Double_J

This is objectively extraordinary: x.com/clashreport/st… Jake Sullivan, one of the most senior former U.S. officials, says that the U.S. is in a war aimed solely at destroying Iran, one of humanity's oldest civilizations, against the U.S.'s own interests, at the behest of Israel, a 76-year-old state. Listen to the video: he says that Israel's objective in the war "is just break Iran -cause chaos," basically destroy the country, "because as far as they’re concerned, a broken Iran is less of a threat to Israel." Which he says is not in the US's interests "because a broken Iran means a broken global economy, as they continue to threaten the Straits of Hormuz. It means a potential refugee flow, like we saw after the war in Syria into Europe." He also says the Trump administration cannot answer what their own objective is in the war "because they don't know why they're there in the first place," implying that they're there mainly at the behest of Israel (otherwise they'd be able to articulate at least one reason). The curse of the "former official" strikes again... This is the same Jake Sullivan who, as National Security Advisor, oversaw the unconditional U.S. support for Israel's destruction of Gaza. Apparently breaking a people at the behest of Israel is only bad when a different administration does it...

Zaduo County, Qinghai Province, China 📷

One of the best decisions ever made by Tolkien

A girl in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, is gaining attention online for her detailed anatomical drawings and English explanations.

@Yoda4ever sadly enough the story has an ironic turn, that the dogs were simply attracted by the german sherperd who is a girl😅

Seven dogs stolen from their owners have gone viral after escaping from an illegal transport truck and making their way home. They traveled around 17 km together, led by a corgi across highways and fields, now safely back with their respective owners..🐶🐾🥺❤️

@awesometownz so happy to learn we have one more thing in common, the dinosaurs! been watching jurassic series lately too! (only coz the shades series are maybe too much to watch on treadmill>< )

they're all related #lastfourwatched

@awesometownz Happy birthday!!!! 😊😘👏🎂🍻💖

it's my birthday so i get to make an edit with all my favorit clips (jk i get to do that every single day so there's nothing special)

A farmer watching the Irish Open surrounded by his cows. When people talk about being effortlessly cool, this is who they're talking about.

While most of the attention has been focused on the Carney and Trump speeches at Davos, what China announced is probably even more consequential over the long run: x.com/clashreport/st… Vice Premier He Lifeng spoke about China's determination to become "the world's market" and said that boosting domestic demand was now "on top of [China's] economic agenda," as reflected in its 15th 5-year plan. In other words, China has entered a phase where it expects and aims to replace the U.S. as the world's primary consumer market. Which would be quite a tectonic shift. There's a certain irony there. This has been a key demand by the world, very much including the United States, for many years: we've all heard the repeated calls for China to rebalance its economy towards more consumption in order to reduce its trade surplus. So now - if China achieves this objective (and they generally do) - the world will get exactly what they asked for: China as a consumption powerhouse. But, crucially, it also means that the world's center of economic gravity would shift even further East: if companies worldwide sell more in China than in any other market, they have by definition a much bigger stake than they do today in China's continuous prosperity (much like they've had to date in the US's). That's the irony in the US's position. Trump weaponizes US demand and sees strong U.S. imports as weakness but that's also a key source of US power: if you make people rich from your market, you simultaneously buy a lot of goodwill. Pretty ironical to see U.S. insistence to hand this over to China. China is not stupid. They understand this full well, hence their enthusiasm and commitment to this shift. And in fact, historically speaking, that's the way China has dealt with the world: the expression 朝贡制度 (chaogong zhidu) is typically translated as "tributary system" but that's a horrendously bad translation because we immediately associate this with protection money, with countries "paying tribute" and submitting to a form of extraction. The system was in fact the exact opposite: countries were actually enthusiastic to be part of it because entering the Chaogong System was a ticket to trade with China, it bought you access to the Chinese market and to prosperity. In fact, as scholar Takeshi Hamashita showed (thefreelibrary.com/Takeshi+Hamash…), when in 1839 Chinese Emperor Daoguang attempted to reduce the frequency of tribute missions to reduce expenses associated with tributary trade, tributary states such as Ryukyu protested this change, citing the economic benefit to them. In a sense not this dissimilar to Trump's attempts to reduce US imports today. I'm not saying, of course, that He Lifeng announced that China is restarting the Chaogong System - for one thing, this is just open commerce, not a formal diplomatic arrangement - but effectively what you have is the world is asking China for access to prosperity through the Chinese market, and China is happily obliging. And according to Trump, this would mean the U.S. not being "taken advantage of" anymore. In a sense, everybody gets what they want... Full He Lifeng speech here: weforum.org/stories/2026/0…

China defeated Vietnam 3–0 last night to secure a place in the AFC U23 Final against Japan. Many people are stunned by China’s sudden rise within the AFC, but I’m not. This moment is the culmination of reforms that began back in 2010, when I first started working with the Chinese Football Association. It’s a clear example of how most observers struggle to truly understand or analyze a country’s long-term strategy, what works, what doesn’t, and why. Over the past 16 years, ever since I began my work in Chinese football, I’ve been asked the same question: When will we start to see results? My answer has always been the same, patience. This is a marathon, not a sprint. An enormous amount of work went into building youth development systems across China, much of which the outside world will never see. I was fortunate to be given significant freedom to help design strategies that I knew would be effective, even though they would take many years to bear fruit. Much of this journey has been well documented, and I’ll attempt to tell the story over the coming weeks, starting from the very beginning in 2010.

Don’t decrease the goal. Increase the effort! #stepbystep #neverstop #strongerthanever #mm17🌪

O Christmas tree, o cosmic tree 🎄 Located about 2,500 light-years from Earth, NGC 2264 is a cluster of young stars between one and five million years old. The stars appear as blue and white lights surrounded by swirls of gas—the “pine needles” of the tree—with green representing light in the visible spectrum. Learn more:go.nasa.gov/3MN1xdX

happy holidays, everyone! feliz natal :)

@_garrettcharles literally shut the fuck up

We need Disney to make a full movie with all the characters.

very quick and simple lunchtime mixtape edit of andy samberg in a bunch of zoom interviews cause he was always doing some shit and/or looking cute

Seals sleep in the water as well as on land. Because they are sleeping and not actively swimming, they can stay under water much longer than when hunting for food (which is on average about 30 minutes). This aquarium time lapse shows their behavior.

A hug from daddy was just what Elmo needed.❤️

@elonmuskTN 37 coz...why not