Favorites August 22nd 2021

Discourse today was pretty dry, so I made sure to find a cat joke for the end, as a treat.

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is what a lot of experts were saying all along but it was mostly drowned out in the panicky media coverage over breakthrough infections.

Alasdair Munro @apsmunro

Did you hear vaccinated people with Delta “have just as much virus in their nose so are just as infectious as unvaccinated”? Turns out vaccinated people have significantly less culturable virus present at the same Ct count They are LESS INFECTIOUS 💥 https://t.co/OX0Ul0ntWc https://t.co/3vDQSJ6j84

I'm definitely unreasonably worried about breakthrough infections. You can also check out the linked paper.

Brian Klaas @brianklaas

I call this the “Golden retriever in an exploding tennis ball factory” problem. There’s so much crazy in the modern GOP that it’s impossible to convey it because you start explaining one insane thing and then 9 more insane things eclipse it and none get traction. https://t.co/K5fYqsxZ16

Astead @AsteadWesley

hardest part abt covering Trump rallies, and by extension MTG and Gaetz, is that all these things would be a lede but since 10 of them happen it's just this jumbled paragraph https://t.co/pV44dRug2T https://t.co/tsbDPuVEWX

Click through if you want to try to read the paragraph of insanity being refered to. Some of it is straight-up fascism.

Kevin Drum @kdrum

The biggest military evacuation in US history is going pretty well

jabberwocking.comThe biggest military evacuation in US history is going pretty well – Kevin Drum

"The only real mistake the military made in this operation was in not realizing just what a terrible job they had been doing all along. Everything else flows from that. If the Afghan government had been able to hold off the Taliban for even a few weeks, everything would have been fine. But they didn't even try. Ghani just grabbed a few suitcases of cash and took off."

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

It’s noteworthy that the NYT Kabul bureau chief’s take has such a different tone and focus from the bulk of the coverage.

nytimes.comAmerica’s Afghan War: A Defeat Foretold?Recent history suggests that it is foolish for Western powers to fight wars in other people’s lands and that the U.S. intervention was almost certainly doomed from the start.

It’s unusual in media coverage for someone so close to the subject of Afghanistan to be willing to take the long view.

Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders

After 20 years of war, 2,448 American lives lost and over $1T spent, President Biden made the courageous decision to reject Washington’s failed interventionist consensus and end the Afghanistan war. Now we must do everything we can to support evacuations and welcome refugees.

Withdrawing from a war: uniting the party.

Max Fisher @Max_Fisher

“Maintaining credibility” has been invoked to justify every American war since Korea But nearly every prediction predicated on “credibility” turned out to be wildly wrong. On investigation, the theory may be not only false, but dangerously so Me today:

messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.comThe Interpreter: Is ‘credibility’ real?

Just this one last piece of Afghanistan content today.

Elle M. (they/them) @ellle_em

Cat: HUMAN CAT HAVE POÉM FOR U Me: oh god Cat: ROSES R RED Me: please Cat: VIÓLETS R BLUE Me: please no Cat: I CHEWED ON UR LAPTOP CORD AND NOW CORD IS BROKE Me: Cat: Me: Cat: Me: that didn't even rhyme Cat: CAT AM POSTMODERNIST

San Francisco, April 2017

I really miss indoor dining.