Tootfinder

This Week in Sports Trivia: July 17, 2025 https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6498641/2025/07/17/this-week-in-sports-trivia-july-17-2025/

Ashton Jeanty has two words following strong preseason performance https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/news/ashton-jeanty-has-two-words-following-strong-preseason-performance/32…

Trying so hard to be in the 'in' crowd, failing:
Pence: ‘I fully support’ Trump’s deployment of National Guard to DC
https://thehill.com/national-security/5456603-pence-i-fully-support-trumps-deployment-of-national-guard-to-dc/

China pledges deeper support for Russia amid Trump tariff threats: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/15/china-pledges-deeper-support-for.html

War is an unconscionable horror. The illusions of "international law" and "rules of war" have lead us to believe that war can be clean, managed, and "civilized."
But wars are fought by humans and humans are messy. Humans are not well suited to following orderly rules. Humans respond to their environment. Humans in extraordinary situations can be extraordinarily vindictive and brutal. Sufficiently traumatized humans can act without a conscience, spreading trauma like an infection. If humans respond to their situation, then there can be no "civilized" war because war is itself an situation outside of the society. It is a place that promotes antisocial behavior and punishes pro-social behavior. War cannot be expected to follow "international law" because it is what fills the void created by the failure of "international law" (so long as we rely on nations).
To call for war is to inflict atrocities on civilians. It is to kill the parents and children who serve, and to destroy the combatants who survive. It is to infect both sides with a trauma that will spread if untreated, when soldiers come home or when they become mercenaries in other wars.
And yet... there are times when the brutality, the incompetence, the evil becomes so unbearable that no other option exists, when taking up arms is simply bringing symmetry to an existing asymmetric conflict. There are times when the worst possible thing is inescapable, though it can never be justified.
In this new era of war, in the scramble of conflict under the collapsing of the (poorly named) "Pax Americana," I hope that we, the people, can understand that war is not a tool to fulfill an objective. It is not part of a larger strategy. It is not an extension of deplomacy.
War is a failure.
While it may be the only way to deal with the irrational - the genocidal, the slaver, the dictator - it is still a failure. It is a failure to build a world in which these people can't control armies and economies, can't turn populations in to cults and bend nations to their will.
And we will continue to have such wars until we unite against those who would use as as pawns, who would control our lives and lead us to our deaths. We will have these wars until we unite, as one world, against those rulers. This is what I mean, and what a lot of other people mean, when we say, "No War, but Class War."

Grönland gibt's nicht, Liechtenstein ist verschwunden, von Neuseeland hat niemand was gehört
TAZ: Grünspan im Eismeer
Immer mehr Länder fordern geografische Anonymität und möchten mit sofortiger Wirkung von der international regulären Weltkarte gestrichen werden.
https://taz.de/Die-Wahrheit/!6091936/

Die Wahrheit: Grünspan im Eismeer
Immer mehr Länder fordern geografische Anonymität und möchten mit sofortiger Wirkung von der international regulären Weltkarte gestrichen werden.

Threads launches a fediverse feed and a way to search for fediverse users, with support for Mastodon and others, for users who turned on fediverse sharing (David Pierce/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/688267/threads-fediverse-feed-search

Threads is adding fediverse content to your social feeds
A new ‘Fediverse feed’ in your Following section will show posts from Mastodon, Flipboard, and elsewhere.

Since no frills air carrier #SpiritAirlines emerged from #Chapter11 in March, it has lost another $186 million and is failing to meet required fiscal terms and guarantees to investors.
Other #airtravel industry tibits …

Americans were following Trump's big legislative win closely -- and they say they don't support it (Nicole Markus/Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/16/trump-law-new-poll-00455878
http://www.memeorandum.com/250716/p80#a250716p80

Filing: WBD says it plans to "significantly reduce" CEO David Zaslav's annual pay, including his cash bonus, after shareholders rejected his 2024 pay package (Todd Spangler/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/warne

Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav Pay to Drop After Company Split
WBD CEO David Zaslav will see his pay package take a haircut after the proposed separation of Warner Bros. Discovery in 2026. The company granted him $225 million in stock option awards.