2026.01.17
America has blown 80 years of accumulated goodwill and trust among its allies, our American moderator was told. A rock-steady assumption of allied defence and security planning for literally generations has been that America would act in its own interests, sure, but that those interests would be rational, and would still generally value the institutions that America itself worked so hard to build after the Second World War. America's recent actions have destroyed the ability of any ally to continue to have faith in America to act even within its own strategic self-interest, let alone that of any ally.
The officer then said that even a swift return of America to its former role won't matter.
Because "we will never fucking trust you again."
Was pondering the difference between my buddy Scott's love of AI summaries of articles and books - a powerful tool in a text flooded world, but I worry about glossing over nuance - and my historic love of pithy quotes.
Superficially they're similar modes- a lot of information presented in a compact way. But I was pleased when I thought of this framing:
A good summary captures the essence even at the cost of some detail, but a thought provoking quote is able to invoke MORE detail, provoking the thoughtful reader's imagination. It can evocative and invite unpacking, while a summary is bit more drably utilitarian.
My 11 year old nephew independently discovered a kind of fun art technique I made up for myself a decade ago - using layers to draw over a photo, and then using the eyedropper tool to grab a flat color and then apply it to a larger region, resulting in a nice illustrated/cel shaded look.
Being a life long doodler myself, I bought him an iPad and an Apple Pencil last year to encourage this kind of play, but was curious that he ignores the Pencil in favor of the fingers nature gave him. This sort of surprised me; when I doodle on my own iPad I NEED the precision of a good stylus... with a fat opaque fingertip it's too hard to make lines meetup. And his lines were fine!
But I put on my UX researcher hat and observed - and in a minute the answer was clear - he pinches and zooms in ALL the time as needed to where the imprecision of a finger doesn't matter. And not just zoom, but rotate to get a more convenient angle for the coloring motion of his fingertips.
Stodgy old me, growing up with pen-on-paper, this wasn't an option. And I never was comfortable with how some iPad art programs made it "too easy" to rotate. (Heck, my current favorite doodle pad Apple Notes doesn't even have zoom in!)
But this next generation - they're touchscreen native in a way I will never be... The kids are alright.
Open Photo Gallery
This Greenland thing is fricking INSANE.
What right do we think we have to Greenland?
Destroying NATO... what a dream for Putin!
(As my FB friend Mike points out Not to mention for China and Xi Jinping - between justification for whatever they want to do in Taiwan (and the USA less likely to say boo about it) they get to the be the beacon of stabilty and predictability, a reasonable partner when we've become a America First/America Alone/We Don't Care loose cannon.)