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This will go down as a major stain on FIFA and its World Cup before a ball has even been kicked. Infantino has been banging on about the most inclusive World Cup and Africa’s top referee can’t even get into the country. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/08/w...

This is really Interesting if read alongside that piece everyone is sharing about how the kidz can’t read/think anymore (being arsey, difficult & pushing back against authority is helpfully v much in the teen wheelhouse) www.ft.com/content/d2d8...

My day job is at a rural branch of a public library, and we have a Pride display. Yesterday I was at the desk when a man came in. Fifties, maybe, or sixties. Plaid shirt, mesh trucker cap, suspenders. He went up to the display and just stood there for a long moment. Then he came up to the desk. 🧵 1/

Pleased and relieved to present my new paper on the "WhatsApp world order", on how an inter-connected world was created by technology and politics failed to keep up. There is a lot in here and I'll post some key findings to follow. ecipe.org/publications...

South Africa’s electricity generation mix in the first quarter of 2026: Coal 74.1% (down from 79% a year before) Solar 10.7% (up from 8.4%) Nuclear 7.7% (up from 4.7%) Wind 5.3% (up from 4.5%) Hydro 1.6% (up from 0.4%) Diesel 0.5% (down from 3%) CSP 0.2% (up from 0.1%) - Ember

Right but you can just buy little stickers to put over the lights. Perverts will not care about this rule. BAN THE PERVERT GLASSES

Lol

"Justice, without the fine print" 😭😭😭 (as a lawyer who is increasingly buried under hundreds of pages of LLM-generated drivel from opponents, this makes me want to change careers to something serious. Plumbing, maybe.)

On the plaas, the buchu have started flowering. Blue skies, the rain predicted for today has gone walk-about 🌻

Some huge scientific news announced in my house this morning.

A large, fluffy ginger cat has come to visit some builders on a site. One of the builders is stroking her - her eyes closed in bliss. Builder: I know we need to crack on. But this is a lovely cat.

I was lamenting the fact that my cats get tired of one brand of food after two days then I tried to think of it in a different way and asked myself "What if YOU ate salt’n’vinegar crisps every day?" then realised I do that already and that my cats should shut the fuck up and stop acting so entitled.

"If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it." - Roald Dahl

Having been away for a few weeks, one the strongest impressions about being back home is just how filthy Cape Town has become :( So much litter absolutely everywhere.

I do wish that instead of whining about (justifiably) being called out as sexist, people would just say "Yeah, I'm sexiest. I think that's ok and there are bigger issues right now. Here are my red lines, and perhaps we can still work together."

When I finally find the source of all my problems

It's super that every country in the world now has their own specific Trump-related reason to hate the USA.

people are like "how does the economy really work??? what happens in the supply side???" this is how it works

😆😆😆

Very interesting @jburnmurdoch.ft.com piece this morning - how much value AI is creating is exactly the right question. The evidence from coders here suggests it’s so far creating a lot of extra output - 290% more files, 30% more software releases - but no extra valuable outputs (app downloads)

As a noted Polanski skeptic, I just... really don't think it's fair to call him illiberal, and I just don't think this piece successfully grapples with any of the forces or ideas it claims to?

Cool thread with a spectacular ending 😏

And then the cycle repeats. If you prefer a different analogy, it's as if a bunch of raccoons found an overcoat, and used it to get elected to state office to block trash disposal legislation. But now we're getting crazy, right, guys? Right?

LET WOMEN HAVE HOBBIES

OMG 😆😆😆

It's not offline, it's gone on strike

Ten month old son has a Woody toy from Disney in his room. Just seen that the wife put him a drawer with his arm trapped, moved it out just in case Toy Story is real.

Thinking about why women might not want to use a product that has forced itself into every software interface to confidently shout things that are wrong

"Fake citations have turned into a nightmare for research librarians, who by some estimates are wasting up to 15 percent of their work hours responding to requests for nonexistent records that ChatGPT or Google Gemini alluded to." open access link: archive.ph/qt59c 2/🧵

A bright bolide (fireball meteor) exploded high in the atmosphere off the Massachusetts coast around 2:30pm ET. The loud boom heard widely in Boston and RI, was its sonic boom as it fragmented—confirmed by GOES-19 satellite, WBZ meteorologists, and no USGS quake.

Have you, like me, spent the last 26 years worrying if the Canadian Potato Museum STILL has the display of various potato diseases with potatoes in little coffins? Stop worrying. I checked today. Still there.

Just me, swinging. You thought it would be sexy, but no.

this explains everything

This is a very well written article that is worth your time wherever you are in the world www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026...

Look who is keeping me company for breakfast in Bukhara!

Hey, look everybody! I found a brand new way to exit a party with a flourish AND break my ankles!

Get a cat

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

Right? The way journalists act like maybe this time Trump isn't bullshitting them has the vibe of a kid with their backpack, sitting on a curb waiting for their shitty deadbeat dad to pick them up for the weekend like "He's 5hrs late but he said he was coming this time :)"

"It sounds like you're just feeding rockets to the ocean."

Wattle was still very drugged when I got her back. We are allowed to laugh at this photo because she recovered well. Except for 20 minutes of ARGH WHAT ARE LEGS octopus fighting.

Bundibugyo ebolavirus outbreak in the DRC and Uganda has been declared a PHEIC by the WHO. The highest alert lever it has. This requires swift a and multinational response. Estimated death count is already 80! No vaccine, no rapid diagnostic tests. www.science.org/content/arti...

When your phone memory is full, but you'd rather delete your banking app than delete any of the eleventy thousand photos of your cat.

Seen in my hood on the way to get coffee this morning, how fabulous :)

Remember that there are up to 200 000 cases of human #Hantavirus infections each year. Probably many more, since especially old world Hantaviruses apparently often only cause flu-like symptoms. Testing for it may well ramp up now, so expect tons of unrelated cases to turn up over the next week. 🧪

It should not be revolutionary or radical that an essential aspect of democratic governance is engagement with and justification to the public. It's not just about campaigning; this is the essence of a democracy.

🤣🤣🤣

Them: "Aim to leave a beautiful corpse" Me: "..... where... 😬"