I can never recommend ignoring the news but maybe read this first as.ft.com/r/d2b6ae74-d...

Today marks the first day of meteorological spring 🌷 March has arrived, and with it comes longer, lighter days. Over the next few weeks most of us will enjoy around two extra hours of daylight ☀️

As everyone points out in the replies and in the QTs, this is a lot harder that you would expect when first hearing the prompt question

Keir Starmer is going to end up with his trademark u-turn here – where it becomes obvious to those paying attention it was entirely forced by backbenchers. So he gets no credit for the u-turn by people who wanted it, and attacked for dropping the policy by others.

THIS IS EXCITING NEWS! You can now pre-order a SIGNED copy of "Up. A scientist's guide to the magic above us" by the amazing @drlucyrogers.com Lucy Rogers. Lucy shows us the wonder in looking up & discovering a whole world in action overhead. Order HERE! www.biggreenbookshop.com/signed-copie...

In short: There is little the Tolkien estate can do about Palantir and all the other torment-nexusish companies giving themselves names from Tolkien books their functionally illiterate founders don't understand. Single words aren't subject to copyright and the Estate wasn't using them as marks.

The sense of dread that filled me last week when we were boarding at CDG to return home absolutely confirms this.

Bro I don't remember a THING after the sixth double scotch. You telling me I bombed WHAT now?

if people are using classified information to place bets, then theoretically others can analyze betting behavior to find signals that reveal classified information.

Dilley detainees said art supplies have been removed in room searches, immigrants have lost access to Gmail and staff hover within earshot during video calls. The Trump administration and private prison operator CoreCivic disputed detainees’ claims.

Many important points in this thread but IMHO this is the key one. MAGA’s perception of “strength” is 180 degrees from reality. Hard to imagine a more clear example of the triumph of [misogynist, racist] ideology unmoored from geopolitical facts.

It’s insane this is legal. People around Trump are profiting off war and death. I’m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this.

I swear to Christ I think I would vote for a candidate who just used capitalization correctly

Donald Trump announces Khamenei's death while Underpants Gnoming his way towards Iran's future.

With everything that’s going on in the world, take a minute and relax to the sounds of Loch Long in Argyll Scotland this afternoon 🌊 Be safe everyone 💙 #StormHour #Scotland #Relax

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope provided the first vertical view of Uranus’s ionosphere in this image released on Feb 19, 2026, revealing auroras shaped by its tilted magnetic field. This is giving us the most detailed portrait yet of where its auroras form.

The person he is speaking of is Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989. These people are fucking weapons-grade stupid. Holy fuck.

“On Monday, Carney meets Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi before flying to Australia, where he is expected to address parliament in Canberra. He then jets to Japan to meet Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who was sworn in October last year.” Middle power solidarity ✊

Someone filmed the Iranian suicide drone attack from INSIDE the Bahrain hotel. Extraordinary footage. (🎥 Cradle Media)

The technical term for this in political science is State Rapture.

Somehow this isn't an Onion headline au.news.yahoo.com/us-designate...

Then what happened?

Kash Patel Faces Backlash After Partying With Nancy Guthrie’s Captors

what if we did 2003 again but with even stupider people in charge of everything

Trump may have just launched the kind of Middle Eastern forever war he has long condemned in his predecessors (via Bloomberg Opinion)

If I was the UAE I'd want my Board of Peace membership fee back.

CNN is saying the Iranian attack happened after Trump “lost patience with negotiations”. I don’t believe it. The negotiations were cover. This was always the plan. The scale of the military buildup showed that.

"At least he'll be better on property rights" has gone the way of "At least he won't drag us into pointless overseas wars."

Joe Biden warns that Donald Trump will try to ‘steal’ midterm elections

THIS.

Jesus Christ they're running the war from Mar-a-Lago www.reuters.com/world/us/top...

This is fundamentally my view, and it can be explained to a toddler. The object of immigration policy is simple: to get more British citizens, to make the country bigger and stronger.

The ridiculous extension of the wait for settled status isn't about putting up barriers to arrival, it's about putting up barriers to integration for people who have already been here for years. It's agreeing with Farage that these people should be treated with suspicion - and leaving it at that.

Rich alludes here to the wisdom of the judges at the Nuremburg trial: “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

inside the White House

Literally

A party that is resolutely anti-bourgeois while being staffed and supported by the bourgeoisie is an intriguing and inevitably impossible strategy. Anyway good luck attracting those Reform voters who hate you.

"You may have noticed more adverts for QuickBooks, Sage and other subscription-based accounting software popping up. HMRC’s digital shift is certainly going to be good for their businesses — but what about the small traders forced to shell out hundreds for their services?"

Trump’s video suggests there’s no plan for after - he’s just going to let the Iranian people sort it out. And as the Iranian people have no access to weapons that likely means new faces from the heavily-armed old guard in charge, just like Venezuela.

This kind of open Islamophobia was quite common in the US after 9/11, but - broadly - kept out of the mainstream in the UK. That firewall seems to have gone.

Labour remain trapped by the grid. It's clear that they had planned on the basis of either losing to Reform or just about scrapping a tight win against them. So they had Mahmood already lined up to show that Labour can outdo Reform on the cruelty stakes. Unfortunately the Greens won.

Remember when Congress authorized the use of force against Iran? Me neither. Any U.S. attack on Iran would violate U.S. and international law.