Maine craftsman. I hand-hew round logs into square beams using only an axe. Supporter of Ukraine. Coauthor of “Men of God — Men of War.”
Joined July 2019
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Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
🧵1/7: The golden age of stained glass can be traced back to Plato. Abbot Suger, father of Gothic architecture, was inspired by the Neoplatonic philosophy of light, which holds that light is a divine emanation flowing outward from the source of reality, energy, consciousness and goodness.
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
Some melodies aren’t just meant to be heard, they can be experienced visually, too. Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” offers a captivating blend of music and visual beauty.
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
Most days I write ceaselessly, trying new lines, crossing out almost all of them, and when I lie down as the moon rises I see I have brought nothing to completion, and there are no witnesses to what I've done. And yet I feel that the process itself has changed me, and has deepened my being, and has given me a greater chance to hear the truth when it taps its little finger on my door.
And that is what GenAI can't do. Be the process, not the product. Be human. Be always on your way.
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
If you own a copy of We Were Soldiers Once... And Young, you are already holding a picture of him. The soldier on the cover, bayonet fixed, coming out of the elephant grass, is Rick Rescorla. Hal Moore called him the best platoon leader he ever saw.
He was born in Hayle, Cornwall, in 1939, a boy who watched American GIs stage through his town before Normandy and decided that was the life. British Parachute Regiment first, then Cyprus, then a uniform from a country he was not yet a citizen of. He joined the US Army in 1963 and by November 1965 he was a lieutenant in the 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang Valley, the first major battle between American troops and the North Vietnamese Army. His men called him Hard Core. He came home with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star with oak leaf cluster, and a Purple Heart.
Then he became a corporate security director, which is where the story actually starts.
In 1990 Rescorla and an old Vietnam friend named Dan Hill walked the World Trade Center looking at it the way two infantrymen look at terrain. They found the weak point fast. The basement parking garage was wide open. They wrote it up and told the Port Authority that a truck full of explosives could be driven in and parked under the tower. The fix cost money, and it was declined.
On February 26, 1993, a truck bomb went off in that garage roughly thirty feet from the spot the two of them had circled.
Most people would have taken the vindication. Rescorla took the next step. He told Morgan Stanley the building was still a target and that they should get out of it entirely. The lease ran to 2006, so the answer was no. So he did the only thing left to him, which was to assume the attack was coming and train for it.
Every three months, no warning, he ran a full evacuation of every Morgan Stanley floor in the South Tower. Everyone went, down the stairwells, two abreast, at a pace he set. Senior executives went too, and he did not care that they hated it, and they did hate it. Traders being pulled off desks by a 60-year-old Cornishman with a stopwatch. He timed them. He made them do it again.
8:46 on the morning of September 11, 2001. The North Tower is hit. Over the public address system, the South Tower is told to stay put and return to desks.
Rescorla got on his bullhorn and told everyone to get out.
He was 62 years old. He was near the end of his career and he had every reason to be somewhere else that morning. Instead he stood in the stairwells and moved roughly 2,700 Morgan Stanley employees, plus hundreds of other people, down out of the building. To keep them steady he sang into the bullhorn. Men of Harlech. God Bless America. The Cornish songs he grew up on. Grown adults later remembered the strangest thing about the worst day of their lives was the sound of a man singing in a stairwell.
At 9:03 the second plane hit their tower, above them. Most of his people were already low or already out.
He called his wife Susan. She was watching it on television and she was falling apart. What he said to her was this. Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier.
Then he went back up.
He was last seen on the 10th floor, climbing, still going against the flow of people coming down. The South Tower collapsed at 9:59. His body was never recovered.
Morgan Stanley had about 2,700 people in that building. Six of them died. Rescorla and members of his own security staff, who stayed with him.
He spent eleven years telling people that an attack was coming and being told it was too expensive to prepare for. Then he spent the last hour of his life proving he had been right, and making sure it did not matter.
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
Ukraine appears to have fielded a new variant of the FP-5 Flamingo heavyweight cruise missile with a more advanced altimeter and navigation system, allowing near treetop-level flight.
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
Remind me … why haven’t I used oil pastels for a while? That was an excellent 45 minutes! Yay!
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
We have comprehensive intelligence reports on Russia’s plans for the fall. Putin is preparing the conditions for expanding mobilization. His casualty figures speak for themselves. In less than seven months this year, 221,000 people have joined the ranks of the Russian Armed Forces. During the same period, Russian casualties have amounted to nearly 225,500, among them 131,000 killed and almost 93,000 wounded. A significant share of those wounds are severe, as frontline medical care in Russia is catastrophically poor.
Putin is preparing to simply send more Russians to war. He disguises it with different words and signals, but that is what he is preparing to do. It is crucial that, together with our partners, we exert enough pressure on Russia so that the idea of ending this aggression becomes the dominant one – the idea of peace, not of another Russian mobilization.
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
“I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
The threat of AI-takeover is simply the end result of the belief that the pursuit of wealth completely unguided by any other values can result in happiness.
It is, quite simply, the logical result of a system that has devalued the human being.
The only way to change it is to create a society whose primary value is love instead of money.
And that seems naïve and impossible only because you've been trained to think it is. By an indoctrination in cynicism masquerading as "practicality." By the mockery, even in your earliest years, of anything in you that chooses spirit over Caesar. By money.
And because we've forgotten that the gifts that make us wholly human—empathy, interconnectedness, self-actualization, love—are joyously hard at first, and instruct us in delayed gratification, and lead, along the way, to a happiness experienced only by those who are working to become all of what they are.
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
101st Airborne Division WWII veteran Ralph Maley salutes the grave of his twin brother Rolan, who was killed on D-Day in Normandy at age 19.
This photo was taken in 2018, and Ralph sadly passed away the following year in 2019, at the age of 95.
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
For everyone trying to understand who Ukraine's new Commander-in-Chief is, here's some background:
Mykhailo Drapatyi is a 42-year-old Ukrainian major general who has spent more than a decade fighting Russia and is widely regarded as one of Ukraine's most respected battlefield commanders. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has now appointed him as the country's new Commander-in-Chief, replacing General Oleksandr Syrskyi.
Unlike many senior officers, Drapatyi built his reputation almost entirely on the battlefield. He first became known during the Battle of Mariupol in 2014, when he personally led an armored assault through separatist barricades to relieve Ukrainian forces. Later that year, after Ukrainian units were surrounded near the Russian border, he led hundreds of troops through Russian-controlled territory in a successful breakout that became one of the defining episodes of the early war.
Over the following decade, Drapatyi commanded the 58th Motorized Infantry Brigade, served in senior operational commands in Kherson, Odesa, Luhansk, and Kharkiv, and repeatedly earned a reputation as the commander sent to stabilize Ukraine's most difficult sectors. During Russia's offensive into Kharkiv Oblast in May 2024, he was brought in after the initial breakthrough and was credited with improving coordination, slowing Russian advances, and helping stabilize the front.
What sets Drapatyi apart is his approach to warfare. He is considered one of the strongest advocates inside the Ukrainian military for modern, technology-driven combat. He has pushed for the widespread use of drones, electronic warfare, intelligence integration, and decentralized command, arguing that initiative at the junior-officer level wins battles more effectively than rigid Soviet-style hierarchies.
He is also known as one of the military leaders closest to Mykhailo Fedorov, the two have been associated with efforts to rapidly expand the use of battlefield technology, drone capabilities, digital systems, and innovation across the Armed Forces. Their shared emphasis on technology and adaptation has made Drapatyi a favorite among many of Ukraine's younger officers and military reformers.
As Commander of the Ground Forces, Drapatyi launched reforms aimed at improving combat training, modernizing recruitment, reducing corruption, strengthening junior leadership, and ensuring soldiers received training that reflected the realities of the modern battlefield rather than outdated doctrine.
Another defining characteristic is his emphasis on accountability. Following a deadly Russian strike on a Ukrainian training center in 2025, Drapatyi resigned as Ground Forces commander, stating that commanders not soldiers must bear responsibility for failures. He openly criticized a military culture that avoided accountability and argued that leadership should accept responsibility instead of shifting blame downward.
Within Ukraine, Drapatyi is widely viewed as part of a new generation of military leaders officers shaped by the war against Russia rather than the Soviet military tradition. His supporters see him as a pragmatic commander who combines frontline experience with a willingness to embrace innovation, technology, and institutional reform.
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
I’ve worked on Iran for nearly 20 years. Our options are never great, but I’ve never seen things this bad. For the first time in my career, I’m at a loss.
When this war began, I warned that Iran would likely emerge weakened but more aggressive and risk-tolerant—leaving the region trapped in a cycle of military clashes and chronic instability. That has happened. What I underestimated was the leverage Iran would gain through its stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz.
For a moment, the MOU offered a possible way out. It was deeply flawed, but better than the alternatives. Then vague terms and shoddy negotiating caused it to collapse: Iran believed it could retain some control over the Strait; Washington believed the Strait would reopen to international shipping.
But the fundamental problem wasn’t the negotiation. It was Trump’s catastrophic decision to go to war in the first place.
The result: higher oil prices, economic shocks, depleted US missile-defense stocks, immense regional damage and civilian suffering, alienated allies and very little achieved in return.
So what now?
We could pay Iran off through sanctions relief, oil exports and access to the international banking system. But after surviving forty days of war, Tehran is angry, distrustful and convinced it holds the stronger hand. Its price is so high – and so humiliating – that Trump will never accept it.
We could escalate militarily, which is what the US is doing. But bombing has not produced meaningful Iranian concessions, and Trump appears unwilling to bear the costs of the maximalist alternatives. More pressure means an expensive, dangerous and potentially endless war, with serious risks to US forces and the entire region as we tragically saw this weekend. And it has little chance of success.
Or we could encourage the Gulf states to negotiate a regional arrangement. That may ultimately be the most promising path, but the Gulf states are divided, this remains fundamentally a US-Iran conflict, and any agreement will require major American concessions while leaving Iran strategically stronger than it was before the war. So this isn’t very appealing and hard to get to as well.
The likeliest outcome is therefore that we are looking at a new normal: recurring US-Iran clashes, periodic American or Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, Iranian control over the SOH, higher oil prices and a larger, longer-lasting American military presence in the Middle East. But since the costs of all out escalation are too high both sides try to keep it from going there, though there is always a risk.
Iran’s leverage will eventually depreciate as countries build pipelines, diversify energy supplies and establish alternative trade routes. But that could take years.
Eventually, exhaustion may produce a deal. Iran may decide that controlling the Strait while living under blockade is unsustainable. Washington may accept that it must offer more. The Gulf states may finally unite around a workable diplomatic framework. But not soon.
Trump took a situation in which better options plainly existed, started an unnecessary war and produced a strategic disaster that will take years to unwind.
For now, we are all stuck with this mess.
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
Former CIA Director, General David Petraeus: "Look, Ukraine is now using 10,000 or more drones per day. This is just staggering. Last year, they produced 3.5 million drones. We in the United States produced 300,000. We have nothing like what they have."
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
"Russian soldiers only live an average of 20 to 30 minutes on the battlefield because of Ukraine’s AI drones." - CIA Director John Ratcliffe
"Our intelligence is consistent with some of the open-source reporting you may have seen in Ukraine: the average life expectancy of a Russian recruit right now, arriving on the battlefield in Ukraine, is estimated to be between 20 and 30 minutes.
And that's because AI-powered drones have gotten to be such specialised, low-cost killing machines.
So it's why an inferior force, 4 and a half years later, has held off the superior force of Russia against Ukraine.
The pace of their advance has stopped as Ukraine's mastery of emerging technologies, and in this case, drone warfare, asymmetric warfare, is such a great equalizer," the Central Intelligence Agency chief said at the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit.
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
This is what happens when you have a president who doesn't read.
This is really incredible. Docs released by Trump tonight confirm RUSSIA tried to spread claims Biden was engaged in criminal activity vis-a-vis Burisma and that it advanced those narratives "with US officials" and planed a "high-profile corruption scandal... at the peak of the 2020 US presidential campaign."
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
The puzzle has finally come together. I'm genuinely glad to see it.
Zelenskyy Acknowledges Fedorov's Effectiveness and Announces His Return to a Strategic National Security Role
The political drama surrounding the government's reshuffle has taken a completely new turn, significantly changing the political landscape. Following widespread public debate, former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov's press conference, and public appeals from volunteers and the business community, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an important statement. The president publicly praised Fedorov's performance as head of the Ministry of Defense, acknowledging that the technological leap made by Ukraine's Armed Forces over the past six months has been exemplary, and announced the reformer's return to the government in a fundamentally new and unexpected role.
The Office of the President confirmed that the country's leadership reached a consensus on Fedorov's future role after he publicly declined a standard advisory position, insisting instead on receiving real authority to continue military reforms.
During a working meeting with the newly formed Cabinet of Ministers led by Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi, President Zelenskyy specifically addressed the importance of preserving the reform team's potential. He stressed that disagreements over the military and conflicts between government institutions should not overshadow achievements that have already produced tangible results on the battlefield—particularly the large-scale drone programs and Ukraine's domestic ballistic missile program.
According to sources close to the Presidential Office, Zelenskyy acknowledged that the original plan to remove Fedorov from the government's executive structure because of disagreements with the General Staff had been a tactical mistake that created unnecessary public tension.
> "Mykhailo Fedorov has proven that he can break through bureaucratic barriers and create asymmetric advantages against the enemy. His dismissal as minister during the government's restructuring was a procedural step, but he remains an integral part of our team. The state highly values his contribution, and we have prepared a role where his full potential can be realized without the limitations of a traditional ministerial office," Zelenskyy said, effectively putting an end to behind-the-scenes speculation and apologizing for the wave of destructive rumors in the media.
A Special NSDC Mandate: His New Role
Because the parliamentary approval process for the new Cabinet involved a complex series of personnel changes—including the appointment of Acting Defense Minister Yevhen Khmara—an alternative and much more flexible leadership position was created for Fedorov.
According to preliminary information from presidential advisers, Mykhailo Fedorov will receive a direct appointment to Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) as Chairman of the Defense MilTech and Strategic Planning Coordination Council. Reporting directly to the President, he would receive an expanded mandate that includes:
Coordinating all defense technology projects, including the Brave1 platform, long-range unmanned systems, and the missile program, with direct oversight that bypasses mid-level approvals within the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff.
Auditing military procurement by creating a transparent digital system for overseeing defense logistics and reducing corruption risks.
Maintaining direct cooperation with Western partners as the chief negotiator responsible for attracting foreign investment into Ukraine's high-tech defense industry.
Reaction in Parliament and Society: The Crisis Appears Resolved
News that President Zelenskyy and Mykhailo Fedorov had reached an agreement—and that the reformer would return with broader powers—was met with noticeable relief among political circles and volunteer organizations.
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Putin
Last night Donald Trump released a declassified document that says his own intelligence community identified Putin as personally running an operation to defeat my father in 2020, built around a fake Burisma corruption scandal centered around me and executed through prominent Americans.
Trump tasked his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to fly to Kyiv and meet a known Russian agent.
The Americans who ran, laundered, and legitimized the operation:
Donald Trump. Rudy Giuliani. John Solomon. Joe DiGenova. Victoria Toensing. Lev Parnas. Igor Fruman. Chanel Rion. Sean Hannity. Steve Bannon. Miranda Devine. Ken Vogel. Ron Johnson. Chuck Grassley. James Comer. Jim Jordan.
To name a few.
An operation formally sanctioned by Trump's own Treasury Department on September 10, 2020, and expanded to include more named actors on January 11, 2021.
Oh, and don't forget the Russian-linked FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who later pleaded guilty to making the entire Burisma bribery story up.
The record exists and we have all the receipts, and more.
Renaissance Timber LLC retweeted
When the government finally listens to the people, a lot can be achieved!
Zelenskyy acknowledges Fedorov’s outstanding performance and announces his return to a strategic national security role
The political drama surrounding the government reshuffle has taken a dramatic turn, significantly changing the political landscape. Following widespread public debate, former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov’s press conference, and public appeals from volunteers and the business community, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an important statement. He publicly praised Fedorov’s performance as defense minister, recognizing that the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ technological leap over the past six months has been exemplary, and announced the reformer's return to the government in a fundamentally new and unexpected role.
The Presidential Office confirmed that the country's leadership reached a consensus on Fedorov’s future role after he publicly rejected a standard advisory position, insisting instead on real authority to continue military reforms.
During a working meeting with the newly formed Cabinet of Ministers led by Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi, President Zelenskyy emphasized the importance of preserving the reform team’s expertise. He stressed that debates over the military command and interagency disagreements should not overshadow achievements that have already produced tangible battlefield results, including the expansion of large-scale drone programs and Ukraine’s domestic ballistic missile initiative.
According to sources close to the Presidential Office, Zelenskyy acknowledged that the original plan to remove Fedorov from the government due to disagreements with the General Staff had been a tactical mistake that created unnecessary public tension.
> “Mykhailo Fedorov has proven that he can break through bureaucratic barriers and create asymmetric advantages against the enemy. His dismissal as minister was a procedural step within the broader government restructuring, but he remains an integral part of our team. The state highly values his contribution, and we have created a role where his full potential can be realized without the limitations of a traditional ministerial office,” Zelenskyy said, effectively ending behind-the-scenes speculation and apologizing for the wave of damaging rumors in the media.
A special mandate within the National Security and Defense Council
Because the appointment of new ministers required a complex parliamentary reshuffle—including the appointment of Acting Defense Minister Yevhen Khmara—an alternative and far more flexible leadership role was created for Fedorov.
According to preliminary information from presidential advisers, Mykhailo Fedorov will be directly appointed to Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) as Head of the Coordination Council for Defense MilTech and Strategic Planning. The position will report directly to the President and include broad authority:
Coordination of all defense innovation: Brave1, long-range drone production, and Ukraine’s missile program will come under his direct supervision, bypassing middle-level approval processes within the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff.
Oversight of military procurement: Establishing a transparent digital system to monitor defense logistics and eliminate corruption risks.
Direct engagement with Western partners: Fedorov will remain the chief negotiator responsible for attracting foreign investment into Ukraine’s high-tech defense industry.
Reaction from Parliament and society: the crisis is over
News that President Zelenskyy and Mykhailo Fedorov had reached an agreement—and that the reformer would return with expanded powers—was met with noticeable relief among politicians and volunteer organizations. Members of Parliament who had previously criticized the Presidential Office over behind-the-scenes personnel decisions said the compromise would help preserve domestic stability.
