Worrisome that city construction costs in NYC have gotten so out of hand that to get public toilet costs down to the low six figures each, we need to do away with running water and sewer connections www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/n...

Something wonderfully ironic about this announcement coming from the most terminally online person in Westminster.

Seeing people do "here's the savvy take on how and why the US should acquire Greenland" and just feeling so *embarrassed* for them. Have some dignity. You don't need to be an apologist for the world's dumbest autocrat, you're not somehow sophisticated for seeing The Smart Play on imperial vainglory.

This is a genuine post. What right does he think he has to tell Germany how to manage its healthcare. This is not the behavior of an ally.

I just saw someone use the term "slopulism" and it's a very good word. My proposed definition: "Junk policy aimed at populism-inclined voters which will go nowhere and achieve nothing but which strategists believe will win support."

It’s beyond insane that our overarching internal security agency has spent months tweeting barely-coded messages of support for neo-Nazi groups and the entire media apparatus looks at it and says “That’s odd but certainly not part a major story that is relevant to current events, I’m sure”

It's so fucking convenient that they get to "fear for their lives" anytime they want to absolve themselves of anything and when we actually fear for our lives because of them and do anything a scared person would do it's justification for our death.

at this point, i won't even settle for a fresh round of nuremberg being on the platform. our reps need to actively plan them. write a law and release the text. pick the venue. keep a public list of offenders and their crimes, and make it very clear that they will be hauled in to face justice.

This is unsustainable and is an explicit threat of civil war against blue states.

Spoken like a true 19th century Conservative city father of a Yorkshire or Lancashire mill town, Mr Mayor.

Frey: "This notion of inflammatory comments -- c'mon guys. I dropped an F bomb, they killed someone. Which one of those is more inflammatory? I'm going with the killing somebody."

The level of quixoticism at this point is like Kemi Badenoch spending all day trying to win over Your Party voters. What part of ‘no’ does Blue Labour not understand?

When you are the incumbent government, your re-election strategy is downstream of your governing record, which is what you should be preoccupied with now.

I can’t understand how the restoration of the Houses of Parliament will cost… £15 billion! That’s…. £133,000 a square metre! For context, to build a brand new skyscraper in London is around £10,000 /m2. What the hell? www.politico.eu/article/mp-q...

I don't know much about this soecific projects, but I wouldn't be surprised if the very high price tag comes from them wanting a 19th century building to work like a building fully complying with 21st century standards while leaving most of it untouched because heritage conservation.

just done a pre-rec for the BBC World Service (think it was for Newshour, which goes out at 2) on the response to Grok's appalling AI images. Feel really strongly that governments, institutions and businesses should come off X now: it's crossed a red line; there's no value there for them.

Also this is basically all podcasts bsky.app/profile/mich...

Again, "I only make CSAM for money" would not help an ordinary person's defence, but would aggravate their sentencing.

"It’s worth remembering that Ernest Marples arguably did more for the motoring lobby than any transport minister before or since. And yet they hated him – for attempting to restrict their freedoms even slightly for the greater good. That, too, was a sign of things to come." @jonnelledge.bsky.social

Add to this list BBC Verify and several European newspapers, unanimously reaching the same conclusion. It's a serious test of the Trump MAGA lie-machine.

Pissing people off by hitting them with taxes/cutting their benefits and earning their emnity only to then forgo the badly needed funds really is becoming one of this government's distinguishing features www.theguardian.com/business/202...

spending my day interviewing trans people for a piece (hopefully coming out next week!) and what a stupid, stupid, mean, absurd state of affairs

This is also a field test. If the press lets them muddy the waters on executing a woman in Minneapolis despite multiple witnesses and video recordings clearly depicting what happened, the message they'll take away is that there's nothing they can't get away with. Nothing.

I understand the pressures on the BBC, but Radio 4's coverage of the Minneapolis shooting is an example of "bad balance". It's all "the Trump regime says she was a terrorist, but Democrats say it was murder". The BBC has the footage. It doesn't have to treat truth and falsehood as equally valid.

absolutely unreal. who can possibly hit publish on that and think "yes I have done my job as a journalist and editor. this is serving the reader"

You and your wife drop your 6-year-old off at school. You just moved here. You see ICE terrorizing your new neighbors. You film them, as is your legal right. Your wife complies with orders. She is then shot in the head. You still have to pick up your child later today. This could be you.

"Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” her mother said. “She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.” www.startribune.com/she-was-an-a...

Tim Walz needs to order the MN state police to arrest this ICE agent:

Cracking headline, made me click immediately, accurately describes the content of the story, 10/10

It's completely unacceptable in every sense, except the very literal one, in which we are going to accept it.

Who governs?

Grok is awful; it's the very worst example of what running AI without any guardrails and concern for harm looks like. But let's not forget that it's people - and let's be clear here, those people are men - who are telling Grok to make those images.

The idea of teaching Western civilisation as “Plato to NATO” is taking a battering at both ends in the US nowadays

I am extremely confused as to why the UK government and police are saying Grok’s mass-scale CSAM generation is an issue for Ofcom. This isn’t about X failing to moderate CSAM, which is an Online Safety Act issue. It is about the company and its technology being actively involved in its generation.

man what the fuck www.whitehouse.gov/j6/

I mean they do lose when their polls go down. Belief and nerve aren't much use in winning elections if no one votes for you.

Elon Musk chatbot repeatedly making CSAM on demand should be one of the single biggest stories right now and it's effectively a collective shrug instead

I have a hunch that if you or I were running a website doing this the "urgent contact" would involve door rams and handcuffs so I struggle to see why it can't be slightly more pugnacious than this.

If you follow this argument through to its logical conclusion there should be a UK Government channel on pornhub.

Embodies the underlying weirdness of this government - the minister in question hasn't tweeted for *OVER A YEAR* because the site is a cesspit.

i want to stress again that every time i try to explain this shit to normal people i sound like i have to be institutionalized

There’s appeal across the political spectrum, and you take the fight head on with the rule breakers of the former Tory govt and the rule destroyers of the far-right. But this govt have taken cowardice over justice every time. Bankers bonuses, Israel, Trump, ECHR, winter fuel, immigration…

magical

I’ve been reading about influential new “conservative intellectuals” or “post-liberals” for at least a decade now and every time it’s just racism with a different hat on. Whatever the spin, it’s always fundamentally the same idea

2026: scrolling past the AI generated CSAM on the nazi pedophile app to see my favorite politicians' public anti-war statements

This is the smartest thing I've read about the Venezuelan regime change effort.

More broadly, this is a depressing death knell to the idea — already on life support — that U.S. foreign policy cares *at all* about democracy and human rights, in Latin America or elsewhere. Now we love dictatorships, just so long as they're willing to give us a cut of the proceeds.

Parsing Trump, Rubio, and Hegseth statements, it sounds a lot like "we're going to drop all demands for democracy/elections, recognize Rodriguez in perpetuity, drop all sanctions, send lots of investment and technical assistance, and buy any oil Venezuela wants to sell."

This is such a great speech. Cities are wonderful and its great to see someone truly believing in that finally in charge here again

Imagine being the person brave enough to leak this in the hopes that media attention could stop it and then the media just……buries it.