Discworld QOTD, from Jingo “History was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders.”

My god, 80s Sting was buff.

People who moved to the UAE for tax purposes are now, I assume, closely examining a map of the region.

They’ve hit dozens if not hundreds. Yeh Trump is scum but don’t fall for open propaganda by Russian puppets.

British middle classes:

Excited to see the arrival of lots of little North Koreas

And - as with Maduro - the message this gives to everyone is “you really should get nukes. They don’t mess with people who have nukes”

If I were a world leader, I would probably be reluctant to normalise the targeted killing of world leaders

Post a picture you took, no context, to bring some zen to the feed.

This 'correction' from @lewisgoodall.com regarding accusations from Reform and the Conservatives that the Greens engaged in sectarianism, deserves to be widely read. #c4news

Tbh, it‘s kind of surreal as a Christian watching certain Jewish leftists dabble in it. Like… buddy, do I really gotta break Christianity’s batting record on nuance to you here? The Cossacks are talking about you too. You’re slathering yourself in chum, then jumping into a shark tank

Fantastic. Do more of this. Will also annoy a lot of people who deserve to be annoyed.

Setting aside them guys who knock each other's teeth out for vainglory can we just take a moment to really appreciate that what Ali did in staring jingoism down & rejecting it, taking years in prison rather than engage in imperialism or injustice, is one of the coolest things anyone has ever done?

Fond memories of working at NTL, woman rang up screaming at me. Her husband in background shouts at her, “don’t talk to them like that. They’re on fuck all” Then he takes phone off her, and gives me a line which I have used myself since “Do you have a manager you dislike intensely I can speak to?”

Massive result here from good old fashioned journalism. Props to @jim.londoncentric.media and the team. A must read. Fantastic work all round.

This is how I discovered Polanski’s position on ‘natural birth’ and god, fuck this so so much

Brainwashing, 2026 edition. This paper shows how X's algorithmic feed shifts people's views rightwards. It's a sophisticated, highly effective form of reorientation. And it is utterly chilling. If you're still on that platform, unhook yourself now. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Outstanding. Perfect. No notes. Disappointed he didn’t go for 100%. Way bigger number. 10% seems positively limp.

Really decent thread digging into AI a bit and the responses to it. Similarity I sit between booster and doomed. I do think the median view needs to be “useful but imperfect”. Not in all cases. But dismissing it as useless I’m afraid is ignoring a reality. It’s also not a god.

Getting shown up in the arena of elite impunity by *the British monarchy* is an incredible “America at 250!” achievement

as someone who talks to a fair amount of trump supporters it really does boggle my mind how they're like "i would like really terrible things to happen, but i get very squeamish about seeing them." the only way i can describe this is Worm Mentality

"excuse me sir, there must be some mistake- i voted to create the camps, not live in the zone of interest" is like every trump voter

So much of Bluesky can be explained by it having one population whose primary mode of interaction is jokes and another population who have taken a vow against ever getting a joke.

I find this article persuasive. I know from my own anti-fascist organising that many left-wing Jews - including many who have been extremely vocal against Israel's actions in Gaza, turning up at protests week after week, having many difficult conversations - have a complex relationship with Zionism.

A great power model anchored on the era when the US was at the height of its dominance in the 1980s and 1990s is also not intellectually structured to cope with the geopolitical consequences of EU integration

The drunk uncle theory. You don’t argue with the casually homophobic uncle at Thanksgiving dinner to change his mind; you argue so that the closeted cousin at the kids table knows there’s safe people and better possibilities out there

Wow.

Whereas this metaphor I think is exactly right. (Right down to we do on occasion close a park or a space to children in order to give us more time to fix the space)

As Ronald Reagan said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and have you considered bobsleigh."

Bottom of a thread that is absolute fab

Obviously this does feed into my priors, but also does bring a lot of receipts to the table on how bad the OSA and how it’s an enabler for worse. Any good it might achieve is lost in the worse it has achieved.

It *literally* does. Thats what it is. A document which says youre British.

The US administration’s insanity on vaccines continues to have ramifications across the world – it is not that America will miss out on these potential new vaccines. It is that they simply won’t happen at all. (Or at least they’ll be indefinitely delayed.)

Properly giggled at this. My wife asked what I was laughing at. By the time I finished explaining, I don't think she wants to ask me anything ever again.

I would have thought this was clearly a fringe view until yesterday, but I saw tons and tons of people seeming to endorse it, which, as I said, seems not great

He’s just described *checks notes* Every single commuter.

This reads more like he was galaxy braining a list like: a) Darth Vader b) [my clearly preferred candidate] c) Mr Blobby And the PM still almost went for Vader.

For a "communist" state, China is the most ruthlessly mercantile in the business and have been building green infrastructure, and filing green patents, at a basically unparalleled rate because it is the future. One estimate is that 90% of green tech patents have been filed in China.

This is really good. Come for the funny. Stay for insight.

This by @zoesqwilliams.bsky.social is really worth a read, in spite of the fact that it mentions me in passing. She's convinced me, anyway, that vice-signalling really is a thing - and a phenomenon/technique we need to take very seriously.

AI will replace all search and just become what we think of as search. Somewhere along the line the new kids will look us Gen X’s and wonder why we had to boolean search term our way to finding an email. It’s not everything non AI was magically great either.

I understand why people are exhausted by AI hype, and why those of us squarely in the corner of "human dignity uber alles" see AI doomerism as self-serving hype, but I *really* think people on the left broadly need to start thinking seriously about the possibiltiy of the hype being...true.

side note: it's odd to me that people on both sides of this equation are so fixated on the concept of AGI / consciousness/ etc... even if AGI is never achieved, the level of usefulness and effectiveness that today's AI technology presents is already way more than "enough" to produce serious effects

in light of that chris hayes post about ai and the left, i’m just gonna re-up what i’ve been saying for like a year now

The kids actually made animals that don't exist. The AI just put a bunch of stuff that already exists together into a polished slop blender. You can't get a better illustration of why AI can't create anything new while human creativity is bottomless.

The rest of the world seems locked in to some narrative of British cooking that's decades old. London especially but all over the country has some of the finest cooking right now from street food all the way up to fine dinning. You can hit a solid gastro in most places without much effort.

When you get visited by three Puerto Rican ghosts

My “dont panic we’re winning” T-shirt is raising a lot of questions answered by my “dont panic we’re winning” T-shirt