ICE Reports 19th Death of 2026: Georgian National Mamuka Artmeladze dies at Winn. Mamuka was not a public safety threat, may not have broken a single law, couldn't be deported, and shouldn't have been arrested. austinkocher.substack.com/p/ice-report...

"The words must be spoken, he must be called out for who he is, for the values he represents: colonial, warmongering, racist, far-right values ... Silence seems to us to be the worst thing we can do on these issues.”

The responses to this. 😁

+400 prominent women; Nobel Prize winners, former presidents and PMs, MPs, UN special rapporteurs, prominent media figures, renowned sports icons, &HR advocates, endorsed urgent public declaration demanding immediate release of #ZahraTabari currently facing execution in Iran. #StopExecutionsInIran

Super cool that the grandfather I grew up in a house with,who wouldn't even talk about his time in France during WWII because of the horrors, fought for a country whose defense secretary is now IRL Hitlerposting from Normandy on the anniversary of D-Day.

"For the first time ever, the Dutch said “no” to an American company and blocked the sale on national security/public interest grounds." This is not something that would have happened under any other administration.

He's not wrong, including about Putin knowing it too: "But you, too, will have to fight much harder for your own existence – not Russia’s, but your own. And this is not a threat from me or from Ukraine. It is a fact of Russian history that you know well: when Russia grows tired, change comes."

Fabulous story - and kudos to his friend who pushed him 😉.

Propaganda from Nick Adams, Special Presidential Envoy for Tourism, Exceptionalism & Values (that title alone!) on #Today. Apparently, the reason he even has to make the case that the US is safe, is because the media is "building the narrative that the US is inhospitable and unwelcoming".

A decent discussion that would have been improved by showing who Salvini really is, which would have itself made the point of the protestors. I'd also point out that if it serves the Kremlin, it definitely isn't serving the Russian people.

May 24, 2026

Love this.

💥 Horrific. Morning footage from Kyiv Ukraine after Russia poured ballistic missiles on civilian neighborhoods, targeting apartment buildings, schools, markets, and bomb shelters full of people. @radiosvoboda.org.web.brid.gy

Upping this on the 490th anniversary of Anne Boleyn's beheading. Still one of my favourite women in history.

Northern Fleet takes part in major nuclear exercise. Big areas in the Barents Sea and the Arctic is closed for navigation and civilian air traffic. What happens up north is closely linked with the exercise over Belarus and Kaliningrad on Tuesday.

Russia fired over 3,170 strike drones, more than 1,300 guided bombs and 74 missiles at Ukraine this week, most being ballistic, Zelensky says. The strikes killed 52 people and wounded 346, including 22 children.

Unsurprising. Gill, after all, is only the tip of the iceberg. I worry Reform will tip the scale away from the support Ukraine has had from the UK. We've already seen them win broader support for a move away from green energy, which only serves to help Russia.

If Berlin is only sceptical, it really hasn't been paying attention.

Russian attacks wounded at least nine people in Ukraine on Sunday, the second day of what was supposed to have been a three-day truce with Russia, Ukrainian officials said. www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/05/10/u...

"What is at stake, then, is not simply the fate of a single nation but the corrosion of democratic life on an international scale." Great piece that also reminds us of the empathy and resistance some are demonstrating, giving us reason to be hopeful.

Truly historic & moving scenes from the inaugural session of the Hungarian Parliament. A children’s tambura band from a tiny village playing a folk song often described as the unofficial Roma anthem. MPs were tearing up & so were many more of us watching. After all those years of hate. 🎥 telex.hu

"The king’s statement indicated that the Danish People’s party had pushed for Poulsen under the condition that the new government had “the explicit goal of introducing measures that will lead to Muslim net-exodus of Denmark”."

In a week celebrating 81 years since WWII's end in Europe & the defeat of the Nazis; plus the 100th birthday of Sir David Attenborough, this planet's greatest champion, results from English local elections show electoral success for the grifters who champion ethnic division, crypto & fossil fuels.

Remember all these swastikas popping up all over synagogues in Paris & Berlin last summer? "Moscow offers shelter to leader of Serbian group suspected of incidents in Paris and Berlin" #ICYMI www.gazetaexpress.com/en/REL-inves...

I will never cease to wonder when innovation ceases to be innovation. Many of us have been doing all this for a long time and it has been written about for a long time. So long that some of us have even written about the need to be careful with what else goes out with the bathwater.

That there is no deep push back or outrage over this just speaks to how profoundly NI is othered in GB politics. There are no votes in it. There's only forget and move on. share.google/PbXA5GOlxyQO...

This paper was retracted from the @nejm.org because the images of bronchial branching after smoke inhalation were obviously and transparently manipulated by generative AI. Look at the ruler. I don't even know what lesson to draw from this. www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/...

Such important research for its own sake. But especially in a climate where Reform UK essentially want to rewrite the history books so children only learn positive things about British history. And where they want to deny visas to people coming from countries demanding reparations.

Russian police arrested at least 16 men on extremism charges for belonging to a queer VK dating group, human rights activists report. The legal basis: a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that declared a fictitious "International LGBT Movement" to be an extremist group. meduza.io/en/news/2026...

“Questions will be raised now over whether the Russians can provide the kind of solution that African nations facing insurgencies are looking for”. I'm not sure who exactly previously thought they'd provide any solution. Certainly, there were few if any grounds for doing so.

Whether this is incompetence or malign intention is an important question that will take time to answer. Meanwhile, the precautionary principle surely has to be applied because this is not a US administration that has UK interests even slightly in mind. When will enough be enough?!

Indeed.

“After 10 years, Brexit has inflicted serious, lasting harm on the United Kingdom. That is not opinion. It is fact, documented and measurable…Not one of the glib, deceitful promises made by the leading Brexiters has been fulfilled. None of them ever will be.” observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

An important reminder that the most significant actions come from ordinary people acting out of care for others. Tell me again who the "strong men" really are.

Reading thoughts on the failure of British politicians to engage in serious conversations with the public about the nature of the challenges facing them absent a grappling with the state of the British media landscape leaves me cold.

Adding this to my list of things that beggar belief ...

“I wanted to let people know what happened and however bad they thought that it might be inside USAID when Doge came in to tear it apart, it was way worse – especially the incompetence, ignorance and cruelty that came along with it”.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum under the Trump administration has deleted its teaching materials about links between Nazi racism and the Jim Crow laws: www.politico.com/news/2026/04...

Just so long as it isn't a "special" military operation.

"Despicable and disqualifying in any other decade."

"In the name of the University's final AI principle - responsiveness to the stakeholders involved (i.e. all of us ...) - we ask that the University of Edinburgh not renew its contract with OpenAI and stop using OpenAI as a supplier." docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

In which Trump is described as Netanyahu's poodle ...

Numerous satellite dishes have appeared on rooftops of Russian-owned buildings in Vienna, including non-diplomatic sites, over the past two years, the FT reported.

Author Prof Richard Toye has many years experience studying the career and speeches of Winston Churchill. This is the value of historical training, scholarship, judgement and expertise - and it's seen daily from historians working in higher education. @richardtoye.bsky.social #Skystorians

I'd say I was staggered but the normalisation of stupidity by this administration has occurred at such a pace that it's just water off a duck's back.

A large number of privacy and infosec researchers have published a detailed letter calling for a moratorium on laws requiring age assurance technologies until there is a scientific consensus on the risk/benefit tradeoff of using them www.politico.eu/article/age-...

Kind of incredible. I was just sitting down to write about how Starmer should be given credit for keeping us out of this mess when he does this. Unutterably foolish and obsequious. Why in God's name should we have anything to do with this shortsighted madness.

🔴 Paul Conroy’s Last Photo Essay: Cuba’s Moment of Reckoning, Veteran war photographer and correspondent Paul Conroy died of natural causes a day after returning from Cuba with this report of another city under siege. He never stopped bearing witness open.substack.com/pub/bylineti...

❗️🇫🇷French Navy helicopters captured a 🇷🇺Russian shadow fleet tanker tonight.