Daniel Mufson

Writer, editor, translator based in Berlin.

[Daniel Mufson @mufson]

I don’t have a job that gives me power over anyone, but I am an expat and know many people with dual citizenship, and I think you are baselessly impugning the integrity of such people, particularly given that most people who go into public service embark on that journey with idealistic intentions of improving the community they have come to call home, where their spouse and children and many family members and friends almost invariably live. I don’t know anything about this Tommo case but I would urge you to consider that what might be at play is a factor or factors unrelated to dual citizenship.

[Daniel Mufson @mufson]

@TheBigBerbowski Interesting—I feel the same way about META (and MSFT btw) vs Google in terms of security and privacy, fwiw. Just feel like I have not heard horror stories about Google leaking data or getting hacked.

[Daniel Mufson @mufson]

Martz is counting episodes, not heat burden. A 12-day heatwave and a 3-day heatwave can both count as one event. So his chart does not directly measure cumulative exposure or intensity—and doesn’t prove what he says it proves. He’s also trying to refute a statement on global warming with a chart describing the local phenomenon of how the 1930s Dust Bowl produced extraordinary U.S. daytime heat.

[Daniel Mufson @mufson]

@marcosagusstinn Yes, but: the political establishment’s complacency & unresponsiveness to legitimate grievances and concerns is part of what fueled the rise of the AfD. Dismissing voters’ fury as making mountains out of molehills is going to make matters worse, not better.

[Daniel Mufson @mufson]

Why don't you look up some stats, @MarkManger ? 8% of the population in Sachsen-Anhalt lacks a German passport, and half of those people are other Europeans. That's nothing. If migration were the cause of discontent, then areas with the most migrants should be the most xenophobic, but the opposite is true. Right-wingers exploit a baseline feeling of frustration and find easy targets. Deporting people is easier than increasing the housing stock, improving schools, or raising real wages.
https://t.co/hwsTlpC417

[Daniel Mufson @mufson]

@highbrow_nobrow I’m pretty sure I despise Trump as much as anyone in this feed, but could we all refrain from incorrectly paraphrasing him? That quotation isn’t what he says in the video. There is more than enough heinous garbage coming out of his mouth—there’s no need to invent stuff.

[derLampeitl @JLampeitl]

Die aktuelle Empörung über die Berufung von Annalena Baerbock an die Columbia University dokumentiert vor allem die fundamentale Unkenntnis über das internationale Hochschulwesen, doch der eigentliche Skandal an diesem viralen Bashing ist ein anderer:

Dieser peinliche Feldzug stammt eben nicht mehr nur von den üblichen, bekannten grünen Feinden aus den digitalen Troll-Netzwerken, sondern wird mittlerweile von angesehenen Politikern wie Wolfgang Kubicki und bisweilen seriösen Journalisten getragen, die sich für billigen Populismus hergeben.

Der Kernfehler all dieser Kritiker liegt darin, das starre deutsche Beamtensystem der Habilitation eins zu eins auf US-amerikanische Spitzenuniversitäten zu übertragen.

Die Columbia University – eine der renommiertesten Universitäten der Welt – funktioniert nach dem ungleich erfolgreicheren Prinzip der „Professors of Practice“, bei dem Spitzenpolitiker nicht trotz, sondern gerade wegen ihrer praktischen Erfahrung in den Machtzentren der Welt berufen werden.

Wer jahrelang globale Krisen gemanagt und Außenpolitik auf höchster Ebene gestaltet hat, bringt eine unersetzliche Expertise in den Hörsaal.

Dieses System ist internationaler Standard: Ob Hillary Clinton an derselben Columbia University oder Condoleezza Rice in Stanford – niemand käme in den USA auf die absurde Idee, diesen Persönlichkeiten die Kompetenz abzusprechen.

Wenn etablierte deutsche Medien und Spitzenpolitiker nun in diesen Chor einstimmen und behaupten, diese Berufung beleidige die Lehre, entlarven sie lediglich ihren eigenen Bildungsneid und ein verstaubtes Verständnis von Wissenschaft.

Dass sich vermeintliche Qualitätsjournalisten und erfahrene politische Akteure für diese intellektuell unredliche Kampagne einspannen lassen, ist der wahre Skandal dieser Debatte.

[Daniel Mufson @mufson]

Mainstream Haredi rabbinic authorities—including staunchly conservative ones and major rabbinical courts—have repeatedly denounced and condemned the tiny sect that does this. Leading rabbis have ruled that face coverings and extreme shrouding have no basis in Jewish law. Have Moslem authorities done the same about the burqa? Apparently not, since you are defending it here. And you shamelessly misrepresent the situation and pretend that 99% of Jews don’t condemn the Jews who do this—but they do condemn it. It’s barbaric no matter what religion is doing it.

[Iñigo San Millán @doctorinigo]

A study with almost 74,000 subjects ages 50-85.

Conclusion:
-The wealthiest Americans had approximately the same survival rates as the poorest people in Europe.

Wealth helps enormously within the United States, but even high wealth does not completely overcome the US–European mortality disadvantage.

Wealthy Americans presumably have much greater ability to buy excellent medical care, better housing, healthier food, gyms, preventive testing and so forth. Yet their survival remained roughly comparable to the poorest group in Northern/Western Europe.

The study doesn’t provide direct answers to why this happens. However, maybe wealth cannot outperform lifestyle, strong social safety net, great food around friends and family, lower stress, walking significantly more everyday to your bakery (yes, believe it or not, Europeans are big on bread), local food stores, coffee shops, affording to retire when it is time without worrying about paying bills especially when you get sick…

As both an American and European citizen, I believe it may be time for Americans to recalibrate how we think about longevity.

We are increasingly chasing the latest intervention such as rapamycin, peptides, cold plunges, red-light therapy…hoping that targeting a single enzyme or metabolic pathway will move the needle.

As a systems physiologist, I struggle with that view. Human physiology is not a collection of isolated pathways. Trillions of cells communicate across metabolic, vascular, endocrine, immune and neurological systems. Health emerges from their integration.

Perhaps longevity is less about hacking individual pathways and more about creating the environment in which the whole organism can thrive.

[Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz ,داني سيترينوفيتش @citrinowicz]

Washington talks constantly about the Indo-Pacific as the central theater of the 21st century. Yet the United States keeps finding itself pulled back into wars in the Middle East. The problem, however, goes beyond strategic distraction. The war with Iran has exposed a deeper and potentially more damaging weakness: the erosion of American credibility among its own allies.

The most important question for U.S. strategy is not simply whether America can defeat an adversary. It is whether its allies still believe that Washington can, and will, protect them when the moment comes.

In the Middle East, that confidence has clearly weakened. Saudi Arabia’s search for alternative security arrangements, including closer strategic coordination with Turkey and Pakistan, should be understood in this context. Riyadh’s intense efforts to prevent an American attack on Iran reflected not sympathy for Tehran, but a sober assessment of its own vulnerability: if a regional war spiraled out of control, no one could guarantee the Kingdom’s protection from the consequences.

But the credibility problem does not stop in the Gulf. Recent tensions involving South Korea, alongside Washington’s posture toward North Korea, inevitably resonate across Asia. American allies are watching not only what Washington says about alliances, but how it treats countries that have built their national-security strategies around U.S. guarantees. The same problem is visible, in a different form, in Washington’s increasingly strained relationship with its European allies.

A troubling pattern is emerging. President Trump often appears willing to negotiate and cut deals with adversaries such as North Korea, China, or Russia, while simultaneously placing extraordinary pressure on America’s own allies. Whatever the tactical logic behind individual decisions, the cumulative strategic message can be dangerous: being an American ally does not necessarily provide predictability, while being an American adversary may eventually earn you a seat at the negotiating table.

Allies respond rationally to that uncertainty. They hedge. They diversify their security relationships. They develop independent capabilities and open channels with powers they once relied on Washington to contain. The more they fear that the United States may not be there in a crisis, the less willing they become to build their security entirely around American power.

That dynamic ultimately weakens the countries most closely aligned with Washington while creating opportunities for China and Russia.

The outcome of the Iran war compounds the problem. If the strategic objective included fundamentally transforming Iran or producing regime change, the failure to achieve that objective matters far beyond Tehran. At the same time, the conflict has highlighted uncomfortable constraints on American military power, including pressure on interceptor inventories and the enormous demands of sustained precision warfare.

This is therefore the paradox of the Iran war: even if the United States demonstrated overwhelming military capabilities, it may have emerged with a weaker alliance system.

America’s greatest strategic asset has never been its military alone. China and Russia must largely rely on their own power. The United States possesses something much more difficult to replicate: a global network of allies willing to align their security with Washington because they believe American commitments are credible.

If those allies begin to doubt that assumption, American power does not merely become less popular. It becomes structurally weaker. That may ultimately prove to be the most consequential strategic cost of the war with Iran.

#IranWar‌

[Acyn @Acyn]

Ossoff: When he first announced the tariffs, you remember that? He called it Liberation Day, and it crashed the markets because it was clown policy. You remember that?

OK, so follow me through on this. He announces the tariffs on April 2 of last year. The markets tank nonstop for like a week because it’s a disastrous trade policy, and six days into the crash, April 8, Trump buys millions in stock. I’m talking Amazon, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, and then the very next morning, April 9, he posts on Truth Social, quote, “This is a great time to buy.” Three exclamation marks.

OK, now listen to this. Three hours and 41 minutes after that post, one day after he bought millions in stock, he canceled the tariffs and triggered one of the biggest same-day rebound rallies in market history.

He’s trying to get money. And you saw, now he’s offering paid subscriptions to presidential announcements, right? Just understand what’s for sale here: The sitting president’s pronouncements on war and peace and economic policy delivered first to paying customers.

What an absolute crook.

[Karly Kingsley @karlykingsley]

Imagine if Kamala Harris became the first female president of the United States and then tore down the East wing, obsessed about a ballroom, started a losing war with Iran, took away health care and food from children, raked in billions, fired everyone to put her friends in their positions, fell asleep on camera consistently, mouthed off on social media, openly prosecuted people she didn’t like without real cause, started a slush fund to fund domestic terrorists, and generally lied every second of the day. She wasn’t even allowed to laugh.

[Daniel Mufson @mufson]

@BohuslavskaKate NATO’s fearful and weak response to the Ukraine invasion is itself proof that the last thing the alliance wanted was a direct military conflict woth Russia.

[Daniel Mufson @mufson]

@dpa_intl

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world."

My Take
This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
ISBNdb's website literally says "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it "digital preservation."

I've covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it's irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate.
"We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline.

Hedgie🤗

[Joyce Karam @Joyce_Karam]

Reminder of what "Presidential" look like. George H. Bush letter to Bill Clinton on inauguration in 1993:

[ProPublica @propublica]

THREAD: The boy is called a liar. He’s told not to defend himself.

Then the private school owner encourages all of his peers to attack him, one by one. She hits him, repeatedly, with a plastic pipe-like object.

How does this school still exist — and receive state funds? 🧵

[Daniel Mufson @mufson]

@TheStalwart You know, if you ran your texts through Claude or ChatGPT before publishing them, you could weed out embarrassing pleonasms like “general consensus.” A decent editor should catch things like that.

[Daniel Mufson @mufson]

@KenRoth "Secretary Rubio, given your appeal to UN enforcement of international law in the Strait of Hormuz, would you advocate Senate ratification of the 1994 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea?"... asked nobody

[Daniel Mufson @mufson]

@Biotech2k1 I agree 100% —I cringe every time I see this quote.