Calliope
@calliope5431.bsky.social
Not the Greek muse, just a casual fan. I study the Third Reich. The demands to READ THEORY will continue until you have actually read Christopher Browning and Ian Kershaw.
Pinned
If you want to see the actual practice of anarchist justice, you do not need to imagine it. Just look at footage from the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim pogroms. Or photographs (yes, they exist, no I will not be posting them here) from the 1905 Russian pogroms a century before. Communal violence is real.
The essential difference between liberalism and anarchism is this:
Liberalism recognises that liberty must be protected from the petty tyranny of petty people by law.
Liberalism recognises that liberty must be protected from the petty tyranny of petty people by law.
"The power inherent to nation states is tyrannical and must be abolished. Also I, Random Anarchist Dipshit, should be able to dictate who lives and dies."
November 15, 2025 at 6:05 PM
If you want to see the actual practice of anarchist justice, you do not need to imagine it. Just look at footage from the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim pogroms. Or photographs (yes, they exist, no I will not be posting them here) from the 1905 Russian pogroms a century before. Communal violence is real.
This is literally the trajectory of Gordon Chang's entire career but for China.
November 15, 2025 at 3:47 PM
This is literally the trajectory of Gordon Chang's entire career but for China.
It's absolutely wild that you can now be a shameless partisan in the US government despite there being an explicit law against it, but doing so as a Senior Vice President at a Fortune 500 company will still get you fired.
(CEO of a Fortune 500 company is a different matter entirely, of course)
(CEO of a Fortune 500 company is a different matter entirely, of course)
Hatch Act doesn't exist anymore and obviously he's gonna retire via maximum public diaper filling before the next dem admin comes in (like infantry dork), but also much like infantry dork it's still worth pointing out who he is and how what he's saying is bonkers for someone in that position
I don't think it gets mentioned enough that Bovino is a member of the civil service. He is not a political appointee. Yet he still engages in constant open partisanship while in uniform and with a DHS flag behind him.
November 15, 2025 at 3:28 PM
It's absolutely wild that you can now be a shameless partisan in the US government despite there being an explicit law against it, but doing so as a Senior Vice President at a Fortune 500 company will still get you fired.
(CEO of a Fortune 500 company is a different matter entirely, of course)
(CEO of a Fortune 500 company is a different matter entirely, of course)
This is in marked contrast to the 1930s and 1940s, where most of the far right hated one another. Mussolini moved troops to defend Austria from Hitler in 1934. Japan had to be bribed into recognizing the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. In WW2, the IJA stuck to their nonaggression pact with the USSR.
This is exactly what I mean about the authoritarian internationale
Even when these parties are not in power they seek to cultivate relationships with other like minded parties and groups and form patronage networks
Even when these parties are not in power they seek to cultivate relationships with other like minded parties and groups and form patronage networks
"The restrictions were intended to prevent a repeat of the Nazi rise to power, when anti-democratic forces were able to subvert democracy from within..."
www.politico.eu/article/larg...
www.politico.eu/article/larg...
November 15, 2025 at 2:53 PM
This is in marked contrast to the 1930s and 1940s, where most of the far right hated one another. Mussolini moved troops to defend Austria from Hitler in 1934. Japan had to be bribed into recognizing the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. In WW2, the IJA stuck to their nonaggression pact with the USSR.
President Crassus generously agrees to put out fire on your (now his) house.
BREAKING: President Trump drops tariffs on beef, coffee and tropical fruit as pressure builds on consumer prices.
Trump drops tariffs on beef, coffee, tropical fruit as pressure builds on consumer prices
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to get rid of tariffs on a broad swath of commodities, including beef, coffee and tropical fruits.
bit.ly
November 15, 2025 at 2:48 PM
President Crassus generously agrees to put out fire on your (now his) house.
Reposted by Calliope
One reason the political influence of billonaires has been pernicious is that at certain levels of wealth, people will fawn over whatever inane brain diarrhea you emit as though they’ve just bumped into Socrates in the agora.
Something that’s so striking in these emails is how…unimpressive Epstein is. He comes off as a pompous, sub-literate lech. Yes everyone is so mortifyingly solicitous of him! All fawning and flattery! Why?????
November 14, 2025 at 6:32 PM
One reason the political influence of billonaires has been pernicious is that at certain levels of wealth, people will fawn over whatever inane brain diarrhea you emit as though they’ve just bumped into Socrates in the agora.
Reposted by Calliope
So you get people like Musk who, even beyond the crude motivation to promote their own interests, develop an utterly delusional sense of how insightful their untutored ideas about public policy are.
November 14, 2025 at 6:34 PM
So you get people like Musk who, even beyond the crude motivation to promote their own interests, develop an utterly delusional sense of how insightful their untutored ideas about public policy are.
Yeah this is, I would guess, around 60% of the people in contact with Epstein. They had some impression of what he was, they knew tangentially about the conviction (or at least didn't do due diligence), but he was rich and they were strapped for cash.
The remaining 40% are something else entirely.
The remaining 40% are something else entirely.
The most charitable read on this is Heroic Willa Cather Fan Diverts Money Otherwise Being Used For Rape Island Into Public Humanities Project. However, despite being employed by Harvard English, I do believe Elisa New can in fact read, and this is a decade after Epstein's 1st abuse conviction. Yikes
November 14, 2025 at 7:34 PM
Yeah this is, I would guess, around 60% of the people in contact with Epstein. They had some impression of what he was, they knew tangentially about the conviction (or at least didn't do due diligence), but he was rich and they were strapped for cash.
The remaining 40% are something else entirely.
The remaining 40% are something else entirely.
The issue here is that it's just pure navel gazing. There are actual stories worth covering, but that's actually difficult to do so instead we get to hear about the sublime romantic gesture that is a 31-year-old sending naked pictures to a septuagenarian with worms in his brain.
i cannot express how weary i am of media elites profiling each other and writing with an affectation of disdain or contempt but doing it subtly enough that you can't prove a seeming compliment is intended to be shade. it's not some kind of clever subversion. you're not a novelist. just stop it.
November 14, 2025 at 7:20 PM
The issue here is that it's just pure navel gazing. There are actual stories worth covering, but that's actually difficult to do so instead we get to hear about the sublime romantic gesture that is a 31-year-old sending naked pictures to a septuagenarian with worms in his brain.
If you put Peter Thiel into a 1930s novel people would say the vampirism, evil crystal balls, AI cults, and connections to notorious pedophiles were just a way of justifying contemporary homophobia and can't be taken literally. Same is probably true of Epstein and antisemitism, for the record.
Peter Thiel is literally a bad comic book villain in real life
November 14, 2025 at 6:14 PM
If you put Peter Thiel into a 1930s novel people would say the vampirism, evil crystal balls, AI cults, and connections to notorious pedophiles were just a way of justifying contemporary homophobia and can't be taken literally. Same is probably true of Epstein and antisemitism, for the record.
Sydney Sweeney, despite her role in *Euphoria*, is emphatically not 17. Nor, despite her role in *Game of Thrones*, is Emilia Clarke.
I know that sometimes the cultural perspective of teenagers can be distorted because it's normal for twentysomethings to play 15- and 16-year-olds on TV, but they are unmistakably children. They're not five, but they are very clearly not adults.
Megyn Kelly: "I know somebody very close to this case…Jeffrey Epstein, in this person's view, was not a pedophile…He was into the barely legal type, like he liked 15 year old girls…He wasn't into like 8 year olds…There's a difference between a 15 year old and a 5 year old."
November 14, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Sydney Sweeney, despite her role in *Euphoria*, is emphatically not 17. Nor, despite her role in *Game of Thrones*, is Emilia Clarke.
Bear in mind that for centuries Buddhist monasteries in Japan were some of the largest landholders in the country, organized enormous private armies, and the monks would beat peasants who failed to pay their taxes on time.
nothing says you’re kicking ass at Buddhism quite like having an insatiable desire for something
November 14, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Bear in mind that for centuries Buddhist monasteries in Japan were some of the largest landholders in the country, organized enormous private armies, and the monks would beat peasants who failed to pay their taxes on time.
The fundamental issue with China's climate pledges is that it wants to be a market leader in green energy (and it absolutely is) but it also needs to balance that with massive grid buildouts to get the industrial capacity to do that.
Add that to "energy independence" worries in Beijing and...
Add that to "energy independence" worries in Beijing and...
We really don’t know what coal’s future looks like — China is building huge amounts of new coal capacity and has shored up coal’s position in their grid over the past few years, but there are grid market reforms coming that could reduce coal’s importance. Useful piece: heatmap.news/ideas/china-...
China Can’t Decide if It Wants to Be the World’s First ‘Electrostate’
The country’s underwhelming new climate pledge is more than just bad news for the world — it reveals a serious governing mistake.
heatmap.news
November 14, 2025 at 4:59 PM
The fundamental issue with China's climate pledges is that it wants to be a market leader in green energy (and it absolutely is) but it also needs to balance that with massive grid buildouts to get the industrial capacity to do that.
Add that to "energy independence" worries in Beijing and...
Add that to "energy independence" worries in Beijing and...
Reminds me of the single greatest Paul Krugman interview of all time:
November 14, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Reminds me of the single greatest Paul Krugman interview of all time:
The Russians evidently haven't learned the lessons of Imperial Japan - if you militarize society like this, sooner or later the military is going to take over the country.
Doubly true given Putin is an elderly personalist leader with no strong party backing or a declared successor.
Doubly true given Putin is an elderly personalist leader with no strong party backing or a declared successor.
My piece on the dramatic changes inside Russian schools since 2022, with weapons training in the classroom and a push from kindergarten to prepare soldiers for future conflicts. “They are preparing kids ideologically & psychologically for war,” said @irgarner.bsky.social www.wsj.com/world/russia...
Putin Is Turning Eighth-Grade Classrooms Into Army Training Grounds
A vast militarization of the education system is gathering pace in Russian classrooms, where students are trained to handle weapons by active soldiers.
www.wsj.com
November 14, 2025 at 3:46 PM
The Russians evidently haven't learned the lessons of Imperial Japan - if you militarize society like this, sooner or later the military is going to take over the country.
Doubly true given Putin is an elderly personalist leader with no strong party backing or a declared successor.
Doubly true given Putin is an elderly personalist leader with no strong party backing or a declared successor.
Reposted by Calliope
the astonishing thing about this wave of denialism is that we have more or less decidedly hit the point where clean energy is the *cheaper* option by some distance
I'm kind of baffled how the "moderates" have apparently all decided to turn against climate policy at once, just as China reaches green electrostate liftoff mode. I thought these people were all about National Greatness and making Hard Choices
November 14, 2025 at 3:25 PM
the astonishing thing about this wave of denialism is that we have more or less decidedly hit the point where clean energy is the *cheaper* option by some distance
Reposted by Calliope
These people are *also* pushing Americans to have more babies, a LOT more babies, and routinely bash leftists who advocate zero population growth, so I'm not sure "there are too many people in America" is a 100% good faith argument here...
JD Vance: "A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive. Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who were taking houses that ought by right go to American citizens."
November 13, 2025 at 9:58 PM
These people are *also* pushing Americans to have more babies, a LOT more babies, and routinely bash leftists who advocate zero population growth, so I'm not sure "there are too many people in America" is a 100% good faith argument here...
Reposted by Calliope
How many profs in major PhD granting science departments have *not* advised even 1 Chinese student or Chinese postdoc in the last five years 😧?
“The prohibited activities would include joint research, co-authorship on papers, and advising a foreign graduate student or postdoctoral fellow. The language is retroactive, meaning any interactions during the previous 5 years could make a scientist ineligible for future federal funding.”
U.S. Congress considers sweeping ban on Chinese collaborations
Researchers speak out against proposal that would bar funding for U.S. scientists working with Chinese partners or training Chinese students
www.science.org
November 14, 2025 at 2:13 AM
How many profs in major PhD granting science departments have *not* advised even 1 Chinese student or Chinese postdoc in the last five years 😧?
More provocatively, this is also true of the alt-right's fixation with Nazism. National Socialism exists in a German context and removing it from that context to "cosplay" produces absurdities. For instance, Hitler's views on the United States' European race-mixing were anything but complimentary.
Tangential, but the fact that “they’ve” decided to use the specific Kingdom Of Heaven photo for their self-referencing “Deus Vult” meme…
Oh, you’re Baldwin IV? You the Leper King, an anachronistic warlord of a long lost cause & you die at 24?
Mmkay…
Oh, you’re Baldwin IV? You the Leper King, an anachronistic warlord of a long lost cause & you die at 24?
Mmkay…
It’s how you end up with language like “paperwork American” or the idea that Thanksgiving turkey is some sort of natural ethno-national tradition that certain other groups are incapable of ever appreciating
November 13, 2025 at 10:20 PM
More provocatively, this is also true of the alt-right's fixation with Nazism. National Socialism exists in a German context and removing it from that context to "cosplay" produces absurdities. For instance, Hitler's views on the United States' European race-mixing were anything but complimentary.
Newsom is a slightly different form of terrible and is too young to be hanging out with Epstein (hardly an issue unique to him, I know). He only became governor of California the year Epstein died, and before that he was a local figure in California politics.
it feels like a minor miracle that Newsom didn't show up in this somehow
November 13, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Newsom is a slightly different form of terrible and is too young to be hanging out with Epstein (hardly an issue unique to him, I know). He only became governor of California the year Epstein died, and before that he was a local figure in California politics.
Soviet censors were prudes, they wouldn't put that in Pravda.
"American girls have to sell sex to the nominee for attorney general of the United States to get braces" sounds like Soviet propaganda
November 13, 2025 at 8:02 PM
Soviet censors were prudes, they wouldn't put that in Pravda.
The Japanese had such a massive strategic meth reserve that when the Imperial Japanese Army sold it off, yakuza leadership immediately bought it up and created a drug epidemic. It was only outlawed in 1951 and it's still the yakuza's largest revenue source.
One of the many reasons Blitzed was a bad book is because it took practices that were military standards and tried to turn them into some unique Nazi thing that explained the German war effort
November 13, 2025 at 7:53 PM
The Japanese had such a massive strategic meth reserve that when the Imperial Japanese Army sold it off, yakuza leadership immediately bought it up and created a drug epidemic. It was only outlawed in 1951 and it's still the yakuza's largest revenue source.
Still waiting on the scientific review about the permanent physical advantages of being part of the Russian and Chinese state-sponsored doping programs, IOC.
Transgender women to be banned from all female Olympic events
IOC likely to announce new policy early in new year after findings of a scientific review about the permanent physical advantages of being born male
www.thetimes.com
November 13, 2025 at 6:34 PM
Still waiting on the scientific review about the permanent physical advantages of being part of the Russian and Chinese state-sponsored doping programs, IOC.
Mostly a coincidence, I believe. The thing about Trump II is that it's Balkanized into a bunch of competing empires and so the "destroy the rule of law" crowd is mostly separated from the "tariffs on bananas" crowd and the "invade Venezuela" crowd.
And Trump himself whipsaws all over the place.
And Trump himself whipsaws all over the place.
can we not do “I’m in trouble domestically so let’s start a war” again
"Senior military officials on Wednesday presented President Trump with updated options for potential operations in Venezuela, including strikes on land, according to multiple sources familiar with the meetings at the White House. "
November 13, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Mostly a coincidence, I believe. The thing about Trump II is that it's Balkanized into a bunch of competing empires and so the "destroy the rule of law" crowd is mostly separated from the "tariffs on bananas" crowd and the "invade Venezuela" crowd.
And Trump himself whipsaws all over the place.
And Trump himself whipsaws all over the place.