Military historian Phillips O’Brien: There have been no U.S. peace efforts in Ukraine.
There have been efforts to get Putin a very good deal, forcing Ukrainians to give up more territory and people. That is not peace. That is Washington trying to deliver Putin a success.
“youths and men of such a temper who would calmly suppress their own reflections and opinions in which original thought is so impatient to manifest itself, such listeners attentive to the facts as Plato portrayed them, could hardly be imagined in a modern dialogue; and even less could one count on readers of similar disposition”
-- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Science of Logic.
В антропологическом смысле, повторяю, человек является существом эстетическим прежде, чем этическим.
...
Ибо человек со вкусом, в частности литературным, менее восприимчив к повторам и заклинаниям, свойственным любой форме политической демагогии. Дело не столько в том, что добродетель не является гарантией шедевра, сколько в том, что зло, особенно политическое, всегда плохой стилист. Чем богаче эстетический опыт индивидуума, чем тверже его вкус, тем четче его царственный выбор, тем он свободнее – хотя, возможно, и не счастливее.
https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2025/04/brodsky-lecture-russian.pdf
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1987/brodsky/lecture/
Several pages of “The Dog’s Gaze” are devoted to the most memorable little dog in art, the one in Carpaccio’s late-Quattrocento painting of St. Augustine in his beautiful Venetian study. The Maltese—who watches his master as the translucent apparition of St. Jerome appears at his study window—is alert and attentive without being capable of complete apprehension. We are reminded of dogs as an intermediary between mankind and the rest of creation, both sublunary and celestial; dogs remind us daily of our animal selves and are audience to our higher moments.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/01/the-dogs-gaze-a-visual-history-thomas-w-laqueur-book-review
There’s a well known joke about a tourist in Ireland who asks one of the locals for directions to Dublin. The Irishman replies: ‘Well sir, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here’.
“It’s an old question in the philosophy of physics. People have been talking about it since Fermat first formulated it in the 1600s; Planck wrote volumes about it. The thing is, while the common formulation of physical laws is causal, a variational principle like Fermat’s is purposive, almost teleological.
...
Well, if I can speak anthropomorphic-projectionally, the light has to examine the possible paths and compute how long each one would take.” He plucked the last potsticker from the serving dish.
“And to do that,” I continued, “the ray of light has to know just where its destination is. If the destination were somewhere else, the fastest path would be different.
Gary nodded again. “That’s right; the notion of a ‘fastest path’ is meaningless unless there’s a destination specified. And computing how long a given path takes also requires information about what lies along that path, like where the water’s surface is.
I kept staring at the diagram on the napkin. “And the light ray has to know all that ahead of time, before it starts moving, right?”
...
That day when Gary first explained Fermat’s principle to me, he had mentioned that almost every physical law could be stated as a variational principle. Yet when humans thought about physical laws, they preferred to work with them in their causal formulation. I could understand that: the physical attributes that humans found intuitive, like kinetic energy or acceleration, were all properties of an object at a given moment in time. And these were conducive to a chronological, causal interpretation of events: one moment growing out of another, causes and effects creating a chain reaction that grew from past to future.
In contrast, the physical attributes that the heptapods found intuitive, like “action” or those other things defined by integrals, were meaningful only over a period of time. And these were conducive
to a teleological interpretation of events: by viewing events over a period of time, one recognized that there was a requirement that had to be satisfied, a goal of minimizing or maximizing. And one had to know the initial and final states to meet that goal; one needed knowledge of the effects before the causes could be initiated.”
-- Ted Chiang. “Stories of Your Life and Others.”
Trump’s Deal With His Administration Also Ends His Tax Audits
WASHINGTON—President Trump’s extraordinary agreement with the federal government expanded Tuesday to end all pending tax audits of him and his businesses, according to a document posted by the Justice Department.
In the document, signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the government said it would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from pursuing certain claims against Trump, his businesses and family members. The agreement specifically blocks the government from taking any action regarding tax returns that already have been filed.
Tuesday’s addendum includes broad language in which the U.S. pledges to cease pursuing any matters that are or could be pending with the IRS and with other agencies or departments. The statement includes family members and “related or affiliated individuals,” although it doesn’t clearly define those terms.
“He gets the money to spread among his friends and allies and also gets immunity for any review or audit. These guys just have no limit to what they’ll try to get away with.”
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/government-deal-with-trump-expands-to-end-tax-audits-aad8f2bc
The accounts purchased at least $1.75 million of Nvidia’s stock in the quarter, including $500,000 on Jan. 6. A week later, the administration cleared the way for Nvidia to send its H200 artificial-intelligence chips to China. Last week, Trump invited Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to travel aboard Air Force One for the state visit to China.
Natalie Harp, Trump’s executive assistant, plays an integral role in Trump’s Truth Social activity. She brings the president stacks of printed-out draft social-media posts for his approval. The proposed posts often recycle content from other accounts that Harp or advisers think would appeal to Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.
Harp then logs onto the president’s account—at times outside of normal work hours—and posts batches of Trump-approved messages, the people said. Trump personally signs off on all of the content posted to his account. While Harp often posts content on Trump’s behalf, the president posts some messages himself, White House officials said.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/trump-truth-social-late-night-posts-167cb47a
Now, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is taking the next step, one that would have been unthinkable even as recently as 2024. By word and deed, he’s showing Europe and the world how the post-American free world can preserve its liberty and independence.
...
No nation can match American might, but for the first time in my adult life, the moral and strategic heart of the defense of liberal democracy doesn’t beat in Washington. It doesn’t beat in London or Paris or Berlin or Ottawa, either. It’s in Kyiv, where a courageous leader and a courageous people have picked up the torch America has dropped.
He discovers that a seven-headed dragon who lives on a mountain in the neighborhood demands: periodically a maiden asa sacrifice, else he will lay waste the entire country. The sacrifice has been agreed upon and the lot has fallen to the princess. The king promises that whoever saves her shall have her hand and half his kingdom.
-- Stith Thomson. The Folktale, 1978. UC Press.
В Смоленской области на территории мемориального комплекса «Катынь» открылась выставка «Десять веков польской русофобии». Об этом сообщили организаторы выставки — Российское военно-историческое общество (РВИО), которое возглавляет помощник президента РФ Владимир Мединский.
They [two Trump's posts on Iran: 1. open the f-ing strait; 2. civilization will die tonight] constituted hitting a new bottom, a new and infernal, face-lit-by-flames bottom, in world communications. The posts weren’t showbiz, they were sinister. You destabilize the world when, as the American president, you say such things. You make all the babies in this delicately poised, always knock-down-able world less safe. You rob your own nation of a claim to moral seriousness in the military action in which it’s engaged: You are saying we’re not trying to protect life but plan to attack, and in the attacking kill noncombatants who are members of the targeted civilization. The moral high ground is relinquished. You lower the bar for all potential response. You encourage violent action by trumpeting your readiness for it.
It bolsters the position of your enemies—their animus is justified, their commitment deepened. It allows them to pretend they’re fighting for the continuation of their people and not only the continuation of their regime.
Donald Trump plays the part of the madman every day. His head fake would be sanity. If his advisers thought this was a good negotiating tactic—“Give ’em a little madman theory, Mr. President”—they really are hicks.
Mr. Trump’s trust in his gut seems to have grown overwhelming—not in his reasoning power, not his analysis of intelligence data, but gut.
A lot of gut instinct is pattern recognition—I’ve lived long, experienced much, and know how this movie ends. But that means gut is weighted toward past experience.
Sometimes gut is mere emotion dressed up as instinct. Sometimes it’s wishful thinking that feels like conviction. Sometimes it conveniently pre-empts hard reasoning.
You can trust your gut straight into catastrophe.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/in-gut-we-trust-dde164b6
What started as a tongue-in-cheek observation that “Trump always chickens out” has become a consistently profitable pattern. It works especially well when there’s a specific deadline like Tuesday night’s Strait of Hormuz ultimatum since there’s less danger of being right but getting the timing wrong.
Over the 300-plus trading sessions since Trump took the oath of office last year, nine of the S&P 500’s 10 biggest gains have had to do with relief over tariffs or Iran. Owning stocks on just those days would have earned an investor 52% on their money compared with 12% for buying and holding an index fund throughout. Wednesday’s cease-fire rally might crack the top six.
https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/iran-bounce-these-tacos-are-getting-stale-1f69dd3a
A Trump insider opened a $51,000,000 oil short position — hours before Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran. This guy is now 16 for 16. $170 million in profit. A perfect streak.
"We placed the bet." "The ceasefire dropped." "We cashed out." Sixteen times in a row.
https://x.com/JamesTate121/status/2041908860576002256
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