Swedish Air Force says it intercepted two Russian Tu-22M3 intermediate-range (not “strategic”) bombers over the Baltic today. One photo shows a nuclear-capable Kh-32 air-to-surface missile under the belly of one of the bombers.
An ancient stone carving of the god of corn with a magnificent headdress.
Pitao Cozobi, the Zapotec god of thunder, water, and therefore corn (which you can see in his headdress). From Mexico’s treasure trove of marvelous ancient creativity, the anthropological museum.
Any US settlement or resolution of the conflict that enables Iran to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would represent a major US defeat and set a precedent with critical implications for global trade, given the strait’s role as a critical energy chokepoint.
Placing people who call for political violence in positions of tremendous power is a perversion of our Constitution and an abomination of the public trust. It endangers all of us. All Americans, on Right and Left.
A bit of casual war-criming to manipulate the markets before tomorrow morning’s opening. Like every other weekend. Has any war ever been so gruesome and yet at the same time so tedious?
Thucydides alert!
"What made war inevitable, in other words, was not merely the presence of rival great powers, but the fact that one of those powers was abusing the rules of the system that had enabled its rise to greatness in the first place."
Gift link
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/19/o...
“We are witnessing astonishing military successes that do not add up to victory and that is squarely on the president and how he’s chosen to do his job—lack of attention to detail and lack of planning,” said @kschake.bsky.social
www.wsj.com/politics/nat...
So happy to have a day in MXC’s anthropological museum! Here’s Xochipilli, the Mexica (Aztec) patron of flowers, wearing a human skin mask, a pectoral of thorns and claws, crowned with the heat of the sun and the light of the stars, flowers germinating from his body.
It’s quite the coincidence that the Strait of Hormuz is open when the stock market is open and closed when it isn’t.
Only the Secretary of Defense can do these two things: translate political objectives into military plans, and co-operate with Congress for approvals, authorisation and budgeting.
This War Sec fails in both.
Friction emerges inside Hegseth’s Pentagon | @kschake.bsky.social
#TimesRadio NV0FltIXXlM
This unreliability of delivery will not only damage allied trust, it will also incentivize diversification away from U.S. suppliers.
A big step towards a quickie deal, with Iran in control of reopened Hormuz. A big relief for the global economy but not great news for the strategic balance in the region. Gulfies but also Israel find themselves in a deep strategic predicament after the US war and peace of Trumpian choice
“The most consequential development of the 21st century is the destruction by the most powerful state in the international order of its own primacy.”
Quite the first sentence by @kschake.bsky.social
Why can American power look so overwhelming one moment, and unfocused the next? @kschake.bsky.social gave viewers much to consider in her thoughtful analysis:
Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen tells NBC News that many Greenlanders "don't feel safe" amid Trump's repeated push to take control of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.
"Some have been scared. Now it's turning into — for a lot — turning into anger."
Check out their website. Hit that donate button! I believe this is a great place for us to continue doing good in the world.
www.keepingourpromise.org
Happy MacArthur Relief Week to all who celebrate.
One of the difficulties of large conscripted forces is that they more fully reflect societal attitudes when they come into conflict with the values of the profession. @queenofthinair.bsky.social
“To resign in protest is to choose the purity of public dissent over the grinding, unglamorous work of internal constraint. Johnson chose the latter. McMaster called it dereliction. It may have been the opposite.” Brilliant; wish I’d written this, @sodrock.bsky.social
At Pentagon worship service today, Pete Hegseth again read a violent prayer to bless the Iran war. But this time his prayer was apparently borrowed from 'Pulp Fiction.' I promise I'm not writing for @theonion.com now:
publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/hegseth-bo...
On this day in 1947, Jackie Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers, making him the first Black athlete to play in a Major League Baseball game. His #42 is now retired by all @mlb.com teams to commemorate his place in baseball and American history.
Image: National Portrait Gallery.
"The emails show in a very humdrum sort of way the painful bureaucracy behind a U.S. military agency making a song."
I see that I have a wealth of contemporary material to add to my customary lecture on ethics and war… and if any world leaders want to join my lecture to learn more about the “Just War” tradition and the dialogues of the School of Salamanca, they are more than welcome to join…
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NYT: "As China’s mammoth trade surplus stokes global tensions, Beijing has enacted sweeping new regulations to investigate and punish foreign companies that stop using Chinese suppliers in response to political pressure at home." www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/b...
Cover of book with text in yellow reading: The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires, overlaid on an image of an angel in seventeenth-century dress with wings and a long gun.
Hello Bluesky! My new book, THE FIREARM REVOLUTION, is out on 14 April. It’s about how a new technology changed society, and how hard it was to control. Here’s a little thread of what’s inside:
“War exacts a toll so severe that only the clearest and most necessary purposes can justify it. If…Iran is still in the fight and still able to exact major military and economic costs, then it is fair to ask what purpose this war truly serves.”
warontherocks.com/tactical-suc...
Not sure what's more surprising here: that 41% of all US deployed Navy ships, including three aircraft carriers, are now operating in/around the Persian Gulf, or that the US Navy only currently has around 65 ships deployed worldwide
"since America’s problems with Iran are inherently political, military objectives cannot be proper war aims. And proper war aims are what’s missing: a desired end state that can be served by a ledger of destruction but must be more than the ledger itself.” @ryanevans.bsky.social
