Phil

Pigs don't just feel fear themselves. They also feel the fear of other pigs — and try to comfort them. In one study, pigs watching another pig in distress first showed fear themselves and then tried to comfort the distressed pig through snout-to-snout contact. Pigs who'd previously endured the same ordeal reacted even more intensely — they seemed to recognize what the distressed pig was going through. (Goumon & Špinka, 2016.) On factory farms, pigs trapped in gestation crates aren't just feeling afraid themselves. They're feeling the fear of all the other pigs around them. But the crate's iron bars stop them from even turning toward their fellow pigs — let alone comforting them with their snout.

@matthewstoller Supposedly this was more of a norm decades ago? It barely seems to happen anymore...

Good. Resigning over policy disagreements is an important way to retain credibility.

One family, the right-wing Trump-aligned Ellisons, will soon control: TikTok CBS CNN HBO Discovery Channel BET Cartoon Network Comedy Central DC Studios Fandango Miramax MTV Nickelodeon Paramount PlutoTV Showtime TBS The CW TNT Warner Bros. And more This is oligarchy.

I've been getting real into history in the past few years, and have been real humbled at how many incorrect assumptions I held. 1. I sort of assumed people in the past had more freedom from their governments, but they absolutely did not. The people with the guns consistently oppressed people without, basically as much as they could get away with. 2. Democracy is an insane invention. It feels sort of default or obvious now, and I sort of assumed that... people in the past all kinda wanted something like democracy but were oppressed by their monarchs, but this is not the case. Much of the time, calls for democracy were radical, even among the suffering unrepresented lower classes. If you went back in time and said "every man should have the right to vote" people would go 'whoah there are you insane? that would absolutely destroy civilization!' 3. Most big moves to make things better were way less radical than you think. People would get very mad at the king for being terrible, but instead pushing to overthrow the king, would just... want the king to sign a nice constitutional document or something. Progress was mostly made in smaller increments; people generally did *not* think big at all. And even when radical moves did happen, people just sorta quietly waited until everything died down and reverted them. Like, you know how they guillotined the King and Queen in the French Revolution? Well basically as soon as it all died down (and uh, post napoleon) they just put the monarchy back on the throne and continued onwards as usual. It took like another four revolutions and almost a century to actually get to a stable republic. 4. Things were local. Today I have a concept of large cause areas like 'the environment' or 'war crimes on the other side of the world', but in general, pushes for change were extremely local. People really do not see beyond what will benefit them and their own communities. The entire 'working class' would ostensibly want the same rights and seem to united, except the artisan class would dump the farmers the instant it was convenient, etc. Like, at one point one of the lead slaves of the Haitian revolution, who helped start the whole thing and led an army, tried to sell his fellow slave fighters back into slavery in exchange for getting special treatment from the rulers. 5. The US revolution was way derpier than I thought, but also way more impressive compared to how derpier everything else was. the US is actually an extremely special and anomalous thing in history, and "selecting for intense high-risk people away from the control of established governments" was a magic spark that almost never happens. The key people somehow seemed more intelligent and principled than most other people in history who ended up in decisionmaker chairs. 6. Sometimes history feels inevitable, like someone would have filled the role of 'conservative chancellor' vs 'charismatic revolutionary' no matter what, but it really struck me how much history occasionally just got curbstomped into a different dimension by individual people or random happenstance. Like, assassinations (Aurelian, Caesar), powerful people suddenly becoming mentally ill (Robespierre), and just crazy high powered superpeople (Napoleon, Alexander the Great). 7. The mobs and common people are often very stupid. They get paranoid, they believe completely ridiculous conspiracies that were obviously not true if you thoguht for two seconds, they misinterpret normal facts as evidence the ruling class is evil. e.g. at one point a mob was tryin to send representatives to the king with a petition, then they saw the doors getting locked, and flipped their absolute shit. But - the doors got locked at that same time every day, it was routine and had nothing to do with their representative, but the mob didn't care, didn't stop to think critically, and just exploded. 8. Mobs are really hard to predict. Things happen fast, tensions are high, and they might switch their allegiance, suddenly become violent, or just get tired and disperse. It's super high variance. 9. You can just abuse the people you rule over for a really long time. I sorta thought you had to be careful with how poorly you treat your peasants or they'd revolt, but revolts are kinda uncommon? and the common people can just absorb a shockingly high amount of mistreatment. Probably this is happens during slow boils - the taxes are raised very slowly, the regulatory policies are a gradual squeeze. Cruelty does actually pay off sometimes. You can terrorize a populace sustainably. 10. There was often a tension between freedom and order. Lots of people justified tightening the hand of the rulers by spreading fear about lack of order. Sure, man should be free - but obviously not free enough to cause chaos by failing to respect the law, or social propriety, or those above him, obviously. 11. Competent people often didn't last long in positions of power, because their competence threatened people around them. If a general started winning too many battles and getting too much love from his army, then the rulers back home would start getting antsy and worrying about a coup. This was justified, because powerful, well-loved generals did in fact tend to do a lot of coups. 12. Militaries were not aligned with their governments, often. In the US the concept of the military acting independent of our government is pretty foreign, but much of history was plagued by the armies going rogue, doing their own assassinations of rulers, putting their own guys on thrones, etc. And sometimes oppression of the common people was downstream of rulers having to basically bribe their armies to let them stay in power. 13. I was surprised by how much monarchies were not dictatorships. I'd assumed that kings basically could tell people to do whatever and those people would have to do it (and sometimes this was the case), but often the king would have to get the support of key influential people beneath him, and sometimes follow laws to do this. Like the english revolution in the 1600's iirc had the king repeatedly trying to follow laws to raise tax and the influential people refusing to vote to allow him to raise the tax, and the king got really huffy. 14. Absolute power really, really does corrupt. People in power often forgot their past allegiances and lost moral compunctions after attaining power. They tend to go to extreme lengths to hold onto that power, and often would rather die than give up that power. Most people's kindness is actually just a cope for weakness. 15. But every once in a while, you do find the rare person who lets power go voluntarily; e.g. George Washington, or Diocletian who resigned his emperorship and then retired to grow cabbages. 16. The common people often would get shafted on economic policy, they'd suffer, and then would often make very stupid demands that would not solve their suffering whatsoever. To be clear, the ruling class did also pass stupid economic policy, but my point is that suffering underneath the consequences did not necessarily give people better insight into what economic policy would be better. 17. Humans intentionally operating selflessly at large scales is basically not a thing. History is just what happens when each piece on the chessboard fends for itself. Sometimes a piece can do it more cleverly, in a way that appears to coordinate with others, but it will abandon that coordination as soon as it's no longer useful. The punishment for failing to jump off a sinking ship is usually death. 18. Everything is so, so complicated. Basically no single ideology value set today really feels like it would cleanly be the right option to take in the past in all cases. For almost every value you hold, you can find instances in the past where holding that value would have gotten you and everyone you loved killed.

@RichCimini Gee, I wonder why accountability has been a problem for this franchise @woodyjohnson4

This is a win for Woody Johnson. You may recall that Johnson, panned by his players in the 2024 report card, said the NFLPA report cards are "totally bogus."

@FacherTorte @lthomasnews Same for Germany. In 2025 PFL was on Dazn here but it does not show up there any more since the new year began. It was only a couple of days ago they bothered to update that info on the pfl website. In January they still showed Dazn as the way to watch in Germany.

@lthomasnews Same here

Incredible

@PFLMMA @espnmma @PFLEurope Is this actually gonna be on @DAZN_DE in Germany? Since the new year pfl does not show up there anymore.

PFL Dubai is going to bring fireworks 🤌🧨 Your fight card set to go down in Dubai this Saturday, February 7th! #RoadToDubai | Saturday, February 7th | Dubai, UAE | Prelims 9AM EST | Main Card 12PM EST | 📺Streaming on the ESPN App

@sharmaaaryaman7 @arielhelwani @heynottheface is the one who does most of the real reporting on the numbers afaik. There are plenty of others who talk about it besides Ariel. Ofc the 'influencer' crowd doesn't.

@arielhelwani It’s hilarious you’re the only reporter who speaks about this and has been for a long time yet the fighters think you’re “instigating”. It really has to be CTE, how do they not see their pants being pulled in broad daylight.

At some point, I wonder if the fighters and their representatives will realize that they’re being treated like major league athletes. However, they get none of the benefits that those major league athletes get. They’re on the same level when it comes to rights deals and sponsorships and all that stuff, and they’re getting 0% of it. Mind-boggling. You can’t just sit here and listen to all of this and be like, “Yep. OK. That’s cool.”

@lthomasnews Will there not be a @morningkombat pre-game preview?

🚨The fights are BACK and it's live chat day!🚨 We're previewing UFC 324, looking at Zuffa Boxing and talking whatever is on your mind. We go live at 3pm ET. Join us! (link for stream in next tweet 👇👇👇)

Blut & Öl In einer einzigen Woche bittet man Sie da draußen an den Geräten, Folgendes zu glauben: In Venezuela muss der Staatsführer gestürzt werden, weil er ein Diktator ist, während der Sohn eines Diktators im Iran an die Macht gebracht werden muss, und die Herrschaftsverhältnisse über Grönland sich grundlegend verändern werden, ohne dass auch nur ein einziger der Diktatur verdächtiger Akteur im Spiel gewesen sein soll. Stimmungsgebende Medien halten es für machbar, Ihnen diese widersprüchlichen Standpunkte gleichzeitig zu servieren - in der Annahme, Sie würden nicht bemerken, dass hier weder „Demokratie“ noch „Freiheit“, sondern blanker Imperialismus verteidigt wird. Fragen Sie nicht, warum dieselben, die in der EU immer FÜR das Tragen von Hijabs eintraten, im Iran mit Vehemenz dagegen sind. Fragen Sie nicht, warum dieselben, denen Leben und Sterben von Libanesen, Syrern, Kurden, Drusen, Alawiten & Palästinensern nie eine Zeile wert waren, über Nacht ein drängendes Mitgefühl für Bewohner Westasiens entdecken. Und fragen Sie erst recht nicht, wie es möglich sein kann, dass dieselben, die systematisch Grundrechte & demokratische Freiheiten in der EU einschränken, andernorts als idealistische Humanisten für Rechte auftreten, die sie in ihren eigenen „Demokratien“ und gegenüber ihren eigenen Bürgern nicht die Bohne zu achten pflegen. Im Wortgebrauch George Orwells nennt man so etwas „Kohärenz“, logische Folgerichtigkeit. Ebenso kohärent ist das plötzliche Aufflammen der medialen Begeisterung für einen iranischen Klonprinzen, der (genauso gut) der politischen Erblinie von Franco, Pinochet oder Mussolini entstammen könnte, und der weit weniger von den iranischen Bürgern selbst als von Trump & Netanjahu, CIA & Mossad dafür ausgewählt wurde, das nunmehr dritte pseudomonarchisch-pseudodemokratische Marionettenregime im Iran anzuführen. Britisch-amerikanischen Kolonialausbeutern lag die Demokratie im Iran schon immer so sehr am Herzen, dass sie seit über 100 Jahren daran arbeiten, sie aufs Gründlichste zu ruinieren. 1921 hatten die Briten den ehem. Kommandeur der persischen Kosakenbrigade Reza Khan erfolgreich „auf den Thron“ gesetzt, der der britischen „Anglo-Persian Oil Company“ den gewünschten Zugriff auf die lokalen Ölvorkommen sicherte. Als der (demokratisch!) gewählte Premierminister Mohammad Mossadegh 1951 beschloss, die iranischen Ölreserven zu verstaatlichen und den Briten die mittlerweile als „Anglo-Iranian Oil Company“ firmierende Gewinnschleuder durch Enteignung aus der Hand zu schlagen, wurde er vom gefeierten „Man of the Year“ des Time-Magazines (der Churchill & Eisenhower geschlagen hatte) über Nacht zum Paria. Nach der Wahl Eisenhowers konnte der (wie heute) großmäulige, aber impotente britische Geheimdienst, der sich den Coup allein nicht zutraute, die CIA zum Mitmachen bewegen. In der von Kermit Roosevelt (kein Witz!) geleiteten „Operation Ajax“ (auch kein Witz!) wurde Mossadegh 1953 gestürzt und durch den Vater des jetzigen Erbklonprinzen ersetzt: Erbdiktator Reza Shah Pahlavi, der die berüchtigte Geheimpolizei SAVAK, Foltergefängnisse, Repression (und den Jubel seiner Jubelperser) zu Hilfe nahm, um sich selbst die Macht und den anglophonen Profithaien den Zugang zum iranischen Öl zu sichern. (Der Besuch desselben Schahs in Berlin gab 1967 übrigens zur Ermordung Benno Ohnesorgs und dem weiteren Fortgang der bundesdeutschen Geschichte Anlass, aber lassen wir das hier.) Die Briten benannten ihren Laden in eine „ökologisch verantwortungsvolle“ Tankstellenkette namens „BP“ um und mussten den US-Amerikanern (als Gegenleistung fürs erfolgreiche Putschieren) fortan die Hälfte ihres Profitanteils abgeben. In den folgenden 25 Jahren teilten sich die beteiligten Mafias die im Iran gemachte Beute: 40% für BP, 40% für US-Ölmuftis, 20% für den Schah. Der heutige Iran und seine heutige Regierung gingen aus einer Revolution hervor, die die nach Anstiftung Grobbritanniens von den USA eingesetzte Schahdiktatur beseitigen wollte. Im jetzigen „Mullahregime“ sieht „der Westen“ also dem vorläufigen Endergebnis seiner eigenen Völkerrechtsverletzung ins Gesicht, seiner illegalen Einmischungen, brutalen Regime-Change-Operationen & kurzsichtigen Coups. Werte, Kohärenz, so wichtig. Ebenso wichtig und kohärent wie die neueste Ausgabe des „Werteleitfadens für (ahnungslose) Kommissionspräsidentinnen“, das den für die Nachfahren von Kolonisatoren ja immer noch etwas unübersichtlichen „Nahen Osten“ endlich einmal übersichtlich ordnet. Demokratisch NICHT legitimierte autoritäre Regime, die „wir“ unterstützen: - Saudi-Barbarien - Katarrh (inkl. des dazugehörigen Gates, s. Korruption EU-Parlament) - Bar-rein - Onan - Vereinigte Arabische Autokrate - Jordanien (EU-Gelder für „Sicherheit“ & „wirtschaftliche Resilienz“: 3 Mrd.) - IS-Syrien (EU-Gelder für „Wiederaufbau“: 630 Mio.) Demokratisch legitimierte autoritäre Regime, die „wir“ NICHT unterstützen: - Iran Sie sehen: Wenn die USA & ihre Verbündeten die Welt beschreiben, bezeichnet „Diktator“ immer den Akteur, der den westlichen Wirtschafts- und Machtinteressen seine Unterordnung verweigert, weswegen die Bezeichnung auch nie auf Militärjuntas, Autokraten, Hasardeure, Schlächter, theokratische oder sonstige Spinner angewendet wird, die mit Washington „verbündet“ sind. Wertekarneval, Diktatorenpolonäääse! Fragen Sie bloß nicht nach Kohärenz. Und falls Sie wissen wollen, warum Ihre politischen Vertreter sich seit Jahrzehnten immer nur für Volksaufstände erwärmen können, die nicht gegen sie selbst gerichtet sind, aber nie für frz. Gelbwesten, polnische Bauern, belgische Rentner, Arme in der gesamten EU, Pazifisten, dann lassen Sie es sich von einem, der es gewusst haben muss, mal unverbindlich in Erinnerung rufen: „Das bestehende parlamentarische System ist unbrauchbar. Wir haben in unserem Parlament keine Repräsentanten, die die Interessen unserer Bevölkerung – die wirklichen Interessen unserer Bevölkerung – ausdrücken." Rudi Dutschke

@zombiemanjay @lthomasnews @paramountplus @DaznDe please add this/bitte Ton ohne Kommentar anbieten

Paramount + you know what needs to be done…

@lthomasnews I also love how the new 'NextGen' train still has usb-a connector plugs which virtually no one uses any more opposed to USB-c 😄

The new seats don't recline and are also noticeably less comfortable, but that's not the point. There's a delay *BARE MINIMUM* 1 out of every 3 rides I take and usually it's closer to 1 out of 2. Until that changes, better outlets to plug in my phone don't really mean much.

As I write this, we're idling in one of these @Amtrak trains at a stop because there's a door malfunction. Let me tell you the truth about them: minor improvements as you see below are real, but these trains are no faster nor any more reliable than the ones they replaced.

@NorthWeymo @funkmasterMMA Sure, just not to determine Ilia's next opponent, but the one after Arman.

@funkmasterMMA I speak for everyone when I say, we want to see Gaethje vs Paddy

It’s 110% not what it used to be. I ride for the company but this shit is beyond frustrating! I get their POV, but stop saying we give the fans the fights that they want to see and we make the BEST fight the BEST! It’s way more frequent now and extremely hard to ignore. Especially at your weight class.

@Jason_OTC @ArmandoSalguero @1053thefan I'd guess he's lying to try and make himself look better. 'I would have given up Parsons and a 1 for Williams. Now I got Williams + picks for Parsons. I am great, huh?!' Meanwhile trading Parsons for Williams straight up would be a bad deal 😅

@ArmandoSalguero @1053thefan If that was actually offered to the jets they were crazy to not take it. Had the cap room. Not sure if they had the budget to extend

Jerry Jones tells @1053thefan in Dallas he offered Micah Parsons and a 1st-round pick to the Jets for Quinnen Williams during camp. Jets declined because, Jones says, they didn’t have cap space for Parsons. Jets ended up trading Williams to Dallas at the trade deadline.

@aaronbronsteter Come on Aaron, Arman told us he is rdy for the first card of 2026.

Instant reaction: 👊 Gaethje vs. Pimblett 👊 Harrison vs. Nunes 👊 Volkanovski vs. Lopes And more!

@lthomasnews @ZoreanKombie Come on Luke, that was a good one 😄

@ZoreanKombie Increase pay.

This is literally the easiest problem in the world for the UFC to solve.

@ndreasMueller @mma_orbit @BYMPod It will initially. But if they do it correctly fighters will adjust since they don't want to lose points. Looong overdue. Also, see arguments made by the likes of @JimMiller_155 @MarvinVettori

@mma_orbit @BYMPod I wonder if there’s a way to penalize before taking an entire point. It seems like that kind of severe penalty could get out of hand as well?

🚨| Herb Dean reveals that MMA officials have agreed to enforce immediate point deductions for fighters who extend their fingers toward opponents. While the rule has been in place for years, many referees have admitted to being lenient in enforcing it. 🎥 @BYMPod

@seeejayyy07 @aaronbronsteter They are always wrong. Don't do that.

@aaronbronsteter Was going off live fight stats

20-18 Imavov after two. He's been a step ahead. Caio has some success when he ups his pace and output, but at a slower pace, Imavov has been a calculated killer.

@lthomasnews @Avid_MMA_Fan Yes! These agreements were in the BE articles. This pay does not show up in the payouts published by the commissions! There is no conspiracy here. A good recent example is Islams commission reported payout which was so low that he most likely has such an agreement.@heynottheface

@PhilKln @Avid_MMA_Fan Guys, you do know all of this is covered exhaustively in detail in the class action lawsuit, yes?

I guess we’re going to do yet another media cycle of media accepting pay has gone up without asking whether the percentage of total revenue fighters obtain has gone up.

@lthomasnews @Avid_MMA_Fan There is a middle ground here, Luke. Because as you know, there are these side letter agreements where guys get/got paid a whole lot more than what I says/said on the official commission payout. Ofc this is documented pay, but not seen by the public. Love your work!

@Avid_MMA_Fan Bless your heart.