Córy Doctorow with another verbal bullseye: pluralistic.net/2026/01/13/n...

John Boorman is 93. This anecdote about him & Lee Marvin has quite the punchline.

New Order's Blue Monday played on 1940s instruments .

Borders expert here! This ia a steaming pile of horseshit.

Must read. I’ve spent much of the past year visiting Big Locals, and have never been more certain that its model would deliver significant results if backed at scale (as the government is doing with Pride in Place) It is remarkable what some places have done given just a little money and time.

As someone said the other day, one of the biggest problems with AI is not that you're expected to be more productive; it's that it triples the output of the biggest idiot you work with

More like “Board of Where’s My Piece”. This despicable plan shames those govs and orgs that fail to condemn it. Its instigators and enablers are beyond shame. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Donald Trump names Tony Blair, Jared Kushner and Marc Rowan to advise Gaza ‘Board of Peace’

🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪

"And we now have María on the line who would like to swap a Nobel Peace Prize for the presidency of Venezuela..."

This desire to be beyond reproach is a pathology among billionaires. It used to be you'd at least attempt philanthropy to offset the inevitable harm you knew your business did, now they just throw a fit and stomp their feet if anyone doesn't unquestioningly love them. Maturity crisis.

The Maga war on European democracy

The FT got is architecture critic Edwin Heathcote to write about data centres and it's wonderful. www.ft.com/content/7692...

For clarity, this government has so far: - cancelled HS2 north of Birmingham (previous government hadn't actually done that formally) - cancelled electrification of the Midland Main Line - cancelled West Yorkshire mass transit - cancelled the trans-Pennine high speed line

You may deride lawyers generally, and you maybe right to do so. But sometimes, even lawyers can be pushed too far. Well done these guys on resigning. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

NEW Death in Minnesota The significance of the reaction to the killing of Renee Nicole Good By me, at @prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

So when authorities say “she tried to run over an officer,” that is not a neutral description. It is a claim of intent that can be used to justify lethal force after the fact. When the state kills first and invents the threat afterward, it is not policing, it is death squad behavior. /end

There is a howling void where this man’s soul should be

Our Govt is intransigent on this issue of injustice for nearly a thousand prisoners. Its suggested plan is far too slow. Two better plans were suggested last night by two very learned Peers, but the Govt rejected both. We won't give up.

Wednesday’s @thetimes.com cartoon times.newsprints.co.uk/morten-morla...

This is SO unfair. Just because Jared Kushner earned a living as a real-estate investor working at his father's Kushner Companies... and then took over the firm when his dad was jailed.. and then landed a load of profitable gigs after his father in law became president it does not make him a nepo

My readership on this channel is small, a combination of few numbers and little message to convey. I never thought that I would be angrier in my sixties than my twenties about the state of the world. US presidents may have disappointed me but none has abhorred me as much as the orange excrescence.

This just in: calculator has apologized for saying BOOBS

After arriving in the UK I needed to register for my NI number so I was sent down to a dingy office in Poland Street one lunchtime. Got in the lift and was joined by a short gentleman. Ronny Corbett.

Hearing the expression “that butters no parsnips” the other day reminded me of one used by my father: “that doesn’t put any jam on my eggs”. Searching Google only served up AI slop, so is this a Dublin expression? Or is my aul’ fella just a bit odd?

Never has done. Never will do.

Die Hard: why didn’t the Gemermans just cut off the juice and have vault failsafe to open at the beginning of the movie and save all the bloodshed by Bruce Willis’s feet?

subscriptions >>> shop.viz.co.uk/viz351bs

Grand Design’s House of the Year judge has redeemed herself after having me shouting at the telly last week - first for only shortlisting one and then for picking the third best in my opinion. Two really good choices this week.

OH. MY. GOD!!!

I wish Radio 5 would stick to sport and give the BBC’s spineless obsession with immigration the weekend off. Its presenters appear lightweight and unprepared, giving the likes of Danny Shaw, leader of Labour’s Home Office descent in the moral void, an uncritical ride. Only “optics”, no humanity.

I came to this country as a child refugee. No English, no certainty, no idea what my life could become. Britain gave me refuge. Not on a timer, not with conditions attached, but with a chance to grow roots. A thread 🧵 1/8 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A really fun fact. If you go to the cartoonmuseum.org in Central London to see incredible collections & shows of the best cartoon artwork & you pay for admission once, that ticket acts as an annual membership so you can go back as many times as you like in 1 year. @cartoonmuseum.bsky.social

The Race to Build 1.5m Homes on BBC is doing a fair job of making a complex story comprehensible. But it’s getting evasion to the 2 big questions: can it be done? Will it make housing cheaper? The answer to both is No. And even if the answer to the first were Yes, the second will still be No.

Oh, FFS! Why does the BBC continue to give airtime to Reform?!

BBC QT: Hilary Benn channeling Sgt Wilson.

BBC QT: Why are concerned citizens branded far right about immigration? Immigration being a primary far right obsession might be a clue. It’s such a closely overlapping Venn diagram it approaches a circle. And “concerned citizens” has long been a disingenuous cover for vigilantes.

It's a fool's errand to try to figure out why each individual shooter did what they did; it centers one erratic, unwell individual (which is impossible to solve) rather than the structural problems (which are possible to solve). And the structural problem is this: guns. I explain more here:

Expected this Big Read on UK housing to just say ‘build more houses’. It’s much more interesting than that. on.ft.com/4nauRYz

Can't say I particularly trust this "democratic lock" over sentencing guidelines, given how much Governments of the day obsess over the risk of negative Daily Mail front pages, rather than what is legally sound/just (but can be spun badly as 'soft on crime') www.gov.uk/government/n...

Elkins’s argument is tendentious, and against the sprit of the Belfast Agreement, but a sufficiently unimaginative UK Supreme Court, would probably be unable to win a battle with a sufficiently imaginative UK Govt determined to leave the ECHR 🧵

NEW Yes, an incoming illiberal and radical UK government would have absolute constitutional power By me Substack: emptycity.substack.com/p/yes-an-inc... Personal blog: davidallengreen.com/2025/08/yes-...

Putin 1 - Cretin 0

Oops. Just been blocked by someone I followed so I could be exposed to those of a different political persuasion, for being critical of the quality of a publication by his think tank. Recycling a teacher’s criticism of my own writing in a far off time was evidently unwise, however appropriate.

All these trees will be destroyed for 300 car spaces for @sdublincoco €35M overscaled coffee shop at the Hellfire. Over 31,500 have said no & are calling for a review of this monstrosity. change.org/p/save-the-hel…#naturer#biodiversityt#wildlifefe