rtft some gorgeous images

I try not to think about American politics (Don't look up) but this is very nicely put:

It's tragic Lindsey Graham did not get to go out on his own preferred terms, buried alive in Donald Trump's White House Pyramid alongside his gold and other concubines.

www.ft.com/content/7a0f... If I was a political aide with a conviction for fraud, under scrutiny about undeclared financial support… I simply would not write a book called “How to Launder Money”.

Oh no not the integrity of FIFA

No, fair enough, if I’d offered to launder some cash I’d probably do the same.

May he who does not have a crypto gambling aristocrat paying the rent on a five storey Georgian townhouse near Buckingham Palace cast the first stone.

"A few minutes later, Walsh decided he had hit on the solution. “There is a MUCH stronger case to be made for invading the UK, toppling its tyrannical government, and liberating its people than for pretty much any regime change war (to include Iran) over the past 30 years,” he concluded."

Language log was an incredible blog - worth reading if you were interested in any aspect of languages. Rest in peace.

Straight out of Nancy Mitford

Tbf to her she's doing an excellent job at portfolio without minister.

France grapples with the hard questions.

Since most former US presidents are ... non-responsive for the foreseeable future ... this is technically correct

You could have read it first in the Church Times, the day after April Fool's www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/202...

In case anyone wondered whether Trump's Anthropic ban was inspired by anything other than spite and stupidity: www.theregister.com/security/202...

Something similar to. 3 just happened to me. One of my articles was credited to Yuval Noah Harari in a published paper! The authors say they are fixing this citation and other hallucinated ones...

I would find the "hydration breaks" vastly less irritating if they were just honest and called them additional ad breaks.

It occurs to me that "The Selfish Gene" only works as a title because we are the products of multi-level (group) selection and so sensitised to betrayal and selfishness. A pity that the whole book is an argument against the reality or importance of such selection.

I get Andy Burham’s Triple Lock line, given manifesto I don’t get floating pensioner tax cuts After flirting with WASPI compensation & reversing the Nat Ins rise, he’s now flirting with diluting the govt’s other big direct tax rise The mood music will need to change VERY fast after Thursday

It would be nice if at any stage of this process Burnham had sat down for a hour and looked at the government's current spending plans for the next few years. If he'd done this, he might not have spent so much time recently actively sabotaging his own prospects as prime minister.

Delicious

Thought experiment. If guns were more widely available in Belfast, who would be the most likely to have them?

The fruitloop to fascism pipeline, part one www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/202...

"Yeah, I do cocaine." "I didn't know you had dandruff." "I don't."

A "legitimate concerns" guy

This is very good indeed.

By far the biggest problem with delegating judgement to machines is the people who own the machines can tune them towards outcomes they prefer but those who don't own anything can't. It's not the technology. It's a transfer of decision making power from rational accountable systems to capital.

one of those stories where the future jumps down your throat New AI espionage powers trigger Putin camera scare - www.ft.com/content/6f4d... via @FT

This has been something I've been meaning to write for quite some time and the Homer contretemps gave it the opportunity. The thing I most wanted to draw out is that it isn't one fool on Twitter with a helmet, but a radicalization pipeline designed to lead antiquity-curious young men into fascism.

What strikes me in writing about the last ten years is just how much of the UK approach to the EU was set in stone in 2016 and never revisited - the secrecy, the believe in a regulatory dividend, the idea of hero negotiators or special deals - all wrong.

FCC To Investigate TV Shows Where The Mom Has Job https://theonion.com/fcc-to-investigate-tv-shows-where-the-mom-has-job/

They need the central bank of crypto to print some more vibes

A few years ago I wrote a profile of the Metropolitan Police for @lrb.co.uk. It was partly about how establishment attacks on "DEI" in policing were an effort to rebuild an alliance with rank and file officers that had catastrophically broken down in the 2010s... www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Really good thread (and a really good follow also)

The next time someone points out that Britain and Iran are the only two countries to reserve places in the legislature for clergy I'll say that since Iran is so much better at standing up to Trump we obviously need more bishops in the Lords, not fewer.

If you read one thing today, make it @stephenkb.bsky.social's admirably clear and rational analysis of the police's actions following Henry Nowak's murder, from the @financialtimes.com Inside Politics newsletter www.ft.com/content/aa94...

This is how politicians of the Labour right used to deal with the fash, btw

Juvenile Northern Saw-Whet Owl. They breathe in dense coniferous forest of Southern Canada and northern United States and mountainous regions of central Mexico. They are cavity nests. They do not build their own nests. They live in abandoned woodpecker holes.

This is such a great e.g. "We don't recognise" always means "we can't deny this but it's just far enough away from being 100% accurate that we can pretend to not know what you mean."

thinking about this a lot today

If by "smashed up" you mean spouted a lot of bollocks and then quit government in a huff because everyone was ignoring him, then yes he did.

Can you spot the bits that were written by a human being? I asked Claude to imitate a WSJ editorial on Pope Leo XIV's encyclical and then mashed the results up with the real thing. If Claude read the Pope on AI, by @seatrout open.substack.com/pub/andrewbr...

This looks like what Bezos did to the Washpost newsroom

“THERE is but one living and true God, ever- lasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible.” (Source: the not noticeably woke Thirty-Nine Articles)

Battery cattle farms are an abomination.

Interesting that the idea of another EU referendum is regularly discussed on broascast media as something that would cause division and thus a bad idea. But plans to deport literally millions of people are discussed as administrative questions.

Excellent book! Grab it while you can. Think Jane Austen but with dragons. 🐉💕

In sum, skip the Atlantic on this one and read Monstrous Regiment, a great standalone Pratchett and a perfect book for right now, because it takes on propaganda, war, gender, and how religious zealots starve nations and ruin everything. Quote me on that, why don’t you.

Can anyone explain just why Onan would rather spill his seed on the ground than make Tamar pregnant? The only explanation I can think of is that the resulting child would count as Er’s heir. But is this right?