Susan Simpson

Must read dispatch by @yarotrof. We’re in a real pickle now, @briangobosox. “[L]eaving in place Iran’s theocratic regime … would essentially grant Tehran control over the world’s energy markets.” “Now that Tehran has demonstrated the capacity—and global implications—of choking off the Hormuz strait, it has created significant geopolitical leverage for itself, and an incentive for Gulf states to appease it in the future. Reopening the strait, military analysts say, may require a ground operation to seize the Iranian coastline.” “12 days into the war, Iran keeps firing missiles and drones across the Middle East, albeit at a slower rate. Iran’s ability to destroy with precision strikes some of the most sensitive and scarce U.S. military targets in the Middle East, such as radars for air-defense installations, didn’t go unnoticed. Should America abandon its Gulf partners after exposing them to existential danger, there will be inevitable repercussions in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.” “One nightmare scenario, in particular for America’s Gulf partners now bearing the brunt of Iranian attacks, is that the U.S. and Israel would stop, then Iran would continue harassing strikes to cow these oil-rich monarchies into submission. The fear is that Tehran will try to pressure them to expel U.S. bases and sever their dependence on an America that failed to protect them.” wsj.com/world/middle-e…

Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/2jgmxz… Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mur…

It appears that a Polymarket account called "Magamyman" made $515,000 in a single day betting on last night's U.S. strike on Iran, with the first trade placed 71 minutes before the news broke publicly. When this person bought in, the market had this at a 17% probability. They turned roughly $87,000 into over half a million dollars overnight. Reminder that Donald Trump Jr. sits on Polymarket's advisory board and his firm invested double-digit millions into the platform last year. The DOJ and CFTC both had active investigations into Polymarket that were dropped after Trump took office. Prediction markets cannot be a vehicle for profiting off advance knowledge of military action. We need answers, transparency, and oversight.

On today's new @Undisclosedpod, we chat with @TheViewFromLL2 about her terrific new season of @proofcrimepod: audioboom.com/posts/8864541-…

This is an astonishing, heartbreaking piece by @ebruenig theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/…

New sidebar for season 3 up now! Covering the really interesting question of how memory works. And the background on the pivotal interview with the ex-husband. Listen on proofcrimepod.com or wherever you pod. #investigation #truecrime #podcast

Strong contender here for most pathetic social media post in all of human history.

👀 A cryptic new letter from Senator @RonWyden to the CIA director.

@reblavoie How you gonna leave us hanging on the how?

Except it was also an unending blood hose.

This morning I cut off the end of my pinkie and got it stitched back on. How did your day go?

First sidebar of the new season is here. Susan, Jacinda, and Kevin share their thoughts on the first two episodes, and more. Find wherever you pod, including this link to Apple podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mur…

We've reached the stage of politics where having an informed opinion requires you to watch videos of people dying on repeat and in slo-mo.

We are like two weeks away from the new GOP line: "ICE already killed two Americans, everyone knows that. Any American who continues to protest accepted the risk, and that's on them. What did [NAME OF NEXT VICTIM(S)] think would happen?"

They're not bothered by the killings. When it's an immigrant, they enjoy it. When it's an American, they get the chance to keep pushing their message: if you protest, you might die. And then Republicans rush to the chorus: "If they hadn't protested, they'd still be alive!"

JD Vance isn’t this stupid, so what he’s doing here is deliberate and evil. You don’t just need “some kind of warrant” to enter a home. You need a warrant from the judiciary. He knows this. He knows they’re breaking the law when they enter a home with an administrative warrant. He uses the phrase “administrative law judges” to mislead. An administrative warrant comes from DHS. They are writing their own “warrants,” which makes them no more valid under the Fourth Amendment than if a random person wrote on a piece of paper, “I can enter your house.”

This is a photo from an ICE detainment stop this week. Posting without comment as the photo is horrific and disturbing enough to speak for itself.

He cannot hold a line of thought. He cannot land a point. He cannot communicate seriousness. And yet global markets, alliances and security are being forced to react in real time to this kind of performance. A superpower led by a man delivering incoherent childhood anecdotes instead of policy and global markets are expected to take it seriously. This is what institutional collapse looks like.

Season 3 of @proofcrimepod begins today. Episode 1 is out now — a devastating start to a story that is so much bigger than we knew when we started. megaphone.link/GLSS8737228731

This is a horrible development... we should quickly sell the government interest, pay down a bit of the federal debt, and never take this path again.

The idea that you can just colonize a country, anoint a puppet government under threat of disappearance/ death if they disobey, and extract their resources at will but IT WILL BE FINE may be the dumbest belief this Administration has ever adopted. Oil execs know damn well better!

It really says something about how seriously people take the administration’s rhetoric that it called her a domestic terrorist yesterday, and a major business still does this today.