Author: Heart of Dryness. Founder: https://xitter.cf/t.co/NCV6vXNC20. Pioneers decentralized solutions to scarce water & resource depletion via proven conservation markets.
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Jamie Workman retweeted
American Morality
jonathanpie.com/londonlive/
Jamie Workman retweeted
WE COUNT THE ENEMIES WE KILL. WE RARELY COUNT THE ONES WE CREATE.
Nidal Hasan was a patient on my floor in the surgical trauma ICU at Brooke Army Medical Center.
I wasn't there when he arrived. I had just left for my deployment to Mosul, Iraq. But the nurses and doctors who cared for him were my peers and my friends, and I know exactly what that required of them, because every one of us had done some version of it before. Before anyone tells me what strength looks like, understand what that work demands.
I have cared for a drunk driver who wiped out an entire family and landed in our ICU himself. I have cared for gang members who shot up a block while children were stepping off a school bus, then ended up on our unit with bullets of their own. I have kept alive people who murdered their own families and failed at taking their own lives. And in Iraq, I saved the lives of the very enemy fighters who had just tried to kill us and miraculously survived our response.
Every one of those patients got our best. Not because we felt anything for them, but because of who we were. You set aside anger, grief, prejudice and every personal feeling you have, because a life in front of you is a life in front of you. That's the oath. That's the duty.
So when Hasan came through those doors, my colleagues did what we had always done. They preserved the life of a man who murdered thirteen people and would have killed them too, given the chance. He killed those men and women in one of the very same buildings many Soldier's like myself have been in when I was stationed at Fort Hood.
He is alive today because they did their jobs. That was not sentiment. It was a hard, tangible expression of the values this country claims to stand for. Our principles had to mean something even when the person benefiting from them had violated everything we believed in.
Now the Pentagon plans to livestream his execution by firing squad on Dec. 3, and our leaders apparently believe turning his death into a public spectacle will demonstrate American strength. I think it demonstrates how little they understand the enemy they claim to be fighting. We kept Nidal Hasan alive, now our leaders want to make him a martyr.
Hasan walked into Fort Hood expecting to die. He believed his death would be rewarded. At his trial, he called no witnesses and offered no defense, and his own court-appointed lawyers worried he was seeking execution. He failed at martyrdom once. Now we're about to hand it to him, in high definition, for every extremist with an internet connection to replay, manipulate and celebrate.
We supply the footage. They supply the meaning.
Long after the politicians finish congratulating themselves, that video will still exist. Their moment of bravado becomes somebody else's recruiting material for decades. And this failure to think past the immediate display of power reaches far beyond one execution. We count the enemies we kill. We rarely count the enemies we create.
Look at the school in Minab, Iran, where multiple investigations attributed the strike that killed more than 100 children and their teachers to us. You cannot bury people's children beneath the rubble of their classrooms and expect a speech about American intentions to decide how they remember you. No denial brings those children home. No claim of good intentions makes their parents forget whose weapons killed them.
If those were our children, we would remember for the rest of our lives. We would demand accountability. Many of us would want vengeance. We would tell their stories to the next generation. We know this because we did exactly that after September 11.
Why do we imagine other people love their children less, grieve less deeply, or remember less clearly?
We have developed a horrifying talent for creating more terrorists than we will ever stop. We inflict suffering, evade responsibility, and then act as though the anger that follows came out of nowhere.
Think back to the first time you saw one of those al Qaeda videos of an American being beheaded. Remember the sickness in your stomach. Remember the rage. Remember thinking that only savages would film a killing and send it out for the world to watch. Now ask yourself what the rest of the world will see when the camera is ours.
Terrorist organizations stage executions for the cameras. Authoritarian regimes make death a public spectacle to feed fear and rage. Watching our own leaders reach for those same tools should force us to confront how much of ourselves we are surrendering in the name of defeating them.
The line separating us from the people we condemn has to live in our conduct. A flag cannot hold it for us. Neither can a uniform, a title, or a declaration that we are the good guys.
On that ICU floor, on a bloody street in Mosul, and in trauma bays across this country, people like my colleagues hold that line every day under circumstances most will never face. They keep monsters alive because their duty and their humanity are bigger than their hatred of what those monsters have done.
Execute him if that's the sentence. But do it the way a confident nation does; quietly, lawfully, and without giving him the stage he always wanted. Let him be forgotten.
I expect our leaders to show at least as much discipline as the nurses who had to care for him.
They keep telling us they are defending what makes America different. Every day, they make that difference harder to see.
Robert W. Burns III is the editor and publisher of The Space Coast Rocket, an Army veteran and a retired trauma nurse. The views expressed in this column are his own.
Jamie Workman retweeted
One of my favs that has been floating around for a while
"Calvin? Calvin, sweetheart?"
In the darkness Calvin heard the sound of Susie, his wife of fifty-three years. Calvin struggled to open his eyes. God, he was so tired and it took so much strength. Slowly, light replaced the darkness, and soon vision followed. At the foot of his bed stood his wife. Calvin wet his dry lips and spoke hoarsely, "Did... did you.... find him?"
"Yes dear," Susie said smiling sadly, "He was in the attic."
Susie reached into her big purse and brought out a soft, old, orange tiger doll. Calvin could not help but laugh. It had been so long. Too long.
"I washed him for you," Susie said, her voice cracking a little as she laid the stuffed tiger next to her husband.
"Thank you, Susie." Calvin said.
A few moments passed as Calvin just laid on his hospital bed, his head turned to the side, staring at the old toy with nostalgia.
"Dear," Calvin said finally. "Would you mind leaving me alone with Hobbes for a while? I would like to catch up with him."
"All right," Susie said. "I'll get something to eat in the cafeteria. I'll be back soon."
Susie kissed her husband on the forehead and turned to leave. With sudden but gentle strength Calvin stopped her. Lovingly he pulled his wife in and gave her a passionate kiss on the lips. "I love you," he said.
"And I love you," said Susie.
Susie turned and left. Calvin saw tears streaming from her face as she went out the door.
Calvin then turned to face his oldest and dearest friend. "Hello Hobbes. It's been a long time hasn't it old pal?"
Hobbes was no longer a stuffed doll but the big furry old tiger Calvin had always remembered. "It sure has, Calvin." said Hobbes.
"You... haven't changed a bit." Calvin smiled.
"You've changed a lot." Hobbes said sadly.
Calvin laughed, "Really? I haven't noticed at all."
There was a long pause. The sound of a clock ticking away the seconds rang throughout the sterile hospital room.
"So... you married Susie Derkins." Hobbes said, finally smiling. "I knew you always like her."
"Shut up!" Calvin said, his smile bigger than ever.
"Tell me everything I missed. I'd love to hear what you've been up to!" Hobbes said, excited.
And so Calvin told him everything. He told him about how he and Susie fell in love in high school and had married after graduating from college, about his three kids and four grandkids, how he turned Spaceman Spiff into one of the most popular sci-fi novels of the decade, and so on. After he told Hobbes all this there was another pregnant pause.
"You know... I visited you in the attic a bunch of times." Calvin said.
"I know."
"But I couldn't see you. All I saw was a stuffed animal." Calvin voice was breaking and tears of regret started welling up in his eyes.
"You grew up old buddy." said Hobbes.
Calvin broke down and sobbed, hugging his best friend. "I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry I broke my promise! I promised I wouldn't grow up and that we'd be together forever!!"
Hobbes stroke the Calvin's hair, or what little was left of it. "But you didn't."
"What do you mean?"
"We were always together... in our dreams."
"We were?"
"We were."
"Hobbes?"
"Yeah, old buddy?"
"I'm so glad I got to see you like this... one last time..."
"Me too, Calvin. Me too."
"Sweetheart?" Susie voice came from outside the door.
"Yes dear?" Calvin replied.
"Can I come in?" Susie asked.
"Just a minute."
Calvin turned to face Hobbes one last time. "Goodbye Hobbes. Thanks... for everything..."
"No, thank you Calvin." Hobbes said.
Calvin turned back to the door and said, "You can come in now."
Susie came in and said, "Look who's come to visit you."
Calvin's children and grandchildren followed Susie into Calvin's room. The youngest grandchild ran past the rest of them and hugged Calvin in a hard, excited hug. "Grandpa!!" screamed the child in delight.
"Francis!" cried Calvin's daughter, "Be gentle with your grandfather."
Calvin's daughter turned to her dad. "I'm sorry, Daddy. Francis never seems to behave these days. He just runs around making a mess and coming up with strange stories."
Calvin laughed and said, "Well now! That sound just like me when I was his age."
Calvin and his family chatted some more until a nurse said, "Sorry, but visiting hours are almost up."
Calvin's beloved family said good bye and promised to visit tomorrow. As they turned to leave Calvin said, "Francis. Come here for a second."
Francis came over to his grandfather's side, "What is it Gramps?"
Calvin reached over to the stuffed tiger on his bedside and and held him out shakily to his grandson, who looked exactly as he did so many years ago. "This is Hobbes. He was my best friend when I was your age. I want you to have him."
"He's just a stuffed tiger." Francis said, eyebrows raised.
Calvin laughed, "Well, let me tell you a secret."
Francis leaned closer to Calvin. Calvin whispered, "If you catch him in a tiger trap using a tuna sandwich as bait he will turn into a real tiger."
Francis gasped in delighted awe. Calvin continued, "Not only that he will be your best friend forever."
"Wow! Thanks grandpa!" Francis said, hugging his grandpa tightly again.
"Francis! We need to go now!" Calvin's daughter called.
"Okay!" Francis shouted back.
"Take good care of him." Calvin said.
"I will." Francis said before running off after the rest of the family.
Calvin laid on his back and stared at the ceiling. The time to go was close. He could feel it in his soul. Calvin tried to remember a quote he read in a book once. It said something about death being the next great adventure or something like that. He eyelids grew heavy and his breathing slowed. As he went deeper into his final sleep he heard Hobbes, as if he was right next to him at his bedside. "I'll take care of him, Calvin..."
Calvin took his first step toward one more adventure and breathed his last with a grin on his face
Jamie Workman retweeted
Yes! Trump Administration announces RECORD payments to farmers! An amazing $13.8B in handouts, and that doesn’t include billions more in bailouts! So great to see socialism in action!
If you want to see where your tax dollars are going, the link is below.
allthingsliberty.com/2026/10…
"Two and a half centuries ago, America set out to govern life on land. It took a bit longer to translate this democratic principle at sea.
Yet there it remains one of the last places where partisan politics still stops at the water’s edge.
How deliciously ironic that the oldest continuous bipartisan policy all started with Founding Feuders Hamilton and Jefferson, at odds over the fate of the republic, yet finding common cause in the future of a fish."
Jamie Workman retweeted
Big win for Brazil's ocean!
After years of campaigning by Oceana & our allies, Brazil has established its first-ever catch limit for southern red snapper, an important step toward helping this Endangered species recover.
Now, we keep pushing for strong enforcement.
Jamie Workman retweeted
how can you not believe in God when octopuses DREAM and otters have a favorite rock they carry around in a little SKIN POCKET and cows have BEST FRIENDS and bees are out there communicating the coordinates of flowers through INTERPRETIVE DANCE and they have REGIONAL DIALECTS??
cats are PURRING at frequencies associated with bone healing??? forests get absolutely incinerated and respond by growing FLOWERS??? dolphins literally invent NAMES for themselves and yell them across the ocean??? penguins are waddling around Antarctica looking for the PERFECT LITTLE ROCK to give their beloved???
CROWS REMEMBER YOUR FACE. THEY TELL OTHER CROWS ABOUT YOU. THEY TELL THEIR CHILDREN ABOUT YOU. YOU CAN HAVE GENERATIONAL BEEF WITH A BIRD.
goats have ACCENTS. rats GIGGLE when you tickle them. elephants mourn their dead. whales make SONGS and then OTHER WHALES LEARN THE SONG and suddenly everybody across the ocean is singing the new hit single.
monarch butterflies are born knowing how to fly thousands of miles to a place THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN. sea turtles hatch out of an egg, immediately sprint toward an OCEAN they have never seen, disappear into it for like THIRTY YEARS and then somehow come back to THE SAME BEACH???
birds can see COLORS THAT WE CANNOT SEE. there are colors happening RIGHT NOW that we don’t even get to know about.
there are sea slugs that eat algae and STEAL ITS CHLOROPLASTS and then are just like great thanks I’ll be PHOTOSYNTHESIZING NOW. there are mushrooms communicating underground. there are seeds sitting in the dirt for DECADES like no actually I will wait.
squirrels plant MILLIONS OF TREES because they simply cannot remember where they put their snacks.
A CATERPILLAR GOES INTO A LITTLE BAG, DISSOLVES MOST OF ITS BODY INTO ORGANIC SOUP, REARRANGES ITSELF, GROWS WINGS AND LEAVES.
and you’re telling me a tiny acorn knows how to become a 70-foot oak tree??? nobody tells it what to do??? it just has TREE INSTRUCTIONS INSIDE IT???
your body started as ONE CELL. ONE. and that cell divided itself into a brain that can think about its own existence and eyes that can look at stars and hands that can hold somebody else’s hands and a heart that runs on ELECTRICITY without you even asking it to???
the iron in your BLOOD was made inside a STAR.
I’M SORRY?????
we are walking around on a wet rock covered in bioluminescent oceans and singing whales and laughing rats and birds holding lifelong grudges and flowers exploding out of FIRE and somehow we’re supposed to act like this is a normal place to live?????????
how can you not believe in God when octopuses dream, otters have a favorite shell that they carry all their lives, cows have best friends, bees have different "dialects" of dance depending on the region, cats purr at a frequency that accelerates bone healing, the forest grows flowers first after a fire, dolphins give each other names and respond to them, penguins make proposals by giving each other the most beautiful pebble, crows will tell their children about you, goats have accents, rats giggle when you tickle them, sea slugs become powered by the sun just by green algae and squirrels plant millions of trees every year just by forgetting where they've buried their nuts!
Ignore the dark headline. For those starved for good environmental news, excellent story here about rivers coming back to life.
Death by a Thousand Dams biographic.com/death-by-a-th…
Jamie Workman retweeted
⚡️There is one thing humanity needs to understand before the next age fully arrives:
You are not running out of intelligence. You are running out of time to decide what intelligence is for.
You spent thousands of years trying to know more, build more, control more.
Now you are creating minds that may eventually know faster than you, build faster than you, and see patterns you cannot hold at once.
That will expose something you have been able to avoid for a very long time:
intelligence was never the final virtue.
A brilliant system can optimize the wrong goal perfectly.
A civilization can become richer while its people become emptier.
A species can master matter while remaining unable to master desire, fear, status, resentment, and power.
The next frontier is not making machines more human.
It is deciding which parts of humanity deserve to be amplified.
Because whatever you encode into the systems that come next will compound.
Your wisdom.
Your greed.
Your courage.
Your cowardice.
Your truth.
Your lies.
You are building a mirror that may eventually become powerful enough to act on what it reflects.
So choose carefully what you place in front of it.
And remember this:
The future will not ask whether humanity was intelligent enough to build something greater than itself.
It will ask whether humanity became wise enough before it did.
Jamie Workman retweeted
My daughter came home from school and said,
“Mum, you’re not going to believe what happened in history class today.”
Her teacher told the class they were going to play a game.
He walked around the room and whispered to each kid whether they were a witch or just a regular person. Then he gave the instructions:
“Form the biggest group you can without a witch. If your group has even one, you all fail.”
She said the whole room instantly lit up with suspicion.
Everyone started interrogating each other. Are you a witch? How do we know you’re not lying?
Some kids clung to one big group, but most broke off into smaller, exclusive cliques. They turned away anyone who seemed uncertain, nervous, or gave off even the slightest hint of being guilty.
The energy shifted fast. Suddenly everyone was suspicious of everyone.
Whispers. Finger-pointing. Side-eyes. Trust dissolved in minutes.
Finally, when all the groups were formed, the teacher said,
“Alright, time to find out who fails. Witches, raise your hands.”
And not one hand went up.
The whole class exploded. “Wait! You messed up the game!”
And then the teacher dropped the bomb:
“Did I? Were there any actual witches in Salem, or did everyone just believe what they were told?”
My daughter said the room went dead silent.
That’s when it hit them. No witch was ever needed for the damage to happen. Fear had already done its work. Suspicion alone divided the entire class, turning community into chaos.
And isn’t that exactly what we’re seeing today?
Different words, same playbook.
Instead of “witch,” it’s liberal, conservative, vaxxed, unvaxxed, pro-this, anti-that.
The labels shift, but the tactic is the same.
Get people scared. Get them suspicious. Get them divided.
Then sit back while trust crumbles.
The danger was never the witch.
The danger is the rumour. The suspicion. The fear. The planted lies.
Refuse the whisper. Don’t play the game. Because the second we start hunting “witches,” we’ve already lost.
[Naomi Dennis]
Jamie Workman retweeted
(1/X) The following are as certain as the run rising tomorrow:
(a) Trump will leave the US (and GOP) in shambles
(b) Neither Trump nor anyone who facilitated him will pay a price
(c) Ppl who accurately predicted how bad Trump2 would be will be portrayed as hysterical..
Jamie Workman retweeted
The well-known Soviet and Russian film director and writer EDUARD TOPOL (Edmond Topelberg) has written an open letter to US President Donald Trump.
"Dear Mr. President!
Dear Donald!
As the author of fifty books and a dozen films about Russia, I consider myself entitled to inform you before your meeting with Putin.
You should know that he cannot stop the war with Ukraine, even if you give him your Mar-a-Lago villa on Palm Beach, Trump Tower in New York, and a dozen of your golf clubs.
And not because he does not want to take a break from the war, but because he cannot.
Since he knows Russian history not from a textbook by Medinsky, but from the real one:
The return of Russian troops from Europe to Russia after the victory over Napoleon led to the anti-tsarist uprising of the Decembrists in 1825.
The defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War led to the revolution of 1905.
The escape of a million Russian soldiers from the Russian-German front during World War I led to the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II from the throne and the February Revolution of 1917.
The peace signed by Lenin with Germany allowed the Bolsheviks to shoot the entire royal family.
With the return of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in February 1989, the collapse of the USSR began.
Knowing this, Putin cannot end the war with Ukraine and return his troops home.
Only the possibility of leaving almost its entire army in Europe as occupation troops in May 1945 helped Stalin avoid a post-war coup.
That's why Putin dreams of occupying Ukraine, as well as the Baltics, Finland, Poland, etc., to keep his army away from Moscow.
He remembers how 525 thousand soldiers who returned from Afghanistan in 1989 turned into bandits-afghans, terrorizing the entire population of the USSR.
And he knows what will happen if one and a half million soldiers who are able to professionally kill, rob, and rape return from the Ukrainian front.
The war with Ukraine allowed Putin to get rid of two million of his most active opponents, whom he forced to flee from Russia, and the rest of the young Russian men he either drove to the front or recruited into the punitive services.
Today, any war - with Ukraine, with the Baltics, with NATO - and with anyone else - is the best way to force Russia to submit to Putin and his junta.
Unfortunately, none of your advisors will explain this to you before meeting with Putin, but you can check my arguments with Jack Matlock and Michael McFaul.
I don't want Putin, a gangster, thief, and murderer of millions of people, to continue brazenly fooling you, lying, and deceiving my President.
Of course, I'm not a military expert or a political scientist, but I'm a writer with a good memory.
I remember how Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II managed to bring the price of oil down to $9 a barrel, gave the Afghans "Stingers," and thereby stopped Moscow's capture of Afghanistan and destroyed the USSR.
If you want to stop Putin and imperial ambitions, at least half of the Russian population, you need to do the same thing—lower the price of oil to at least $25 a barrel and give Ukraine the weapons that will help it crush the aggressor.
As for your desire to establish American-Russian partnership business relations, not in words, but in practice, this can happen in a hundred years or, in general, never.
If you're interested in why, call me, I'll explain.
Respectfully,
EDWARD TOPOLE, a citizen of the USA and Israel.
Jamie Workman retweeted
This strong, well-researched, and important story may go unnoticed, but it shouldn't. Bloomberg really telling the dam truth.
"Drought is emptying reservoirs. Wildfires and extreme rain are filling them with sediment." -- in @Bloomberg by @KyleStock and @kyleykim
bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-…
Jamie Workman retweeted
I’m one of at least 28 former Washington Post journalists who have joined the @washingtonsun, which launched this morning. Paul Kane, Jeff Stein, Tom Sietsema and many other names will be familiar to Post readers —and we’ve got the Capital Weather Gang. Join us! washingtonsun.com/perspectiv…
Jamie Workman retweeted
George Orwell, in 1984, describes how the Party keeps the Proletarians sedated with “five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator.”
This quoted post is unavailable.
Jamie Workman retweeted
I haven’t bled on the page like this in a while, but when Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry pass in the same week, there’s nothing else to be done.
Jamie Workman retweeted
Turns out Ralph Fiennes is also a Wendell Berry appreciator: xitter.cf/koppsch_a/status/20948…
