To any Democrat who ever said about any issue, "Maybe if we agree with Republicans just this far, they'll stop there," remember that you were wrong, it was obvious at the time, and you really should never believe that again about any issue, ever.

New Six proposals for improving public procurement Yesterday we saw what was wrong - here are suggestions for what could be put right By me

परिवर्तनं फलं भवतु।

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world the elites live in Islington and not Chelsea.

Parade of planets!

Goblin Mode Kobolde Style Bugbear Gestalt Hobgoblin Whole Deal Githyanki Modus Operandi Mindflayer Epistemologye Ogre Magus Grande Scheme of Thinges

NEW Six concerns about public procurement What is wrong about public procurement - and why it can be hard to do anything about it Detailed post by me: emptycity.substack.com/p/six-concer...

Fact-Checking Claims About Zohran Mamdani https://theonion.com/fact-checking-claims-about-zohran-mamdani/

One day they might even think about employing people to do this job better

Now I've heard there was some icebox loot That you had saved, but I ate the fruit But you don't really care for breakfast, do ya? The plums were sweet, so tasty cold I'm writing this so you've been told: Delicious were your Prunus Domestica

It Only Tuesday https://theonion.com/it-only-tuesday-1819569397/

Found my old MAC Viva Glam lipstick in the bottom of a bag and gave it a go. Immediate Proustian effect.

Any merit in the drivel I write comes from learning painstakingly how to write essays. To assay - to test - exactly what I thought and knew about a matter. Great essayists - Woolf, Orwell, Bacon, Montaigne, Hazlett - are utter intellectual joys as you read how they test themselves on topics too.

It never ceases to confound me just how many folks think the point of essays is to provide teachers with essays. That teachers just like, collect them, or need them for sustenance or something. Rather than the point of them being the *actual fucking act of learning how to think about shit*

I’m so fucking proud of the Olympic gold-winning US women's hockey team for declining to attend Trump's stupid State of the Union address.

Help us support Girlguiding and the Women’s Institute to remain inclusive: goodlaw.social/m960

Happy Monday

Happy Monday

THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP 🫡 IT WOULD BE MY HONOR FOR MY SMALL BUSINESS TO DIE IN YOUR TRADE WAR 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

I’m sorry, I know it’s a minor point, but crack dens are traditionally indoor establishments. What the scaremongering Labour minister is describing here is a crack paddock.

Good to highlight this. I always wonder how it is that this long piece in Wired from 2017, on how Palantir takes over institutions, has not found its way into the minds of public procurement decision makers around the world. www.wired.com/story/how-pe...

I have no particular knowledge nor interest in Palantir, but as a public procurement lawyer looking closely at the public domain documents about the MoD-Palantir contracts, there is something concerning going on. Two successive high value tenders without advertisements or competition? Really?

NEW How Palantir captured the Ministry of Defence How a close read of public domain documents show how MoD was commercially colonised by Palantir By me, at FT www.ft.com/content/5207...

Can we collectively just not uncritically repeat phrases like ‘“Labour has had the biggest impact on costs, and we have really leaned in to improve productivity” without even some attempt at talking about what that means. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

I enjoyed this headline but would like to know more about the training undertaken by officers for the sting (or were they all lion dancers on their days off?) news.sky.com/story/underc...

#Olympics #WinterOlympics #MilanoCortina2026 #IFigureSkating ⛸️ It takes a moment for Nakai Ami to process that she's won a medal - I think she saw the '9' next to the Free Skate - & she looks almost happier than Alysa Liu who wins Gold. Liu somehow manages to avoid turning on the waterworks...

I regularly see people wondering how it's possible that there are so many musicians and writers and film makers and artists from a tiny nation like Iceland. And the answer is really simple: State funding for art education and artists. I literally get a salary from the government to write books.

notorious radical left communist rag says tax the rich

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has posted on X “1 million people living in this country don’t speak any English at all. 4 million people living in this country barely speak passable English” It’s racked up 2 million views AND IT’S COMPLETELY UNTRUE

📌 #2 Added to playlist: "Apache" by Incredible Bongo Band

A post so smart I'm almost afraid to share it. www.garbageday.email/p/the-only-t...

Husband [spruced up for an evening event]: How do I look? Daughter: Cover your head. Husband: ...why? Daughter: It’s just alarming.”

Obviously this young man is a danger to himself and society, but he's right about the eyes of doom www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

DOG AT THE OLYMPICS FULL COMPETITION HIGHLIGHTS

Who better to have as Chancellor than Robert Jenrick, the man who helped a billionaire pornographer avoid £45m tax in exchange for a £10k donation.

The song Right Said Fred is a pretty good guide to project management. Ensure you create a pause in the work, then think, including taking input from the whole team, then test a new approach. The issue wasn't incompetence, it was that the job was out of scope for that team.

We wished hard enough and now it’s back

Well, as we used to say, duh.

Keir Starmer orders investigation into claim Labour think tank paid for report on journalists www.itv.com/news/2026-02...

Vlad, I've played Civilisation, you're meant to make peace after 20 turns.

I've been dipping in and out of the Winlympics but it's quite fun to be able to pop the TV on over lunch and find something insane happening every day (today: slalom, which is not that insane but I bet tomorrow it will be backflipping between trampolines on skis or something).

REVIEW: we saw American Beauty (1999) which I hadn't rewatched since it came out. It still beautifully captures a very particular pre-millennium tension. Excellent performances throughout, and I like the way it uses horror film tropes (lighting, music) to present the quiet desperation of suburbia.

REVIEW we watched Bamboozled (a Spike Lee joint from 2000) and I have a lot of thoughts. It is the kind of film that begets a lot of thoughts. Did I like it? I'm not sure. It certainly is not without flaws (but I don't always mind flaws). It certainly is not without points of interest. It is a lot.

When I was 13 I was camping with the Girl Guides, and I got a large splinter in my finger that wouldn’t come out with tweezers; so I had to go to the GP for some magnesium sulphate to draw it out, which worked. I was gone from camp for 40 minutes. In that mere 40 minutes the story morphed into:

🔴 𝗧𝗘𝗔𝗠𝙉𝙀𝙒𝙎 ⚪️ 🧱 Saliba returns 💪 Norgaard in the middle 🎯 Jesus up top Let’s go, Gunners 👊

I've said it before but, in the absence of proper regulation and the licensing of metal detecting, then we must rely on the good old fashioned fairy curses attached to each and every hoard. Let the folk beyond the veil sort it out. 🏺🪙🧚🏼‍♂️☠️

#uksnow 4/10 lots of falling flakes, not settling yet