TSB

A minor functionary of the foreign affairs department of the Washington DC area's largest employer

[TSB @TweetingTSB]

“The Government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people, with the ultimate extinction of all privileged cIasses.” - Calvin Coolidge, a vastly under-appreciated POTUS https://t.co/Y6tB6BPGjr

[Susan Crabtree @susancrabtree]

🚨JUST DROPPED: @DHSgov Office of Inspector General releases report on “Secret Service Missed Opportunities to Prevent and Disrupt the Attempted Assassination of President Trump on July 13, 2024."

One of the top findings confirms one of the big mysteries of the Butler assassination attempt and who is really at fault: The Secret Service didn't use available equipment to block the line of sight between the AGR building and the stage where President Trump spoke, allowing shooter Thomas Crooks a clear 155-yard shot at Trump. This occurred despite extensive Secret Service training that instructs agents to place objects that "enhance light-of-sight coverage" at events, the OIG reports asserts. The OIG also produced the video below to demonstrate just how clear a shot Crooks had of Trump and the stage.

Who is at fault for that?

In its report, the DHS OIG said the Secret Service WOULD NOT TELL THEM if campaign staff had placed equipment that was already on site at the event locations that would have blocked the line of sight.

I have reported, and a report from Sen. Rand Paul's office later reported, that the Secret Service tried to use farm equipment to block that line of sight -- but the Trump campaign objected to the optics of it -- and requested that it be removed.

Here's where it gets interesting: The Secret Service complied. It's unclear who in the Secret Service is responsible for failing to stand up to and override the campaign staff who wanted the equipment removed.

-Miyo Perez was the USSS agent in charge of security. She was an inexperienced agent and known within the detail as a partier, not a serious.

There were two supervisory agents that were supposed to provide oversight to Perez's work, Nick Menster and Nick Olszewski. Those two agents were never punished for their role in Butler's porous security plan and execution. In fact, current Secret Service Director Sean Curran gave them big promotions.

Interestingly, it was Curran who was ultimately responsible for all security decisions for the Butler site -- including the decision to remove farm equipment or not place additional equipment to block the line of sight.

Curran was the detail leader for the team protecting Trump during the campaign, and he signed off on the site plan.

This new OIG report doesn't address whether Curran himself directly approved the removal of farm equipment from the site so the line of site remained unobstructed for Crooks' shot that nearly killed Trump and did murder Corey Comperatore and seriously wound two others, James Copenhaver and David Dutch. Copenhaver and Duth are now suing the Secret Service over the agency's "preventable failures," as their lawsuit asserts.

It's possible that OIG investigators asked Curran, and he refused to say.

I'll link to the new DHS OIG report below.

[U.S. Office of Personnel Management @USOPM]

Yesterday was the end of paper retirement processing at OPM, a major milestone in modernizing how we serve the federal workforce. Read the @foxnews exclusive: https://t.co/fXc2RXlb09

[Ihsan Horani @neutralground90]

Don't let this get buried.

Last October the EU spent €10 million on a project to convince Europeans that Islam was foundational to European civilisation.

Le Journal du Dimanche found several academics involved are documented as close to the Muslim Brotherhood. One translated Hassan al-Banna's writings. Another lectures at the Brotherhood's theological institute in Paris.

This is how it actually works.

Not just mosques and charities. Academic projects. Public funding. Peer-reviewed legitimacy. The slow construction of a historical narrative that makes political Islam's presence in Europe feel ancient, inevitable and beyond question.

By the time anyone objects the argument has already been laundered through universities, exhibitions and conference papers.

Former FRONTEX director Fabrice Leggeri saw it clearly: "a historical falsification funded with public money."

https://t.co/gBFtvJr63P

[David Betz @DavidBe31099196]

I have been observing the British defence establishment closely for 25 years. The closest any senior person got to thinking truly strategically and speaking honestly was Chris Parry. He got fired. In war it’s perfectly fine to lie to your enemy—recommended, in fact—but it’s suicidal to lie to yourself. Which is all we’ve done for a generation.

[Arsen Ostrovsky @Ostrov_A]

Fifty years ago today, Air France Captain Michel Bacos showed the world what true moral courage looks like.

When Flight 139 was hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists and flown to Entebbe, the non-Jewish passengers were eventually released. Bacos and his crew were also offered their freedom.

However, Bacos, who also served in the French army under DeGaulle, refused to leave his Jewish passengers. All his crew also refused, without exception.

Instead, they chose to remain alongside the 94 Jewish hostages, fully aware of the danger they faced. As Bacos later said, abandoning his passengers was simply "unimaginable."

Days later, they were freed in the legendary Israeli rescue mission, Operation Entebbe, led by Yoni Netanyahu, who would die in the battle.

For his extraordinary courage, Bacos was honoured by both France and Israel. Yet his greatest legacy was not the medals he received, but the example he set: that decency, duty and humanity must never yield to terror or antisemitism.

Michel Bacos was a true hero. May his life, his courage and his memory forever be a blessing and an inspiration.

[Ministère des Armées et des Anciens combattants @Armees_Gouv]

[Mémoire] Historien, officier, résistant, Marc Bloch a associé le livre au combat, et fait preuve d’un patriotisme et d’un engagement républicain total.
82 ans après son assassinat, Marc Bloch entre au Panthéon ce 23 juin 2026 !
@Elysee @CaVautrin @RufoAlice @SGArmees @ShdVincennes @education_gouv @MinistereCC
#MarcBloch #DevoirdeMémoire

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

For 43 years, one stubborn two-story building held its ground as Rosslyn turned into a forest of glass towers. Inside: a steamboat salad bar, $8 Lancers, and more than 1,000 diners on a Saturday night.

https://t.co/78cb3jTP4i

[TSB @TweetingTSB]

$5 prime rib was a lunch speciality IIRC.

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

For 43 years, one stubborn two-story building held its ground as Rosslyn turned into a forest of glass towers. Inside: a steamboat salad bar, $8 Lancers, and more than 1,000 diners on a Saturday night.

https://t.co/78cb3jTP4i

[Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 @JasonJournoDC]

💥NEW: John Fetterman pushes Kristen Welker to press Graham Platner on s*xting scandal💥

“This is a guy that’s been dropping d*ck pics on Kik for a decade! … the ‘predators’ playground.’ Why can’t someone — perhaps YOU — ask him: ‘Why did you choose Kik!?’”

[TSB @TweetingTSB]

https://t.co/XDsAv48YVJ

The Obamalisk welcomes you.

[Jan Jekielek @JanJekielek]

For 37 years, over 2,000 images taken by a Chinese state media photographer were hidden in a metal box, surviving brutal purges—until now.

These raw, powerful photos show the courage of the students, the scale of the protests, and the horror of what the Chinese Communist Party did.

Now, The @EpochTimes is making the photos public for the first time. [1/2]

[The Cultural Tutor @culturaltutor]

I’m making a show about buildings.

The concept is simple: do for the man-made world what Planet Earth did for the natural world.

But, when I pitched the idea, the answer was that nobody would watch it.

So I released a pilot episode on YouTube. It’s got 5.4 million views, 379k likes, and 23k comments.

People are interested, and now it’s time to make the full show.

Six episodes, filming in the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the USA, and releasing on a streaming service like HBO, Netflix, or Prime.

Why does this show matter?

First: we’re surrounded by buildings all the time. Look around yourself, right now… what do you see? Buildings are the logical conclusion of everything a society believes in. That’s the real focus of this show: not the buildings themselves, but what they say about us.

Second: there’s global dissatisfaction with modern architecture. This feeling gets written about online, but nobody’s given a voice to it on film or TV. That’s what this show will be. But this isn’t just about criticising modernity. That’s easy. This is about learning from the past in order to understand and improve the present, for everybody.

Third: there’s a drought of high-quality culture shows. When I spoke to film executives they said that only documentaries about sports, music, or true crime get funded. That’s a colossal missed opportunity. Galleries are always full, content about architecture goes viral online all the time, and people spend their precious holidays visiting beautiful cities.

Why no shows about architecture, then?

Tourists flock in their millions to see (for example) the buildings of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona. But, if you asked those same people if they’re interested in “architecture”, they’d probably say no.

To put that another way: not many people want to watch “a show about architecture”, but lots of people want to watch a show that illuminates the real world they’re living in, each and every day.

What will the show be like?

Six episodes, going chronologically through history and arriving at the present, each focussing on the architecture and design of a specific period:

1. Middle Ages
2. Renaissance
3. Enlightenment
4. The Nineteenth Century
5. Art Nouveau & Art Deco
6. Present Day

But, in each case, the point isn’t just to learn about that era; the point is to learn about our modern world through those eras and what they’ve left behind. If you watch the pilot episode (included below) you’ll see what I mean.

So the show’s not really “about” the past; it’s about the twenty-first century.

That’s why it’s called The Modern World.

When you think of a typical history show there are loads of interviews, stock footage, archive photos, historical recreations, and graphics. We’re doing none of that. Everything will be filmed on location, because we’re telling our story only through the real world that exists right now. And, rather than going to the most obvious places, we’ll focus on buildings that aren’t well-known but should be more famous.

But that’s all big picture; what will it be like on screen?

Buildings used to look different in every country, and now they look the same. Why? Because the weather is different everywhere, and buildings were always a way of dealing with that weather, using local materials. Now we have air conditioning and we ship concrete around the world, so we don’t need to design our buildings with regard to local weather or rely on local materials.

Look at really old clocks and you’ll notice something: they don’t have a second hand… because it was only invented 300 years ago! Then you look at the present and you realise we’re surrounded by timers, by seconds ticking down and ticking up relentlessly. If we’re looking for a cause of our anxiety-inducing culture, that might be it.

When you spend time with the sun-softened bricks and time-warped timbers of old cities you notice that synthetic materials like plastic have taken over. When we’re surrounded by things that feel temporary, how do you think it makes us feel?

It’s only by seeing 19th century train stations, designed like cathedrals, that you realise tradition and technology aren’t enemies. New things don’t have to look boring: if the Victorians had designed AI data centres, they’d look like Medieval castles.

In the 1920s, at the zenith of Art Deco, people believed technology would uplift humanity. That’s why they decorated their buildings with statues inspired by electricity. Only by seeing their enthusiasm can we realise our own cynicism, and perhaps begin to fix it.

All of that… and much, much more.

But, above all else, this show is about a way of seeing. If you want to understand any society then you need to look at what it creates, not what it says about itself.

There’s a worldview in every single object; our skyscrapers are designed the same way as our phones. Learn to look at this world, to notice its details, and everything else starts to make sense.

What now?

I’ve been quiet online recently because I’ve been researching and working on scripts for six full-length episodes. Production begins when we’ve raised the funding.

The Modern World is coming.

[TSB @TweetingTSB]

He brought it home from work?!

[AZ Intel @AZ_Intel_]

NYT: "A senior C.I.A. official was arrested last week after investigators found hundreds of gold bars worth over $40 million stashed in his Virginia residence, a small fortune that he apparently brought home from work, according to court papers. The official, David Rush, is being held in jail while he awaits a detention hearing in the coming days on charges of stealing public money by filling out fraudulent time sheets. The charging documents filed in Alexandria, Va., still leave a lot unanswered about his recent conduct."

[TSB @TweetingTSB]

“Investigators further alleged Rush requested large quantities of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars from his employer between November 2025 and March 2026 for purported work-related expenses.”

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: FBI arrests senior CIA official after uncovering over $40 million in gold bars & $2 million in cash at his Virginia home.

[TSB @TweetingTSB]

Targeting “families of personnel returning home for Eid. Most of the casualties are women and children.”

[Iftikhar Firdous @IftikharFirdous]

The deaths from the suspected suicide bombing have risen to 23. The bodies have been brought to the civil hospital in Quetta, around 47 injured as well. These are only partial figures as official are still busy with rescue efforts. Initial investigations say that the train had stopped at the paramilitary installation to attach new bogeys to the train for families of personnel returning home for Eid. Most of the casualties are women and children.

[TSB @TweetingTSB]

NYPD must have a Time Machine because they just took a curio and relic off the streets of at least a century ago.

[NYPD 115th Precinct @NYPD115Pct]

Another illegal firearm off our streets. Last night, our Neighborhood Safety Team recovered this illegally possessed handgun, helping to keep East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and North Corona safe.

[DaVinci @BiancoDavinci]

Similarity between Apple stores and Soviet-era architecture.

[kel varnsen @spotifybosnia]

@leylaaa31 can’t reach your potential without ascending the rosslyn escalator

[Hans Mahncke @HansMahncke]

I do not think the scale of this story has fully sunk in yet, and this tweet actually understates it. UK border patrol and immigration officers with access to government databases were working for Chinese intelligence as part of a shadow policing operation inside the UK, tracking, surveilling, intimidating, and even breaking into the homes of Chinese dissidents. And those are just the ones who were caught. Now think about all the ones who have not been caught, as well as all the unofficial Chinese police stations and covert influence networks operating not just in the UK, but across Australia, Canada, the US, and elsewhere. When people living in Western countries can no longer act freely because of Chinese state thuggery operating on Western soil, it is long past time to respond decisively.

[State OIG @StateOIG]

New Report: "Management Assistance Report: Law Enforcement Credentials, Weapons, and Premium Pay for Employees in Non–Law Enforcement Roles" https://t.co/mZBKcS5rsJ