iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

There’s a collection of 1960s Spider-Man comics that were reprinted in 2006 that a friend of mine gave me from her dad’s collection in 2020 and I’m glad to have finally cracked into it

Pages from the first spider-man story, where spidey is getting famous after transitioning from wrestling to late night shows

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Finally finished Morbius’s quest line (I’m almost 108 hours into Midnight Suns) and in the last fight against Sin I finally used Nico’s power for the first time. It was so cool

Nico from the Runaways using her ultimate attack in Midnight Suns - a fireball appears in the middle of her scepter, while dark magic wings appear behind her back and the whole sky turns orange with a bit of purple emanating around her torso at the top of her wings

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

If we’re counting post screenshots, mine is GRRM nerding out about early FF as a child in a letter to the editors

A very excited and complimentary letter from then-15-year-old George R. R. Martin to the writers of Fantastic Four within a tweet from “luen” that says “fifteen year old George’s letter to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby with a laughing emoji, saying he was queening out” in a quote tweet from “Victor von gloom” that says “”the doom of Valyria “ clearly named after doctor doom and Valeria lmfao he was STILL fantastic four-pilled after all those years”

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Thought i was done with college football preview magazines

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

As far as I know, it’s unsubstantiated, but people felt confirmed based on the new trailer

Summary of plot points in upcoming Avengers Doomsday film according to Reddit leaks

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Just looked down at my chrome nails and thought “what if I *could* be happy”? (and, then, “what if I was the cop robot from THX-1138?”)

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

That Polygon article about RDR2 is fine for the most part. “It’s too boring” is not even that unpopular a take. I just hate the title. And found this bit to be a missed thread, which someone else pointed out

in an era when so many people have shorter attention spans anyway, due to short-form content consumption and the sheer breadth of entertainment media available, I think Red Dead Redemption 2 falls on the wrong side of the line.

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Was looking up the lyrics to “Helicopter” by Bloc Party, learned that people thought this clearly biographical song was about W

From the website formerly known as Rap Genius:

Bloc Party’s breakthrough hit, which is speculated to be about former U.S. president George Bush. In response to the interpretations, Okereke stated that he’d actually written the lyrics of “Helicopter” about himself.

It’s frustrating that people attribute something to certain songs and that’s not what they’re about at all. It’s a common misconception that “Helicopter” is about President Bush. It’s kinda patronizing.

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

It was created to ease communication across intelligence orgs, that’s the “Unity and harmony”. I am disgusted at the reflexive need to paint evil admin like it was ever benevolent and I want to know how Ron Elving thinks ICE+CBP “were involved” in the shooting. Did they perhaps fucking do it?

ICE and Customs and Border Patrol agents, overseen by DHS, were involved in the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

This is the panel that seemed the goofiest to me. Aphra feels like she fits in the universe as a Marvel comics-style character within their vision of expanding AGFFA. Vader I’m reading in James Earl Jones’s voice with depth and menace. It’s a bit of a silly team up, though I did overall enjoy it.

Darth Vader says “It’s stronger than it looks” while holding a cable connecting Padme’s old Naboo cruiser and some hardware he and Doctor Aphra stole

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Read the first volume of Kieran Gillen’s Darth Vader run last night. (Shout out to Libby and the FLP). I found Doctor Aphra at once both immediately charming *and* found her an odd match with Vader. Reverse Indiana Jones bit is funny, seems a little different than the character I met a decade later.

A series of comic panels after Doctor Aphra is introduced which include her telling the keeper of an archive that a weapon “belongs in an armory” like a reverse Indiana Jones

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

After nukes destroy most of Las Vegas, themed replicants fight over one of the last remaining resorts

In issue 2 of Blade Runner: Black Lotus, replicant servants-turned warrior queens Cleopatra and Neyfirtiti look over their forces fighting those of King Nebuchadnezzar with the caption “The Resulting battle between Babylon and Egypt in the streets of Vegas was as fierce and bloody as any in human history”

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Don’t know what this means, but I’ve been threatening for years to get into 40K via just books and videogames

A Warhammer 40k faction alignment chart
40% imperial
70% chaos
85% eldar
30% dark eldar
65% orks
55% tyranids
60% necrons
95% T’au

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Oh no… I hope it’s in that way like when people say something is ”sickening” because it’s so cool. or like the mortifliers in Furiosa

My word of the year, according to Merriam Webster, is “mortifying”

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Hard to pick *the* most poignant body paragraph, but maybe this one

This is not a show made for humans. It thinks very little of the people who make games, and it thinks even less of the people that play them. And I think every little thing done to give them credence — every podcast discussion or article about its trailers and winners and column chronicling that awards horse race — has worked to cement the place where it all sits. Yes, The Game Awards are here because Keighley has the resources and stubborn will to insist on them, year after year. But they also endure because on some level, we want them to. We don’t actually want something better. We want what Keighley is selling.

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Got to work and this was on my desk (in a mysterious Bookshop.org box) =D @ckunzelman.bsky.social

Everything is Permitted: On Assassin’s Creed by Cameron Kunzelman

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Don’t feel like screenshotting the whole thing, so here are a few highlights

America has a conservative establishment. Its formal name is the Democratic party. Whether it be the federal government, universities, welfare or the regulatory state, Democrats fight to preserve the world as it is or was. “America is already great,” liberals cry, which is another way of saying that things were fine until Donald Trump came along. Their lodestar was Joe Biden, who personified nostalgia. Much of the party is now nostalgic for Biden. You have to be imprisoned in old ways of thinking to believe this is how US liberalism will rebound.

An invigorated US opposition would now be making hay. Trump’s team maintains a “promises kept” tally sheet. To be sure, he has in effect closed the border, demolished DEI quota culture, assaulted the deep state

Democrats also face a deeper philosophical problem. Nobody knows how to reinvent 20th-century liberalism. In the US that was Franklin D Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal, with updates over the next couple of generations. FDR built that world with “bold persistent experimentation”. His would-be heirs are stuck in a timid, persistent conservatism. They do not “welcome the hatred” of financial and business monopolists as Roosevelt did. They are the party of corporate America. No party in history could ever boast of so many expert fundraisers and humane philanthropists.

Lack of fresh ideas and cloistered demography are definitions of conservatism. If Trump did not exist, would Democrats want to reform the US administrative state? They should want to reinvent it but are now its militant defenders. A system that is so riddled with veto points that it takes years to execute simple projects and requires a PhD to navigate the tax system does not deserve to be defended. The same goes for a housing market that has priced younger voters out of the American dream and elite universities that are biased towards the children of alumni and donors. If Trump is attacking something, it must be defended to the hilt.

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

I could probably do this list forever. Wanna start me off?

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

Not gonna platform that little fashy nobody, but I do actually think this car looks cool

A cream-colored sedan sitting pretty in a field

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Why is it so funny than New Hampshire doesn’t want in?

Health officials from Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania met this week to consider coordinating their own vaccine recommendations, separate from the federal government.
Map of the U.S. northeast with the following states highlighted:
Vermont
Maine
New York
Pennsylvania
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Connecticut
New Jersey

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Samuel R. Delany in The Motion of Light in Water discussing his terror at the blatant media manipulation of US TV producers hiding the UN General Assembly’s response to the Cuban ambassador’s address after the Missile Crisis.

The Cuban ambassador was introduced. In Spanish, he began to talk. In English, the translator followed him. There was a very different feel to the Cuban’s speech. It felt far less peremptory. He spoke of US atrocities committed regularly against his country. He spoke of his country’s unsettled position, geographically close to one great power, ideologically closer to a more distant one, and the huge experience of the risk this created across his island. He spoke of the pain and death of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, to which the recent buildup of Soviet missiles in Cuba was (partially) a response.

The body of his speech over, he leaned back to take a breath— And something happened I’ll never forget. CBS, the major television channel on which we were watching the UN coverage, again cut to a live news analyst, who began to explain that the Cuban ambassador had said more or less what was to be expected, full of emotion but without content. Meanwhile, on Riverside Radio, the ambassador, after his breath, clearly had leaned forward again, to continue speaking. The translator ended his pause and continued translating. The actual speech came to a close perhaps half a dozen sentences on. Beyond what the TV audience heard, it ran on another—oh, a minute and a half—possibly two. Confused, though, Is already gotten up and begun switching TV channels, to see if any other TV stations were staying with the UN—as

The FM radio behind me was. On channel after channel I stared at, and listened to, some analyst, talking calmly, as if, indeed, the Cuban ambassador’s speech had reached its conclusion just like the other two. All the networks shared the same picture.

Behind me, on the radio, the Cuban’s speech actually ended—and I heard a sound.

It was applause—the applause of the General Assembly and the whole audience. Neither of the two other ambassadors had received such an ovation. It was applause that rose, over the first two or three seconds, to a volume to equal that of the traffic on the industrial avenues in the city just before noon. The applause came on and on. There were shouts of approbation in it.i have been in theaters and know the difference between the sound of an ordinary ovation and a standing ovation. And I will tell you, though I did not see it, in the

General Assembly of the United Nations, as they applauded, people stood.

On TV, on all channels available, the analyst went on (do I add, in memory, a vague sense of flusteredness to his words, as if he had not been prepared to start as early as he had, and had been still making notes, considering what he was to say, when he’d been directed to go on—now!) but what had happened was that someone, sensing what the reaction to the speech would be, had decided that the American people should not see the General Assembly audience go wild with support for Cuba, and so had made a decision, given a direction; and the Cuban ambassador’s speech had been truncated, and the analyst had been purposely brought in to obliterate both the ending to the speech and the overwhelming reaction to it among the delegates from the rest of the world.

I suspect whoever did this still thinks of himself as a hero. I suspect many who

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

Documentaries from Black Star. Feel like I’m missing one.

The Sixth Borough; Anfitriões há meio século; Otherworld; Tijolo por Tijolo

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

Came away thinking I always underestimated Cappadonna. Did the ladies go crazy when Meth took off his shirt during You’re All I Need? Of course

Philadelphia’s own Freeway performing at the last night of the Wu-Tang Clan Final Chamber tour

Cappadonna of the Wu-Tang Clan performing at the last night of the Wu-Tang Clan Final Chamber tour alongside Raekwon the Chef and Ghostface Killah

Method Man about to pull his tank top up at the end of performing You’re All I Need to Get By (which Method Man originally recorded with Mary J Blige) at the last night of the Wu-Tang Clan Final Chamber tour

Philadelphia City Council President Kenyatta Johnson giving the members of the Wu-Tang Clan special citations at the last night of the Wu-Tang Clan Final Chamber tour

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

I was at the Wu-Tang Clan’s last concert. It was my godson’s first concert. Run the Jewels opened. Lauryn Hill (and Zion Marley), Freeway, and LL Cool J came out as special guests. The crowd was four or five generations of hip-hop heads. Incredible stuff.

Run the Jewels performing at the last night of the Wu-Tang Clan Final Chamber tour

The moment Method Man rose and announced himself at the last night of the Wu-Tang Clan Final Chamber tour

Ms Lauryn Hill performing at the last night of the Wu-Tang Clan Final Chamber tour

LL Cool J performing at the last night of the Wu-Tang Clan Final Chamber tour

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

I watched a lot of bullshit last month, but Phoenician Scheme’s only competition for my favorite of the year so far is Den of Thieves 2. (M:I:tFR is probably third place, but those stunts really were incredible, who knows how I’ll feel in December)

June 2025 Letterboxd list
20th-Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)-2.5 stars
19th-Sicario (2015)-2.5 stars
18th-The Phoenician Scheme (2025)-4.5 stars and a heart (rewatch)
13th-The Wrath of Man (2021)-2 stars
9th-Phoenician Scheme (2025)-4 stars
8th-The Nice Guys (2016)-3.5 stars and a heart
6th-28 Days Later (2002)-3 stars
3rd-Mission: Impossible (1996)-3 stars and a heart
2nd-Ballerina (2025)-2.5 stars and a heart

June 2025 Letterboxd list
25th-Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)-2 stars
20th-Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)-2.5 stars
19th-Sicario (2015)-2.5 stars
18th-The Phoenician Scheme (2025)-4.5 stars and a heart (rewatch)
13th-The Wrath of Man (2021)-2 stars
9th-Phoenician Scheme (2025)-4 stars
8th-The Nice Guys (2016)-3.5 stars and a heart
6th-28 Days Later (2002)-3 stars
3rd-Mission: Impossible (1996)-3 stars and a heart

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Another was the environment Flamengo and Esperance’s fans brought. Especially all the Palestinian flags from Esperance, or when a huge group of fans made a Palestinian flag with balloons. They had huge FREE GAZA and FREE PALESTINE banners

Picture of the Esperánce Sportive de Tunisie fans in the Lincoln Financial Field stands; some of them holding a banner that says “Land, Freedom, Palestine”

Picture of the Esperánce Sportive de Tunisie fans in the Lincoln Financial Field stands; some of them holding a banner that says “FREE GAZA” where the “A” is on a Palestinian flag

Picture of the Esperánce Sportive de Tunisie fans in the Lincoln Financial Field stands; the center group are holding red, black, white, and green balloons arranged to make a Palestinian flag

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Pretty clear knock-on effect that if you create a bunch of people with the requisite skills for the job you’ll suppress the wages by flooding the labor market, so I’m glad they addressed that as well as layoffs and “AI” futurism.com/computer-sci...

"We created a gold rush mentality around coding right as the gold ran out," Ryan continued, referencing the "learn to code" craze of the late 2010s and early 2020s. "Companies are cutting engineering budgets by 40 percent while CS enrollment hits record highs. It's basic economics. Flood the market, crater the wages."

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

My threading isn’t working, but here’s Nix dressed like LoBot. How cute is this?

Picture from the game Star Wars: Outlaws. Adorable little alien pet with cyborg visor implants like Lando Calrissian’s buddy Lo Bot in Empire Strikes Back

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

@scumbelievable.bsky.social on the staff recommends shelf at Tattered Cover Books in Denver

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin on a bookshelf with a recommendation blurb that says “Zombie outbreak targets cis men. Two trans women fight for their lives against flesh eaters and worse - TURFS *(should be spelled T-E-R-F*). Such a kickass debut from Gretchen Felker-Martin.”

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

Any thoughts on how to repair a book cover damaged like this?

Paperback book - The Consumer Society: A History of American Capitalism by Peter d’A. Jones… the cover is torn off the book cleanly

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Marcos Martín on the second Absolute Batman arc drew a more positive initial reaction (reminds me a bit of the 70s/80s stuff)

A full two page spread of Absolute Batman #7, the central picture in which Batman is diving upside down, but other smaller panels include a pink hued helicopter interior with Gotham police astonished, and a series of yellow hued panels depicting a construction site

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

I didn’t love De Iuis’s art in their first issue (#6) of Absolute Wonder Woman (mainly Diana herself; I was really into Sherman’s art style in 1-5) but it grew on me in issue 7… also, wish parents were explaining media literacy like Circe here lol

Comic panels where Wonder Woman as a child talks through a story with an ambiguous ending; in the last exchange, her mother says “I understand you are caught up on her worthiness, but do you think that is the point of the story?” “…no,” replies Diana

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

I’m so good at making pizza (pics attached) but sometimes I just want convenience. How could the shops on the corner betray me so?

Homemade pizza with pepperoni, mushroom, and prosciutto

Pepperoni and mushroom pizza with shredded basil sprinkled across it

Single slice of sopressata pizza, holding firm

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Finished running ten miles down Broad street about an hour ago lol nbd

2025 Independence Blue Cross Broad Street Run 10 mile race finisher medal

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

I baked (instead of fried) wings earlier. They were good. Sauce was spicy

Chicken wing pieces fried but not fully sauced

Chicken wings fried and sauced next to some homemade blue cheese dressing

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Putting down my marker. Honestly not super sure. I think Liam is going to surprise some people and could end up top 5. I think Oscar is a dark horse title contender. I think Aston we won’t see really come on until 2026. I’m very curious about the midfield race

F1 calendar fill-in list
Top 5 driver predictions
Max Verstappen
Lando Norris
Oscar Piastri
Charles LeClerc
Lewis Hamilton

Top 3 Teams Predictions
McLaren
Ferrari
Red Bull

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

I need to watch more movies, but I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve seen most recently

Letterboxd Recent Activity showing “Conclave” (rated 3.5), “The King” (rated 4), “The Killer” (rated 3.5), and “The Big Heat (rated 4)

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

That’s two head thrown back cackles in ten minutes. I love this line

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Wonderful girlfriend got me the Down North pizza cookbook for Valentine’s. Danny Trejo wrote the foreword

Cover of “We the Pizza” by Muhammad Abdul-Hadi with recipes by Michael Carter. Subtitled “Slangin’ Pies + Savin’ Lives”

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

“He has a lot of income, so I don’t even know why you’d have all that debt if you have that much income”. Girl, me too. What is he doing?

Financial experts interviewed by CNBC said balances that high are unusual.

“That’s a truly massive amount of credit card debt,” said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate.

“He has a lot of income, so I don’t even know why you’d have all that debt if you have that much income,” said Carolyn McClanahan, a certified financial planner and founder of Life Planning Partners, who reviewed Kennedy’s filing.

Kennedy was not immediately available for comment.

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left-turn depression indicator @phantomcobra.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

They’ve just been offered buyouts like other agencies while the people in charge are pointing toward a new hardline mission. We’re in no way “getting rid of the CIA.”

Trump administration officials have said the offers are also meant to signal to those who oppose Trump’s agenda to find work elsewhere. Ratcliffe told the White House to extend the same buyout package to the CIA, the aide said, believing it would pave the way for a more aggressive spy agency.

A CIA spokeswoman said the move was part of an effort to “infuse the agency with renewed energy.”

In his confirmation hearing, Ratcliffe promised to launch more hard-edge spying operations and covert action, naming drug cartels and China as key adversaries. “To the brave CIA officers listening around the world, if all of that sounds like what you signed up for, then buckle up and get ready to make a difference,” he told lawmakers last month. “If it doesn’t then it’s time to find a new line of work.”

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