Peter Rowley Wilson

[Konstantin Toropin @KToropin]

HASC rejects Hegseth's workaround of renaming military bases for namesakes that are identical to their original, Confederate names.

The amendment offered here directs him to re-rename the bases to the specific names chosen after the bipartisan naming commission report.

[Gigi @Gigi_chienergy]

The screwworm program wasn't charity, it was a $10 million fence that kept a billion-dollar problem from eating our own livestock alive. That's the thing with most USAID funding: it looks like "aid," but it's really cheap self-defense. Solve a problem there, and it never lands on our doorstep. But sure, let a bunch of guys who can't define DEI without Googling take a chainsaw to it. They didn't stop to ask, "Will this cut hurt us too?" Unless that's the point, burn it all down and call it efficiency.

As usual our inept agriculture secretary, blaming the Biden administration as usual, instead of offering a solution to the problem they created.

Texan here

A screwworm infestation is a nightmare for cattle, causing horrific wounds and economic devastation. For Texas, the situation has escalated dramatically in the last 24 hours with the first confirmed case of New World Screwworm (NWS) in over 60 years! This could have been avoided!

Infested animal can kill a cow in less than two weeks.

Treatment is extremely difficult and time-consuming, requiring the painful removal of every visible larva and deep disinfection of the wound. Ranchers no longer have much experience with this labor-intensive process, and there is currently no approved pharmaceutical treatment to make it easier.

This has triggered a massive economic threat. The USDA estimates that a widespread outbreak would drain an astonishing $1.8 billion from the Texas economy alone in livestock deaths, labor, and medication expenses.

How will this affect you? Tightening supplies will drive already high beef prices higher.

[Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en]

The St Petersburg International Economic Forum 2026, which seeks to present itself as Russia's version of Davos, actually resembles a theater of the absurd. Each session and each stage set is designed to convince visitors of Russia's greatness. Apparently, the situation in Russia is so bad that the task of rescuing SPIEF 2026 has fallen to the apologists of nuclear Orthodoxy - Dugin, Malofeyev, and Bezrukov.

It is not economists or development strategists who are being brought to the country’s main economic forum, but rather the architects of the ideology through which the regime explains that war is Russia’s means of survival. The next step, apparently, will be enshrining ideologue Dugin in the Russian Constitution.

The report presented by the Tsargrad Institute offers a model of Russia's desired future. The "good scenario" includes, among other things, the annexation of Kyiv, Odesa, and Kharkiv; the collapse of the EU; and the formation of a Russian macro-region in Eurasia. By 2050, Russia is expected to become one of the guarantors of global security, ensure the "triune unity of the Russian people," and bury the "imperialist plans of the West."

The "bad scenario" is no less revealing. Russia's defeat in the war is described as the "colonization of Russia," the loss of sovereignty, and Ukraine's accession to NATO. Between these two poles, there is no scenario for a peaceful post-imperial Russia. The regime cannot imagine prosperity without expansion. It does not think about the future in terms of well-being, economic development, or quality of life. It thinks in terms of status, control, and coercion.

The key point appears to be the thesis regarding the necessity of "finally overcoming the sovereign worldview." That is, Russian diplomats and Putin himself are being hypocritical when they speak of UN principles and the sovereign equality of states. In fact, this is a rejection of the principle of sovereign equality of states as the foundation of the UN-centered international order - the very order to which Russian and .... Chinese diplomats constantly appeal.

In fact, I am not surprised. I know very well that the Russian authorities and Russian diplomacy classify states according to the principle from Orwell's Animal Farm: "all animals are equal, but Russians are more equal."

The most dangerous part of the discussion was the nuclear framework proposed by Andrey Bezrukov. It is built on three theses: that the West is allegedly waging an existential war against Russia; that the world is entering an era of prolonged global conflict; and that Russia's nuclear deterrent is under threat. In effect, this creates a political justification that can be used when needed.

How should we view this? Much like cancer, because Russia is now developing like an aggressive form of cancer. It must be fought. For the sake of the world's survival, Russia must be deprived of the ability to use nuclear weapons.

Another aspect of the report is equally important. Nearly every measure the authors consider necessary for the "good scenario" concerns domestic policy: autocracy, de-Westernization, state planning, digital sovereignty, the cult of the family, and a new Constitution. External expansion is presented as an internal necessity, as a direct consequence of domestic development. First comes ideological mobilization, centralization of power, and the cleansing of the political space. Then comes territorial expansion and the revision of the international order.

For now, the Tsargrad report is not an official Kremlin plan. But it should not be dismissed as a fringe fantasy. This discussion took place not at a closed ideological gathering, but at the country’s main economic venue. And it is an attempt by a part of the Russian ideological and security elite to turn imperial war into the official model for the future.

Such a model leads Russia toward catastrophe, but its authors cannot see that because they are blinded by their obsession with greatness. Like Putin himself, they live in their own sick reality. And within that reality, they act entirely rationally.

The question here is: is there another part of the Russian elite that is more adequate and capable of a sober assessment of reality? Or has the entire Russian elite and society already been poisoned by this worldview, leaving no hope for Russia?

[Wes @gardenofgag]

the moment when lady gaga ended this man for asking a transphobic question

[Peter Rowley Wilson @textivorous]

@CoctostanJohn1 @CynicalPublius @MilesTaylorUSA No, they don't. The President does not have absolute power over everyone in the Executive Branch. There are rules. And Trump has consistently shown he doesn't believe rules apply to him.

[Peter Rowley Wilson @textivorous]

@indelibleindigo @CynicalPublius @MilesTaylorUSA Fine. Pick an arbitrary past President who you thought was really bad. Would you have wanted them to hand themselves this kind of power, without Congressional approval or oversight?

[Nathan Livingstone (MilkBarTV) @TheMilkBarTV]

🚨Compilation of political scientist John Mearsheimer's TERRIBLE PREDICTIONS - Ukraine, Middle East & Maduro.

[Peter Rowley Wilson @textivorous]

@CynicalPublius @MilesTaylorUSA So this would have been fine for Biden to do?

[Peter Rowley Wilson @textivorous]

@GeffertJoe @HunterBiden @BasedTorba @TheStefanSmith Well, what about Trump's Chinese money? Or does that not count?

[✧˖ @colditioner]

“when i choose to see the good side of things, i'm not being naive. it is strategic and necessary. it's how I've learned to survive through everything”

[Peter Rowley Wilson @textivorous]

@pete_shearer @verybadintel @AnalyticaCamil1 How has doing either of things actually achieved any objectives? At all?

[Peter Rowley Wilson @textivorous]

@pete_shearer @AnalyticaCamil1 Clearly more than you.

[The AZ - abc15 - Data Guru @Garrett_Archer]

This is a good take.

-California pushes the boundaries of what *should* be acceptable for post election night reporting.

-It's a combination of postmark deadlines and poor funding (You can only signature verify so many ballots in one day with the staff you have.)

-Systemic, large scale voter fraud remains a fantasy. One look at @VoteHub's precinct map shows results are comporting to demographic realities on the ground.

-The earth is round.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

ANGIE CRAIG: I don't think you understand the difference between error rates and fraud rates. I honestly don't. SNAP has one of the lowest fraud rates of any program

BROOKE ROLLINS: You can't be serious when you say that

CRAIG: Your own data says that

[Joe Paul Kroll @JoePKroll]

The beginning of AJP Taylor’s ‘English History 1914–1945’ famously ‘goes hard’, as the internet puts it, but part of its brilliance is surely that it was written (or rather edited) to fit a single page.

[Peter Rowley Wilson @textivorous]

@pete_shearer @DanLamothe She was shot while trying to force her way into a room while being ordered to stop by a police officer. It wasn’t murder.

[Prof Jeffrey S Morris @jsm2334]

That is completely and demonstrably false.

Remdesevir and other treatments were approved in October 2020 before the vaccines got EUA in December 2020— check the dates for yourself.

I’m not sure why so many repeat that false argument — it’s a fantasy used as a rhetorical device to try to foment conspiratorial belief that treatments were "suppressed" in order to enable vaccines.

Treatments and vaccines are different elements of the total strategy, and the pursuit of vaccines was not dependent on the failure to find univerally effective treatments.

[Martin Bauer @martinmbauer]

If anything this shows how fundamental the Pauli principle is

When gravity collapses a star, the gravitational energy rips electrons out of their shells and a white dwarf forms, stabilised by the electron degeneracy pressure

If the star is more massive the gravitational force can squeeze the electrons into protons to form neutrons, move atomic nuclei closer together. It becomes a neutron star, which survives only because the Pauli principle reappears at a deeper level: neutrons are uncharged fermions, so neutron degeneracy pressure resists further collapse.

If the star was even heavier, there could be quark stars (in principle), made from deconfined quark matter. Quarks, also fermions, provide another possible layer of resistance

Gravity and the Pauli principle are like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. They can be reconciled at ever higher mass only by literally ripping a hole into spacetime, a black hole

[Prof Michael E. Mann @MichaelEMann]

#ScienceUnderSiege

[Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof]

Ugh, I wonder on what authority Rodney Mims Cook Jr, head of the Commission on Fine Arts, who as per Rubio’s Senate testimony does not represent the U.S. government at the St. Petersburg conference, is going be signing an MOU on a huge infrastructure project with a U.S.-sanctioned Russian official? If all this actually happens, of course. @CFA_GOV