illustrated by Arif Rafhan, is a children's book that I got when I was missing my childhood folk tale books and hankering for more regional stories. The book is what it says on the tin with simple retellings, mayhaps too simple even though it is a children's book.

That said, it's a decent mix of East, West and South East Asian retellings of folk tales, some of them familiar like the stories of the naming of Melaka and Singapura, new-to-me stories of trickster characters of various regions, romances that end tragically with one or both members of the romance turning into a plant or geographical formation, truncated stories about Hua Mulan and Badang (though I would expect all of them to be truncated, but these particular stand out because I know how long the originals are), and as a surprise of some modern stories like Hachiko. It's fine, I'll probably look for something better later.

Another book from the old unread pile I started to read but stopped was a colonial translation of Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa, which I couldn't get past the first few pages. Something about the translation itself and the footnotes kept throwing me, so I've reshelved that, though it's very unlikely I'll come back to it unless my future self has a hankering for the Kedah Annals.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: 2PM - Heartbeat

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/4/8/things-are-going-otterly-swimmingly

Via Aquarium of the Pacific

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/4/8/things-are-going-otterly-swimmingly

jack

I re-read the 1967 story 9 Billion Names of God by Arthur C Clarke, where a Tibetan monastery are calculating all possible names of God, which they think will be some sort of culmination of the universe.

When I first read it I hadn't noticed that it was written when using a computer to print all the possible combinations of something was still quite new.

It does feel like all those permutations make sense in a Buddhist monastery, but AFAIK he must have based that on Kaballah and made up the connection to Buddhism.

He wrote it in a long weekend away. But he added a comment that there was something wrong with the maths and he'd needed to fix it later so I guess he didn't QUITE finish it in one go :)

The numbers be gave were 9 billion names, 15,000 years by hand, 100 days by computer printout. A custom alphabet. 9 letters at most. And a few combinations are forbidden. I'm guessing he chose 9 billion as a good sounding title and a reasonable length of time, but that something^something didn't quite come out at 9 billion, so added the forbidden combinations or custom alphabet to adjust it a bit.

angrboda posting in

gardening

The below is a crosspost from my own dw. Has anybody else experimented with a garden journal? What sort of stuff did you write in it?

For Christmas Husband gave me a nice Critical Role notebook as 'something to go with', so I have been vaguely pondering what to use it for. I have now decided to have a go at making it a garden journal.

I have no idea how one does that. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm basically just putting stuff in there and seeing where it goes. I don't even know how long I'll be able to keep it up,* but we're having a go anyway. So far I've put in a list of what's in the different beds off the top of my head, I've put a todo list of tasks I'd like to get done during the spring (lol!),** and I've put in a number of ideas for how I would like to do the terrace pots and a list of other plants I might like to try and plant.

It occurs to me that it might also come in handy when we go to the garden center because I can take it with me and look up what I was considering, which feels far more attractive than a note on my phone, and I could potentially also put in things that I saw at the garden center that might be interesting later on, especially if I remember to also bring a pencil.***

This decision coincides, or is probably partially born from, the effort Husband is currently making to get through a vast stack of garden magazines that have piled up. We tried putting them in a specific place, so that they weren't always lying around on the dining table. This worked splendidly for me because it was more tidy, and not at all for him because the magazines tended to just accumulate and he'd never actually get around to looking in them. So now the magazine storage situation is a bit unclear. Anyway, he's making his way through them, tearing out the pages he wants a closer look at, and I got trough after him and do the same.

On one page, I was mainly interested in a small bit in the bottom third, so in a fit of inspiration I cut it out and glued it into my journal. I had a bit of leftover hobby glue that was still good, so I used that. I discovered that the paper is really too thin for this to be an ideal solution, but on the other hand, I'm kind of enjoying the tactile way the paper has gone a bit crinkly now where it has dried. Might acquire more unsuitable glue and do it again.

---

*But it is giving me some opportunity to use highlighters. I have far too many highlighters. But they come in so many colours, and you obviously have to have one in each colour. I mean, obviously!
**If I do a third of them, I'll call it a success.
***Not a pen. A pencil. And definitely not a mechanical one. An old fashioned one that you have to sharpen. I've been favouring them for years now. I think it has something to do how it feels to write with it.

goodbyebird

ECLIPSE. April 6, 2026. Totality, beyond Earth. From lunar orbit, the Moon eclipses the Sun, revealing a view few in human history have ever witnessed.

First photo from the far side of the Moon. Captured from Orion as Earth dips beyond the lunar horizon

Following the current Artemis mission + rolling around in art and nature photography is keeping me going atm. Slingshotting in space!

+ The seagulls are napping and grooming on our windowsills a lot and it's been a treat. I often find myself watching Bird TV. With the stains on the glass they don't seem to notice us there, so you get a wild animal puffing up and resting 30cm from your face. Always a delight.

+ If like me you're still enamored with Project Hail Mary and need images to make icons from,

theskyisnew's got you covered 👎

+ Sad Starfleet Academy got cancelled, though I strongly suspected that would be the case. What I didn't expect was that they'd already finished shooting season 2. So that's something. Probably a cliffhanger nightmare but I'll take it.

( Letter from Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau. )

+ Already considering rewarding myself with a purchase after the trip. The Embodied Ecosystems TarOracle is looking like a strong contender, both for the art/theming, and the chunky guidebook it comes with. But then there's the fanmade X-Files tarot I spotted that's calling to me. Hmm. (I finished season 1 btw. Mulder didn't know lycanthropy transferred through bites/scratches?? Press x-files to doubt. S2 will have Scully revert back to not believing in aliens, huh? I remember being extremely annoyed back in the day and surely that can't have been based off s1. Mulder's hot takes have been deserving of a defenestration sometimes multiple times per episode.)

+

3weeks4dreamwidth is coming up, but I honestly feel there's not enough interest to make it work. I'm going to have to give it a think.

+ I'll be home in two and a half weeks so I'll just cling to that for now.

Current Music: Anjimile- Like You Really Mean It

the_siobhan

I've been planning to recondition the ol' walking muscles for a while now, but spending 20 minutes putting on layers before you can walk out the door is not conducive to the casual stroll. Friday it was 20+ degrees and sunny so I went for a 90-minute walk, just in a big circle around the neighbourhood. I was not alone in this decision. The sidewalks were full, every patio was packed, and the ice cream store had a line down the block.

This morning I woke up and there was snow on my deck.

So that was second spring. We're due two more and then we enter smoke-from-forest-fires season.

In the course of my walk I found out there is a new brewpub at the literal end of my street. They will have a patio. This is going to be very very bad for my wallet.

***

Word has come down from Above, I am going back into the office one day a week starting the last week of May.

Completely stupid and unnecessary but it could be a lot worse. I suspect it's only once a week because they've received so much negative feedback from their employees and they'll try to bump it up to higher frequency once they figure we're resigned to it. But that's unlikely to happen this year.

Or you know, gas will hit $50 a litre and they'll have to either back off or pay people more. Which could also happen! Who the fuck knows, this is the most stupid of all possible timelines.

I'm taking a staycation to work on the house in a couple of weeks and after that I'm going to try to train myself to get up earlier on a daily basis. I would try to get up early on the monthly office days but anything that disrupts my sleep sets off the vertigo like woah, and I ended up leaving the house at the same time or later by the time I got it under control. It took me almost three weeks to get over the shift to daylight savings time. I figure I can spend a month being wobbly at home before I have to go into the office and navigate bright lights and too many moving bodies.

***

Lord Brock continues to develop concerning test results and cost me five million dollars per vet visit. But he still beats on a catnip mouse like it owes him money, so I have hope that whatever the underlying issue is it remains manageable.

While going through old paperwork to see what I could shred this year I found his original adoption records. He is 13 this year, not 15 as I originally thought. So he's definitely in his old man years, but not quite as old as I thought. So I might get a couple more years of being yelled at.

brokenframe posting in

vidding

Title: Walking On The Moon
Fandom: Ryan Gosling
Movie: First Man
Music: Walking On The Moon by Ruelle
Length: 3:56
Streaming/download at: DW | Tumblr

crossover_chick

The weather was fairly crappy -- cold and partly cloudy, with wind and the occasional passing rain shower; the traffic to and from work was not great (with the ride in being especially annoying right at the end thanks to some badly-synced lights at the intersection I have to turn at leading to a lot of gridlock); and my Mom had to take an Uber to my work to borrow my car after the battery in the truck died (as she needed to bring Dad to the hospital for an MRI today to figure out why he's having a lot of neck pain these days). This AFTER arguing with the billing department at the hospital over a procedure we prepaid for but was never done (because of the aforementioned neck pain). So yeah, bit of a frustrating, annoying day overall. :( Though I have to say, my portion of it wasn't TOO bad:

Work – Well, my return to the office was happily not OVERLY busy, but I did have plenty to do –

A) After doing the usual morning reports, I spent a decent chunk of the morning going through our voicemails and calling a couple of people back – one who wanted a new billing statement for her pledge to replace her incorrect one (her last payment was processed after it went out), and one who wanted to remove himself, his parents, and his mother-in-law from the mailings (with further research revealing his mother-in-law and father were both dead, so I updated the records accordingly)

B) I also took a call from a guy looking to see if we had received his gift yet – we had not, which was worrying, as he apparently sent it out in January. As it was an IRA check, he said he’d call his broker to see if it had been cashed or not after my coworker and I confirmed we most definitely didn’t have it – we’ll see what happens and if he calls us back!

C) After lunch, I set about getting rid of some of the gifts that were on our system but were meant for the newspaper office – ironically, just as I was writing up the memo to Fiscal to get them to issue a check to the newspaper office, a guy called in to let me know that he too had sent in a gift intended for the newspaper that had been wrongly credited to the Appeal, so I had to update it to include that one (glad the guy called, but sheesh)

D) And then I spent most of the rest of the day doing some roster maintenance by going through some of the old obituaries I still had hanging around and cleaning up some people with similar names

And that and taking care of some exceptions we recently received was basically my day! No great shakes, but I was expecting it to be a LOT busier, so I will take that level of activity. We’ll see what it’s like tomorrow!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – and I chose to stay the Hitman course this week by starting “HITMANNIVERSARY! Hitman 10th Anniversary Stream | The BEST Maps and Our NEVER-BEFORE-TRIED Missions” by OXBox during tonight’s stationary bike ride! And yes, Hitman (No Subtitle), the original in what became the World of Assassination trilogy, did in fact come out ten years ago – it was released in 2016. You may feel old now – the OXBoxers sure do! XD Anyway, the first half-hour of the stream featured:

A) Mike doing a quick community contract in Sapienza (their favorite map from the original game) to snipe a politician making a speech on the beach from the church’s clock tower, which involved:

I. Mike discovering that you can go into the butcher’s shop next to the apartment building where the ICA safehouse is (and that it has a big old freezer behind it)

II. Mike confirming that he has genuinely learned nothing over ten years of playing this game and its sequels (despite later claiming that this is his favorite game of all time, as he loves how interconnected everything is and how you can cause such lovely chaos; plus, Miami is just one of his favorite video game levels in general) by being unable to initially find the briefcase his sniper rifle was stashed in when he entered his safehouse (Andy had to point it out to him on the mini-map)

III. Mike executing the sniping mission quite easily, and everyone admitting that sniping targets is the most boring way to kill them

IV. And everyone wondering if Mike was going to end up with an unheard of “Silent Assassin, 5 Stars” rating on the hit, because he did it so quickly and professionally...only for him to somehow end up compromised while running up the street with his briefcase and only end up with “Marksman Sniper Assassin, 2 Stars.” Mike was rather annoyed. XD (To be fair, it probably never would have been a perfect score, as everyone immediately saw the guy die…)

( You know this got longer than I meant it to be )

2. Start final edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I dropped Chapter 6 into the Document Manager over on fanfiction.net this eve, and spent roughly fifty minutes making my way through it again from the start! So far I’ve gotten through:

A) Victor giving Alice his museum maps (including an official one he updated with notes and scribbles indicating cameras, guard patrols, and other points of interest, and a homemade one he made of the restoration area down in the basement) and Alice being like “I’m grateful but damn Victor you really didn’t need to do this”

B) Victor and Alice talking a bit about how depressing it is that Victor is certain that his parents were never glad to see him when they came home, and how glad he is that he moved an ocean and the better part of a country away from them so he could figure out who HE is

C) Victor offering to let Alice feed on him before she left, and Alice’s first attempt to drink from his neck revealing that he, well, has a vamp-kink that he did not expect to make an appearance there

D) Alice successfully feeding from Victor’s arm, and discovering that he tastes utterly divine...and then somehow seeing one of his memories (his father bringing home Scraps), which utterly confused them both when she told him about it

E)And Alice prepping for her night out, getting her jacket, knife, pistol, and some ammo, and exchanging goodbyes with Victor before leaving

*nods* And there we have it! Not bad, I suppose! It got me all the way to the start of page 8, at least!

...of 67.

...fuck, I’m going to be at this for the rest of the month, aren’t I?

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check, but that’s no surprise these days – starting to think I should just remove this as a list item and just note if I manage to watch something in the “Other” section instead at this point. Meeeh.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check this Tuesday eve –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I slotted three things from my drafts into my queue for the week:

A) A gif of the original American McGee’s Alice version of Alice rocking on her heels in front of Cheshire by pixiecorpse (with my tags noting that I’ve always liked that as a go-to fidget for her) for Wednesday

B) A set of Smiler-themed virtual stamps (some animated, some not) by m0-th for Thursday

C) And a short video of some Victor and Emily moments from Corpse Bride (including them watching the butterfly in the woods, Emily returning his ring, and Emily dissolving into butterflies at the front of the church) for Friday!

So that’s all right! Still have to figure out Song Saturday, but that can be done tomorrow.

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had two asks to answer and pop into the queue:

A) One from an anon going “Behold! A thousand cereals! I collect cereals. It took me nine yeareals to collect the cereals. Yom Yom cereals good!” Which is probably another reference to something I haven’t seen...anyway, I had the Cuddlepile Valicer trio answer, with Smiler declaring the collection impressive and saying they liked the “yeareals” pun; Alice admitting she didn’t know they made this many types of cereal; Victor agreeing and saying this was genuinely impressive; and Smiler coming back in to say that the anon should open a cereal museum. Because that is the sort of thing they would suggest.

B) And one from mysterious-cat-official, earned during a game of Tumblr Snek, inquiring, “What video game has the best opening scene or level?” I replied OOC to this one, stating that the best opening scene belonged to Fallout: New Vegas, as I was genuinely wowed by the starting cinematic – and of course Benny’s speech right before he shoots you is a classic – but the best opening level belonged to Alice: Madness Returns, as the London stuff really hammered home Alice’s shitty situation, while the Vale of Tears stuff introduced you to the mechanics well and was very pretty to look at. *nods*

So that was nice too! Always good to get a little action over here.

*nods* Not too shabby, I suppose. And now I have to go to bed. We'll see what Wednesday brings -- night all!

Current Mood: okay

dialecticdreamer

Helping Out
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 2 of 2, complete
Word count (story only): 1107
[Morning of Wednesday, 8 November of 2017]

:: Torrin calls Jules to bring some forgotten supplies. It gives Jules an opportunity to help Loudmouth, too. Part of the “Lodestar” arc, set in the Polychrome Heroics universe. ::

Back to part one
:: Thanks for reading! ::

Ten minutes later, Jules lifted the game controller out of Torrin’s lax hands and paused the game. He turned down the game volume two marks, but quite enjoyed the music that played, changing tempo and mood according to the player’s actions. The rectangular office trash can at the younger boy’s right had been empty except for a glossy black liner and was now full enough to mound slightly. The center three or four wads of tissue were visible over the rim of the trash can.

Jules unfolded the quilt lying on the back of the sofa and draped it over Torrin’s legs.
( Read more... )

Current Mood: amused

ionelv

The New York Times tells us how Trump took US to war with Iran.
Tldr verson: Bibi and a cabinet full of yes men. The top comments to the article:

Scott T.
Nashville ·
10h ago
The level of misguided and impulsive policymaking described in this piece is nausea-inducing. All these people should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
Replies 7
Recommend 2.5K

J. B. commented 10 hours ago
J
J. B.
Aurora, CO ·
10h ago
Netanyahu has now duped two Presidents into supporting war in the Middle East to distract from his own political problems. Biden stood by and did nothing about Gaza, and now Trump is actively doing Netanyahu's dirty work. All of the Yes Men are equally to blame.
Replies 14
Recommend 1.9K

charles marlow commented 10 hours ago
C
charles marlow
New London, CT ·
10h ago
"His instincts." Most patients in mental institutions rely on their instincts. That's why they're there in the first place.
Replies 1
Recommend 1.7K

Fred commented 10 hours ago
F
Fred
LA ·
10h ago
How Trump took the US to war with Iran…..simple, Israel and Israeli focused interests in the US told him to do so.
Replies 7
Recommend 1.3K

NB commented 10 hours ago
N
NB
East & West ·
10h ago
This article gives Trump too much credit. Just follow the money. Thiel, Kushner, Musk and others with ties to Trump all stand to financially benefit from this war due to their heavy investments in defense companies, defense startup companies, or investment firms that invest in these industries.
Replies 5
Recommend 1.3K

Ed o commented 9 hours ago
E
Ed o
San Diego ·
9h ago
Why doesn't anyone admit that the current Iran crisis was caused by Trump getting rid of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement in 2018? The agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), required Iran to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98% to 300 kg (660 lbs) and limit enrichment to 3.67%, civilian grade.
What did Trump accomplish by getting rid of the 2015 agreement?
Iran now has 440kg of 60% enrichment, near weapons grade . Iran continued to support Hamas and Hezbollah, and it strengthened the Iranian theocracy. It now has ballistic missiles.

Trump caused this problem. Now he is trying to fix it in the same way he broke it without a plan.
In my opinion, we are currently fighting to get back to where we were before Trump got rid of the 2015 accord. This is progress?
Replies 4
Recommend 1.3K

James commented 10 hours ago
J
James
Burns, TN ·
10h ago
As much as the article notes that Vance and others weren't fully onboard with the decision, NOBODY was against it enough to resign in protest. in 2027/7 when Vance and Rubio are vying for the GOP nomination, we will do well to remember this when they all try to say they were against it..... They all chose their careers and political lives instead of standing on principle.
Replies 4
Recommend 1.1K

Michael M commented 9 hours ago
M
Michael M
Colorado ·
9h ago
Call me a skeptic, but this in part seems like JD Vance (or sources close to him ) trying to create a narrative for 2028 to distance himself from this disastrous, ill conceived war.

Sorry JD, you enabled and continue to enable Trump. You own and will own all the consequences of this Administration.
Replies 4
Recommend 1K

Jimbo commented 10 hours ago
J
Jimbo
Los Angeles ·
10h ago
His deadline is 8pm Eastern. Watch the Futures markets bets at 7:45pm and we’ll know if he bombs or tacos.
Replies 4
Recommend 877

Mort Mech commented 10 hours ago
M
Mort Mech
USA ·
10h ago
Combination of ignorance and power is the most destructive force on earth and Trump is the epitome of that.
Replies 2
Recommend 839

Science Teacher commented 10 hours ago
S
Science Teacher
Illinois ·
10h ago
I'm aghast and infuriated at Trump being surrounded by a whole crowd of sycophants who abandoned their oaths to the Constitution and the public to go along with his "instincts" when they all knew better.
Replies 2
Recommend 811

DennisMcG commented 9 hours ago
D
DennisMcG
Boston ·
9h ago
I'd bet a decent amount it is Vance feeding a substantive amount of this information out, this whole thing reads like exculpatory evidence for him.
Replies 2
Recommend 745

Of note commented 10 hours ago
O
Of note
Washington ·
10h ago
I'm struck by how many of these people didn't voice an opinion, or did the "on the one hand, on the other" thing. They were in the room. The stakes were huge for this country and the world. It was their job to speak up.
Replies 1
Recommend 621

dave commented 9 hours ago
D
dave
nc ·
9h ago
I’m sure Trump’s time on the apprentice, Kushner’s “work” as a full time nepo baby, Witikoff’s real estate experience and Hegseth’s time as a weekend tv show host, not to mention his white christian supremacy leanings, were all extremely helpful in the decision making process. Notably absent is anyone with real experience and/or expertise in this area. God help us.
Recommend 617

Vagabond Rambler commented 9 hours ago
V
Vagabond Rambler
Australia ·
9h ago
In most other U.S. presidential administrations this ridiculous one-hour sales pitch would have been met with replies like "Are you insane?" or "Do NOT start a war with Iran!". The war-pitch opportunity would probably not have been granted at all. Certainly not in the situation room. But Israel knew an easy mark when they saw one. And Trump was that easy mark.
Replies 2
Recommend 576

hop sing commented 10 hours ago
H
hop sing
SF, california ·
10h ago
Trump's total need, that hole in his bucket that can never be filled, is driving the train. Nothing he does offers more than a moment's satisfaction, so the next thing has to be bigger and badder-- but it never works. He has no stopping point, the the craven Republican Party is ignoring the truth of the situation.

The end will be supremely ugly.
Replies 3
Recommend 557

Futbolistaviva commented 9 hours ago
F
Futbolistaviva
San Francisco, CA ·
9h ago
A very interesting piece and equally disturbing.

Well done by the NYT reporters!

So as most informed Americans already knew, Bibi was the driving force behind this war with Iran. To have Kushner and Witkoff, the Keystone Cops (lining their pockets) as envoys is laughable.

No one, not one cabinet member had the courage to object to a war or resign on principle in protest.

We've seen better cabinets at IKEA.
Replies 2
Recommend 455

Brian C. commented 9 hours ago
B
Brian C.
Minnesota ·
9h ago
Great reporting as always.

My one hope is our military recognizes an illegal order and doesn’t follow it.

Bombing civilian infrastructure and killing innocent people is an illegal order.
Replies 3
Recommend 400

CitizenCO commented 9 hours ago
C
CitizenCO
Denver, CO ·
9h ago
General Caine replied: “Sir, this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell, and their plans are not always well-developed. They know they need us, and that’s why they’re hard-selling.” That is the proof this whole thing was a Netanyahu led justification for US carrying out his war and the US is just a tool of a foreign government.

But Caine also led him down the path of the mission feasibility and the rest of the went all in - they are all war criminals in my view.

The apologia of Vance and Wiles complicity reads like PR cleansing knowing the operation is criminal and the phrase saying "Vance built his career" on anti war made me spit my coffee out as the "career" of JD Vance is like 15 minutes in historical terms and is as vapid as that description.
Replies 1
Recommend 379

Yossarian commented 8 hours agoIn reply thread
Y
Yossarian
Canada ·
8h ago
scott T.
I have been an avid student of American politics, both domestic and foreign, and a moderately-read student of American military history for the last 60 years.
With the information conveyed in this NYT article, I can now say that I have never seen such incompetent, shallow minded and inexcusably reckless leadership ever before at the top of your country's political, military and intelligence commands, commands that have the benefit of the knowledge of the lessons learned from the mistakes made in the Vietnam and Iraq wars and have nevertheless ignored those lessons.

I simply cannot imagine your country being in worse hands than it is at this moment.
Replies 1
Recommend 370

Stacey CT commented 9 hours agoIn reply thread
S
Stacey CT
Madison, Connecticut ·
9h ago
scott T. “Misguided and impulsive” is a generous assessment, like someone who didn’t plan well enough for a trip to Disney World.

I’d call this “evil and criminal”, among other things.
Recommend 359

Kathy Hughes commented 10 hours ago
K
Kathy Hughes
Centerville, OH ·
9h ago
This is going to be disastrous for the United States, and for our citizens as well. Hegseth and Trump cannot expect divine intervention to make up for their impulsive decision to fight an unholy war without adequate planning, strategy, and preparation. Unfortunately, it is ordinary citizens who will be left with the costs this war will impose.
Replies 2
Recommend 334

Mr. SeaMonkey commented 10 hours ago
Mr. SeaMonkey
Mr. SeaMonkey
Indiana ·
10h ago
It seems to me that our memory regarding war is about 25 years long. War is horrible, complex, and always longer than anticipated. We finished up with WWII and about 25 years later went into Vietnam. The general after-the-fact consensus was that it was a bad move. About 25 years later we went into Afghanistan and Iraq. The general after-the-fact consensus was that it was a bad move. Now, about 25 years later, we go into Iran. We always think that it will be easier than it turns out to be. History has a lot to teach us. But I guess that we are not capable of remembering.
Replies 5
Recommend 256

Maggie Haberman commented 4 hours ago
Maggie Haberman
Maggie Haberman
Senior Political Correspondent ·
4h ago
Benjamin Netanyahu made his war pitch from inside the Situation Room — a setting rarely used for in-person foreign leader meetings. The audience was President Trump and his inner circle. It proved to be a fateful meeting, as my colleague Jonathan Swan and I show in new reporting.
Replies 2
Recommend 240

Albro commented 10 hours ago
A
Albro
Wellington, ON, Canada ·
10h ago
What worries the most is that Trump will want to prolong this war until November to allow him to claim the country is at war and cancel the November mid terms.
Replies 4
Recommend 234

Jack commented 9 hours ago
J
Jack
Nebraska ·
9h ago
Just incredible. Every one of the president's closest cabinet members and advisors deferring to him, the dumbest, most ignorant man in the room, on the horrific decision to start a major war. For objectives that were ill-defined and clearly unobtainable. They all knew it was a bad idea (except for Hegseth, because he is also an ignoramus) and did nothing to stop him. Genuinely what is wrong with these people?
Replies 2
Recommend 233

Arthur commented 9 hours ago
A
Arthur
Toronto, ON ·
9h ago
I wonder if JD Vance, who stood silently when asked who won the 2020 election, and professes to be a devout Catholic has any introspection about the series of Faustian bargains he has made in his pursuit of power.
Replies 5
Recommend 232

Heiko from Offenbach commented 9 hours agoIn reply thread
H
Heiko from Offenbach
Germany ·
9h ago
j. B.
Joe Biden didn’t start any war!
Replies 2
Recommend 231

CN commented 10 hours ago
C
CN
Portland Oregon ·
10h ago
Hereafter, America and values can't be put in the same sentence. That's how we will be looked upon for a long time and we will be remembered as such in history.
Recommend 216

The only thing that surprised me in this sickening agit-prop puff piece was how JD is already being fluffed as the prime candidate to take over the dumpster fire before Jan 2029. Thiel and his tech bros are celebrating already.

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The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal, KJ Charles, 2015 or 2017 paranormal romance. A series of short stories taking place across the late 19th and early 20th century about a journalist and a ghost hunter, as their relationship develops out of sex-for-supernatural-reasons into a long-term thing, riffing on various bits of British folklore and Victorian occult pulp fiction. An entertaining end to "KJ Charles week" here.

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nanila - Some photos from Day 1 in Trieste
lirazel - what i'm reading wednesday 8/4/2026
aurumcalendula - (no subject)
james_davis_nicoll - Witch Hat Atelier, volume 14 by Kamome Shirahama
rebeccmeister in gardening - Worm Dirt Harvesting
rebeccmeister - Harvesting Worm Dirt: A Photoessay [gardening]
ionelv - The Bible (and other scriptures) seen through chaos theory and entropy laws
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 08-04-2026
scaramouche - Book Log: Asian Folk Tales and Legends
daily_otter_feed - Things Are Going Otterly Swimmingly
jack - 9 Billion Names of God.
angrboda in gardening - Starting a garden journal
goodbyebird - Moon's haunted.
the_siobhan - don't fake a restless heart
brokenframe in vidding - New Vid: First Man Fan Video - Walking On The Moon
crossover_chick - A Fairly Meeeeh Tuesday
dialecticdreamer - Helping Out (part 2 of 2, complete)
ionelv - How US started war with Iran: Bibi and feckless cabinet (per New Tork Times)
github in changelog - [dreamwidth/dreamwidth] f3e043: Bump github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go-v2/aws/protocol/eve...
psocoptera - The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal

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Page generated Apr. 8th, 2026 01:57 pm

Between blotch and blok

twa corbies making a mane

Network

Some photos from Day 1 in Trieste

what i'm reading wednesday 8/4/2026

(no subject)

Witch Hat Atelier, volume 14 by Kamome Shirahama

Worm Dirt Harvesting

Harvesting Worm Dirt: A Photoessay [gardening]

The Bible (and other scriptures) seen through chaos theory and entropy laws

Interesting Links for 08-04-2026

Book Log: Asian Folk Tales and Legends

Things Are Going Otterly Swimmingly

9 Billion Names of God.

Starting a garden journal

Moon's haunted.

don't fake a restless heart

New Vid: First Man Fan Video - Walking On The Moon

A Fairly Meeeeh Tuesday

Helping Out (part 2 of 2, complete)

How US started war with Iran: Bibi and feckless cabinet (per New Tork Times)

[dreamwidth/dreamwidth] f3e043: Bump github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go-v2/aws/protocol/eve...

The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal

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