I mean it is actually a click bait story of someone looking up what tax rates are because we don't actually know what his financial affairs are. At the very least I'd expect him to have some business expenses to deduct.

Carmakers copy China to get new models on the road faster - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Competition is a good thing, exhibit CCLVII

"According to the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan agency, households in the bottom decile of income distribution will lose about $1,600 per year as a result of the law, while those in the top 10 per cent will see a $12,000 annual gain." www.ft.com/content/4927... Not so beautiful

"Commodity purchases were negotiated bilaterally and driven by economics, including freight costs and margins, rather than political pledges" www.ft.com/content/c961... Shocked faces in the White House

Outstanding blog from Freedman senior on the Battle of Kupyansk open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/w...

I've found this season very exposition heavy and the dialogue feels very aimed at people who are on their phone. Lots of showing AND telling which I don't like. Still enjoying. Glad it's ending.

Tell me I'm not mistaken: Stranger Things is total garbage isn't it? I'm not missing something? At least since the first one or two seasons.

Sorry I can't come out Christmas shopping, I'm obviously reading every word of the 587 "thoughts for 2026" emails kindly sent to me by think tanks, consultancies and event organisers. How did they know this is what I wanted. Did they intercept the letter to Santa.

Even on the immigration side you can see Marshall already moving to a 'well we didn't want to scare off THOSE people' - as they discover that high skilled people do not in fact want to be treated like criminals.

"when we embarked on a deluded adventure in trade barrier creation, we naturally assumed the UK governing class that we routinely deride would nevertheless seize the opportunity to turn the country in Singapore and Switzerland combined. They have sadly disappointed us"

This piece is billed as ‘father of girls thinks misogyny lessons are unnecessary’ but right at the end he actually asks the girls he is confidently speaking on behalf of and they…disagree. Amazing. www.thetimes.com/life-style/p...

www.theguardian.com/film/2025/de... The moment the credits came up, I thought this the most entertaining movie I could remember seeing. Nice to see this lot agree

Coal demand reaches new annual record as US output rises - www.ft.com/content/8fa0... Terrible

observer.co.uk/culture/book... Was quite surprised to find I had read seven and a half of these (half because I really could not finish the Zuboff book, it felt unreadable after a bit).

really good, postive blogpost from Anthony. Interested in whether the consensus (be you YIMBY, NIMBY or whatever) agrees with his postitivity

Oh

Also this www.wsj.com/finance/inve...

Unhedged is always a must-read, but this one on how to think about the possibly passing quality of being "asset-lite" in the big tech companies is educational, thought provoking, all round excellent and therefore worth a precious free link for the first few giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

"Current AI valuations assume massive, durable moats. Investors have priced in the assumption that only a few companies can build frontier AI models, allowing them to extract monopoly rents."- giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

I knew it was down, but would not have guessed this much www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Quite a morning for a run

I know I should just brush this aside as the having of opinions by a professional opinion-haver, but it is as offensive as it is ignorant to suggest that people in Poland, of all places, are in the grip of a delusion for fearing the very real possibility of Russian invasion.

what I find odder about this interview is her quite openly avowed powerlessness when really bad things happen, like the deadly, abrupt closure of USAID, pardons for J6 rioters and ICE violence.

all of us will forever remember where we were when we heard that the UK-US Tech Prosperity Deal had been suspended. The shock on everyone's faces. People in the street, simply numb. Staring at their phones in disbelief. Our stoutest most reliable ally. How on earth. www.ft.com/content/afd4...

Almost all governing strategies involve some risks. The ones that don't are the strategies pursued by Sunak's government and this one: in which by avoiding taking tough decisions, just become more unpopular with no path to popularity.

I've came to the same conclusion over last few years. The detail and coordination required for each play on both sides of the ball is unmatched IMO. It's like 4D moving chess but with a load of guys that weigh over 20 stones.

Weird late realisation/confession: American football is a much more interesting game than UK football. Sorry.

observer.co.uk/news/nationa... The Observer deserves many prizes for their dogged exposure of this fraudulent, parasitical behaviour

my regular reminder to myself that ONS search results are actively, imaginatively bad: they must surely be programming it to ensure that "ASHE survey" immediately brings back *2012's* results, just for lolz

Thinking this may be a better profile pic

My absolute favourite bad line: a rebel commander, relieved that Leia is alive, says something to her like "thank goodness! When we heard Alderan was destroyed, we feared the worst!" Yup, a whole planet was vaporised but at least *the worst* didn't happen....

Watched the original Star Wars for the first time in decades last night. It seems... Smaller? The special effects are still surprisingly good. The dialogue - "I've got a bad feeling about this!"- surprisingly poor. Still easy to imagine it seeming brilliant on first viewing 50 years ago.

The Mail employs someone who's got an equity stake in the hotdog man meme

Presumably at some point we will have hit peak grift, and just like the IPO of Lastminute.com marked the peak of the dotcom bubble in 2000, there will be some symbolic last grift that defines it. And I'm calling it: it's the Truss £500k member's club.

Just seen that this is the longest period of no small boat arrivals for seven years.

Amazing, the @dailymail.co.uk manages to publish an entire lengthy feature bewailing (!!!!) the exodus of Poles from Britain without once mentioning Brexit. Apparently this outcome (which is surely exactly what they campaigned for in 2016) is all the fault of Keir Starmer. mol.im/a/15379789

"It is the US that is truly infatuated with AI...There is a strong belief in continued exponential progress — a rarity in the history of technology." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

An thinking of rereading Bleak House for the first time in thirty years. Will I regret it?

*The truth is that a huge pessimistic bias in our national accounts has led us to be fed with contemporary reports of doom and gloom, which subsequently turn out to be nonsense" . giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @chrisgiles.ft.com

This is what Russia does to its own. Imagine what it does to the places it conquers

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK appears to have realised that governing like Nigel Farage's Reform promised to is a stupid idea www.economist.com/britain/2025... From The Economist

Me at the arrivals gate in any US airport after providing my social media accounts:

It's less than a fortnight to Christmas and there is absolutely no way I'm reading an Economist three parter on the endless rise of the European far right, no way whatsoever

In our part of London a new free primary school was opened in an area surrounded by good existing schools with falling rolls. Parents in an affluent area have basically created a 'free prep school' (which we're all funding), complete with posh name and boaters in the summer.

A chart which reveals the difficulty of dealing with negative supply side shocks and links into this piece by @gilesyb.bsky.social substack.com/@gileswilkes...

Here, have some tasty nominal growth 😍

Tory governments spent £325m on free schools that failed or disappeared www.theguardian.com/education/20... Open minded question: do we know whether the free school idea was a good one?

pca.st/episode/a001... Listening to this nice episode about forecasts for the year ahead, and remembering this... But...

Works all year