So Iran says their toll booth is open. Trump says his blockade is still in place. And ... China says that blockade is unlawful. 🤔

I now see what happened with the Mandelson vetting. Ollie Robbins treated it as a normal ambassadorial appointment, where he had sole discretion on vetting. In fact, he should have treated it as the equivalent of a Ministerial appointment, where the PM would expect to be told of any issues. 1/

If TV didn't exist it would be necessary to invent it, again.

A line I was expecting from Melania.

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This feels like the mid-second-series recap for anyone just joining or who's lost the thread of what's been going on. youtu.be/xiSBfKIOrlA

Finally made it to the clouds! 👋🦋 ​From the bridge of Serenity to the chaotic world of Wade Wilson, it’s been a wild ride. Excited to be here! ​Currently: Keeping the peace in Sheriff Country 🤠 & protecting Castle Grayskull as The Sorceress! 🏰✨ ​Let's chat movies, 🇧🇷, & @theIRC. Hi, Bluesky!

>> Ogilvy, the astronomer, assured me we were in no danger. He was convinced there could be no living thing on that remote, forbidding planet. >> "A million to one," he said.

On the limits of trying to unpick Brexit by stealth www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The Guardian - Israeli ambassador to Germany condemns Bezalel Smotrich’s tirade against chancellor >> Ron Prosor says verbal attack on Friedrich Merz referencing Nazi regime ‘erodes the memory of the Holocaust’ www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Morning Bluesky.

I do wonder whether the Reform voting demographic knows what their party wants to do to health, welfare, and their pensions. Maybe they should be told.

I misread the headline as one movie and got very excited for a moment…

One day I'll stop saving these images as potential wallpapers. Today is not that day.

War on Woke. >> Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said "we need to get serious" on defence and suggested the Tories would "repurpose funds from net zero projects to invest in our military". BBC News - Former Nato chief warns UK's national security 'in peril' www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Unfortunately, the Strategic Defence Review failed to trigger the much-needed national debate not just on defence spending, but, more broadly, Britain’s strategy in this dangerous time. Easy to blame the media, but it would have been No 10‘s job to drive this conversation./4 But

>> Don’t worry, you don’t have to steal content from your favorite authors to keep using your Kindle. There are plenty of e-stores where you can buy DRM-free novels legally... uk.pcmag.com/ebook-reader...

Paging Doctor Germophobe. youtu.be/kluOMop4RWw

If a reckless "excursion" leads an unnamed NATO member into war with _another_ other unnamed country I'm guessing that's not automatically an Article 5 condition in the same way the first action wasn't... Asking for a hemisphere or two.

President Zelenskyy: ❗️For the first time in the history of this war an enemy position was taken using only unmanned platforms - ground robotic complexes and drones. Russian soldiers in the position surrendered into captivity.

Q: Did you post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus Christ? TRUMP: I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do Red Cross. Only the fake news could come up with that one.

Man, this is all so mad and funny. Antichrist Liberace.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson: “The Strait of Hormuz was already open before the war. You are the ones who created the war out of nothing and closed the strait to the rest of the world.”

"How can we get rid of you?" The immense significance of the defeat of Orbán's illiberal political machine and methodology By me at the Empty City substack emptycity.substack.com/p/how-can-we...

BBC News - Meta pulls Facebook ads recruiting for social media addiction lawsuits www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Very Ukrainian accent: "Oh Mr Vance, is it hard to negotiate peace? Is it difficult to come to a deal when both sides have fundamentally irreconcilable positions on key issues? Does not being able to trust your counterparty make things tricky? Why do you hate peace, Mr Vance?"

China: you're going to do what now?

In my experience vast majority of voters know Brexit is a disaster, hate Trump and dislike Farage. Many then follow that up with 'vote Reform' anyway, and say why: 1. Immigration 2. Immigration 3. Hatred of Labour 4. Hatred of Starmer and Reeves 5. 'Got to try something new' 6. Scroungers.

A big come back for Esperanto?

There's an element of supply and demand in the use of AI tools. People (inc. me) have questions that aren't being answered elsewhere. The idea that people are using these tools instead of chatting with their top professor friend or a good librarian isn't really the case.

To put this another way: the kids that would wait to talk to the professor after class are probably a lot less stressed nowadays and are excelling in ways I had only dreamed about before LLMs.

Photographer Carina Letelier Baeza captured a stunning "Arctic Dragon" forming across the sky

Remember when everyone wanted #hashtags?

Another one who thinks the response to a global shortage of something which makes it more expensive is to subsidise people to buy more of it. Truly British politics is blessed with genius.

Thread on the South Korean president’s evolving stance on Israel, as he faces increasing economic pressure from the war in Iran:

>> Moldova is a candidate country for EU membership and Brussels triggered an emergency aid facility. Romania and Poland sent help...

this one’s my favorite youtu.be/YAAm_cJGvZ8?...

For something that is definitely absolutely not interference this is very interferency.

I don't know. I just thought it would've been bigger. I mean, in greatness. Who even was St Louis and why does he get a really properly big arch? How many people did he even kill? Is it too late to make it bigger?

Even judged on his own terms, Benjamin Netanyahu is a monstrous failure. Latest column www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Let's not get ahead of getting ahead of ourselves.

I hear they've booked Norman Collier to do the audio book of the Epstein Files. (Yes, I'm referencing Norman Collier on social media in 2025.) youtu.be/Mzx3wNNuyB8

I was pleased to be one of the experts. A lot of consensus among us: the machinery of NATO will survive, but the mutual trust with the US will not. The US & Europe will both be the weaker for it.

"…most of us have been cured of any little illusions we may have had about the pomp and glory of war, and know it all for the vilest disaster that can befall mankind…" - Wipers Times

If the Telegraph was more patriotic than it was anti-Starmer, it would have said "Putin mocks Britain..."

Having said that you've already achieved and exceeded your military objectives, what do you plan on attacking after a temporary ceasefire and why? >> ...then the "Shootin' Starts," bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before.