Google Books is becoming a desert. Its regress is real: the knowledge we were assured was both safely stored and freely available, which led libraries and schools to get rid of their books, has retreated into the shadows. The internet of 2026 knows less than the internet of 2010.
🇨🇳 China saw this war coming and quietly filled its tanks before the first missile ever flew...
Here's a mystery from late 2025 that finally makes sense.
China was buying oil like crazy. Millions of barrels it had no use for.
Its economy was slowing, electric cars were cutting fuel demand, and analysts kept asking why Beijing wanted so much crude.
Jeffrey Snider says we just got the answer... they were STOCKING UP for this exact war.
Fill your reserves before Hormuz closes, and the crisis everyone else is drowning in barely touches you.
That's why China looks so relaxed right now. No panic, no picking sides, just:
"sitting on the sidelines waiting to see who wins"
If Washington breaks Iran, Beijing claps. If Iran survives, Beijing says we stood with you the whole time. Either way, they win.
Jeffrey also spelled out what Washington actually wants, and it's bigger than a deal.
Three things Washington won't budge on: the nuclear program, the strait, and the collapse of the Iranian government itself.
Not a new deal. Collapse.
One more thing he pushed back on. The famous 41 days of oil reserves?
He says relax, private inventories are nearly full and the real runway is much longer.
So who blinks first? The market has its own dark answer.
Oil futures for next year are priced low, and he thinks that means one thing: a world too broke to buy.
@JeffSnider_EDU@WeTheBrandon
Your iPhone shoots better photos than most cameras. Apple just leaves half the settings switched off out of the box.
Here are the 7 to change tonight:👇
I wish people hated the people who create poverty more than they hate poor people. Poverty is a moral failing in a world where people who cheat, lie, steal and exploit others are celebrated, envied and loved.
It's a very strange thing the British school does to society. It subordinates knowledge to power. During colonial times, the British DO would decide everything: from public health, to agriculture, to education, to law and punishment... and he would barely listen even to British technical staff. So GoK can't listen to experts and yet they don't know much.
This is the problem we tried to solve by putting public participation in #Katiba2010. But we can't solve it when our schools educate people to think their job is to be supermen and women implementing solutions, like colonial DOs and the Kenyan civil servants who took over from them.
Erin Brockovich is outraged:
“EPA, FDA... where have you been?! Chemicals are the biggest environmental threat we've ever faced. They're in our soil, our water, our food. And now, they're devastating America's farmlands—making it impossible for farmers to grow safe crops.”
A screenwriter wanted a place to disappear into her own head for a while, and got a cottage that seems to grow out of a stream-fed forest instead of sitting on top of it.
Fractal Chaos built this retreat for director Megha Ramaswamy in Pasli Gaon, on land straddling the Deccan Plateau and the Western Ghats, ecology rare enough to carry four full seasons. Rather than plant a fast forest for quick cover, they built one slowly, native hardwoods and flowering shrubs arranged in a grid that mimics nature’s own irregular rhythm, half the plot forested, half left as open grassland. You walk through young forest to reach the cottage, then the landscape opens back up behind it.
The cottage itself sits deliberately alone, distanced from where the future main house will go, solitude built into the site plan before a single wall went up. Basalt stone walls and deep roof overhangs block the harsh southwest sun, small west-facing openings keep air moving without letting heat in, and the main window faces east toward what Megha calls the “twin flame tree,” two trees grown into each other.
Even the constraints became material honesty. Budget limits meant local basalt stone with brick detailing instead of dressed stone, steel railings built from leftover stock because a curved pre-made piece couldn’t reach the site. Nothing here was chosen for show. Everything was chosen because it was actually available, actually buildable, actually right for the land it sits on.
Credits: Writer’s Cottage, Pasli, Velhe, Maharashtra. Architecture: Fractal Chaos. Principal architect: Rajlaxmi Teli. Photography: architectural_captures.
@musembidigital These ones are gems. Preserve them and educate your community to preserve them. Ndula ukipata somewhere please ask people not to cut them down. Ukambani kuna pesa in the name of indigenous trees but we’re too destructive. These oils are very expensive in the cosmetic industry
the fastest way to trigger neuroplasticity isn't playing brain games or reading research papers. it's forcing your brain to fail repeatedly at something you have zero natural talent for. high frustration is the literal chemical signal that forces synaptic rewiring.
@bluewmist the peak of the craving is the real training session.every time you let the urge rise, stay uncomfortable, and pass without obeying it, you teach yourself that an impulse can be loud without being in charge.
neuroplasticity works faster under high emotional intensity. if you can resist a craving when it's at its peak, you get a bigger rewiring effect. this is why the hardest moments matter most, they're not setbacks, they're high-voltage opportunities to change.