75yo retiree on a scooter mobile goes through the supermarket checkout line, gets to the escalator ramp and guns it uphill at 30kph

In addition, literal stacks of M4000 chemical bombs, used by the Assad regime to drop sarin on civilians in 3 recorded incidents, were found and photographed. Yet more evidence everything we published at Bellingcat based on our open source investigations of chemical attacks was accurate.

Hard to voice eternal truths in a refreshingly hilarious way, but @henrymance.ft.com pulls it off

Would like an app that calls in a drone strike on the HQ of any software that requires updates more than once in 3 months

Such an excellent and withering piece. The massive chilling effect that Starmer and Mahmood have had on high skill / high pay migration needed calling out.

Prose stylist and economic maven @soumayakeynes.ft.com: "Sadly, navigating today’s era of economic conflict by appealing to the rule book is like turning up to a knife fight with a Scrabble manual." www.ft.com/content/9876...

Terrific long read by @olliecarroll.bsky.social. ~"An unpublished survey of Ukrainian public sentiment found society fracturing into patriots (46%), sceptical moderates (36%) and demotivated (18%). The main demotivating factors are elite corruption and distrust of institutions."

The Vibes Immigration Crisis is the British equivalent of the Vibes Recession problem in the US. May also hold for EU countries

War tech is all very interesting etc, the various ways men kill other men with bits of metal, but it's rather stupid if the war isn't about anything. We should talk more about why we are fighting Russia's invasion of Ukraine and why lawful democracies are better than criminal dictatorships.

No blueberries for Sal

Another reminder: if there exists *any* class of people who don't have due process rights, then *nobody* actually has due process rights because the government can always just say you're in that class.

Collateral.damage from mindless Iran war

Gorgeous story about Van Zanten Flowerbulbs, a storied bulb growing and trading firm in Dutch tulip strip, which has sold its businesses to investors and will close on May 29. Profitable, but high labor costs, tougher pesticide rules, low local interest--the slow waning of Dutch flower farming.

From @sophiepedder.bsky.social on how Mélenchon forged an alliance between youth and ethnic minorities that is keeping leftist populism in the game in France economist.com/europe/2026/...

Greatly enjoyed editing this piece by @codendahl.bsky.social about how Europe hopes to unwind its dependence on American tech www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

Spot on from Beattie. Europe’s trade weaponry is useless without political will. The EU already has an arsenal — and can get creative with it, if the will is there A 301-style instrument to respond to macro distortions would help. But the key is to act. www.ft.com/content/ac10...

The last assassination attempt against a western European leader was in 2002, when a far-right extremist fired a rifle at Jacques Chirac. How often are these things happening in the US these days? www.nytimes.com/2026/05/23/u...

Just a note: the UK would love to have this “people say the economy is terrible even though the stats are good and they themselves are fine” conundrum. In the UK people say the economy is bad bc the stats are bad, and 21% say they are struggling to get by. www.credit-connect.co.uk/news/househo....

Love it: the night after he was kicked off of CBS for good, Stephen Colbert hosted a public access show in southeast Michigan.

This would be a disaster. It also shows that trying to remain above the political fray, as NASEM leadership has mostly done, is generally not workable — in the end, they’ll come for you if they don’t like what you represent, and probably sooner than later

Given the amount of energy a Star Trek starship has available, why does it bother going into orbit around a planet rather than just sitting wherever it wants to be

Still think occasionally about the guy who stopped a terrorist attack using a narwhal tusk he grabbed off the wall www.bbc.com/news/uk-5087...

This is definitely the most strategically rational way to allocate the deployment of army units

This is going to be a good thread

Deep cut—For the uninitiated, this is a reference to the Belgian comic book Suske & Wiske en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tante_S...

Places that could be your aunt: Alberta Georgia Any others?

The hearing marked “a truly historic milestone,” presiding Judge Iain Bonomy said, formally ending the proceedings involving the alleged financier of the genocide, Félicien Kabuga, who died on Saturday.

Offering opportunities to historically oppressed minorities

Torturing cows

It’s time for Rutte’s daddy talk to stop. It served a purpose for a while; now it only clouds Europeans’ ability to see that they must work on a NATO Plan B for a post-American future.

Has it really come to this

[Scene: Nespresso boardroom] -- Gentlemen, on the one hand, after 15 years on the market, no one can figure out how the fuck our machines work. [grumbles from room] -- On the other hand, we have saved almost $1bn in on-off button costs [cheers, standing ovation]

This ad goes hard

Humankind, having achieved levels of wealth unimaginable to any prior generation, should be spending lots of time and modest amounts of money on meaningful stuff like this.

Barney Frank was one of a kind. Brilliant, acerbic, deep, one of the best legislators I have ever encountered. I was proud to have him as a friend. I will miss him. May his memory be a blessing

🇪🇺‘Protecting Democracy in Europe: Pluralism, Autocracy and the Future of the EU’ by @tomtheuns.bsky.social is now available in paperback! ‘Powerful . . . Urges an explicitly political fight against autocrats.’ @mattsteinglass.bsky.social Get 20% off w/code THEUNS20 ➡️ tinyurl.com/yc7sxmv8

1. Number of stories about Trump buying and selling hundreds of millions of dollars in stocks in the first three months of 2026: CBS: 0 CNN: 0 Fox News: 0 NPR: 0 PBS: 0 Politico: 0 Semafor: 0 Business Insider: 0

Should have asked for $1.789 billion

Europa wil baas in eigen byte zijn. Is this something

This is truly bonkers. "the United States and Israel went into the conflict with a particular and very surprising someone in mind: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president known for his hard-line, anti-Israel and anti-American views." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/u...

“The attack on an Islamic center exemplified a danger that the Trump administration would rather ignore.” I wrote for @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

🇭🇺🤝🇵🇱🚄Peter Magyar starts his first foreign trip today - to Poland. Many symbolic moves by the new Hungarian PM, including visiting the resting places of Queen Jadwiga and Stefan Batory, both very PL-HU history coded figures, but the real gem is that Magyar will go from Kraków to Warsaw *by train*.

In which realist Walter Russell Mead discovers that national self-consciousness and patriotism are real. "The white-hot fire of war has allowed or perhaps forced Ukraine to forge something it previously lacked: a powerful and competent state." www.wsj.com/opinion/ukra...

At 19:00 here Curtis Yarvin argues that tech CEOs’ support for MAGA is based on “thinking for themselves”, not self-interest. 20 seconds later he says the key moment came when California Democrats moved towards taxing billionaires podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/m...

Russia’s death toll remains extraordinarily high, and its spring offensive has stalled. Our charts illustrate a potential turning point in the war

Cette anecdote est l'occasion de rappeler que l'on doit toujours prendre en compte l'avis de ceux qui subissent depuis leur naissance un discours raciste, pour définir ce qui en relève ou pas. Et ça vaut pour CNews comme pour ceux qui s'imaginent échapper à toute critique en se prétendant de gauche.

📉 Russia has begun losing territory in Ukraine for the first time since 2023, - The Economist. Russia’s spring offensive has effectively stalled, while Ukrainian forces have gradually regained ground in recent months.

This seems right, the US now ranking below Lithuania in the corruptions perception index. Lithuania has quite a strong anti-corruption prosecution office and is getting better, whereas the US is quickly burning through a century of reputational capital

If facts don’t care about my feelings why should I care about facts? Seems quite obnoxious on facts’ part tbh