www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2156... just as the kind of clickbait the Express and such like are pumping out (it’s Gravesend)

It's depressing how much UK political messaging relies, not on promising better services, but by planting the suspicion that someone, somewhere, is getting something you didn't. We're told to expect next to nothing from the state, to the extent that supporting vulnerable children is framed as theft.

“Q: What do you think Jonathan thought of you? A: It doesn’t matter.” The Jewish Chronicle tried to replicate the Guardian’s Blind Date column. It didn’t go very well. (via @lindasgrant.bsky.social)

Oh god. I've just realised: the entire plot of xfiles is just the teacher sitting the well behaved quiet girl next to the disruptive boy in the hope it will socialise him to play well with others

RAM wholesalers right now

"I am based Anglofuturist. My vision is bold, look at this union jack adorned spaceship on the moon grok has created following my sophisticated prompt. My voters are people who have a stroke when a mobile signal mast goes up in a mile from their house."

…

Tom is entirely right, this is a banger

For the really old heads, my nephew heard the story of the exploding radiator the other day and asked for the picture

Ah, hello all, I see there’s a wave of starter packs again. You’ll probably be disappointed by me But welcome anyway

Seen some people suggesting the new shooting video is AI because you can see a dinosaur in the background at one point. But, uh, there’s just a dinosaur on a car on that street. Here’s Google Street View. maps.app.goo.gl/fmgYaLWrwxx3...

Screen shotting only to avoid including the video itself but it’s women-hatred yet again, isn’t it?

Metaphor Refantazio clearly

Sorry but it’s the word that made me finally accept Tooze is too little butter over too much bread these days

A core part of “why Labour is failing” is that the backbenchers given prime retirement seats - the people who ought to be the brains of the party - are not asking “what decisions should we be taking to defend ourselves and our allies and to increase resilience?” “How do we reform public services?”…

Came in from listening to the new Rosalia album on streaming to find the eldest listening to The Violent Femmes on CD. Can’t help but feel this is the wrong way round

This is Reza Pahlavi btw

www.amazon.co.uk/You-Dreamed-... Just 99p on Kindle in the UK today. Aztec fans!

The eldest and I explaining Uma Musume to @ceona.bsky.social over dinner involved a lot of “surprisingly wholesome” and “I know what you’re thinking and exactly why you’d think that but it’s not a prawn thing”

which writer do you think most anticipated 'an AI system controlled by the world's richest man is producing pornographic images of a woman murdered on video by US state security'

Ah, I see John Stallard’s famed charm and deft marketing skills strikes again

“…I single-handledly ended 8 wars and do they call me Donald the Peace Maker? No But you take a flight on one private jet…”

More Kanji learnings: Fukushima literally means Lucky Island (and this isn't a kanji used to represent a sound, a samurai chose to rename his castle, that later named the province, this)

Ah, my annual exposure as a U.K.-trained tax nerd in having to prepare 1099s and wondering why

Not knowing Parisian suburbs, I assume this is 'tough streets of Milton Keynes' bullshit? "Tellier’s early love for Wyatt mirrored his mindset growing up in the “tough” area of Cergy-Pontoise, north-west of Paris." www.theguardian.com/music/2026/j...

are you telling me that war is an extension of online clout by other means Is that what we are saying

There are jokes in bits of the internet about the malign effects of Paradox Interactive games, but... (more widely about the virtualisation of things) this is kind of true for the young (<45 or so) Right, isn't it? Everything is just for the Lolz/game.

Lots of paracetamol in pregnancies these days

The Lady Ghislaine, the yacht that Robert Maxwell took his final swim from, is now owned by Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife

Given Trump’s recent nautical obsession, is the Lady Ghislaine still afloat?

I appreciate a lot of us will think "they've always been like this" but the utter moral decay on the right in the last few years has been notable. A shift from love the sinner, hate the sin fig leaf to "yeah, kill she/her, haha, pronouns in bio."

45 y/o, in a nightclub for first time in years. Young lad burst into the toilets & caught me furtively trying to open a little ziploc bag. He said "just a heads up, the bouncers come in here to check for drugs". Couldn't tell him it was my bag of googly eyes, to stick on a poster

The woman killed by ICE was Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year old who was the mother of a 4-year old child whose father already died a few years ago. The Star Tribune talked to her mother. www.startribune.com/she-was-an-a...

Here’s a fun FATCA brain teaser for those of you so inclined

Subtweet: I keep seeing people go 'ah, yes, the validation of Charles de Gaulle'. De Gaulle didn't want French nuclear independence or distrust the States because he thought that they might elect the wrong guy, but because he wanted to be able to maintain France's own imperial project!

Republicans actually winning the popular vote after how Trump ran his campaign really made them look, for a moment, like the natural rulers of the US (this is not praise for Republicans, but condemnation of the US)

www.ign.com/articles/dav... (Ctrl+F 'Lily Allen')

Kemi Badenoch’s spokesperson has said that the shadow attorney general Lord Wolfson has recused himself from any legal advice over Ukraine or Russia because he is representing Roman Abramovich - which would include anything about the deployment of UK troops. That’s a bit awkward.

Then: Civ 2 Now: Wargame Construction Set III: Age of Rifles 1846–1905

Already seen one person go arse over tit

Tim Weiner's short NYT obituary manages to convey both the horror and impact of what Ames did and also why it was the result of a dreadful culture at Langley at the time:

THE TANK (2026) - the Shit, more like. I mean, obvious spoiler but if you don’t figure out what’s going on in the first five minutes

It’s very nice when the sun comes out shining when it’s still raining so you get rainbows and a lovely contrast between the bits the sun is shining through or on and everywhere else

Actually, I do have another (semi) new one: a lot of the modern instantiation of "British food is uniformly bad" is down to British restauranteurs being WAY happier to utterly fleece their customers thab American ones

man what the fuck www.whitehouse.gov/j6/

The Government is ashamed of the voting coalition that brought it to power and would rather have other voters voting for it. Hence why it is where it is.

(Keikaku means plan)

At political cabinet today, Morgan McSweeney gave a presentation on “three Es” on how the government can connect with voters - emotion, empathy and evidence. Am told he said the government currently has a “deficit in emotion”