Márcio Barbosa

Proud dad and husband. Living a great life of unrequited effort. Zero frustration tolerance, yet zero fear of failure. Don't know how.

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

Trump has turned the White House into a 24/7 corruption operation. This is a national crisis.

Trump thinks the public will stop paying attention.

So I went to the Senate floor to call his bluff. I told the ENTIRE STORY of his 500 days of corruption.

1/ Here it is - in one🧵

[Culture Crave 🍿 @CultureCrave]

John C. Reilly questions why human rights have become political

"If you stand up for human rights, why is that a right or left thing? Why aren’t people on the right wing concerned about human rights?"

"Elon Musk says, 'don’t be fooled by the empathy trap'. ... Empathy is not a trap, empathy is a superpower. It’s what makes human beings exceptional, our ability to look outside ourself”

"Do unto others ... It's crazy that we have to argue for these things"

(via It's Open Pod)

[Acyn @Acyn]

Ossoff: We see a faithless president, self-dealing, while he depicts himself as Christ, while he depicts the Obamas as apes, while he plunges the nation recklessly into war, plunders our health care, and sends prices soaring. 

And while the people pay more than ever for groceries and housing and health care, he builds a monument to himself. 

While a cancer patient loses health coverage, he adorns his office in gold. 

Voting rights laws are dismantled, prisons for immigrants are full of children, and all the while we see this wickedness advanced and defended by those who wrap themselves in the banner of righteous faith. 

But we ask, where in Scripture are we commanded to deny care to the sick, to take from those with the least to give to those with the most, to violate the house of worship to hunt down the refuge

[Anonymous @YourAnonNews]

If you have a child that is getting out of school for the summer... this is exactly how you should greet them when they get off the school bus.

[Anonymous @YourAnonNews]

Cognitive dissonance helps explain why Trump supporters remain loyal, new research suggests. This sheds light on how supporters of Donald Trump justify their continued allegiance despite learning about allegations of his sexual misconduct and illegal activities.
https://t.co/Z1mAYJ7shM

[Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder]

He took the greatest military force in world history, lost a war to a middle power in a week, begged the world to save him, and demanded that the media lie about this and everything else. I try, but at a simple human level I do not see how anyone can mistake this man’s almost supernatural weakness for strength. His weakness is something negative, gravitational, so deep that it can draw in a whole country. But only if we fail to see it. Only if we let it.

[Ilan Goldenberg @ilangoldenberg]

Three weeks into the war with Iran, a number of observations as someone who spent years war-gaming this scenario.

1. The U.S. and Israel may have produced regime transition in the worst possible way.
Ali Khamenei was 86 and had survived multiple bouts of prostate cancer. His death in the coming years would likely have triggered a real internal reckoning in Iran, potentially opening the door to somewhat more pragmatic leadership, especially after the protests and crackdown last month. Instead, the regime made its most consequential decision under existential external threat giving the hardliners a clear upperhand. Now we appear to have a successor who is 30 years younger, deeply tied to the IRGC, and radicalized by the war itself – including the killing of family members. Disastrous.

2. About seven years ago at CNAS, I helped convene a group of security, energy, and economic experts to walk through scenarios for a U.S.--Iran war and the implications for global oil prices. What we’re seeing now was considered one of the least likely but worst outcomes. The modeling assumed the Strait of Hormuz could close for 4–10 weeks, with 1–3 years required to restore oil production once you factored in infrastructure damage. Prices could spike from around $65 to $175–$200 per barrel, before eventually settling in the $80–$100 range a year later in a new normal.

3. One surprising development: Iran is still moving oil through the Strait of Hormuz while disrupting everyone else. In most war games I participated in, we assumed Iran couldn’t close the Strait and still use it themselves. That would have made the move extremely self-defeating. But Iran appears capable of harassing global shipping while still pushing some of its own exports through. That changes the calculus.

4. The U.S. now finds itself in the naval and air equivalent of the dynamic we faced in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a recipe for a quagmire where we win every battle and lose the war. We have overwhelming military dominance and are exacting a tremendous cost. But Iran doesn’t need to win battles. They just need occasional successes. A small boat hitting a tanker. A drone slipping through defenses in the Gulf. A strike on a hotel or oil facility. Each incident creates insecurity and drives costs up while remind everyone that the regime is surviving and fighting.

5. The deeper problem is that U.S. objectives were set far too high. Once “regime change” becomes the implicit or explicit goal, the bar for American success becomes enormous. Iran’s bar is simple: survive and keep causing disruption.

6. The options for ending this war now are all bad. You can try to secure the entire Gulf and Middle East indefinitely – extremely expensive and maybe impossible. You can invade Iran and replace the regime, but nobody is seriously going to do that. Costs are astronomical. You can try to destabilize the regime by supporting separatist groups. It probably won’t work and if it does you’ll most likely spark a civil war producing years of bloody chaos the U.S. will get blamed for. None of these are good outcomes.

7. The other escalatory options being discussed are taking the nuclear material out of Esfahan or taking Kargh Island. Esfahan is not really workable. Huge risk. You’d have been on the ground for a LONG time to safely dig in and get the nuclear material out in the middle of the country giving Iran time to reinforce from all over and over run the American position.

8. Kharg Island can be appealing to Trump. He’d love to take Iran’s ability to export oil off the map and try to coerce them to end the war. It’s much easier because it’s not in the middle of IRan. But it’s still a potentially costly ground operation. And again. Again, the Iranian government only has to survive to win and they can probably do that even without Kargh.

9. The least bad option is the classic diplomatic off-ramp. The U.S. declares that Iran’s military capabilities have been significantly degraded, which is how the Pentagon always saw the purpose of the war. Iran declares victory for surviving and demonstrating it can still threaten regional actors. It would feel unsatisfying. But this is the inevitable outcome anyway. Better to stop now than after five or ten more years of escalating costs. Remember in Afghanistan we turned down a deal very early in the war with the Taliban that looked amazing 20 years later. Don’t need to repeat that kind of mistake.

10. The U.S. and Israel are not perfectly aligned here. Trump just needs a limited win and would see long-term instability as a negative whereas for Netanyahu a weak unstable Iran that bogs the U.S. down in the MIddle East is a fine outcome. If President Trump decided he wanted Israel to stop, he likely has the leverage to push it in that direction just as he pressured Netanyahu to take a deal last fall on Gaza.

11. When this is over, the Gulf states will have to rethink their entire security strategy. They are stuck in the absolute worst place. They didn’t start this war and didn’t want it and now they are taking with some of the worst consequences. Neither doubling down with the U.S. and Israel nor placating the Iranians seems overwhelmingly appealing.

12. One clear geopolitical winner so far: Russia. Oil prices are rising. Sanctions are coming off. Western attention and military resources are shifting away from Ukraine. From Moscow’s perspective, this war is a win win win.

13. At some point China may have a role to play here. It is the world’s largest oil importer, and much of that supply comes from the Middle East. Yes they are still getting oil from Iran. But they also buy from the rest of the Middle East, and a prolonged disruption in the Gulf hits Beijing hard. That gives China a real incentive to help push toward an end to the conflict.

[Anonymous @YourAnonNews]

Fmr UN Weapons Insp. Scott Ritter: "Burned these children alive! You know why this happened? Pete Hegseth cancelled a Department of Defense directive that required a civilian mitigation team to go over each target to make sure that we weren't striking the wrong targets. He called that WOKE"

[Anonymous @YourAnonNews]

Transitioning to green energy would have cost less than an oil crisis, much less than war, and would have created the so desperately needed jobs

[Christopher Steele @Chris_D_Steele]

@Manny_Street I’m told by reliable sources in both the US and Russia that the Kremlin has had the Epstein files, and more similar, for years.

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

A statement from Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, on our discussions with the Department of War.

https://t.co/rM77LJejuk

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Obama: "At some point, you age out. You're not connected directly to the immediate struggles that folks are going through. I'm not making a hard and fast rule here, but I think Democrats do well when we have candidates who are plugged into the moment. To the zeitgeist. To the times."

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

PS: To those who like Rubio (I supported him in 2016) in contrast to Trump & Vance, or because he can speak diplomatically, he is still a tool of the Trump admin & is advancing its destructive, pro-Kremlin agenda. Don’t fall for good cop, bad cop. He’s endorsing a corrupt thug.

[Anonymous @YourAnonNews]

Once you realize the only purpose of the trump administration is content creation in order to steal money and force a white ethno state, it all starts to make sense

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

Belgium was listed as a Board of Peace signatory at Davos.

Belgium immediately denied signing.

This is Davos 2026 in one sentence.

Trump announced a Greenland “framework deal” with NATO Secretary General Rutte.

Danish PM Frederiksen’s response: “Rutte has no mandate to negotiate on Denmark’s behalf.”

Trump negotiated Greenland with someone who doesn’t own Greenland.

Greenland’s own Prime Minister when asked what’s in the deal about his country:

“I don’t know what there is in the agreement, or the deal about my country.”

Then came the Board of Peace.

An 11-page charter for Gaza reconstruction.

The word “Gaza” appears zero times.

Trump’s exact words at the signing:

“Once this board is completely formed, we can do pretty much whatever we want to do.”

Sole veto power. For life.

Authority over any global conflict zone. Worldwide.

$1 billion membership fee. Per country.

Power to nominate his own successor.

Russia offered to pay using frozen Western assets.

Trump: “I’m fine with that.”

25 nations reportedly signed.

France refused.

Belgium denies signing.

The pattern:

Negotiate with parties who don’t own the asset.

Sign charters that omit their stated purpose.

List signatories who deny signing.

Declare victory before anyone reads the document.

And the markets moved anyway.

Critical Metals stock pumped 158% in three weeks on Greenland headlines.

The 1951 Defense Agreement already gives America base rights in Greenland. In perpetuity.

Trump negotiated access to something America has had since Truman.

But the stock moved.

The headlines printed.

The institution now exists.

Everyone debating whether Trump “failed” at Greenland is measuring the wrong variable.

The 20th century required signatures.

The 21st century requires announcements.

Treaties needed consent.

Press releases only need attention.

Mark Carney stood at the same podium and delivered the verdict:

“This is not a transition. This is a rupture.”

He wasn’t describing a failure.

He was describing an upgrade.

The old operating system required agreement to execute a deal.

The new one just requires the headline.

Davos 2026 wasn’t a negotiation.

It was a product launch.

The announcement is the product.

The deal was never the point.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

https://t.co/UUSvx41OJI

[Anonymous @YourAnonNews]

The majority of the people in the US need to accept that 30-40% of the population wants a dictatorship, wants fascism as long as the right people in their minds are being opressed/punished/murdered/disappeared/tortured. They don't care what laws are broken. They don't give a shit about the constitution. They don't even care about the economy which is baffling. They have racist fantasies that are being played out, or are deluded that they will somehow be insiders in all this. Facts don't matter. Corruption doesn't matter. Hypocrisy doesn't matter. They call themselves christians but everything in their actions and hearts is the opposite of the teachings of the person they pretend to worship. Stop trying to convince them with logic. They have to come to it on their own and regardless they need to be stopped. Keep fighting for the rights of all. Keep your minds and hearts strong.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

this is a beautiful piece about life and loss. sharing with a gift link https://t.co/akWZ16ZszU

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

“He raped me.”

“Donald J Trump had raped her along with Jeffrey Epstein.”

“She was found with her head ‘blown off’… there was no way it was a suicide.”

Now we’re starting to see why Trump was hiding the Epstein files, and it probably gets much worse.

[Anonymous @OpDeathEaters]

The Epstein files on the DOJ website allow you to highlight the redacted text, copy it, and paste it into another document, which reveals what was hidden. You can also press Ctrl+F and search for “Trump ” (with a space) to see his name appear more than 600 times. #OpDeathEaters

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

THE COGNITIVE COLLAPSE

We are witnessing the first documented case of mutual intelligence degradation between humans and machines.

This is not theory. This is peer-reviewed science.

Texas A&M, UT Austin, and Purdue just proved that AI systems trained on viral content lose 23.6% of their reasoning ability. Long-context comprehension collapses by 38%. Even after retraining with 4.8 times more quality data, a 17.3% deficit remains permanent.

The models are forgetting how to think.

MIT tracked 54 humans using ChatGPT for four months. Result: weakest brain connectivity of any group tested. When asked to write without AI assistance, 78% could not recall a single passage from essays they had written minutes earlier.

The humans are forgetting how to think.

Nature published the mathematical proof: AI trained on AI-generated content undergoes “irreversible defects.” The tails of the distribution vanish. Nuance disappears. Everything converges toward the median of whatever the algorithm rewards.

Now connect the system.

Platforms optimize for engagement. Engagement-optimized content degrades AI training data. Degraded AI produces degraded content. Humans consuming and delegating to these systems experience cognitive decline. Those humans produce content that becomes training data.

The feedback loop is closed. Both intelligences are degrading together.

560,000 weekly ChatGPT users now show signs of psychosis according to OpenAI’s own data. Websites blocking AI scraping tripled in one year. AI incidents increased 56.4% in 2024 alone.

The information ecosystem that built modern civilization is consuming itself.

This is not a technology problem. This is not a human problem. This is a coupled system approaching a phase transition where the quality of thought itself becomes the scarce resource.

The organizations and individuals who secure access to genuine human intelligence and uncorrupted information will define the next era.

Everyone else will wonder what happened to their ability to reason.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Read the full article here
https://t.co/lz92GGz4N4