Month: March 2025

by liberal japonicus I thought that this deserved a separate thread. I'm sure everyone knows, but just to put it out there, a circus sideshow where National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz convened a Signal chat consisting of the three main Cabinet secretaries (in the UK, they refer to the Great Offices of State but for … Read more

by liberal japonicus I had been trying to write an email concerning this Ezra Klein podcast, with Matt Yglesias and Dara Lind, dealing with their discussion of birthright citizenship. I've not been able to pull it together, so I'm just posting my draft here. Klein and Lind (Yglesias didn't have much to say about it) … Read more

by liberal japonicus in facebook comments (which is the only place, for the most part, I see any political discussions in the wild), I've seen something interesting crop up. Obviously my facebook feed is pretty heavily weighted towards liberal opinions, though I do have some friends from high school who are MAGA types, but more … Read more

by liberal japonicus I don't really have much time for the genre of 'let's explain why Trump is doing X',  however, I might make an exception for this Ezra Klein discussion with Gillian Tett, which hits a lot of very interesting notes because Tett was trained as an anthropologist, so her take on the mess … Read more

I found this article quite interesting, it's about Vision Zero, an initiative which began in Sweden and is being taken up in other countries. What I find most interesting is that this is a great example of what happens if you change your perspective. I read that New York is trying to adopt it, but … Read more

by liberal japonicus Russell suggested a new thread around Macron's speech (here and here). The title is the old name for the French nuclear capability, it is now called Force de dissuasion. Whether it will live up to the new name and this pdf from 1965, which details Soviet reaction to this nuclear capability, is … Read more