W. W. S. Hsieh - Sometimes Satirical!
@whsieh
Military historian. Once a temp diplomat. Opinions expressed are my own personal thoughts. RTs & links ≠ endorsements. Fully Hatch Act compliant.
I still think Twitter remains the best source of breaking news, but I don't think I've ever been that great a fit for the medium (as seen in my follower account😂), so I'm moving most of my posts to Substack. 1/2 substack.com/@plaintivenumb…
Join us for our Jubilee Dinner on October 16! Featuring @whsieh and a great Civil War Book Raffle. The sign-up sheet is below. Thanks!
I just wanted to thank everyone that liked and shared this post, as well as those who reached out to their representatives. The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government completed its 2026 budget markup and included $5m for the National…
Much like the public land sales that were originally in the Big Beautiful Bill, the proposed 2026 Fiscal Year budget includes zeroing-out of the National Historic Records and Publications Commission (NHPRC) and proposes the elimination of the National Endowment for the Humanities…
Statement 1: The Universities are in financial crisis. Send help! Statement 2: Uni of Warwick splurges £5m on a rebrand that asks its members to talk like low-grade listicle writers and deploy the word "Beyond" in ways English has never seen. Beyond is this perverse...
Drones and air defense and all that are obviously super important, but without a critical mass of infantry on the ground to hold and take territory, it’s all for nothing.
Something that often goes unremarked about Marx is his trust in technical progress, which is necessary to bring about a situation in which people need to work very little. What he seems to have taken for granted (among other things) is that there would be people.
Example: whereas Liwa al-Jabal was previously talking to the Ministry of Defence on incorporation & felt Hijri's demands for resolution w/the govt weren't realistic, now the framing (to quote what one of them said to me) is "the terrorist Jowlani government."
The claims Hijri asked for govt mediation were circulating yesterday night & could easily be found on social media. They don't seem plausible given continued mobilisation today of factions that were previously more pragmatic in dealing w/govt like Rijal al-Karama & Liwa al-Jabal.
.@Charles_Lister notes three well placed sources have it otherwise. He’s better informed than having to refer to Facebook tea leaves. Intriguing to see who Aymenn backs under the circumstances.
Handy graphic here by our team at @horizonengage on the recent militia rocket & drone attacks in the KRI. The most intense sequence of militia attacks we've seen in 10+ years, even more than the post-Soleimani & Oct 2023 strikes on US points of presence. linkedin.com/posts/horizone…
This is the legitimacy crisis facing American academia. Lefties know that their commitment to radicalism is fake. Unis are frank about their hostility to right wingers. So what’s left is an unstable therapeutic managerialism that is hollow and hypocritical, but also really rich.
Orwellian is putting it nicely. I don't know who or what @salkhanacademy is but they deserve all the criticism they can get. This is a way to weed out students who are too interesting or have strong views on any topic, including of course on Israel-Palestine.
I’d also argue that peak modernity was really zero covid, for which the PRC was certainly the trailblazer.
Making modernity all about energy transition is…. something. I guess that makes sense if one buys the idea that climate change is essentially an existential issue for civilization.
I’m glad Shohei won, but does anyone care about the Espys anymore? ESPN went from cultural powerhouse to sports bookie and platform for Stephen A Smith trying to get LeBron to Will Smith him before he runs for Prez.
There are so many axes to grind in Syria coverage and @ajaltamimi is one of the few relatively straight shooters… open.substack.com/pub/aymennalta…
France intends to release Lebanese far-left terrorist Georges Abdallah, who assassinated the US assistant military attache in Paris, Col. Charles R. Ray and attempted to assassinate the US Consul General in Strasbourg, Robert O. Homme.
#BREAKING ⚖️ 🇫🇷 A French court ruled Thursday in favour of releasing Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a Lebanese militant jailed for the 1982 murders of two foreign diplomats in Paris. More here ➡️ go.france24.com/TGo
I wonder if this focus on “civility” flows from a painful contradiction in prog academia. It wants to be both “radical” but also the establishment. It’s also how lib faculty can sound almost right wing when talking about what they expect in classroom decorum when they teach.
I mad tweeted about this yesterday, but I don’t think I paid sufficient attention to the absurd premise that HS students are capable of “debating” Israel or immigration in a way that would be useful to anyone, or that empathy and kindness are proper measure of success.
So I guess checkpoints to exclude “Zionists” from access to the library and classes is no longer okay?
Hate has no place here. At University of California campuses, we’re actively working to combat antisemitism. Learn more.
It’s hard for me to get excited about the Olympics, but Dodger Stadium hosting Olympic baseball would be pretty cool…
Anyway I’m less worried about students gaming the system than the fact that the people designing it seem to have genuinely no idea what they’re doing.