Poland having an official start date (966 AD), contemporaneous written sources predating that start date (Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, probably 961-2 AD), an interrupted history of unified statehood (sui generis gavelkind breakup and „seniorate” in 1138), 123 years of occupation (1795-1918) is illustrative

Every lifelong football fan I've ever met is like "I think players are supposed to serve their suspension" and every adult convert is like "the Archon of Constantinople's epistle on the Pentacostine rites of the eucharist clearly states handballs are mandatory."

Why do I think that, despite polling showing they will be largest party, but unable to form government, Civic Platform will hold power in Poland? Best personal financial wellbeing indicators in Polish history. What can Labour do in three years to get an equivalent „real” metric?

www.maptap.gg July 6 96🏅 93🏆 100🎯 100🎯 100🎯 Final score: 989 ok this was not bad, but my US geography remains mediocre

Today I feel Belgian.

It gives me almost no pleasure at all to support Belgium, a team I’ve always seen as overhyped and underachieving, but, well,,

screaming (but obviously unsurprised) at Truss being the one the RCP most clearly respect

Ok pleased with this, reasonably. www.maptap.gg July 3 99🎯 97🔥 98🎯 99🎯 96🏅 Final score: 977

She did a thing!

In fairness, Kraków stopped doing fireworks because of the effect on domestic pets, but I think OP wouldn’t survive 4 hours on Wisła-Cracovia derby day. Or a club night in rural Poland, where „hearing damage” is something you see mouthed to you over retina-blinding laser lights

“Nationalised railways will work better in the Uk”, a hypothesis I also believed, not looking very good based on the last week of using newly nationalised Thameslink

Many such cases. I’ll admit I’ve been guilty of it more than most, but, like, the majority of posters need to get some _perspective_

The Kraków grid being excellent (and with a main square of insane size) is an odd byproduct of the city being burned down nearly totally in a Mongol invasion and consciously refounded in an organised way, which is quite fun

Yeah been sceptical about Andy but at least there seems to be a generic sense of “we’re going this way”

I have a minor gripe that *to me* seems like a “loads of people hate this for budgeting”, but might be no one cares. Subscriptions like streaming platforms and direct debits are basically the same thing and should be presented as such imo

Thought of what I’m reading when I saw this: Andrzej Bobkowski’s unsentimental diaries from Paris 1940-1944, highly critical of _most_ individual responses to occupation. There’s a passage in March 1942 though of hearing cheers, with sorrow reserved for the day after, during a British air raid

There's a trend among the liberal commentariat to say the UK would be better off in the EU but it's going to be terribly, terribly difficult to rejoin and it will be controversial with the public, so we can't . While criticising Starmer for taking the same attitude to every other difficult decision.

V cringe post but small things make me happy. When we bought this rose this spring, the roots were largely dead and just fell off when taken out of the pot. Most of the branches and leaves died. Took a while but the plant revived and it flowered today.

Anecdote time, my dad, as a young radio newsreader on what was then a small new commercial channel in the early 90s, did this because they forgot to include a weather report in his script. “Sunny, occasional cloud, rain possible later in the day”. Nobody noticed

Zack, the defence minister just resigned because they wouldn't fund the military

Living up to the Bluesky stereotype

www.maptap.gg June 25 99🎯 100🎯 93🏆 99🎯 94🏅 Final score: 964

Before the PM sacks him, he should Tapp out (I’m sorry I will resign)

Denaturalisation next imo. Let’s not kid ourselves that Jenrick, Yusuf et al. have any boundaries

With the noble exception of Sadiq and a few others, the failure of progressive politicians to turn clean air into a powerful political agenda is a generational failure.

Haven’t seen speculation about this year’s FIFA Peace Prize winner. 🤞 it’s someone worthy!

Midgeley and Haigh by all accounts orchestrated the coup and Haigh quietly ran the disability benefits rebellion so they should be treated with as much fascination as McSweeney or Cummings. Curious if they will be

Quite in the background elsewhere, but there’s a fairly deep Polish-Ukrainian rupture rumbling in the background and there was an excellent - and balanced, between Polish nationalism and the short-termism of Ukrainian authorities - in last week’s TP by Łukasz Adamski if you read Polish

I think this is basically right, despite personally disagreeing. But it seems both younger and older voters are motivated by socio-cultural values; it’s just the age cohorts values are becoming essentially incompatible

Ok this one I’m proud of www.maptap.gg June 22 100🎯 100🎯 96🔥 96🔥 100🎯 Final score: 980

Starting to think it’s a good thing we didn’t name our firstborn Keir. Not least because she’s a girl

You know who also needs to sit out the incoming Burnham (or whatever) ministry? Peter Kyle. For that interview calling the fash march an exercise in freedom of speech

As was foretold:

Booo the analysts are talking down our Andy

Never fails to miss.

It is extremely important that Labour understands that the movement of voters between Lab and Ref was not the crucial factor, it was consolidation of the anti-Ref vote and Lab voters turning out in droves. Otherwise Burnham will make the same mistakes as Starmer in targeting only one set of voters.

Hello assembled news media, waking up to the concept of block voter dynamics that absolutely nobody has been banging on about in overly long threads on Bluesky for the last year.

www.maptap.gg June 19 98🔥 97🔥 96🔥 95🏅 88✨ Final score: 936 disappointed with this tbh

Steve Reed is being interviewed about how delighted he is about the by-election result with the tone of a man being introduced to his wife’s boyfriend.

Wow. Burnham beat Farage so badly he isn't even whining about postal votes.

Exc: First Government department quits Twitter over racism and violence concerns Richard Hermer sent a directive to staff last week saying the Attorney General's Office would be coming off the platform observer.co.uk/news/politic...

Some spectacular cope from Niall Ferguson here

www.maptap.gg June 18 97🔥 100🎯 99🎯 100🎯 92👑 Final score: 971 not great not terrible

So good and so underrated

Fundamentally, the reforms are bad policy: they leave people in limbo, they make retroactive changes to people's status, and they hurt the economy. Crucially, they are also bad politics, as they go significantly further than voters want, and Labour voters, rightly, think they're cruel.

using this as a land acknowledgement

I’m sorry but „the Russians are firing at our civilian ships, *stern look*, we will therefore increase defence spending by 0.08% of GDP in three years time” is emblematic of this government more than anything else really