I'm totally kidding. It's because I read too quickly and there was a definite article in the original text that I missed. It said "run by *the* US-designated terrorist group" but I have been reading all day and I read too fast. Language. It means stuff.

Maybe it's because the WSJ's Africa editor and MENA editor didn't check with each other? 4/

Maybe the difference is because there's an internationally-recognized GoY that has been displaced but still has access to means of self-representation and can challenge the Houthis' ability to self-present as being in control of "Yemen" as a whole. 3/

Is it because the Houthis only control part of the country? (When AQAP had de facto territorial control in Hadramawt for a year in 2015-2016 it attracted less attention, I think, than either of these cases, but I could be wrong.) 2/

Here’s the SC statement on the threats their folks received in response to their editorial. Tldr; space for civil actors is under threat in all parts of Yemen, not only in the ways that make it to the pages of @nytimes.com or @wsj.com

Almost all non-specialist coverage of Yemen is focused on the Houthis and if there is discussion of the rest of Yemen, it aggregates the whole. Policy folks don’t do this, I know, but policy specialists are increasingly not shaping policy. So the non-specialist discourse matters more than it has. 2/

What's also wild (derogatory) is that if many media outlets are making their journalists use AI to write & edit, or replacing journalists w/ AI to generate content, then you basically have social scientists' LLMs coding AI-generated material, w/o the chance to spot it as such the way a human might.

I vividly recall a site visit for a program my school was considering as a partner in Oman. Arabic instruction was top-shelf but I couldn’t believe the USG students held a 7/4 bonfire on the beach and invited their Omani tutors for pork BBQ. Just securing the pork became a week-long preoccupation.

They've updated your *title*? As if that was the relevant issue here?

This seems like a form of journalistic malpractice, honestly, and I think you're being awfully generous not to name them directly.

As I mentioned the day it happened, civilian residents of Sana’a have been threatened with these strikes and pressured to self-displace (I’m not going to say leave) for months in advance, even in areas where the targets were no longer living. Raises questions about precision, intel, and intent. 3/n

Insofar as they hit adjacent homes and harmed civilians - threatening for months in advance to do so - the strikes demonstrate that, while Houthi rule has increasingly driven people, especially women, into their homes, civilians cannot even rely on staying home to keep them safe. 2/n