Good to see a secretary of state dealing with our local graffiti problem today.

Looking for recommendations for good books on the suffragettes…

This

Teach it all, the contradictions, scandals, adventures, violence, connections and complexity. And stop seeing it entirely through the prism of feeling.

Enjoying this. Thornberry says the Official Secrets Act isn’t fit for purpose but she has little doubt a jury would have managed to decide whether China’s behaviour was hostile or not.

If I were Farage I’d offer a referendum on the death penalty

I would put more money on continuing to harvest infinite energy from the sun over assuming that forcing everyone to use The Machine The Lies To You is the steady basis of an entire economy

I wonder how much longer NEOM's partnership with the Financial Times is going to last? neom.ft.com

The triangle containing the fretwork of roads N of London intrigues me. What explains it? My guess was soil quality.

As for SAFE. It's becoming clear that, whatever the language about Europeans facing common and serious security threats, they're more concerned with protecting market share and getting paid than in really ensuring Europe is better prepared to ensure its own security 3/3

Lammy is being more than a touch disingenuous here. He could simply have reported what he'd been told which wouldn't have been "misleading the House " . news.sky.com/liveblog-web...

I wonder how much longer NEOM's partnership with the Financial Times is going to last? neom.ft.com

“This is one of the most infamous maps of the Middle East that you will ever see”

😮 Norway finds out that its electric busses - produced by a Chinese firm - can be remotely controlled from China! The good news of this is that the Norwegians realised this because they did a cybersecurity test. We need to think about, and test, stuff like this more. www.focus.de/panorama/wel...

‘Something for Mme Monsieur? Something for le weekend?’

This feels like another consequence of the “taxing the rich will fix the deficit” strategy the govt seems to have embarked on

“Duralex preservative” 🤨 Excellent @secondmentions.bsky.social

This would be very much in keeping with our times

“This is one of the most infamous maps of the Middle East that you will ever see”

ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

This is the talk I gave at the Engelsberg Seminar in June. I had 15 minutes and had prepared a speech but abandoned it and spoke off the cuff, using the three props I had brought along. It felt a bit precarious and I ran out of time, but I think it is one of the best talks I have ever done.

I reckon Lammy’s done for

(1/) The distinctive Curlew, with its evocative, bubbling calls declined by 51% between 1995 and 2023 across the UK. This decline was particularly significant in Wales, where it declined by 76%. @btobirds.bsky.social @jncc.bsky.social @rspbscience.bsky.social #Ornithology

Pilot had a massive ad spread in a jp newspaper with "make AI jealous" and "write what AI can't touch" written on it Anyway I think everyone should own a Pilot kakuno pen

Musings On #Iraq Review James Barr, A Line In The Sand, The Anglo-French Struggle For The Middle East, 1914-1948, W.W. Norton & Company, 2012 musingsoniraq.blogspot.com/2025/10/revi...

Reeves launched a National Emergency Broadcast of Doom... thecritic.co.uk/maki...

Good to see that the $$$$$$s of tech bro hedge fund money splurged to try to stop Mamdani went down the drain

We should rename the White House the Domus Aurea.

This is a really good piece from @joshglancy.bsky.social. Far from “whataboutery“, it’s a genuine attempt to to wrestle with a disturbing and peculiar feature of contemporary politics, namely “why is the world quite so obsessed with Israel and Palestine?” www.jewishnews.co.uk/the-world-wa...

Some cheerful Kurdish rugs

Is it cake? It is cake, and not just any cake, it's solar powered cake! Exceedingly clean power! Ed becoming a bit of comedian to tell us about the Mr Kiplin bakery in Barnsley running on solar power! www.instagram.com/reel/DQo5lwm...

I am beginning to wonder if half these companies will exist by the time they have to pay settlements to the authors whose work they have stolen.

I once asked defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, how we got suckered into helping to invade Iraq. He replied, 'We didn't realise until too late that Dick Cheney was the president'.

Just been forced to watch a video about the FSCS while trying to open a joint savings account at the bank…

There should be a tax on ridiculously bloated road boats registered in urban areas, because (a) they cause obvious problems in such areas (b) they are bad for the environment (c) they are dangerous for children (d) they are awful, and driving them should be expensive and socially stigmatised.

Last year, @alexfanta.bsky.social and I started collecting data on a decade of meetings between Google and the European Commission. Today, Alex shows how Google influenced people in Brussels to dominate the scene.

Some cheerful Kurdish rugs

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

Looks like extraordinary cowardice. "...following pressure from the Chinese state and a separate defamation law suit against the university, Sheffield Hallam decided not to publish a final piece of research by Prof Murphy and her team into forced labour." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Very interesting how this and the Chinese spies case show how alarmed the Chinese were at scrutiny of their use of slave labour.

Very interesting article.

From Ruchir Sharma’s piece. My own experience is the same. Ebook sales plateaued years back. Amazon keeps them alive by 99p offers (which I refuse to promote).

Pretty extraordinary story here www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc....

Very interesting how this and the Chinese spies case show how alarmed the Chinese were at scrutiny of their use of slave labour.

From Ruchir Sharma’s piece. My own experience is the same. Ebook sales plateaued years back. Amazon keeps them alive by 99p offers (which I refuse to promote).

Very interesting article.

Email arrives from Microsoft. I have already switched my sub (to Microsoft Classic) to avoid this hike by opting out of Copilot but it’s interesting how they are framing the price rise. Not exactly trumpeting AI.

Update: the crucial screws are hidden under the wheels which you have to ping out. Still a faffy job but the thing now sounds like a Ferrari.

Vacuum cleaners. A while back people were making recommendations. What were they? I need something portable which can cope with long hair. Our Sebo gets clogged all the time and I can’t work out how to take the roller brush head apart.

And some goats for your timeline