Look Mum No Computer’s Eurovision song is extremely Look Mum No Computer youtu.be/8XR2RvfZ-68?...

From the Iraqi first lady

What to know on the sixth day of the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran: U.S. and Iran vow to step up attacks in fast-spreading war; Azerbaijan caught in crossfire www.cbsnews.com/live-updates...

In Iraq in 2006 the US press officers were trying to sell me the line that IEDs were being smuggled in from Iran, because the tech in the EFPs was beyond the Iraqis. That's the Iraqis who got invaded because they were on the cusp of building nukes, mind you

I'm now reliably informed that the guy who harassed the family actually turned up to the rally to show solidarity. You couldn't make this shit up.

Given the UK’s pitch that strikes on Iranian missile launchers and storage facilities are fine now, I can only assume the US, Israel and the Gulf states are running out of interceptor missiles. I suspect the huge number of aircraft in the region is primarily missile/drone defence

“Specific and limited” is a notable turn of phrase from Starmer. Another British government used it in 2020 when the Tories admitted they would breach international law www.bbc.com/news/uk-poli...

I’d be fairly interested in a deeply reported piece on why Israel and/or the US is targeting prominent opposition figures in Iran while the media happily promotes “exiled Crown Prince” Pahlavi

Remember, you don’t have to watch all of it. Take a break, let others bear witness, know that murder and death won’t go unseen without you.

Of the 7 or so varieties of pepper I’m attempting to grow this year I’m most excited about the Aleppo Peppers that are just starting to sprout

Thanks to whoever handed my wallet in at Lidl. Faith in humanity needed something today

I’d really like to see the UK media do some proper reporting on the “Democracy Volunteers” rather than accepting their output uncritically. Seemed off to me when I first saw it. That it happens to be a constituency with a significant Muslim electorate should be reason to question rather than accept

As Democracy Volunteers are the source of the claim of "Family Voting" in the Gorton & Denton by election, I got curious about their claims and thanks to @joenoonan.bsky.social I came across this claim about "Family Voting" during the 2020 Irish General Election. A brief 🧵

Is this good?

Looks a bit like if people from certain countries apply for citizenship in Ireland, the DoJ goes to the guards, who go to the CIA or MI6, and ask, "Is this person a terrorist?" and these foreign intel agencies get a silent/shadow veto on this person's citizenship application.

This seems an eminently sensible move - 3 different vehicles within the same family, plus Caesar artillery pieces

You’d wonder what Big Stu has to do to get Player if the Match

Shoutout to the Twitter randos As Trump pushes Iran to make a deal, scores of U.S. warplanes join "armada" heading for the region www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-i...

On the Anthropic Claude killswitch/refusal code I made two pages with some unique info on them. "pre" had the code before the info and "post" had the code after the info. So it can prevent Claude from scraping text content on demand. Will test with image content now.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, armed forces of the DAANES) expanded about ten times over between 2016 and 2026. Most units didn't see serious combat after 2019, and a lot of veterans of earlier parts of the war retired. Lots of experience was lost, and the rest was hopelessly diluted.

Houl on a wee minute - Look Mum No Computer is representing the UK at Eurovision? youtube.com/shorts/TLOca...

This rules. I love how delighted they all look!

These constant “weather warnings” are increasingly pointless and I’m guessing increasingly counterproductive - I know I basically ignore them now because they mostly describe normal seasonal weather

"Switzerland’s military has terminated its contract with Palantir… following a security audit… concluded that U.S. intelligence agencies could potentially access sensitive Swiss defense data… significant reputational warning for the data analytics firm" www.newscase.com/palantirs-sw... #R4Today

Morgan McSweeney has resigned Lots of reasons for it but among them is our revelation on Thursday evening that McSweeney’s think tank paid a PR firm to investigate journalists. McSweeney was across that decision. Still so many questions to answer about it

For non-Irish people, Simon here describes exactly what Morgan McSweeney has done to UK Labour. It's pretty straightforward; he's just done the same thing there that other Fine Gaelers have done here, which is, destroy their party's electability, for no apparent reason.

Just leaving this here www.thenational.scot/news/2545164...

If this is about road safety and not prioritising cars surely the logical next step is to mandate that all cars be hi-viz so that they can be more easily seen by other road users?

I cannot stress enough: this never happens. Extraordinary international attention saved Erfan Soltani’s life

Can’t afford Premier Sports so instead of the Ulster game I’m watching Ospreys vs Dragons in Welsh on S4C and I entirely blame @squidgerugby.bsky.social for this state of affairs

this invoice could have been a podcast

So much reverse ferreting

Federal law enforcement agents shot and killed a man in Minneapolis on Jan. 24 according to local police officials. DHS told Fox News that the man was “armed with a gun”. A video of the shooting appears to show that a gun was taken from the man before the first shot was fired. x.com/BillMelugin_...

Can’t wait to see what’s in this booklet, but the buried lede is that the govt wants a wide network of centres that people can go to in an emergency, and the article seems to say the govt won’t pay for them or even insure them

American man criticises Europeans and tells them what to do about the other American man who’s criticising them and telling them what to do

If the big defence outlets had reported the names and shared the photos of all the other Resolute Support troops killed in Afghanistan the way they covered American deaths, maybe more people would understand how much Nato gave for America there

£6.20 in UK Tesco so like 30-40% more expensive compared to Northern Ireland?

This is an excellent piece and lays bare just how poor his information is

A recap of the main on the ground developments since midday January 18th, including the situations around various IS fighter prisons and reported war crimes akmckeever.substack.com/p/january-20...

The SDF say they've left al Hol

Almost like Barrack did a deal with Jolani to shaft the Kurds and enable US oil companies to move in or something

My brief summary of the developments in eastern Aleppo and al-Raqqah from Jan 14 to today (c. an hour or so ago) akmckeever.substack.com/p/on-the-cur...

I see we’re at the ‘NATO member threatens NATO members for NATOing’ stage of the Western Alliance that keeps everyone secure

Using AI/LLMs, particularly for government security work, has zero downsides whatsoever

Your second favourite aircraft

Yeah, I dunno, I think I’ll pass