Mark Cutis

@highbrow_nobrow @Frances_Coppola @Acyn Everybody upset in comments below, just because the president is lying. So what else is new? No news here. My favorite is actually the people who are nodding and grinning in agreement. The proverbial boot lickers continue to fascinate.

@PeterAl40121873 @ihtesham2005 That’s it to a “ t”!!

@markcutis @ihtesham2005 'I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one.'

A Harvard professor who has written 9 books and spent 40 years studying how language works inside the human brain just gave the most important writing masterclass I've ever seen. Here's what he said that broke my entire understanding of writing. Steven Pinker, the professor, opened with a single question: why is so much writing terrible? Not just academic writing, but corporate writing, government writing, and even most blog posts. His answer had nothing to do with effort or intelligence. He called it the Curse of Knowledge. The moment you understand something deeply, you lose the ability to remember what it felt like not to know it. You stop seeing your own blind spots because the blind spots feel like common ground. He watched a brilliant molecular biologist destroy a room of 400 people at a TED event. The man launched straight into jargon without ever explaining the problem he was solving or why anyone should care. The biologist had no idea it was happening. That's the curse. Then he said something I haven't stopped thinking about. Bad writing is not a character flaw. It's a failure of empathy. You cannot get inside your reader's head by trying harder. You have to actually find a real human being and watch them read your words in real time. He showed his drafts to his mother. Not because she was unsophisticated, but because she wasn't a cognitive psychologist. She was smart, well-read, and completely outside his world. When she lost the thread, he knew something was wrong. The second thing he said changed how I think about every sentence I write. Language is a delivery system, not the destination. What your reader actually understands is not the words. It is the image, the sensation, the concrete thing those words are supposed to summon. If your reader cannot picture it, they have not understood it. He asked: what is a paradigm? What does a framework look like? What color is a concept? Nobody could answer. Because abstractions produce nothing in the mind's eye. The writers from two centuries ago who still feel alive today were forced to think visually because they had no abstractions to hide behind. They had to say the spirit of the hawk tore into our flesh instead of aggression. The image did the work that the jargon could not. The third thing he said was the one most people ignore completely. Brevity is not about word count. It is about removing every word that makes the reader work harder without rewarding them for it. He quoted a line he had memorized for 40 years: omit needless words. Three words. An instruction that is also an example of itself. He said the best thing that ever happened to his writing was editors who gave him an 800-word limit and wouldn't budge. The constraint always improved the piece. Always. The curse of knowledge is real. The fix is simple and most people never do it. Find one person outside your world. Show them what you wrote. Watch their face, not the page.

Einstein’s inability to secure a university position after graduating from ETH Zurich in 1900 led him to a relatively obscure job at the Swiss Patent Office. Far from the pressures and rigid expectations of academia, this role gave him the time and mental freedom to deeply explore his ideas. It was there, in 1905, that he developed the Special Theory of Relativity;fundamentally transforming our understanding of space, time, and physics. This is a classic example of how an apparent setback can become a hidden advantage. As the saying goes, “Everything happens for a reason.” Steve Jobs captured a similar idea perfectly: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”

At the ETH Zurich, Albert Einstein was far from the ideal student admired by professors. He often skipped lectures, challenged authority, and preferred to explore ideas on his own terms. Meanwhile, his close friend Marcel Grossmann played a quiet but crucial role. His carefully organized notes became Einstein’s lifeline, helping him stay strong in mathematics without attending every class. Contrary to popular belief, Einstein did not fail academically. He graduated in 1900 with solid results in physics and mathematics. However, academic success alone was not enough. His lack of interest in experimental work and his strained relationships with professors, especially Heinrich Weber, meant he did not receive the recommendations needed for a university position. As a result, Einstein found himself outside the academic world, working at the Swiss Patent Office. What seemed like a setback became an unexpected advantage. In that quiet environment, away from rigid academic expectations, he gained the freedom to think deeply. It was there, in relative isolation, that Einstein began developing the ideas that would later become the Special Theory of Relativity, changing our understanding of space and time forever.

Looks like we’re rediscovering old adages, and now cloaking them with science, which admittedly makes them more compelling. You recall the phrase “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger“. Basically same story here: adversity builds resilience, but sometimes kills you. So if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger, cut and dry.

Joe Rogan asked David Sinclair: If one meal a day is so effective, why not just eat smaller meals multiple times instead? Sinclair’s answer cuts deep: Our bodies evolved over millions of years in environments full of adversity — hunger, scarcity, survival. We’ve removed that stress because it feels good, but we actually need it. When you fast, even briefly, your body flips on “adversity response” genes — what Sinclair calls longevity genes. These ramp up repair, resilience, and disease defense. Eat constantly (breakfast as the “most important meal,” snacks all day), and your body thinks: “I just killed a mammoth. No threats here. Time to reproduce, not invest in long-term survival.” Constant eating signals safety. Periodic hunger signals: fight harder, repair better, age slower. A concise, science-backed reminder that comfort might be quietly working against us. What part of this evolutionary perspective on fasting and longevity hits you hardest — the role of hormesis/adversity, or how modern eating habits might be quietly undermining resilience?

@thehill This is tragic, but tells the story. No personal accountability. President made a decision and now his camp followers are trying to walk back what they know was a devastating error of judgment. Truman used to say, “the buck stops here”. Not with the MAGA crowd.

Megyn Kelly targets Trump allies for ‘pushing’ US into Iran conflict thehill.com/homenews/media…

If this were a frugal administration, that wanted to save money by cutting on what they consider scientific frills, maybe all would be understandable. But in practice, they’ve spent and spent and spent, just on different priorities.

Regime change in Iran. Or regime change in USA. More than 7 million protest against Trump.

Useful reminder at a time when misinformation is the order of the day. Totally unnecessary, as most everything can be fact checked easily by Grok. So Mohammad Mossadegh was deposed by the British in a coup d’état , but was not democratically elected leader of Iran. He was appointed by the Shah.

Amazing! What a world we live in.Who would’ve thought psychedelics are useful for more than just seeing all the stars in universe. Looks like Psilocybin is a more effective cure to see smoking other fixes.

Blaming Israel misses the point, or worse, becomes a convenient way to absolve the person who made the call. Trump was drawn to the illusion of a quick win, despite clear signals this would be anything but. Iran is not a marginal actor, it is a 4,000 year old civilization with depth, patience, and asymmetric capability, and that was either ignored or discounted. Add to that a weak advisory environment, including figures like Pete Hegseth, that failed to challenge assumptions, and outcome becomes predictable. This was not a trap set by others, it was a self inflicted strategic error driven by overconfidence, short term thinking, and a fundamental misreading of the adversary. An American tragedy that will affect many, and in time will ricochet back onto the Republic itself.

“Before the war, Bibi really sold it to the president as being easy, as regime change being a lot likelier than it was. And the VP was clear-eyed about some of those statements.” That is a US official speaking to Axios about a phone call between Vice President JD Vance and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. The call was tense. Vance confronted Netanyahu directly over predictions that had not materialised after 28 days of war. No popular uprising. No regime collapse. The hardliners tightened their grip after Khamenei’s killing. The war Netanyahu said would be easy has consumed 11,000 targets, 300 wounded Americans, 13 dead, an AWACS on the ground, a carrier in Croatia, and Swiss accounts raided for interceptors. The day after the call, a right-wing Israeli newspaper owned by GOP mega-donor Miriam Adelson published a story claiming Vance had yelled at Netanyahu over settler violence. Multiple sources told Axios the story was false. Vance’s advisers believe it was planted by Israel to undermine him. A US official said: “It’s an Israeli op against JD.” This is the most dangerous moment in the US-Israel relationship since the war began. Not because the alliance is breaking. Because the man who opposed this war before it started is now the only person positioned to end it. Axios reports that Trump made Vance’s role official in a Cabinet meeting on Thursday, asking the VP to give an update on Iran and noting he was working alongside Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on negotiations. A senior administration official told Axios: “If the Iranians can’t strike a deal with Vance, they don’t get a deal. He’s the best they’re gonna get.” Vance is an Iraq War veteran who has publicly opposed open-ended Middle Eastern conflicts for years. Before the war began, he was one of the most sceptical members of Trump’s administration, expressing concern about the war’s length, goals, and impact on US munitions per Axios citing US sources. He met Wednesday with senior Emirati officials and Thursday with the Prime Minister of Qatar. Both meetings focused on the war, Iran talks, and military assistance. He has been “extensively involved” in diplomacy with Iran both before the war and in recent days per a US official. Here is what the structural arithmetic reveals. Vance is the intersection of three forces that nobody else occupies simultaneously. He is the VP of a president who launched the war. He is a veteran who opposed the doctrine that produced it. And he is the designated negotiator for a deal that Iran has so far refused. The Iranians rejected the 15-point ceasefire proposal. Pakistan is mediating without result. The April 6 deadline is eight days away. And the only American official Iran might accept as a counterpart is the one whose own allies are trying to undermine. The war that was sold as easy has produced the opposite of every prediction. No uprising. No collapse. No quick exit. Instead it produced a three-star general telling 35,000 reservists to pack desert gear. A carrier pulled out by a laundry fire. Fertilizer plants shut across South Asia. Russian satellites photographing American bases for Iranian targeting. And a vice president sitting in the middle of it all, trying to find the off-ramp that the man who started the war promised would not be necessary. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

While some are dying others play the wheel of fortune with odds stacked in their favor. haaretz.com/israel-news/is….

Again, and again it’s the same story. Stay away from seed oils. Once you ingest them in your body, they have a half life of 2 1/2 years.

“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” – Brennan Manning

The Ukrainians aced learning how to use Patriot missiles. Is it surprising!? They are defending homeland. Armies fight battles, but people defending what is theirs fight wars differently.

@highbrow_nobrow @Frances_Coppola @Acyn Everybody upset in comments below, just because the president is lying. So what else is new? No news here. My favorite is actually the people who are nodding and grinning in agreement. The proverbial boot lickers continue to fascinate.

Trump on 9/11 attacks: “You know I wrote about Bin Laden one year before the World Trade Center. If they would’ve listened to me, they wouldn’t have the World Trade Center tragedy. I predicted Bin Laden. Did you know that?” Fact-check: False. @Acyn (2026)

@Jason___YYC @Kathleen_Tyson_ That’s a highly contentious comment. Do you have a shred of proof? If you did, would be ground breaking. Otherwise it’s a fabricated story to elicit an emotional reaction.

Americans literally told Cuba they would not allow oil to go to Cuban hospitals to keep their power on unless they privatized them with American companies There isn’t a grave deep enough for these fuckers

La bella Italia

@TIME Jesus how bad is that. How much more insensitive can our draconian system become?

An Iranian gay couple seeking asylum in the U.S. now faces deportation back to Iran as immigration policies tighten and deportation flights resume, despite fears of persecution and death time.com/article/2026/0…

Resetting, my reminding the cells, their original function, apparently restarts the aging clock. Basically what they’re saying, you can reverse aging and conquer all the diseases that have afflicted humanity. Even if it’s half true, that’s “big stuff”!

MAGA crowd now competing for God’s favor with Iranian Mullahs and Orthodox Jews( Haredim). Reminds one of the Germans in WWI who went to battle saying Gott mit Uns. Jokes aside, have we forgotten separation enshrined in Constitution between church and state? And can’t the Shia turn this into a religious contest with an Army that sounds like Crusaders?