🔗 Is Trump Going to Start a World War? Or, the Price Americans Will Pay For One

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It’s one thing to say: America can’t be depended on anymore to be a friend and ally. It’s another to say: America can’t be trusted not to invade, conquer, or control you. These are different levels of breakdown in relationships. The first is a lack of trust. But the second is a breach and betrayal.

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Even with all its guns and bombs, can America conquer the entire world? Of course not. In the end, the world will win this foolish game, and America must lose. That is where this road begins. Where it ends is with the world demanding that America, in the end, make good for the harm it is doing now, and will continue to do. And the world has the power to enforce that, too, because of course, it owns America’s debt. In this way, too, impoverishment beckons for Americans.

🖇️ I have remarked on this before.

Here are less obvious ones. The EU retaliates not militarily, but financially. It goes nuclear, and dumps its US assets, from stocks to bonds. Bang. There go America’s 401Ks. China joins it, and things go from bad to worse. And of course, because they don’t want to be left holding assets worth pennies on the dollar, Japan and the Arab states race in, too. The stakes now are stark and severe. I don’t think that Americans, at least many of them, fully grasp where they are.

🔗 Why Isn’t Online Age Verification Just Like Showing Your ID In Person? | Techdirt

🔗 Stop doing SEO: Why AI search favours quality writing

💯 @billbennettnz

🔗 Manton

Small developers (especially generalists) have a new competitive advantage

Not just developers methinks ….

Said it before - saying it again

🔗 Futility Closet isn’t always futile

Émile Zola described a work of art as “a corner of nature seen through a temperament.”

Not my first link to 🔗🔎 Umair - and probably not my last - and I really don’t do it all the time.

🔗 The Year the World Broke

Finished reading: 📚🔗 A Cold Wind From Moscow by Rory Clements - and yeah - not really - just way too slow for my taste.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Finished reading: 📚🔗 The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman - and every bit as good - better(?) as the first four.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

My three words for 2026 are 🖇️ Engage - Enable - Excite. But there’s a catch. Underpinning all of that is a requirement to both stop and start. Stop what’s bad for you, what isn’t working, what’s draining you. And start what’s good for you, change things up, do something different when something clearly isn’t landing.

That’s where the tension lives. One voice says when things aren’t working, change the game. Do something different. Move it up. Stagnation demands disruption. You’ve got agency, the ability to reframe, introduce new variables, step outside the rules you’ve been playing by. This voice won’t accept circumstance as fixed.

The other voice says if things aren’t working, they’ll persist anyway. Be patient. All will be well. Not wishful thinking, but confidence in process. The recognition that what’s broken right now is already being worked on by time and circumstances you can’t control yet. Patience here isn’t inaction. It’s understanding that some shifts simply require waiting.

Both are right. And so - by definition - both are wrong and the decision is made by applying the real skill of ‘sensing’. Very useful!

When does the system actually need you to disrupt it, and when is your job to hold steady whilst deeper shifts take hold? Get that distinction wrong and you either exhaust yourself with constant pivoting or you surrender to inertia. Sometimes both.

For me this is not theoretical. It’s the fork in the road. It’s not about the new year - it’s about life that continues to get harder and harder.

This all came to mind this afternoon when this popped up on my phone.

Song For The Post

🔗📼 The Clash

🔗 David Sacks sees 2 cities replacing NYC and SF as finance and tech capitalswww.businessinsider.com/david-sac…)

In case you are wondering .. Miami and Austin … right!