«“The point of this act for me is to earn a place here in Russia,” he told Russian state media last month. “If I risk myself for our new country, no one will say that I am not a part of it. Unlike migrants in America who come there just like that, do not assimilate, and at the same time want free handouts.”»

https://www.thedailybeast.com/texan-moved-fam-to-russia-to-flee-wokenow-hes-headed-to-ukraine-front-line/

«FWD.us estimates that approximately 700,000 foreign-born veterans, many of whom are now U.S. citizens, live in the U.S. today. We estimate there are about 45,000 immigrants actively serving.»

https://www.fwd.us/news/immigrants-in-the-military/

I wonder if he has ANY awareness or if he (and his family) is just a victim of far-right programming.

Jessica Riedl posts about the insanity of being in the cross-hairs of the online anti-trans “community”.

https://www.jessicariedl.blog/p/when-the-online-mob-came-after-meand

(Why is that name familiar to me? (Brian Riedl is less familiar to me.) [Googles some, then shrugs. 🤷])

Aha! https://herereadthis.blog/2025/02/23/doge-released-data-about-federal-contract-savings-it-doesnt-add-up/

Also, I searched my blog for the name and got this, because of the “Friedländer” reference (so, false match), but… it’s relevant? https://herereadthis.blog/2025/03/23/transgender-women-athletes-and-elite-sport-a-scientific-review/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/10/children-limiting-own-smartphone-use-manage-mental-health-survey

I strongly suspect the kids are alright.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/opinion/china-shock-economy-manufacturing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.WU8.eHEc.hnMCIwz9V1OW&smid=url-share (gift)

«China Shock 1.0 was bound to ebb when China ran out of low-cost labor, as it now has. Its growth is already falling behind Vietnam’s in industries such as clothing and commodity furniture. But unlike the United States, China is not looking back and mourning its lost manufacturing prowess. It is focusing instead on the key technologies of the 21st century. Contrary to a strategy built on cheap labor, China Shock 2.0 will last for as long as China has the resources, patience and discipline to compete fiercely.

And if you doubt China’s capability or determination, the evidence is not on your side. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, an independent think tank funded by the Australian Department of Defense, the United States led China in 60 of 64 frontier technologies, such as A.I. and cryptography, between 2003 and 2007, while China led the United States in just three. In the most recent report, covering 2019 through 2023, the rankings were flipped on their head. China led in 57 of 64 key technologies, and the United States held the lead in only seven.

…

One thing that tariffs alone will never do is make the United States an attractive place to innovate. Yes, tariffs belong in our trade arsenal — but as precision munitions, not as land mines that maim foes, friends and noncombatants equally.

…

There is no economic policy that can make job loss painless — especially when it cuts the heart out of your industry or hometown. But when industries collapse, our best response is getting displaced workers into new jobs quickly and making sure the young, small businesses that are responsible for most net U.S. job growth are poised to do their thing. Tariffs, which narrowly protect old-line manufacturing, are terribly suited for this task.»

As long as our electoral process rewards a cri de coeur for lost jobs and a desire to go backwards, this essay will be useless.

Going back over this and taking better notes. (Have I blogged about this before?)

https://bookshop.org/ebooks/quotes/1c3c7cc6-8e5a-4ed9-b7cb-e59897ac714b

«Among the rash of laws passed in the first decade of Justinian’s reign was a decree that pagans were not allowed to teach students. In itself this did not stand out from the other collections of anti-pagan legislation collected in Justinian’s law codes. But its effect on one important institution was soon made clear. John Malalas spelled out what it meant. In an entry covering the year 529, he wrote, “The emperor issued a decree and sent it to Athens ordering that no-one should teach philosophy nor interpret the laws.”20

Another chronicler, Agathius, reported that the last headmaster of the Athens school was forced to leave not only the school and the city, but the empire itself. (In 531 he and several of his fellow teachers fled to Persia.) And this was more than mere relocation. In effect, Justinian’s diktat had spelled the end for the famous school in the ancient Greek capital—the city of Plato and Aristotle—where students had absorbed the insights of classical philosophy and natural science for generations.

The closure of the Athens school was important. It did not kill at a stroke all non-Christian learning in the eastern empire.21 Nor did it immediately throw up an intellectual wall between the classical age and the dawning era of Christian hegemony in Europe and the west. But it was both significant and symbolic. For while scholarship in Persia and other eastern parts flourished, with libraries in Baghdad and other Middle Eastern capitals preserving and transmitting copies of the works of Aristotle and other non-Christian greats, Justinian’s reign, and the sixth century in general, was marked by a self-blinkering in the Christian world. Doctrinal minutiae assumed ever bigger and bloodier importance, while anything non-Christian was regarded with gathering suspicion. The Roman Empire had once been a super-spreader of classical learning across its vast territories. But as it fell to pieces in the west and became ever-more doctrinally obsessed in the east, it became an active blocker to knowledge chains across the ages, and the transmission of ancient learning throughout the empire began to fail.

One reason that the label “the Dark Ages” has proven so hard to untie from the neck of the Middle Ages is that for hundreds of years—between the sixth century and the first beginnings of the Renaissance in the late thirteenth—the scientific and rational insights of the ancient world were forgotten or suppressed in the west. This was not simply an unfortunate symptom of creeping cultural dementia. It sprang from the deliberate policies of eastern emperors like Justinian, who made it their business to hound out of their world the self-appointed but unfortunately unchristian guardians of priceless knowledge.»

That’s it. That’s the post.

https://www.westsiderag.com/2025/07/10/a-baseball-coach-says-he-fended-off-ice-agents-questioning-kids-on-the-uws

«Wilder: It’s all about civics. If you don’t know your rights, they will trample on them. Knowing the law and understanding that they had no right to ask anything of these kids, who are American citizens, and don’t have anything to prove to them. The officers were saying we don’t know if they are American citizens, but I said, it doesn’t matter if they are American citizens or not, they still have constitutional rights, you still violate their 4th, 5th, or 14th amendment rights.

WSR: Did any other adults passing by get involved or take a photo or video of the interaction?

Wilder: That was another thing that was crazy. There were people watching and the agents were telling them to move back, that they would be arrested for interfering, and not to take pictures. The worst thing is that the six or seven people who were watching, followed their orders!

WSR: Did you have any moment of hesitation in terms of pushing back on the agents?

Wilder: No, there was no moment of hesitation. Law school {Wilder says he has a law degree from Grand Canyon University] teaches you what to do in those moments. I knew that they could arrest me, but I knew that they couldn’t keep me.»

«“No drug cases, no human trafficking, no child exploitation,” the agent said. “It’s infuriating.” The longtime ICE employee is thinking about quitting rather than having to continue “arresting gardeners.”»

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/07/trump-ice-morale-immigration/683477/?gift=ly-h2TZGdDJyaoFv6n-KaYLA4bzNhyqLrm5IFyhuFAs&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share (gift)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/opinion/texas-floods-nws.html

«the Weather Service employee whose job it was to make sure those warnings got traction — Paul Yura, the long-serving meteorologist in charge of “warning coordination” — had recently taken an unplanned early retirement amid cuts pushed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. He was not replaced.»

“This was far from the only damning judgment passed of King John” – Powers and Thrones (Dan Jones) https://bookshop.org/ebooks/quotes/00554cad-6255-4874-8ee4-46cd7dedafda

«Yet [the knight] William [Marshall] could not get along with John. The new king’s character was neatly summed up by a chronicler known as the Anonymous of Béthune. Although John was capable of lavish hospitality and generosity, noted the writer, adding that he gave out handsome cloaks to his household knights, John was otherwise “a very bad man, more cruel than all others, he lusted after beautiful women and because of this he shamed the high men of the land, for which reason he was greatly hated. Whenever he could, he told lies rather than the truth. . . . He hated and was jealous of all honorable men; it greatly displeased him when he saw someone acting well. He was brim-full with evil qualities.”54

This was far from the only damning judgment passed of King John, who between 1199 and 1216 enjoyed one of the least successful reigns in English history. Even a summary list of his failures runs quite long: John lost most of the Plantagenets’ lands in France (including the duchy of Normandy); he murdered Arthur of Brittany; he irritated Pope Innocent III to such a degree that he was excommunicated; he extorted so much money from his barons in taxes and semi-legal fines that he pushed many of them to the verge of either bankruptcy or rebellion; he wasted all the money he had plundered from his people on a hopeless war to regain his French lands; he drove his realm into a civil war, during which he was forced to grant a peace treaty circumscribing his royal powers, later known as Magna Carta; he reignited the civil war by renouncing Magna Carta and consequently suffered a full invasion of his realm by the heir to the French crown, Prince Louis; and in the end, he died, abandoned by most of his allies, having lost many of his crown jewels in the marshlands in eastern England known as The Wash.

To what degree precisely all of this was John’s fault is not our concern here. What is significant, though, is that the Anonymous of Béthune, who was probably in the service of a Flemish lord from that town, near Calais, saw John’s failings through an unmistakably chivalric prism. John was not merely incompetent, an unskilled leader, unlucky, or undiplomatic. He was also untruthful, dishonorable, lustful, untrustworthy, and spiteful. For as much as William Marshal’s biographer would portray his rise through life as the reward for his dedication to knightly virtues, so too would chroniclers like the Anonymous of Béthune ascribe John’s free fall through kingship as just deserts for his unchivalrous approach to life. Knightliness—or the perception of knightliness—could make or break a man in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It made William Marshal. It unmade King John.»

O btw, the Magna Carta, the thing we white people are so proud of. Like nobles facing down a king is somehow unique.