I've been obsessed with the collapse in US consumer spending in the bottom income deciles (60% of the lower income decile now consume 20%). It's another indicator ofhow a neoliberal global economy built to benefit a tiny elite will eventually eat itself. A🧵thinking through this.

Earlier this year I wrote about the incoherence of Trump administration foreign policy as a product of simultaneously held but incompatible worldviews. But those worldviews and the specific policy that comes from them do not, I think, originate with Trump. www.bylinesupplement.com/p/a-multipol...

Dazzle Ships, South Docks, Liverpool Shipping, 1918, by Edward Alexander Wadsworth.

Trump To Travel With Own Escalator Following U.N. Embarrassment

Hearing rumors about a second escalator on the grassy knoll

Requiring people in Northern Ireland to carry "Brit Cards" is going to really, really go down well. I can't see any problems with that. At all. Nope. No problems. Everybody will be just fine with that... 😱😱😱

Trump is not invincible. He can be defeated. When people show spine and stand up to him, when civil society bands together rather than capitulating, he often backs down. Our real problem is the appeasers. @monacharen.bsky.social is good on this. Our exchange: newrepublic.com/article/2009...

People professing to be baffled at internet subcultures whose essential message is "Haha, fuck you" really need to do some more deep dives on how far rightwing politics has, for the last 200+ years, been a series of variations on "Haha, fuck you."

Yes, this is why the “they’re not groyper” fixation also misses the target because it is only a technicality. This *is* postmodern fascism at its heart. 20th century fascism was a result of industrial capitalism meeting nationalism while this the result of consumerism meeting racialized nihilism.

Polish PM Donald Tusk warned that Trump’s optimistic statement on Ukraine regaining its territories should be read carefully. He said the “between the lines” message is less US involvement and more responsibility on Europe to end the war. “The truth is better than illusions,” Tusk wrote.

🚨 LAVA HOT TAKE ALERT 🚨 (and it's true)

The truth is Farage has 'hacked' the political-media system so is able to fill large chunks of it unchallenged. He has twigged its need for gossip, clicks and 'column inches', and so exploits this. The media shouldn't be going along with it. They should be putting in place measures to stop it.

The white supremacist conceit that everyone in antiquity was living under some kind of global jim crow segregation is just complete bullshit news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

But some of these, particularly Big Tech and MNCs pledging fealty, seem to be uniquely American for now, in part because Big Tech is preponderently American, but also because pledges of fealty are made to those who hold power.

Besides the UK and France, I don't have as granular a familiarity with the mechanisms other European far-right parties are using to advance their agenda. They all leverage online echo chambers and conspiracy mills, and I imagine they all have their "influencers" at this point.

One of the more fascinating aspects of Trump II is how it has coopted all the phenomena of the 2010s-era that in their emergent forms were identified as existential threats to the state: Big Tech, networked platforms, super-empowered individuals, crypto, globalized MNCs. It's the anti-state state.

I’m absolutely sure that the Georgian Dream cannot last for too long. They just don’t have what it takes to stabilize a dictatorship. However, the following weeks will most likely determine whether taking our country back is a short-term possibility.

Indeed. Breathless talk about Ursula von der Leyen's hotline with Trump should be taken with a few grains of salt

10 ways fake headlines hijack your perception. It’s not just misinformation. It’s reflexive control — tactical manipulation through engineered suggestion. And headlines are the first strike. A thread on deception by design:

Just occurred to me that another one of these is critical theory, from French post-modernism to "woke"/CRT: too absurd to take seriously, but so dangerous it must crushed at the source.

One thing that the war in Ukraine has demonstrated is that too much of our deterrence theory is based on short timescales. The erosion of Russian deterrence is remarkable and real. What would have caused war in ‘22 is commonplace in ‘25.

The rapture!

Trump is just wasting time with these ridiculous rhetorical swings. The reality is that his policy is weak and tending to lower aid. The story isn’t in what he said last. Just like blowing up at Zelensky didn’t mean Ukr was finished, saying that Ru is a paper tiger doesn’t bring Ukr victory closer.

Even if they can't turn it to their direct advantage, the chaff & suppression of facts they'll use will render this at most a neutral event politically. This isn't about our powerlessness, it's about understanding that their own bad acts will not hurt them. Only our good ones will.

"if people click on it, it must be good and we need much more of it" has been positively cancerous at scale

I think the key problem here is a continuing assumption, in traditional media, that when the White House speaks on a major topic, this is a big news story. That model can't cope with a president with no regard for truth, who's in constant broadcast mode, & who veers around from one day to another.

for some reason One Platform To Rule Them All, And In The Darkness Bind Them doesn't seem to bring out the best in anyone

They're converting real crimes into false flags that support their culture war against the left.

👇🏼!!!

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇

Trump saying Ukraine could win =/= Trump saying the US will help Ukraine win, or that he wants Ukraine to win. Trump saying he might impose sanctions on Russia doesn't mean he will ever impose sanctions on Russia.

The only really surprising thing about Trump's comments yesterday is how many people are still treating anything he says about Russia and Ukraine as indicative of a possible shift in the administration's policy of doing absolutely nothing.

Oh hey cool, we switched sides again. Ironically, this makes war with Russia more likely because neither they nor we know where our red lines are and therefore we are more likely to do Bumblefuck 1914.

Told ya so. Trump's warning to Europe that further sanctions on Russia are conditional on European NATO members ceasing to buy Russian oil & gas was simply in order to replace Russian fossil fuels with American fossil fuels. It was always about Chevron, ExxonMobil, Marathon and Occidental.

Engaging and well-produced audio documentary by Eric Fish on the 1975 Banqiao Dam disaster and how it has stayed relatively unknown among the late 20th-century mega-disasters, even as its death toll exceeded them.

I think this is the right response. Trump will change his mind again (probably after talking to Putin or Orban); & in any case he offered no new US help, in terms of sanctions or military aid. As for "I wish both Countries well" - does that sound like someone working hard for the victory of an ally?

This is because Reform relies on building a coalition of disordered counterpublics reacting against distrusted institutions, and the anti-vax community is part of that, so he knows he needs to keep is vague to avoid upsetting them.

They will just... break things. Things we treasure. Things we depend on. Things our lives will be much more difficult without. They will just break them, and laugh, and blame foreigners and wokists.

There is huge market share for the Lib Dem’s to run with the motto of “enough of this American nonsense let’s be sensible British people Again” and not sure anyone’s weird arguments that specific voters should be chased is needed at all.

I keep saying this every time there’s a ‘drone incident’ that the UK needs a primary air defence radar at every military airfield and civilian airport. And ideally the means to engage any drone if the radar detects something. Wringing our hands and dialling 999 won’t cut it.

Former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, "The US is complicit in this famine and unfolding genocide, and it's on President Trump's watch" Matt Frei, "President Trump complicit in genocide?" Former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, "Yes"

Trump agreed with me that Putin will NOT wait for the ending of war in Ukraine. Putin will try to find weak places in Europe in NATO countries — Zelensky

this isn't the usual context in which you see libertarianism and a 13-year-old

Just to be clear: - Paracetamol does not cause autism. - Sadiq Khan is not introducing Sharia law in the UK - We do not have a massive free speech problem here. - Britain is not on the verge of civil war. These are not controversial subjects or contested, they're just not true.

Health and science reporters should lead the coverage of all these health-related conspiracy theories & newsroom leaders should keep their both-sides political reporters out of their way.

🎯🎯👇👇👇

🔵 Jimmy Kimmel & STRIKE FORCE FIVE! - cc. @jimmykimmel.com @jimmykimmellive.bsky.social @jimmyfallon.bsky.social @latenightseth.bsky.social @colbertlateshow.bsky.social @lastweektonight.com - Brought to you by the Inner Hive, including Moonboy & Mike M. ( tomthedancingbug.com ) - READ IT RIGHT HERE👇

In all honesty, writing this piece (gift link below) made me more optimistic than I've been in a while. Perhaps I'll do a companion piece to explain why, but I'll sketch out some of the reasons here. 🧵

Whether it’s paracetamol or something else, Trump and co are perpetuating the idea autism is wrong and disability is an individual’s responsibility to avoid. It’s anti-science but it’s deeply ableist at its core. The goal is for non-disabled to be afraid and disabled people to be ashamed.

To ‘ultra-crepidate’ (19th century) is to lecture others on subjects you know very little about.