A teenage boy was walking home in Minneapolis yesterday when four masked men jumped out of a van & questioned him - with no parent or guardian present. He was bundled into the van & taken away. Bystanders heard the boy say: “Can I just go home?” I don’t know how America comes back from all this.

Please help spread the word on this, especially to those who may be feeling cold winds towards their research. We’ve opened the call for our International Fellowships, enabling early career researchers to work for two years at a UK research institution www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...

The Trump-Vance administration just used your taxes to pay for an ICE agent to do this to a 21-year-old kid, who was only protesting because another ICE agent killed a mother of three, who was only there because ICE agents are kidnapping your neighbors

Definitely thinking these two know each other #TheTraitors

X will face ‘full rigours of the law’, says Minister for AI

Some gorgeous work on #LAOTY

This story, btw, is the reason Pam Bondi rescinded media protections for journalists in leak investigations. You can draw a direct link between this issue and the raid on Hannah Natanson's home this morning. Again, great work from @rshapiro.bsky.social and @dell.bsky.social.

Anyone else think Rachel and Matthew might be a couple? #TheTraitors

Gonna make World Cup tickets cheaper for Americans for a lot of these games if this holds. Otherwise some of these games are gonna be ghost towns.

EXCL: Wes Streeting has asked Jonathan Haidt, a bestselling author and high-profile advocate of banning social media for under-16s, to speak to officials in his push for UK to consider following Australia’s landmark ban - @kiranstacey.bsky.social reports www.theguardian.com/media/2026/j...

“.. Federal agents grab a woman to drag her away from her car, days after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.” @reuters.com

NEW: Civilians have had apparent seizures. One had his eyes roll back. Another had ribs broken. “I felt like I was going to pass out and die,” said a 16-year-old citizen put in a chokehold. The government won’t say if any agents have been punished.

JUST IN FROM STRATFORD: “And one man in his time plays many parts”

Trapped in for-profit ICE camps for nearly a year. Arrived healthy. "By 7 July, Gamboa had been diagnosed with at least 10 conditions [...] sepsis, rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which damaged muscle tissue breaks down rapidly, [...] protein malnutrition and toxic encephalopathy."

The Golden Globes will recognize podcasting for the first time on Sunday, a sign of the industry’s increasing status in Hollywood.

Thanks goodness for the clear and precise analysis on the US actions in Venezuela, and what might be coming in Cuba or Greenland, in terms of international law from @philippesands.bsky.social in this weekend's @theobserveruk.bsky.social observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

“His work is imposing and thrilling, earthy and magisterial, bleak and mesmerizingly beautiful, and suffused with an apocalyptic grandeur.” Justin Chang reflects on the work of Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/1SQeyv

Kamala Harris at her closing campaign rally: "Donald Trump intends to use the United States Military against American citizens who simply disagree with him."

If pumping indecent images of children into our news feeds, isn’t enough to force the Government to finally take action against Musk then nothing ever will be. New post on how Musks useful British idiots are trying desperately to stop the Government from acting www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/elon-musks...

I’m actually okay with not winning, they should all be in prison

@ericswalwell.bsky.social: "Renee Good wasn’t a threat—she was a mom with stuffed animals in her glove box. If the GOP won’t act, we will."

Zarah Sultana’s Your Party membership launch may have been ‘serious criminal act’

America isn’t drifting toward authoritarianism. It is living it. Authoritarianism doesn’t arrive with a dramatic or coup-like event. It advances quietly, in daylight, through choices, habits, and silence. The administration made all their actions clear, they spelled it out! 1/4

"The media has largely let [tech companies] set the terms of the debate, right down to the terminology used in any discussion of these systems." From @nannainie.bsky.social & me in @techpolicypress.bsky.social on how to spot and resist anthropomorphizing language about so-called "AI".

Characteristically excellent thread from @sundersays.bsky.social I don't know of anyone who has done more to expose the realities of X, especially on its continual failure to remove overtly racist material.

The DG of the BBC said this week that it remains on X because it has to reach a worldwide audience. 40m followers.... 40k views and 92 likes. A local Facebook group has more reach.

Trump says his powers have few limits and he ‘doesn’t need international law’

More than a minute in and no mention of the BBC’s own open source team which found nothing that tallies with Vance’s tendentious nonsense www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c1...

Cops are taught to avoid shooting into cars, for all the obvious reasons, but ICE has shot NINE people in cars since September. Great reporting from @nlanard.bsky.social www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

**SPOTIFY, target of a long and strong boycott campaign from @indivisible.org has announced ICE recruitment ads are no longer running on their platform. **Another boycott target, Avelo Airlines just halted deportation flights. **Next Up: Citizens Bank. variety.com/2026/digital...

“almost”

I hate to break it to you, but heavily-armed government militias are roaming unchecked through US cities and shooting human rights observers dead in the streets. That's happening in our country.

"A doctor at the scene attempted to help the woman who was shot, but was kept away by federal agents. When an ambulance finally arrived, it was blocked from reaching her by law-enforcement vehicles, and paramedics had to reach her on foot. The woman has died." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Commons women and equalities committee to stop using X amid AI-altered images row

I’m not sure “there’s nothing we can do about the sexual abuse image factory ask OfCom” is going to hold much water as a line taken by a government which (a) has a huge majority (b) just passed legislation to regulate what people can access online

"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob." —FDR, 1936

Writing this I had to look through Grok's mentions. Earlier I counted around 8 requests PER MINUTE featuring "bikini" and "her". Thousands of women and girls stripped each day. I found users stripping dozens of women per hour, from female celebrities to gym selfies. www.thetimes.com/uk/technolog...

America now has 935 billionaires with $8.1 trillion in collective wealth — a 20% increase from 2024. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of Americans control $4.2 trillion in wealth. When 935 people control more wealth than half a country’s population, we have a very serious problem.

What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids? Watch this activist get arrested *mid-interview* for speaking out against U.S. action in Venezuela.

Interesting headline figures from Ofcom's latest report - fewer UK adults using X than Wikipedia (or Tesco online, for that matter.) Fulll report www.ofcom.org.uk/media-use-an...

If there is an argument then this is the argument. But lol I can’t find where this obviously false stat is coming from. And if the government does believe more than half the families in the UK are using it as their primary news source then woah maybe time to up the scrutiny of it!

More from @markpackuk.bsky.social on his question about the government use of X: government will carry on prioritising X for government comms, despite the evidence about X's promotion + protection of unlawful activity. It no longer pays to advertise there lordseyeview.substack.com/p/will-the-g...

It's wild that the PM of a NATO member feels compelled to put out a statement like this vis-à-vis the US government.

And with that, the 2025/26 Christmas/Hogmanay break comes to an end…

FIFA gave Trump a bullshit peace prize and as a thank you he’s going to launch a war against his World Cup co-host and make the games unplayable

Buddy, hope left the building, went to lunch, had 4 margaritas and a bloody mary, got into a fight with the server, was tossed through a window, severed an artery, had its leg amputated, spent three nights in ICU, got divorced, defaulted on the mortgage, and is living in a van down by the river

Donald Trump has long said that he wanted Nicolás Maduro out of power, branding him a narco-terrorist and placing a $50-million bounty on his head. What’s next for Venezuela now that Maduro has been captured? www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Hard to watch US TV media discussing how the US might occupy and run a foreign country as if it’s a perfectly normal political development.