Justin Abate

[Shashank Joshi @shashj]

“US law enforcement agents obtained authorization to use a controversial surveillance device capable of intercepting cell phone signals to find and arrest a 21-year-old college student who helped produce journalist Don Lemon’s coverage of an anti-ICE protest, court filings show.”

[Tatarigami_UA @Tatarigami_UA]

This tweet, along with a series of others indirectly supporting Ukraine and pushing back against the direction Donald Trump has taken on Russia, is an act of courage in itself.

I disagree with Laura on many things, but I have to give her credit. By speaking out, she risks closing doors for herself within this administration and face negative financial consequences.

You don’t have to agree with someone to recognize when they’re standing up for what they believe in, especially when doing so could come at a personal cost.

That deserves respect, regardless of where you stand politically

[Rep. Don Bacon 🇺🇸✈️🏍️⭐️🎖️ @RepDonBacon]

I agree with LT GEN Kellogg. Ukraine should destroy Russia’s diesel production infrastructure. Totally destroy it. Our President should complain to Putin about Russia bombing Ukrainian cities… not complain to Ukraine who is the victim and who is defending itself.

[Sergey Radchenko @DrRadchenko]

I have spent the last year+ researching the origins of the war for a future book. Relatedly, I have co-led a Stanford/Hoover team in interviewing dozens of key decision makers. I can say with a high level of confidence that this take is unmitigated bullshit.

[AnechoicMedia @AnechoicMedia_]

Power washing is perennial Dave Ramsey make-money-quick advice because it's a rich person's idea of how to make an easy buck.

This is generalizing from their experience of giving fake jobs to their kids and neighborhood children. Community members pay the kid to do a job slowly or poorly because it's nice to do and the kid doesn't really need a stable income source or value his time effectively; He just needs to learn what work feels like.

As an adult if you try to make a living in landscaping you find that it's not easy, you need capital, and you're competing against every Mexican with a trailer who is also capable of spamming flyers and phone calls to everyone in a target zip code. There aren't that many people with unmet needs waiting to pay you a charitable wage to do infrequent yard work.

Power washing is similarly a commercial venture and the people doing it full time have expensive setups. You might have noticed that all the concrete cleaning solutions you can buy at Home Depot say not to let them go into storm drains. You probably ignored that when cleaning your own driveway. The city starts to pay attention when you're doing it for money. That's why power washing trucks have a water reclamation system and have to set up barriers and block off drains.

So there aren't a lot of side hustles that give those out-of-work easy money with minimal time investment and no capital. What someone who is unemployed needs is an actual job, working for a business, not boomer advice about how they should ask all the adults in their neighborhood if they need their lawn mowed.

[Henrick Johansson @compliantvc]

We've been doing this for centuries in Europe

It's thanks to a technology that the US hasn't yet discovered called "trains"

[Lesbian Rod Serling 🇵🇸🇺🇦🇮🇷 @LRSerling]

Literally everything runs on skeleton crews now. Got stuck in like for like 30 minutes at the grocery this week because they had only 1 register open and no one fixing the broken self check outs. At 5pm. On a friday.

[Ronnie Adkins @RonnieAdkins]

When Chuck Grassley was elected to public office there were 48 States.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is a really funny Xi video, which I've never seen before. I just added subtitles in English to it 👇

He explains the art of giving gifts to foreign leaders. The South Korea anecdote is particularly hilarious: he explains that when China had to find a gift for President Park Geun-hye, they went through her autobiography, where she wrote that if she’d ever had a first love (she was unmarried), he would be Zhao Zilong, a legendary general from the Three Kingdoms. So they had Fan Zeng, one of China’s most famous painters, paint her crush 😂

Xi can’t resist adding that Zhao Zilong happens to come from Zhengding, the county he ran in the 1980s, which makes him "very proud too."

Xi’s actual point is that good diplomacy is personal and that you need to do deep research on the people you’re dealing with: reading their biographies, knowing their taste, their history, etc. It signals respect and, as he puts it, is "a very, very effective way of reaching people’s hearts."

[Justin Abate @JustinTAbate]

@RepThomasMassie Terrible take sorry. The Cold War never ended and once you understand that, a lot more in this world right now makes more sense.

[GeoInsider @InsiderGeo]

NEW: 🇳🇴 Chinese-owned rental cars used by the Norwegian Armed Forces reportedly recorded soldiers, their movements and security codes during a major military exercise in Oslo, raising serious questions about the security of vehicles used in sensitive military operations.

The incident occurred during Operation Hovedstad, held from September 14 to 18, when Norway’s Home Guard District 02 trained for security operations, including scenarios involving the defence of Oslo Airport during wartime.

The Armed Forces had rented the cars through Hertz Norway under a nationwide rental agreement signed in 2024, worth up to 350 million Norwegian kroner and running until May 2028. Hertz Norway’s ownership chain ultimately leads to China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, which also owns Volvo Cars. The agreement provides rental vehicles for exercises, operational activities and everyday military use.

During the exercise, soldiers discovered that the cars had recorded and stored video footage. Lieutenant Fredrik Blanck told Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) that the recordings showed who entered and exited the vehicles, where they travelled, whom they picked up and how long they remained at different locations.

More concerningly, the footage reportedly captured security codes entered by soldiers when opening military gates. Some access points require both a key card and a code, meaning the recordings could expose sensitive access procedures.

The vehicles remained in use throughout the exercise because alternative transport was in limited supply.

[Jesse Brenneman @Jesse_Brenneman]

I do think a key to understanding the billionaire obsession with AI agents is that they’re all people with personal assistants who dream of not having to pay their personal assistant.

[Dan Carlin @dccommonsense]

It will be very interesting (as I’ve long said) to see how much of the anger Americans have directed at each other was deliberately stoked by those foreign entities who wish us harm. If so, we fell for it hook, line and sinker. Playing into the hands of our adversaries.

[Phil Williams @PhilNvestigates]

This opening by the incredible @bobsmietana is perfection! A must read!

[Woofers @NotWoofers]

More fascinating footage of the Ukrainian Code 9.2 unit demonstrating how armored warfare is evolving. Armored vehicles reminiscent of bushes escorted by drones to help provide both reconnaissance as well as intercepting enemy drones.

Armor is still relevant on the battlefield, it just needs more tools to help enable it.

[bot blocker | блокировщик ботов @antibot4navalny]

To those implying that Kremlin-controlled social media bot/troll farms became silent after Ukraine hit a Yandex data center, posting this CloudFare chart (https://t.co/9novJa0Lss):

Hate to disappoint you all ⤵️

[Annie Jacobsen @AnnieJacobsen]

👀 ?

[𝕊𝕠𝕔𝕚𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕤𝕥 𝕊𝕪𝕤𝕒𝕕𝕞𝕚𝕟 💾 @reset_by_peer]

They went for “universal high income” to “we will take away your Medicaid if you don’t have a Claude subscription” real fast

[capitolhunters @capitolhunters]

Read down 🧵to get the lede: the US had indicted a Russian man as a "malign influencer seeking to interfere in the US elections"; his charges rated 15 years in prison. We offered a $10M reward. Montegnegro arrested him. Then Trump intervened to get him released back to Russia. 1/

[Cary Bleasdale @Cary_Bleasdale]

The harshest truth is that good formal clothes are WAAAAY more comfortable than almost anything else
You've just never worn them