Mark Datz

@Tyler_A_Harper Intellectual philanthropy

The number of people I encounter who can’t explain their (generally “good”) jobs and/or what their spouses do is staggering. I’d love to see people try to describe what they actually do for a living in a single 280 character tweet in a way that the average person can understand.

@Noahpinion Come on, sometimes the Japanese police have tougher things to deal with than a deer wandering around. youtu.be/RvYz5vALMOU?t=…

Crime story in America: A borderline schizophrenic stabbed an elderly Asian lady to death for no reason after having been arrested and released 178 times Crime story in Japan: A deer has been spotted in an urban area

@pastasnack_e youtube.com/watch?v=CS9OO0…

Lots of people's social & romantic lives could be vastly improved if it was normal for young adults to live in college dorm-style accommodation in city centres until they were ready to set up home properly. Why doesn't this exist? I think there would be a market for it!

Why did you start your Twitter account?

@strxwmxn You said it, Trump is fucking retarded.

The US and Israel have each run countless simulations gaming out every single scenario, every option, and every potential reaction to every option. The idea that the Allied Powers would be caught flat-footed because the war is longer than 20 days is — to borrow a term from game theory — fucking retarded.

@DanDePetris This is, in fact, not true. If you ask four administration officials any question, you will get eight contradictory answers.

6. The messaging has been atrocious. Ask four administration officials what we’re doing in Iran and you’ll get four different answers.

Some fundamental things to remember as the Iran War hits Week 4: 1. Iran was not an “imminent” threat to the United States: its nuclear program was heavily degraded during the June strikes; it had no ICBM capability to speak of; and Iran’s medium to short-range ballistic missiles we’re only a threat if the U.S. attacked the country. This entire crisis is manufactured. 2. The Strait of Hormuz was always a leverage point for the Iranians. It was Tehran’s biggest card, and it turns out the regime was more than happy to play it if it believed its survival was at stake. Every war game known to man anticipated this, yet the Trump administration was apparently caught flat-footed to the point where it’s now allowing other countries to purchase Iranian oil to help calm the market. This policy change could net the regime another $14 billion, which means we’re now essentially funding the very adversary we’re currently fighting. Either Trump and his advisers don’t read or they’re laughably incompetent. Maybe both. 3. Congress has been pathetic throughout this entire ordeal. Not only has it failed to debate and authorize the war, but the congressional leadership has refused to even schedule open hearings to talk about it. And I’ll remind everybody that the war is almost one-month old. Mike Johnson, John Thune and the chairman of the various national security committees ought to be ashamed of themselves for turning a once-proud institution into a rubber stamp body of useless specimens that can’t even do the most basic thing imaginable: oversight. 4. Trump’s decision to wage war in Iran is now undermining other aspects of his foreign policy. Russia is taking advantage of higher oil prices to fund the war in Ukraine, which makes Trump’s desire to strike a settlement there virtually impossible. China is happy to see the U.S. military bottled up in the Middle East yet again—I’ve lost track of how many U.S. military assets have been re-deployed out of Asia. And because Middle East oil is not a sure thing anymore, China will probably buy more from Russia, further solidifying the relationship between two powers that Trump would like to pull apart (although we can debate whether this would even be possible). 5. Finally, the war exposes just how little we’ve learned as a country. People have short memories. The same public intellectuals and former officials who rooted for the war in Iraq are also rooting for the war in Iran. The same assumptions—the U.S. can will a new Middle East into existence—still hover over U.S. foreign policy like a bad cold.

@ca_mkb @yarotrof Or maybe he's a confused old man with advancing dementia who refuses to listen to advice and too humiliated by his failure to admit that it's time to back off.

As Iran is highly unlikely to comply, in 39 hours we will either have a major escalation of the war, or a major blow to the U.S. deterrence ability.

@CalumDouglas1 @SandyofCthulhu It's just AI slop to get clicks. Garbage like that has made Facebook unusable.

@SandyofCthulhu Why have you written this post, when it is almost entirely made up ? By the way, the video of the syncronisation system of the BF 109 is mostly wrong as well.

The British made “pusher” planes because they didn’t know the forward-firing synchronous mechanism. About 1915 a German Fokker got lost and landed at a British airstrip. The British soldiers took apart the plane and noted the synchronization gear. A British war reporter happened to be there and was excited that Britain would now have that tech. After months and seeing no word of a new British fighter, he asked around. The report on the Fokker’s gear had been stuffed into a filing cabinet &forgotten. The reporter made a stink. “Why isn’t Britain using this gear?!” At first the Air Corps generals tries to cover their failure by saying they didn’t want to violate Fokker’s patent!! But people higher than the Air Corps morons forced them to take it seriously, and in 1916 the Sopwith 1 1/2 strutter came out with forward-firing synchronous guns. Was that the last time a journalist did something worthwhile? Hard to say.

@Event_Based @gbrew24 It makes no sense, therefore it will take the enemy completely by surprise.

@gbrew24 Genuinely why would anyone ever put boots on the ground in Kharg? It’s nowhere near the strait, and capturing export infra solves nothing. The whole thing is ridiculous…

The Marine force being sent to potentially occupy parts of Iran, a country of 90 million people, is approximately the same size as the force used to invade the island of Grenada in 1983.

@teobaldo_smith2 @MalcolmNance There are no maps outside the US, it's all terra nullius and dragons.

@MalcolmNance Dude, you’re gonna kill some MAGAs; maps, especially outside the US, are their kryptonite.

Man. Get a map. I've lived and worked there for over 30 years. The SOH is NORTH of Dubai on the Musandam peninsula. I've camped there looking at the strait. No sand beaches, just rocks. Small. small grottoes of sheer rock. The Iranian side is 3,000 ft cliffs and a narrow coastal road. We were talking about Kharg Island, which is 400 nm northwest. Here. This is for you. Study it.

@s8mb I have some experience of these things. #9. If you are drunk enough and forget to pay your power bill, it's surprising the range of things you can eat uncooked. #8. Hitchhiking is the most fuel efficient way to travel, unless you're one of those bicycle wierdos.

Remember lockdown, when they encouraged people to use public transport and do carpooling?

@AnnCoulter He's been pressing his luck for 10 years, but he got away with it because there was a professional bureaucracy (i.e. "deep state") to fix the problems. That fooled him into thinking he was omnipotent so he fired anyone who disagreed. Now he has a problem that is beyond fixing.

Christopher Caldwell: "Having Donald Trump as President probably resembles being a heroin addict: you undergo regular episodes of sweating terror and mortal danger, the end result of which is to get you – at best – back to normal. ... But now the President has pressed his luck. He has joined Israel in a campaign of aerial assassination and bombardment against Iran ...and has wound up trapped. American air power proved sufficient to kill Iran’s 86-year-old leader and dozens of schoolgirls ..."

@ValerieInsinna @michaeldmarrow @Diana_Stancy Doesn't the UK still have some Blue Circle radars in storage for contingencies like this?

SCOOP: Marine Corps F-35Bs are set to deliver in Lot 17 without radars due to delays with the APG-85. Starting in Lot 18, all F-35s delivered to the U.S. military will be awaiting a radar. With @michaeldmarrow and @Diana_Stancy : breakingdefense.com/2026/03/exclus…

@KeruboSk All the old people who had to go to a library and read books and hand write notes, then type their essay on a manual typewriter.

Millennials are the elite generation because they cranked out 12-page essays the night before they were due. No ChatGPT. No Claude. Just lo-fi beats playing in the background, Black coffee at midnight, footnotes that were somehow correct, and pure delusion. Grade was an A minus. Period.

@phildstewart "One option for securing the Strait of Hormuz includes deploying troops to Iranian shores." Is that what the military people call an "invasion"?

SCOOP!!! Trump administration considering deploying thousands of additional troops to the Middle East as the military prepares options for the possible next phase of the Iran war. One option for securing the Strait of Hormuz includes deploying troops to Iranian shores. w/@idreesali114

@JamesSurowiecki @CynicalPublius To raise a huge banner saying "Mission Accomplished," then have a victory parade with tanks down Pennsylvania Avenue. Perfect plan, only thing holding it back is that the Iranians won't do their part. Nobody could have foreseen that happening.

@CynicalPublius What's the "assigned mission" with regard to Iran?

Why do Democrats always want America’s military to fail in its assigned missions if a Republican is POTUS? I honestly do not understand this mentality.

@lynxfindsdeals Eating less.

People who lost a lot of weight, what was the one small daily habit that actually changed everything for you?

Iran isn’t going to allow normal traffic through the Strait of Hormuz until the U.S. and Israel stop the war—and even then, the flow might not reach pre-war levels. The U.S., in turn, won’t stop the war until it has confidence that Hormuz will be re-opened (among other things). Normally, diplomats would be trying to explore whether a mutually-acceptable arrangement could turn this scenario into a reality. Unfortunately, Iran has been burned by Trump’s diplomacy twice before; Trump seems to favor escalation over a deal; and Israel wants to destroy the regime, not see other countries make deals with it. Where do we go from here?