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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 1d

Pete Hegseth is unqualified. He thinks his job is to leverage the US military to kill people and destroy things. And to think that bench pressing has anything to do with war is an utter joke. Strength is measured in conscience, not calories. Fighting a war you don't need to is the same as losing.

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 1d

The Vietnam War didn't end on the battlefield. It ended because Americans turned out to protest pointless destruction. The war achieved no objective and left a trail of suffering, on both sides, even today, 50 years later. Whichever way it had turned out, it never should have happened. 8/

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 1d

I found myself in a hole and I walked, sometimes up, sometimes down, day in, day out. I don't regret who I've become. I achieved because early on I learned to play life on hard mode. But this I will not forgive, that I had to do this at all, that I didn't have a choice. That I lost my lightness. 7/

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 1d

I am who I am because I have been processing trauma and reflected on life and death every day since I was 5. There are lots of positives, like me choosing to live life fully, purposefully most days, and a few negatives, like my intolerance for the frivolities that grease so much of social life. 6/

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 1d

One time in college, I had a dream. He was in the garden, playing. I saw him from the back. But when he turned around, his face was blank, just a flat sheet of skin, with no features. Because I had forgotten what he looked like. For a long time, I felt like a failure and a terrible person. 5/

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 1d

After my cousin died, my mom openly worried about me. So I grieved quietly. I built a shrine for him inside myself, treasuring the few memories, of us playing in the garden, him making origami out of stripes he tore from banana leaves. Of him being a gentle giant. As if that would keep him alive. 4/

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 1d

I learned about the Vietnam War when I was in junior high, in Vietnam, and in highschool, in the US. It was an odd experience, learning it from both perspectives. And even when I got older and could reconcile the two narratives, they were both still very far from my emotional experience. 3/

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 1d

Somehow I understood, at that age, that death was final. But the rest, I learned slowly over the years. That his mom had been a nurse on the Hochiminh Trail during the war. That he had a baby sister who died before I was born. That I was his best friend because kids his age saw him as a monster. 2/

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 1d

I am from a farm 60 miles south of Hanoi. When I was five years old, I wandered into the garden one day and found my cousin unconscious. He had died from a seizure. He was 13 years old and what people called an "Agent Orange baby." 1/

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Reposted by Caffeine

Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 2d

MORE: Minutes after this happened, video emerged of ICE officers on the roof of a facility in Portland firing rubber bullets at protesters outside the facility—not on facility grounds—who were merely standing and looking at the building.

No violence, no crimes, no disruptions. They were fired upon.

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 2d

Pete Hegseth Cold Open - SNL

YouTube video by Saturday Night Live

youtu.be

Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 2d

bsky.app/profile/cffn...

Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 6d

When I see Donald Trump or Stephen Miller gesturing wildly while making speeches, all I can think of is fish butthole. It doesn't help that their mouths also look like fish buttholes.

Fish Buttholes May Be The Reason We Now Have Fingers, Study Finds

The reason we humans have fingers today may all be thanks to a fish's clacker.

www.sciencealert.com

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Reposted by Caffeine

Stuart L. Riley @slriley.com · 3d

Here's my video of ICE goons trying to start a riot in Portland, Oregon, Saturday night. We didn't take the bait because we're law-abiding patriotic Americans.

ICE Protest Portland Oregon 20251004

YouTube video by Stuart Riley

youtu.be

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 3d

OK, now Ted Cruz's comment on Republicans being for pedophiles makes sense. They are, like, pedophilephiles. Pedolaters.

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 3d

This idiot is as bad at war criminaling as he is at business. Just confessing to his crimes in public and documenting and preserving the evidence himself.

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 3d

That is obvious and goes without saying.

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 3d

It's a disgrace that any leader of any country downplays women's contribution in wars. American women stepped up to shoulder industrial work during WWII. The Hochiminh Trail, a military engineering marvel, was manned by teenage girls.

If you don't see women, you're just fucking unqualified to lead.

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 3d

Repeat after me: The Epstein Government Shutdown

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 4d

Freedom of speech, did someone say?

SOLVING CHARLIE KIRK'S MURDER | STAND UP COMEDY

YouTube video by Sammy Obeid

www.youtube.com

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 5d

Trump wants to rewrite history so that the next generation may not know that he incited a violent insurrection, refused to peacefully transfer the power of the presidency after losing an election, stole classified documents and showed them to friends and guests at Mar-a-Lago, that he was a criminal.

Ex-Trump lawyer says president using Comey indictment to conceal being ‘criminal’

Ty Cobb, who managed Trump’s Mueller investigation response, said president is trying to ‘rewrite history’

www.theguardian.com

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 5d

Donald Trump is unstable and not partnership (or leadership) material. No deal signed with him is worth anything.

He's more like your basement tenant who may or may not pay rent next month.

“‘I’m leaving,’ Trump said. ‘There’s no reason to be here any more’”: inside the meeting that brought Nato to the brink

Former secretary general Jens Stoltenberg recalls the rollercoaster ride of dealing with Donald Trump – and how close the US president brought the alliance to the point of collapse

www.theguardian.com

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 5d

Imagine knowing your "idea" is bullshit, you're afraid everyone would belittle it. But instead of keeping it to yourself, you shout it from the rooftop and *by force* make people agree with you. All the while knowing they know.

I get it that people want power, but I don't understand why this way.

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Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 5d

Here's @chrisgiles.ft.com having more patience than me, breaking it down for you.

Chris Giles @chrisgiles.ft.com · 9d

This is how Trump pick for the Fed, Stephen Miran, gets from the current US interest rate to his preffered "appropriate" rate.

Note how tax rises (tariffs) and tax cuts (Trump budget) both push the neutral rate down

For more on this voodoo economics, read my newsletter
www.ft.com/content/807d...

Caffeine @cffn.bsky.social · 5d

Stephen Miran represents the Trump regime and not economic data or science. He sounds polished but what he's saying is argument argument flawed argument data flawed data blah blah, that depends on people not having the time or knowledge to unpack what he says. He's dangerous.

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Reposted by Caffeine

Lev Parnas @levparnas.bsky.social · 6d

open.substack.com/pub/levremem...

Breaking: Trump Used AI to Scan U.S. Generals’ Faces for Loyalty — and to Root Out Whistleblowers

On the Jewish Day of Atonement, America Must Reckon With a President Who Never Repents

open.substack.com

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