Great piece on the failure of centrist governments in the UK, France, and Germany to give voters anything to actually vote for and their fueling of the far-right by elevating its message, and the contrast that Spain offers. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/o...

Balcony, 1945 #surrealism #escher

It’s the universities encouraging students to use AI that really gets me. All this “we need to accept it’s here and teach them to use it” does not help students learn to think. Writing is for thinking and communicating, not just producing words.

Don't do any of this.

This is an excellent BTS image from ALIEN 1979 - it really shows the scale of the jockey and the detail of not only the pilot but the floor and the wall. This is why physical sets are awesome. As viewers it's tangible and real, and as actors they have something physical to properly react to.

Taking Back Control of Remembrance - why war memorial selfies, Nigel Farage's moody wreath vignettes and giant plastic poppies risk obfuscating what we were told to never forget. My Letter from London for @noosphere.app www.noosphere.app/taking-back-...

ICE/BP’s next targets are reportedly Charlotte and New Orleans. Two things: 1) If they had the capacity to hit many cities at once, rather than pick on one or two at a time, they would. 2) Moving south seems to confirm speculation that they’re leaving Chicago because it got cold.

She doesn’t even say his name.

SPOILER ALERT: Social Democracy is not Communism. Franklin D. Roosevelt was to all intents and purposes a Social Democrat. His "New Deal" was a Social Democratic policy that turned out to be the most popular policy in American history.

Took my daughter for a tour of the International Criminal Court in the Hague today. I hate that this court needs to exist, but I'm beyond glad that it does. There are a couple of folks with outstanding arrest warrants who I deeply hope are soon sitting inside being referred to as "defendant."

I'm thinking this through further and there is no difference between deporting people to form a "culturally coherent group of people" and Hitler saying jews could not be aryan. Caution around Godwin's Law should be dropped. Katie Lam has openly supported nazi ideology.

🇵🇱⚖️🇩🇪🇺🇦 Quite incredible passages in the opinion of ("old") judge Dariusz Łubowski in the case: "The destruction of critical infrastructure of any country (...) in a just, defensive war (...) are not sabotage, but military actions of a diversionary nature, which can in no way be considered crimes."

TIL that there isn’t a library in every primary school in England 😳

Wanted to post some 🔥 from John Quincy Adams on the Declaration of Independence: "It was the first solemn declaration by a nation of the only legitimate foundation of civil government. It was the corner stone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished at a stroke/

If AfD did get power they'd need a 2/3rd majority to change the constitution. They are such a long way off getting near there, even in places like Thuringia where they are the strongest. Under FPTP you can get such a majority on minority vote shares.

I was sent this map by a follower. When was the capital city of South American nations founded?

He's right, and not only that, American civil wars were largely unique in that they were fought "formally" (like OP means). That's unusual even accounting for wider history. It's because when you get right down to it, both were nation vs nation.

No one has done more damage to public health and trust in science and medicine than Andrew Wakefield. 26 years after his wrong and fraudulent paper people are still spouting his nonsense about an alleged link between vaccines and autism. The study was debunked countless times. There is no link.

Who really owns the £5 note in your pocket? youtu.be/8CTy_ia4j5k?... Politicians love to talk about “taxpayers’ money.” But here’s the truth: every pound in circulation is created by the government or banks licensed by it. This video explains why.

The true purpose of Bluesky has been revealed and it's Michael Stipe telling us the lyrics to It's The End Of The World As We Know It

My grandfather was an East Tennessee hillbilly farmer. He had dairy cows. And yes. They always boiled the milk before they used it for anything. Have these people ever been around actual cows?!?

This guy gets it. This is the way.

This is extremely disturbing stuff. Growing up in the Tennessee in the 70's & 80's, I know personally how destructive this sort of racism is and how nasty it can get when it is normalised.

The chance of a >140 m asteroid hitting the Earth (hello 🦕) is more likely than you being trampled by an elephant, but much less likely than you being struck by a car. doi.org/10.3847/PSJ/...

The bank app is telling me to "tap & pay like a boss😏" and "rally my crew". I am 37 years old and you are the bank. Don't talk to me this way.

I’ve been outside the Brussels bubble this summer travelling around Europe, spending time in 🇫🇷🇪🇸🇮🇹🇵🇱🇧🇪🇹🇷🇬🇧🇬🇷. In talking to Europeans, a grim reality has become apparent. We are facing a crisis of confidence in facing the 🇺🇸 threat. How can we make Europeans believe in themselves?

For this article on what generative AI is actually doing to society once you cut through the hype, I referenced, drew on, and engaged with some interesting writing by @cwarzel.bsky.social @tressiemcphd.bsky.social @noupside.bsky.social @garethwatkins.bsky.social @himself.bsky.social.

Totally normal for the President to instruct his lawyers to “go through the museums”

Unfortunately, and as I write about in my current book... British society in the 1930s... and even after the start of the war... influenced by newspapers like the Daily Mail was just as hostile to Jewish German and other refugees of Naziism as their modern descendants are to 'asylum seekers' today.

London is one of the greatest cities in the world. Khan is correct. Its very existence does indeed make a mockery of tribal nationalism.

Ain't this God's own Truth!

just a reminder again that we were told over and over that a 13 year old downloading a Limp Bizkit mp3 was an existential threat to society

100%

Otto English talking sense, as per isual.

It’s like a PhD in your pocket, but it’s a PhD in Hamburglarology from the Correspondence College of Tampa

haha this rules. folks don't know that AIs scraping websites accounts for like half of all internet bandwidth usage right now. Sites get scraped- ie, all the contents downloaded- over and over again, destroying/wasting their bandwidth, often maxing it out. It's like being continually DDOS'd

Truth, y'all. Truth.

Very good thread on the profound asymmetry of our information environment. Beyond ideology, the desire for *control* in the political and non-profit donor class is a huge barrier here, that hamstrings even things that *are* funded with unnecessary oversight and reporting requirements.

Seriously, these guys have fired literally every scientist who could tell them that they don't know what they're talking about, and so we get BS like this. www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

Started watching Jaws and couldn’t stop, not for the first time. Amazing movie even with the hilarious fake shark. If it was remade the shark would look real as fuck, but the movie would suck.

Women have been telling men what they want for decades, and it's pretty basic: partners who are caring and respectful. Sense of humour a plus. Stable finances are nice, but for a lot of women it's not a deal breaker. If men refuse to listen (the sticking point seems to be respect), that's on them.

Preview of Monday's newsletter! One answer to 'why do British political parties keep pretending they have a different core vote to the one they have', I think, is that it would be a lot more ideologically convenient for them if they did.

Reading an essay rn that starts with: "My view, shared by very few, is that the Cold War was distinctly a US project that began in 1946–47 and ended in 1963." Yeah bud, it's shared by very few because it's wrong.

For folks who are thinking about induction cooking, I recommend starting with an induction hotplate, which are like $65 at Ikea or wherever. Most people are really happy with the cooking experience and often move half or more of their cooking to induction, even with just one "burner" available.

Sure, but Huckabee is also a fundamentalist young-Earth creationist Christian, so you know . . .

BREAKING: Trump's FCC approves Paramount-Skydance merger after blocking it Just DAYS after CBS (part of Paramount) fired Trump critic Stephen Colbert Just WEEKS after CBS paid $36 million to Trump to settle his bullshit lawsuit vs 60 Minutes TOTAL AND COMPLETE CORRUPTION

Damn straight.

I don't like when people say I'm darkskinned. Not because I'm offended, but because its a (dis)orientation toward whiteness. In the broad spectrum of human skin colors I'm squarely in the middle. Reorient and recalibrate your understanding of human diversity.