These etymological nuggets (for me, at least) make words in my target languages (which this year include Dutch and German) much more memorable. They spark little ‘aha!’ moments that resonate and re-resonate as the words recur in reading or listening across related languages. #langsky

Our 'Special Relationship'

I call this one "Memories of Brexit"

wrote about the occupation in minnesota with a closing note on how the white house has exactly one tactic — repression with goons — but no particular strategy for dealing with entrenched resistance. gift link.

Many who meet Trump comment on a nauseating smell - something between shit and bad breath - that emanates from him. I can definitely smell it here in London from all the way across the ocean.

Seems unfair that you only get to use the bouncy slide to get off a plane when things have gone wrong. The bouncy slide should be a treat they give to the best passengers who did the flight correctly.

He’s an immigrant, so he can’t become President, but my goodness Mamdani would be the guy you’d want in the White House to Make America Likeable Again.

I’m starting to wonder if looking genuinely happy and acting like you really love the city is a more effective way to campaign (and govern) than scowling about what a shithole the city is and how many more cops it will take to subdue it.

Most likely another false dawn. But, wow, I loved it. Red. Always.

‘It’s writing on the sign ‘No Parking’’. My Kurdish barber speaks chatty English strewn with fascinating developmental grammatical errors. Arrived 4 years ago unable to converse, has never taken lessons, but now doing great. Those errors will likely erode away in time. #langsky

This is nice. They fancied and liked each other a lot. A pity they don’t live in the same city. One of these days there’s going to be a Blind Date where they immediately decide to move in together.

You’ve had a hard week at work and you’re after a mildly amusing British sit-com style darkish comedy? This six-parter on iPlayer might be just the ticket. Dawn French is in it, doing her Dawn French thing. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Manages to big up the murderous regime and somehow make the agony of the Iranian people about himself. Nauseating.

Every word of this by Jonathan Freedland.

New details about the death of Good have emerged. She was alive and unattended until Minneapolis Fire Emergency Medical Services could reach her. ICE prevented a doctor from examining her at the scene earlier. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

So cheaply bought, so easily duped. The Russians, the Chinese, every intelligence agency on earth will be licking their lips if, God forbid, this vile little man makes it to Downing Street.

"use the full length of the platform" is not an instruction you can personally put into practice, unless you are an anaconda, in which case you should not be on the piccadilly line for other reasons

One of my hopes for Iran is that following the collapse of its horrible regime, there will be more masterpieces from its amazing filmmakers. Jafar Panahi is one of them. My favourite is Asghar Farhadi. A Separation is brilliant on how marriages and families work and fail.

Universities who want him off their backs should give him a weighty framed certificate on gold embossed paper saying ‘greatest mind of our times’. The UK could present him with a tasselled, scroll-y ‘special lordship’.

The more I learn about Thomas Tuchel, the more I am impressed. He’s right about social skills and the ability of the team to gel being at least as important as talent. I’m more optimistic than I’ve ever been about England winning the World Cup.

🤣 🍿🍿 This has been today’s funniest story. The punchline it deserves is Farage giving Jenrick the cold shoulder.

Trump says a lot of deranged shit, but, per this Reuters article — and the threats of invoking the Insurrection Act in Minnesota this morning — he is very clearly exploring how to cancel the midterms. www.reuters.com/world/us/fiv...

Solidarity with the American people against its horrible government. ✊🏽

Yes, there’s every chance the behaviour of the US between now and June leads several competing nations to boycott the tournament. How could Denmark, for example, (if they qualify) possibly go if the US has seized Greenland?

This "open borders" line is *infuriating* - these people came here to study or work, because they had a uni place or a job to come to. They paid visa fees, student fees, NHS surcharge - and many of them are doing challenging and important work - staffing our care homes, for example, including Mum's.

Labour should ban Grok, ban X, pick a fight with Musk, force Farage in to ever more contorted defence of the platform, make a big deal of saying he supports child porn. There’s an opportunity here for Starmer to draw clean lines and win some attention and credit with voters. He will squander it.

BBC report at a headline level that Grok will now not make sexually exploitative images any more. An actual reporter comes on and explains that it will do no such thing, and will just make the images invisible in the UK. These are two very, very different things.

Very hard to know and properly understand what’s happening in Iran. But if the regime and Donald Trump say that torture and execution of protesters have halted, it means they continue.

The best bit of my morning scroll through The Guardian was this profile of Adam Tooze. I’ve read a couple of his articles and now feel I should pick up a book. The key to our world is China, which both ‘is the climate crisis and its solution.’

This kind of thing comes around again when you become a grandparent. And it’s lovely.

No-one should be travelling to the US right now unless absolutely necessary - as protest and just as a matter of personal safety. I think the UK should maybe issue a travel advisory saying it may be unsafe for non-white Brits.

I’m curious… what is the US actually going to do? Just let Trump bloviate until his term is up and forget this grotesque notion was ever mooted or present Denmark in the next few weeks with an ultimatum to surrender Greenland? I can imagine a US invasion of, say, Cuba. But Greenland? Nah.

This doesn’t go far enough for me. The child pornography is the worst of X, but there are also the algorithms promoting incitement to racial hatred and other evils. Close the whole platform down.

Rafael Behr argues - elegantly - that two-party politics in the UK may well be over. I worry that following the next GE, something more vital will end: a Reform government will upend my assumption that whoever is in power my physical safety and that of my immigrant heritage family is not at risk.

Seizing Greenland seems to be the same sort of obsession as tearing down half the White House to build a ballroom, or announcing insane tariffs or demanding the Nobel Prize. This is the wildest Presidency in US history and it might well be the last.

Explain to me like I'm five what the 2nd Amendment is for if not for this. King George III never said anything this obnoxious or deliberately inflammatory.

Hey, experts in these matters, help me out here with a wholly genuine question: I don’t think Trump can withdraw funding like this - but if he did, would it not over time lead to the break up of the Union?

This is a horrific report. Security forces in Iran are aiming particularly at the eyes but also at the genitals of protesters. Long after the regime falls, thousands will live with permanent disfigurement, disability, trauma and pain. This is what humans do to each other.

I’m starting to wonder if the Union can hold. If you’re Minnesota and a cruel, lunatic federal government continues to hurt your people, do you not, at some point, raise the issue of secession?

The nature of the cruel Iranian regime is that it doesn’t hesitate to torture or execute protesters or shoot at crowds. The death toll will rise. The Iranian people will defeat their oppressors but it will be agony.

I think I love the good people of Minneapolis.

Starmer’s record to date in government suggests he will somehow contrive to miss that open goal. Let’s see.

Superb and absolutely damning long read on HS2. www.ft.com/content/3f73... How the UK ended up building the world’s most expensive railway

Kristi Noem’s podium at DHS is just a straight up Nazi slogan "One of ours, all of yours" was a Nazi policy made when an SS officer was killed in a Czech Village and then the Nazis killed every single resident of that village in response…..but don’t you dare call them Nazis….not even hiding it

This is grim Africans recruited by Russia are referred to as “can openers”. Here’s a photo of one with a land mine strapped to him designed for detonating in a bid to "open" the 🇺🇦 bunker Some “recruited“ as shop assistants/jobs in a shampoo factory find themselves at the front - cannon fodder

The same software that generates child pornography is going to power the US military machine? What a strange and horrible world this has become.

Ukrainian soldiers have established control over the Kupyansk city council (video) The Ukrainian flag was raised again over the destroyed building. www.unian.net/war/kupyansk...

This, from the Reform press conference to announce Zahawi’s defection, is an example of the creeping Trumpification of right wing (and maybe broader) politics in the UK: lob personal insults at journalists asking legitimate questions.