Elizabeth Alex

good person

[Nature Unedited @NatureUnedited]

Don't harm opossums! They’re harmless and actually really useful. They keep pests in check (eating ticks, roaches, rats, and scorpions), clean up dead animals, and help spread seeds. Basically, they’re nature’s cleanup crew

[Christiane Amanpour @amanpour]

This Memorial Day weekend, we take a moment to remember the sacrifices made by the greatest generation. In 2024, WWII veteran Jake Larson told me why he and his fellow soldiers risked everything to fight fascism in Europe.

[Today in History @TodayinHistory]

Today in 1762, the Trevi Fountain was officially completed in Rome!

[Elizabeth Alex @ElizabethMAlex]

💕

[sheep @thefarmersheep]

my first word when I was born

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

Bumblebee asleep in a dahlia bloom

[NBC News @NBCNews]

An experimental pancreatic cancer drug that’s been shown to double survival in patients with advanced stages of the disease is poised to revolutionize the way the cancer is treated, oncologists say. https://t.co/kaw026NO9G

[60 Minutes @60Minutes]

Anderson Cooper was once a birding skeptic. After reporting in Colombia, he changed his tune. https://t.co/XVmdFEeRHQ

[Elizabeth Alex @ElizabethMAlex]

Connor perfect this technology soon enough.

[Mayo Clinic @MayoClinic]

A Mayo Clinic-developed artificial intelligence (AI) model can help specialists detect pancreatic cancer on routine abdominal CT scans up to three years before clinical diagnosis. It identifies subtle signs of disease before tumors are visible, when curative treatment may still be possible. The findings, published in Gut, mark a milestone in Mayo Clinic's multiyear research effort to enable earlier detection of one of the deadliest cancers.

Learn more: https://t.co/EJySSkaW3P

[Admiral James Stavridis, USN, Ret. @stavridisj]

Shame on us. I think of the brave Afghans that stood alongside us against the Taliban, especially those I worked with personally during my four years in command of the NATO mission there. It is incomprehensible to me that we would not bring them here to the United States, fulfilling the most fundamental obligations of trust and honor. https://t.co/An3nK0aadT

[Senator Mark Kelly @SenMarkKelly]

George Washington believed that vaccinating his troops against smallpox was the key to winning the Revolutionary War and our independence. A founding father from 250 years ago had a better understanding of science and military readiness than Pete Hegseth.

[Janet @Janet8001252]

She came, she saw,she conquered🏆

[Elizabeth Alex @ElizabethMAlex]

😊

[Staff Sergeant Johnson @Colonel_Myway]

Slava Ukraini

[NASA @NASA]

"We can see the Moon out of the docking hatch right now. It's a beautiful sight."

Flight day 3 is in the books, and our @NASAArtemis II crew is now closer to the Moon than to Earth. Check out highlights from our lunar mission. What’s been your favorite moment so far?

[CBS News @CBSNews]

Two of Russia's largest oil companies, Rosneft and Gazprom, helped the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin abduct roughly 2,000 Ukrainian children to send to Russian indoctrination camps since the start of the war in 2022, Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab found. CBS News' chief foreign affairs correspondent @margbrennan explains what we learned from the report.

[Archaeo - Histories @archeohistories]

The Ides of March - a day of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, that forever changed history :

Julius Caesar's bloody assassination on March 15, 44 BC, forever marked March 15, or the Ides of March, as a day of infamy. It has fascinated scholars and writers ever since. For ancient Romans living before that event, however, an ides was merely one of several common calendar terms used to mark monthly lunar events. The ides simply marked the appearance of the full moon.
But Romans would soon learn to beware the Ides of March. That iconic phrase came to represent a day of abrupt change, setting off a ripple of repercussions throughout Roman society and beyond.

By the time of Caesar, Rome had a long-established republican government headed by two consuls with joint powers. Praetors were one step below consuls in the power chain and handled judicial matters. A body of citizens forming Senate proposed legislation, which general people's assemblies then approved by vote. A special temporary office, that of dictator, was established for use only during times of extreme civil unrest. Romans had no love for kings. According to legend, they expelled their last one in 509 BC. While Caesar had made pointed and public displays of turning down offers of kingship, he showed no reluctance to accept the office of “dictator for life” in February of 44 BC. This action may have sealed his fate in the minds of his enemies. 

Caesar had pushed the envelope for some time before his death. “Caesar was first living Roman ever to appear on the coinage.” Normally, honor was reserved for deities. He notes that some historians suspect that Caesar might have been attempting to establish a cult in his honor in a move toward deification. Plot's conspirators, who termed themselves “liberators,” had to move quickly as Caesar had plans to leave Rome for a campaign against Parthians. Two days before his departure, he was summoned to Senate for what would be a fateful meeting. Conspirators gathered around Caesar and stabbed him to death as rest of Roman Senate watched in horror.

Whether or not Caesar was a true tyrant is debated still to this day. It is safe to say, however, that in mind of Marcus Brutus, who helped mastermind the attack, the threat Caesar posed to republican system was clear. Brutus was famously portrayed in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as a tragic hero, while Caesar was written as an unequivocal tyrant. In the play, Caesar sees Brutus among the crowd of assassins and says of the betrayal with his dying breath, "Et tu, Brute?" 

Brutus's involvement in murder is made tragic given his close affiliations with Caesar. His mother, Servilia, was one of Caesar's lovers. And although Brutus had fought against Caesar during Rome's recent civil war, he was spared from death and later promoted by Caesar to office of praetor. Brutus, however, was torn in his allegiance to Caesar. Brutus's family had a tradition of rejecting authoritarian powers. Ancestor Junius Brutus was credited with throwing out last king of Rome, Tarquin Superbus, in 509 BC. Ahala, an ancestor of Marcus Brutus's mother, had killed another tyrant, Spurius Maelius. This lineage, coupled with a strong interest in Greek idea of tyranicide, disposed Brutus to have little patience with perceived power grabbers.

The final blow came when his uncle Cato, a father figure to Brutus, killed himself after losing in a battle against Caesar in 46 BC. Brutus may have felt both shame over accepting Caesar's clemency and obligation to do Cato honor by continuing his quest to “save” republic from Caesar, Osgood speculated. It is this moral dilemma that has caused debate over whether or not Brutus should be branded a villain. Plutarch's Life of Brutus, is quite sympathetic in comparison to surviving documents naming other enemies of Caesar and his successors. 

📷 : The Ides of March XLIV BC; Oil on Panel, by Stephen Gjertson (Old Parkland Art Collection, Dallas)

#archaeohistories

[Ece Temelkuran @ETemelkuran]

Earlier today, I was on @CNN having a wonderful conversation with @amanpour about Nation of Strangers. “It is not only refugees, immigrants, exiles or asylum seekers who are homeless,” I said, “The world is becoming homeless, we are all becoming strangers— strangers to our times, to this cruelty. We, as strangers, are the majority.” Thank you @amanpour and many thanks to the formidable team at @CNN #London Here’s the full interview if you missed it https://t.co/FRIRlXQher

[Elizabeth Alex @ElizabethMAlex]

Just vile.

[Andrii Sybiha 🇺🇦 @andrii_sybiha]

The IOC has banned not the Ukrainian athlete, but its own reputation. Future generations will recall this as a moment of shame.

He simply wanted to commemorate fellow athletes killed in war. There is nothing wrong with that under any rules or ethics.

The IOC intimidated, disrespected, and even lectured our athlete and other Ukrainians on how they should keep quiet about “one of 130 conflicts in the world”.

The IOC has also systemically failed to confront the greatest abuser of international sports and the Olympic Charter — Russia.

A country that started three invasions during the Olympic Truce in the past three decades, implemented the largest state-funded doping program, killed 650 Ukrainian athletes and coaches, and damaged 800 sports facilities in Ukraine.

These are Russians who must be banned, not the commemoration of their victims. None of them are “neutral”.

If the Olympic Creed says that “the most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part”, then @iocmedia betrayed it completely by preventing @heraskevych from taking part and betrayed 650 Ukrainian athletes and coaches killed by Russia.

We are proud to have Vladyslav who has not betrayed them. Thank you for your principles and bravery.

[Mary Jordan @marycjordan]

The “peace monks” who have been walking 108 days, starting in Texas, arrived in DC today. The sun came out. So did a lot of people tired of the ugliness.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

This video should unsettle anyone who takes the United States seriously as a nation.

Because it exposes something dangerous: the trivialization of the world's most consequential office. It shows how carelessly the power, credibility, and accumulated moral authority of a superpower can be squandered for a few seconds of viral attention.

In any other major democracy, this behavior from a head of state would trigger a constitutional crisis. Paris would burn. Berlin would convene emergency sessions. In the Nordic countries, resignation would follow within hours. Across functioning democracies, the public, institutions, and political class would recognize this for what it is: an assault on the dignity of the state itself. Leaders are not free to perform as entertainers without consequence. National honor is not personal property, it's held in trust.

But the United States is not just another country with a provocateur in charge. It is the linchpin of global order. It maintains formal alliances and security guarantees with forty to fifty nations. It underwrites the financial architecture, trade systems, and diplomatic frameworks that billions of people depend on daily. When the American president speaks—or posts—it doesn't land as satire, meme, or personal whim. It reads as a signal about what the country is becoming.

American power has never relied solely on carrier strike groups or economic output. It has rested on something more fragile and more valuable: trust. The belief that beneath domestic turbulence lies institutional seriousness, predictability, and a baseline commitment to dignity. That belief is now disintegrating in real time.

Millions of American companies operate globally. They negotiate multibillion-dollar contracts in environments where reputation is currency. Boardrooms in Frankfurt, Singapore, and Dubai aren't debating whether a post was clever—they're asking whether the United States remains a reliable partner. Whether agreements signed today will be honored tomorrow. Whether American leadership has devolved from institutional to purely theatrical.

Consider tourism, which sustains millions of American jobs—airlines, hotels, restaurants, museums, entire regional economies. Soft power isn't an abstraction. It materializes in flight bookings, conference locations, study-abroad programs, and decades of accumulated goodwill. A quiet, decentralized boycott doesn't require government action—only a collective sense that a nation no longer respects itself.

Now picture this image being studied by foreign ministers, central bank governors, defense strategists, and sovereign wealth fund managers. Picture them asking a coldly rational question: How do we write binding thirty-year agreements with a country whose public face will be this, relentlessly, for years to come? How do we plan for the long term when the tone is impulsive, mocking, and unbound by the gravity of office?

This is where the real calculus begins. Trillions in foreign capital depend on confidence that America is stable, credible, and rule-governed. That confidence is now being traded for what, exactly? Applause from an online mob? A dopamine rush from manufactured outrage? Content designed to dominate the news cycle rather than serve the national interest?

Every serious nation eventually confronts this choice: burn long-term credibility for short-term spectacle, or safeguard the reputation previous generations bled to build. The United States spent eighty years constructing an image of reliability, restraint, and leadership under pressure. That image wasn't born from perfection—it came from a visible commitment to standards that transcended impulse.

This isn't a partisan issue. Europeans who value democratic norms recognize something ominously familiar here. Americans—Democrat and Republican alike—who believe in responsibility and restraint should see it too. Power attracts scrutiny. Leadership demands discipline. A superpower cannot behave like a reality TV contestant without paying a price.

The presidency is not a personal broadcast channel. It's a symbol carried on behalf of 330 million people and countless international partners who never voted but whose lives are shaped by American decisions anyway. Every post either reinforces or erodes the idea that America can be counted on when it matters most.

So the question is no longer whether this is offensive. The question is whether this is who America chooses to be: a nation that trades a century of hard-won reputation for viral moments. A country that replaces statecraft with content creation. A republic governed like a season of reality television.

History offers a harsh lesson here. Great powers don't fall because enemies mock them. They collapse when they begin mocking themselves—publicly, proudly, and without grasping the cost until it's far too late.

Stay connected,
Follow Gandalv @Microinteracti1

[Jennifer Rhymer @Jenndividual]

Never walk away from someone who deserves help; your hand is God’s hand for that person. #Proverbs