"Elon Musk Wants What He Can’t Have: Wikipedia "Musk and other right-wing tech figures have been on a campaign to delegitimize the digital encyclopedia. What happens if they succeed?" (gift article) https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/elon-musk-wikipedia/681577/?gift=4TO5wg2qVxF

If you think Amsterdam managed to avoid being overrun by cars, you’re wrong. They too surrendered their streets to cars for many decades. But the people fought back, and forced leaders to see their mistake. There's nothing magical about #Amsterdam. They just saw their mistake, and changed it.

Shortened from the article: Wikimedia Foundation is building new tools that will help Wikipedia editors stay anonymous to avoid harassment & legal threats by Musk & Heritage Foundation. Some of the tactics have been pioneered by Wikimedia in countries where editing Wikipedia is illegal or dangerous.

the single most un-american and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an american president

I'm even confused what the complaint from Elon is here. That writeup is accurate and unbiased. It is *simply true* that "the gesture was compared to a Nazi salute." The writeup isn't even taking a side. It's pointing out that people did compare it to such a salute. It also includes his denial.

One of France's most prominent newspapers, Le Monde, is abandoning Elon Musk's X “The alliance between Donald Trump & social media platform bosses such as Elon Musk & Mark Zuckerberg represents a global threat to free access to reliable information” www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/a...

this is what is happening all I ask is that when you mention the oligarchs, please also mention that they own the communications platforms

NEW: Trump says Jan 6th insurrectionists will be pardoned and released tonight. He keeps referring to them as "hostages"- while in the same room as the families of actual October 7th hostages.

Excellent NYT interview with the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Hungary. This is a key insight!

Blue Monday is a piece of crap pseudo science originally part of a travel company's press release to sell holidays. Can we all try to avoid rewarding marketeers, using this term, which tries to sell goods by parasiting on the back of real mental health campaigns.

New post: Mediamacro melodrama mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/01/medi... Just a week ago the UK media was speculating that Reeves was about to be sacked and who might replace her, all because of largely global movements in interest rates. How and why did the media get things so wrong?

Good morning Bluesky. Today would have been Janey Godley's birthday. In tribute to her, let's make #TrumpIsACunt trend.

Just so I don’t forget tomorrow, happy Janey Godley Day

It was just as cold for Obama's inauguration in 2009, fyi.

#Brexit “the Petri dish for Trump” “#Brexit hasn't brought any tangible benefit and there is no future prospect of any, the UK has changed its mind and that this should be recognised.” petition.parliament.uk/petitions/70...

The (unloved) Brexit consensus across the Westminster parties is wobbling. Why Ed Davey's speech calling for a UK/EU customs union is a big moment. Me on Substack open.substack.com/pub/goodalla...

The media didn't care to do its job here; it's part of the ongoing fox newsification of Canadian media. But that aside, the bigger reason that PP is able to get away with blaming inflation on crime and the carbon tax is that the libs didn't care to hold corporations to account for greedflation.

This sort of absolute BS needs repeatedly calling out. These people are not serious about the truth, governance or the public good. They're not holding anyone's feet to the fire. This isn't hard-nosed accountability in action. It's an embarrassment of hyper partisan banana skins.

#sophiefromromania says be careful out there - that was our iciest walk ever

Absolute garbage of a headline - what just happened is that a bill to protect vulnerable young people was voted through www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Word of the Day is ‘uhtcearu’ [ucht-kay-aru, with the 'ch' as in the Scottish ‘loch']: Old English for ‘the sorrow before dawn', when you lie awake in the darkness and worries crowd your mind.

Trump has surrounded himself with Federalist Society freaks and literally the richest people in the country and still gets granted the "tear down the establishment" framing that's key to duping working class people

Some on the British right are all jostling to get retweeted by Elon Musk - to the point where nothing else matters. It's as dignified as a naked mud slide at a vodka promotion... but then Mackenzie didn't have much in the first place

Still looking for an organisation to help us do something which should be simple – show an inspiring video about Parkinson’s to a live audience without charging us £4000 youtube.com/playlist?lis...

A useful article by the BBC on Elon Musk and his interventions on child sexual abuse. Produced by the Verify, rather than the news arm, and currently situated fairly low down on the BBC News site... A report like this should be given prominence, considering how Musk's claims led the UK's news agenda

This is an astonishingly ill-informed and amoral assessment for the political editor of the BBC to have reached, about someone spreading extremist conspiracy theories and using them to whip up hatred against elected politicians. I'd say I'm surprised, but sadly I'm not.

Greenland/Denmark, Canada, UK and EU are all under threat from the new US administration. It really is that simple - and Europeans need to wake up to this reality quickly.

Absolutely this from Ed Davey 👏

Is NYC's congestion fee a regressive tax? No. Driving into Manhattan is expensive even w/o the fee, so very few low-wage workers do it. Plus the money will be used to improve the transit systems they *do* use paulkrugman.substack.com/p/lessons-fr...

Should be done to those standing to be an MP in the first place 🤔 news.sky.com/story/parlia...

Life comes at you fast

It’s a lot of good questions

I worry about this quite a bit.

For me, the penny dropped a few years back when Musk’s wilful ignorance become impossible to ignore. Viz: www.forbes.com/sites/carlto...

"Hybrid attacks" look like war, but we act like they are not even attacks. news.sky.com/story/russia...

Amazing how many Brexiters who wanted to take back control from unelected bureaucrats and foreign billionaires - are suddenly totally in thrall to an unelected billionaire, huh

As the capital braces for snow and freezing temperatures this weekend, it's crucial to stay safe and look out for one another. Plan your journeys carefully, check for weather updates, and where appropriate support vulnerable neighbours.

Netanyahu: "You can't be president of 🇺🇸 last time I checked right?" Elon Musk: "Not officially." Netanyahu: *laughs* — "OK, so you're the unofficial president..."

This just in. Wikipedia donations spreadsheet. I'm now giving them £5 (plus costs) every month. You could too. donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php

Every time a corporation or a billionaire complains about red tape and regulation, remember that we had to write laws because they behaved so unethically, and we had to enforce those laws because they insisted on breaking them. #AusPol

"Probe reveals hundreds logging in from abroad..." There are over a million council staff (900k FTE). Hundreds could be abroad at any point for all sorts of reasons - including work, study, compassionate grounds, etc. This is a ludicrous non-story designed to attack public servants.

Interesting www.cnu.org/publicsquare...

Not just me then - was puzzled why there was a wall after the end of a runway. news.sky.com/story/south-...

In case you missed it, a Telegraph columnist is calling for the UK to join a federal superstate with a single currency and free movement of people.