They both get to finish their final bombing runs? Iran goes first and then Israel stops 12 hours later? There’s gonna be worldwide celebration? “God bless Iran”? The guy is literally terrified of the war he started, out of his gourd, and has a child’s grasp of the world. Why can’t anyone say it

We ought to judge this strike by its real purpose, not the legal camouflage of preemptive self-defense. If the strike leaves the current regime, or something very much like it, in power with a nuclear option then it will have been a strategic failure. 17/17

RISING LION and MIDNIGHT HAMMER have not slowed the Iranian program nearly as much as the JCPOA. We hold diplomacy to much higher standards than bombing. The same people who endlessly complained about the JCPOA "sunsetting" are now happy to delay Iran's bomb by much less. 15/17

5. Wars are easy to start and hard to stop

4. Wars are unpredictable

3. The rationale given for a war will change over time, such that actual success or failure in achieving a named objective is less relevant than one might think

2. Whatever they say, the people who start wars are often thinking chiefly about domestic politics

1. Many things reported with confidence in the first hours and days will turn out not to be true

Five things to remember about war:

Something I started doing early in the pandemic, when info was spotty and ppl were panicked, was to ask myself these questions about my beliefs and actions:

Where is the evidence I’m right?

Where’s the evidence that I’m wrong?

If I’m wrong, who gets hurt by my mistake?

Nurture the hell out of the seeds of the future you want because they too are sprouting in the chaos.

January 2025 was quite unexpectedly the warmest January on record at 1.75C above preindustrial, beating the prior record set in 2024.

This is despite the presence of La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific, with the El Niño event of 2023/2024 long faded. www.theclimatebrink....

Still the best two sentences on climate action.