National Security and Northern VA. Foreign Policy and SF&F amateur. Blue & Gray and Green & Gold. WMATA woes.
Arlington, VA
Joined November 2010
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Aaron Ammerman retweeted
You can get a sense of just how compressed American history is from the fact that Laura Ingalls Wilder's father was born when Texas was still part of Mexico and her daughter visited Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
The Cuban Missile Crisis began because a CIA analyst looking at U-2 photos noticed soccer fields popping up next to missile silos and thought, hey that’s weird, don’t Cubans play baseball?
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
Wish we had some evidence about how Bielema would do in the SEC. Wait, I’m being…I’m being handed something
NEW: Illinois' Bret Bielema after beating Nebraska:
"But to be in this job, where we’re at right now, 6-3, we beat another 5-3 team. If we were in the SEC, we’d probably be a top-15 team."
(via @IllinoisRivals)
on3.com/news/bret-bielema-af…
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
WSH decided to punt to LAR from the LAR 40* on 4th & 6* with 8:21 remaining in the 4th while losing 13 to 20.
With a Surrender Index of 123.03, this punt ranks at the 100th percentile of cowardly punts of the 2026 season, and the 99.9th percentile of all punts since 1999.
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
You think you're about to read some idiot who believes he could come off the couch and compete against the best in the world.
Instead, you read something brilliant:
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
At least we still have Slate
Today, after 31 years, we are saddened to announce that Salon is ceasing publication. It has been an extraordinary privilege. salon.com/2026/11/05/goodbye…
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
$5 of the $6 gets laundered away in adminstrative overhead. The remaining dollar gets farmed out to the schoolboard director's cousin's shell company who gets a grant from the feds to sub-contract microwavable meals from a 3rd party school lunch conglomerate owned by Blackrock.
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
Upper-middle class urbanites seeing that ‘Corruption’ was a major issue in exit polls: “Wow, the voters are really sick of Jared Kushner’s back-channel negotiations with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman!”
The actual voters: “Trump and Epstein killed and ate JonBenét Ramsey”
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
Wow. For years, an official in Arkansas allegedly tampered with bar exam scores, pulling points from some test takers and giving them to others.
This caused numerous failing exams to pass, and resulted in "at least one instance" where an otherwise passing exam fell below the requisite threshold.
cc: @BarExamTutor
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
A long time ago in a place far far away, I was a peon at a company which coded university computer systems. My job for a season was working on entrance exam results software.
My approximate recollection of the first page of the design doc, in 48 point font:
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
This is wild. Democrats would've basically swept the state if Republicans redistricted as Trump demanded. The only survivor would've been Erin Houchin.
This is insane! Here is a map of yesterday’s Indiana House results if they were drawn under the attempted Republican gerrymander map from last Fall. Thank you to @Vulst3 for breaking down the data to make this map. The gerrymander could’ve netted us a 9-0 or 8-1 map potentially!
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
“Why do you oppose Trump, do you have TDS?”
Trump: “I’m basically Bernie Sanders”
I just had a brief phone call with President Trump and I asked him if he can work with newly empowered Democrats on Capitol Hill. He said, in part:
“I can work with them on many things, many more things than people understand…. When I ran against Bernie Sanders, basically when he dropped out, almost all of his people joined me instead of Hillary. … We’re identical on trade.”
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
Yeah
The radicalization of primary voters has made American politics follow a very predictable pattern
*Republicans win*
"WHOO HOOO. EVERYONE LIKES OUR POLICIES! MAGA OR GTFO!"
*Normal people hate their policies. They get their ass kicked.*
Democrats: "Whooo hooo! Everyone likes our policies! Time to cause a bunch of inflation with poorly thought out stimulus policies and restrictions on mining and oil production!"
*Normal people hate their policies. They get their ass kicked.*
Republicans: "Whooo hoo! Everyone likes our policies! Time to cause a bunch of inflation with unpopular wars in the Middle East!"
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
By June 1898, Spain had held Guam for four centuries, but the island was so neglected that the local authorities hadn’t received news for months. They didn't even know the Spanish-American War had begun.
The USS Charleston slides into the harbor, expecting resistance. Nada. So they fired a few warning shots at an old fort, which the Spanish interpreted as a friendly salute. Local officials rowed out in a boat and apologized that they were out of gunpowder so they couldn’t return the "salute."
The Americans said, "Uh, yeah ... we’re at war so you’re our prisoners.” The Spanish officials were stunned. After some awkward back-and-forth, the Spanish governor surrendered, along with ~50 poorly equipped soldiers. No one got hurt. Completely bloodless.
US sailors raised the flag and found a single American citizen on the island. A merchant whose previous job was as an elevator operator in San Francisco. The ship's captain said, "you're in charge now," and sailed off to the Philippines.
It took about six months for the Americans to return.
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
Many tweets aren’t worth the “read more” button, but this one is.
The JonBenet case is bizarre because it's impossible to know who did what, which is why nobody was ever charged.
The issue with JonBenet is the same issue with a lot of other innocence-fraud arguments, in that it requires you to believe a kind of crime that has never happened before or since is more likely than a kind of crime that happens every day.
Scott Peterson innocence fraud requires you to believe the cheating husband who told his mistress his wife was dead didn't kill the wife - instead she was the victim of either a) a satanic ritual targeting pregnant women or b) random burglars across the street who inexplicably decided to commit a burglary in broad daylight on New Years Eve when there were literally hundreds of eye witnesses in the neighborhood and then made the even more perplexing choice to turn a minor burglary charge into capital homicide for no apparent reason.
Richard Allen innocence fraud requires you to believe that the sex-addicted, mentally ill alcoholic who was fetishistically obsessed with the very bridge the victims were kidnapped from is innocent because actually the murder was a ritualistic Norse pagan child sacrifice involving at least 8 participants, several of whom were objectively not Norse pagans and one of whom was so severely mentally retarded that it is unclear why anyone would invite him into a criminal conspiracy involving the murder of two eighth grade girls.
John and Patsy Ramsey innocence fraud requires you to believe neither the parents nor the brother were involved in killing the victim - despite those statistically being far and away the most likely perpetrators when a 6 year old girl is found murdered in the home - because actually the crime was committed by an intruder who spent several hours in the house without anyone noticing he was there and took the time to pen a handwritten 375-word, bizarrely verbose ransom note pretending to be a member of a foreign militia trying to extort John Ramsey to fund Jihadi terrorism or some shit, despite the intruder was actually a pedophile who had already murdered JonBenet and left her in the basement.
You have three crimes so common they're practically a cliche (immature manchild murders pregnant wife, sexually repressed, drunken weirdo kidnaps and murders underage girls, parents or brother kill a member of the family) and the alternative theory in each case is insane bullshit that has never happened before or since in the entire history of the human race.
Aaron Ammerman retweeted
The JonBenet case is bizarre because it's impossible to know who did what, which is why nobody was ever charged.
The issue with JonBenet is the same issue with a lot of other innocence-fraud arguments, in that it requires you to believe a kind of crime that has never happened before or since is more likely than a kind of crime that happens every day.
Scott Peterson innocence fraud requires you to believe the cheating husband who told his mistress his wife was dead didn't kill the wife - instead she was the victim of either a) a satanic ritual targeting pregnant women or b) random burglars across the street who inexplicably decided to commit a burglary in broad daylight on New Years Eve when there were literally hundreds of eye witnesses in the neighborhood and then made the even more perplexing choice to turn a minor burglary charge into capital homicide for no apparent reason.
Richard Allen innocence fraud requires you to believe that the sex-addicted, mentally ill alcoholic who was fetishistically obsessed with the very bridge the victims were kidnapped from is innocent because actually the murder was a ritualistic Norse pagan child sacrifice involving at least 8 participants, several of whom were objectively not Norse pagans and one of whom was so severely mentally retarded that it is unclear why anyone would invite him into a criminal conspiracy involving the murder of two eighth grade girls.
John and Patsy Ramsey innocence fraud requires you to believe neither the parents nor the brother were involved in killing the victim - despite those statistically being far and away the most likely perpetrators when a 6 year old girl is found murdered in the home - because actually the crime was committed by an intruder who spent several hours in the house without anyone noticing he was there and took the time to pen a handwritten 375-word, bizarrely verbose ransom note pretending to be a member of a foreign militia trying to extort John Ramsey to fund Jihadi terrorism or some shit, despite the intruder was actually a pedophile who had already murdered JonBenet and left her in the basement.
You have three crimes so common they're practically a cliche (immature manchild murders pregnant wife, sexually repressed, drunken weirdo kidnaps and murders underage girls, parents or brother kill a member of the family) and the alternative theory in each case is insane bullshit that has never happened before or since in the entire history of the human race.
