Longtime Lurkerfella

Lurking and learning. | CIA Intelligence and Logistics Division | Anti war of aggression. Pro war of defense. | 🎖️ @BlagulaBilen

[Longtime Lurkerfella @Lurkerfella]

For any android users out there don't forget about Circle to Search. It's really good for quickly finding the articles all those unattributed screenshots come from.

This article also mentions that they will no longer mention Hungarian corruption.

[Longtime Lurkerfella @Lurkerfella]

@SpaghettiKozak Wow, that's gold medal worthy.

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

Also, may I say that I don’t agree with people saying ICE and CBP need “more training.” They’re doing exactly what this administration has trained them to—impose a reign of fear in blue cities. They don’t need more training. They need to be ripped up root and branch.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Even if you can imagine mitigating factors in the killing itself, from "doing his job" to a terrible mistake, the Trump admin's immediate and total defense of it and blanket of lies are damning. It’s the standard authoritarian response, unquestioning loyalty above all.

[Marc Polymeropoulos @Mpolymer]

Spot on. Anyone who is surprised at what is happening is frankly a fool. It was all laid out, from Project 2025 to the campaign speeches. We tried to warn. We were called hysterical and melodramatic. Except we were right. Those who voted for this historically awful man are getting the dystopian America that he openly promised. Congrats, our country is royally fucked. Our allies hate us. Europe is gone, never to come to our aid again. There is turmoil in the streets with a paramilitary force trampling on the constitution, and killing citizens for exercising their right to protest. Prices are still high, as the grift is the only thing that matters to the admin, vice helping everday people. The DOJ, FBI, State Dept are hollowed out crusts of what they were before. America is more divided than any time since Vietnam. Yet all of this was entirely 100 percent predictable.

[Longtime Lurkerfella @Lurkerfella]

@ZachsSack1 @50ftqueen1e I'm just seeing everyone loving the goalie fight. You don't get that without him skating across the ice, so props for that.

[Longtime Lurkerfella @Lurkerfella]

@cyber05026 @UpwardChanging @blanks_sj I was thinking Dark Souls

[Vlad Vexler @VladVexler]

BREAKDOWN: Trump's unhinged letter, line by line

“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize....”

This is Trump stewing in his narcissistic anger. The denial of the Nobel Prize functions as a narcissistic injury, under the stress of which Trump’s psychic organisation regresses to primitive defences. He cannot tolerate loss, accept ambivalence, or take responsibility.

A healthy adult might respond to disappointment with contextualisation and re-establishment of proportion. Trump cannot do this. He fixates, replaying and enlarging the narcissistic injury.

Moreover, Trump has difficulty with disengaging attention, emotional impulsivity, and poor inhibitory control under stress (It’s worth considering that ADHD can magnify narcissistic loops)

“... for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS”

Reality-testing has collapsed for Trump, in favour of fantasy achievement. Exaggeration to ward off feelings of inadequacy.

“I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace”

Trump is expelling responsibility for aggression outward. He frames himself as forced into domination because others failed to reward him: if you are not good to me, I am freed from being good to anyone.

“... although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”

Trump is relocating private rage into an institutional role. The psychic mechanism is three-fold -
(1) an intolerable affect arises (e.g. rage)
(2) that affect is expelled to an external object
(3) the external object is then pressured to carry and enact the affect

“Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China…”

Trump is engaging in post-truth manipulation. His desired acquisition of Greenland has more to do with it’s size than any geopolitical concern about Russia or China.

“and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway?”

This is an attack on a container that limits desire: how can me wanting something very much not be a sufficient reason for having it? The ideological correlate of this psychology is “might is right” monarchism.

“There are no written documents…”

Trump reduces the question of sovereignty to a childlike original story.

“… it’s only a boat that landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also.”

This is arguably the most embarrassing line in the letter. Think of this analogy:

A child is told: “That toy belongs to your friend Susan because her parents bought it for her two years ago.”

The child replies: “That doesn’t count. I walked into the same shop two years ago too. So it isn’t really hers.”

The child’s response, like Trump’s, reduces ownership to immediate desire and declares frustration of desire illegitimate.

“I have done more for NATO than any person since its founding…”

Trump is veiling his attainment of “getting the Europeans to pay up” in grandiose self-idealisation.

“… and now, NATO should do something for the United States.”

Again, as discussed above, this is externalisation of desire onto an external object. There is no America for Trump - there is only Trump and his desire, generated by the atrocity of his own mind.

"The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland."

“Complete and Total Control” is not adult strategy. It is magical repair of narcissistic injury through imagined mastery. Political absurdities, from the absence of Greenland acquisition in the latest National Security Strategy to fantasies about the price of Greenland, are secondary to the stunning psychic regression on display.

"Thank you! President DJT"

“Thank you!” seals the letter with monarchist magical thinking. Like Putin, Trump assumes that if something happens in country X, the government must be behind it.

Brief analytical takeaways:

(1) Reject strategic normalisation.
Those who label Trump’s foreign policy as belonging to a recognisable school - for example a form of realism - are operating in the realm of farce.

(2) Reject cognitive-decline narratives.
There is little evidence that Trump is experiencing significant dementia or Biden-style cognitive decline. What we are seeing instead is severe narcissistic degeneration under increasingly unchecked power. Age and neurodiversity may amplify this degeneration, but it is not cognitive decline.

So: this is neither strategy nor dementia.

(3) Recognise the institutional danger.
If the U.S. political system cannot check Trump’s behaviour, shared trust in institutions will erode catastrophically. No mentally sound future President will be able to undo the damage.

[Longtime Lurkerfella @Lurkerfella]

@BigAsBeanboozld @stefen_rosner All the way up at 50

[Oksii ✚ 🇺🇦 @Oksii33]

There used to be life here... Please don’t leave us alone, help us to stop russians

[Longtime Lurkerfella @Lurkerfella]

@koby_schechter @MF1sles This season he's mostly been great at screening his own goalie and dropping the puck at the worst possible moments.

It's not without reason that Sharks fans are celebrating this news like it's a cup win in all the other QTs.

[Dr Kate Strasdin @kateStrasdin]

This was such a clever design for a museum show. The pockets of the c18th were suspended from the waist so here, a recreation of the various layers, like an anatomical illustration. The yellow quilted pockets are original amongst the grey blue of the facsimile, #1740s @V_and_A

[Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof]

This is the weather forecast for Kyiv for the next two weeks, in Celsius and Fahrenheit. The coldest winter in decades. Russia timed its missile and drone strikes on heating and electricity infrastructure to maximize civilian suffering caused by this. Imagine how it is to live in unheated high-rises with only a few hours of electricity a day. For two more weeks, at least. Millions of people.

[Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder]

Countless emails asking how Americans can directly aid Ukrainian soldiers. Here’s an easy answer:
https://t.co/esLMTa8fn2

[Flatpack Fellamunculus 🏴‍☠️ @tryingattimes]

👉Extremely timely and well-positioned Polish initiative to help Ukraine ride out power cuts - OPEN TO ALL, not just Polish people. 👈

[Longtime Lurkerfella @Lurkerfella]

@eatindubyas @LarsThorsell I saw that posted as a response to everyone saying that it couldn't be done in men's hockey because of body checks.

It got ugly in those comments with people acting like D-men getting embarrassed by shifty stick handlers isn't a staple of NHL highlight reels too.

[Longtime Lurkerfella @Lurkerfella]

@LarsThorsell But all the haters in the comments under her highlight said that that move was impossible in real hockey.

[adam @resurrecti0ns]

these books are all pretty garbage but i don't think it's surprising that bookstores choose to cater to people that regularly come in to buy books and not people who haven't been to a bookstore in years

[Prof. Ryan Katz-Rosene @ryankatzrosene]

These fucking tools still don’t get it!? YOU HAD CANADA as your closest most loyal trade partner, coordinating a stance towards China and partnering on continental security! YOU HAD GREENLAND within your sphere of influence, with ALL OF EUROPE ready to have your back, securing continental security! But then your Orange Moron in Chief fucked it ALL by stabbing his allies in the back, launching trade wars against allies which directly contradicted the very trade agreements HE FUCKING NEGOTIATED in the first place! Threatening MILITARY ANNEXATION OF NATO ALLIES (some ‘Peace President!’)! I can’t even with you people - literally screwing over your closest friends and then crying foul when they adjust to the new reality which YOU CAUSED. GET FUCKED!

[Longtime Lurkerfella @Lurkerfella]

@McFaul He's just meeting them at their level. Childish fits the tweets from official American accounts too.