Yikes

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Absolutely not. Britain came up with the migrants-eating-beloved-animals meme ("Swan bake", The Sun, 2003). And which country pioneered irresponsible speculation about medicines and autism? America is a re-exporter.

I don’t agree, for some of the same reasons that Germany should not have the same foreign policy orientation as most countries in the EU, which tend to be cautious and self-interested. If you are huge, rich and powerful, you should act more altruistically than those who are small, poor and weak.

The Russian ambassador's second statement here may well be true www.ft.com/content/5317...

🧵: “Welcome to Planet Hungary”

Major American cities are reasonably safe too. But yes

PSA to sources: journos want to quote the one funny or striking thing you said about a specific topic, not a general broad mission statement of your organization. This is because readers don’t want to read that. We will get the general themes across in the article but not in your quote.

Brilliant idea to get rich solving Europe's energy problems by building an electrolysis plant that uses power during negative-price hours to generate hydrogen and pump it into a giant blimp, which I will then pilot to whichever European country offers the highest price for the gas

I think there are various bsky'ers who will be interested in this news about a very good boy www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/pers/pers...

Good interview in Dutch with Laurens Dassen, MP in the Netherlands for Volt, the EU-wide liberal party. Pro EU army, pro faster green transition, against shutting out refugees, against €-billions in subsidies to keep NL’s unprofitable Tata Steel mill going. podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/d...

I continue to find it interesting that Trump and RFK2 keep pushing disproven bs about vaccines and paracetamol causing autism, but have nothing to say about genuine unknown risks from microplastics and PFAS. Plastic industry GOP-coded vs pharma Democrat-coded? Or just random craziness?

Medical ethicist Arthur Kaplan, quoted in the NYT: “The announcement on autism was the saddest display of a lack of evidence, rumors, recyling old myths, lousy advice, outright lies & dangerous advice I have ever witnessed by anyone in authority in the world claiming to know anything about science”

‘2026 Is the Battlefield’ with @garrykasparov.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/arc...

⚡️Denmark's Copenhagen airport shut down after drone sightings. "CPH Airport is currently closed for takeoffs and landings, as 2-3 larger drones have been observed flying in the area," police said in a statement posted on X.

Just encountering Ernst Fraenkel’s description of the Nazi dual state, divided between a “normative state” (the old legal/bureaucratic structures) and a “prerogative state” (Party-led, arbitrary, personalistic, violent). Useful way to think about Trump administration governance

They rush when they want to rush and they slow walk when they want to slow walk and it’s an ideological decision always in either direction.

We finally yelled loud enough at the TV

Best post of the day—click and read upwards

J.D. Vance in 2025: EU Kommissars are suppressing free speech 🇺🇸 in 2026 thanks i.a. to Kommissar J.D. Vance according to leading authority on free speech law: "Authoritarianism, with its trademark suppression of free political discussion, looms on our horizon."

Met de verschuiving van de VVD naar cultureel rechts is er maar een volledig liberale partij in NL: D66. Markant dat fascistische hooligans kiezen om hun partijkantoor aan te vallen en niet die van Partij voor de Dieren, de Socialisten oid.

Retrospectively removing indefinite leave to remain would be immoral and economically damaging. It would tear families apart. Attacking it as ‘potentially illegal’ is completely beside the point. Argue with the (awful) idea. Don’t try ’well, actually you can’t do that’.

How south-east Asia lost its way - Ruchir Sharma column here. He argues Indonesia is just the worst of the worst in the world’s weakest regional market. Includes this striking anecdote www.ft.com/content/4f07....

Yeah man we should really fight back by staying on X

Holy cow. An entire month of production lost to cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover. 24,000 vehicles.

Anyway, a Dutch anti-immigrant protest in The Hague led by a minor newish 26-yr-old female right-wing political chancer, Els Noort, turned into a riot today, with hooligans torching police cars and smashing up the HQ of the liberal D66 party, completely without provocation nos.nl/l/2583352

Meestervolle ironie van verslaggever Merijn Rengers www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/... www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...

I plan to spend the day watching reruns of Princess Diana’s funeral

On World Values Surveys, the US has always looked surprisingly close to Latin America compared to Europe: religious, tolerant of violence etc. You could see the Trump administration’s caudillo governance as part of a process of making America more thoroughly Latino.

Critical part of the President's new $100,000 charge for H1-B visas: The Administration can also offer a $100,000 discount to any person, company, or industry that it wants. Replacing rules with arbitrary discretion. Want visas? You know who to call and who to flatter.

Group of smiling orthodox Jewish boys striding down a pedestrian shopping street in Budapest yesterday, one wearing a tallit and blowing occasionally on a shofar like it was a noisemaking toy. Is that halacha? I thought you blow a shofar to open or close the book of life.

Elements of the US judiciary pushing back against conservative ideological takeover of US state culture funding. NEA tried to effectively deny all funding to queer artists, using the “promoting” language used by Putin, Orban et al www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/a...

Interesting piece. Now thinking about whether I would prefer that fame-seeking killers tend towards mass shootings or towards political assassinations

Part of the interest in meeting Jordan Bardella, the president of France’s National Rally party, is “to size up the beast”, says one business boss. Might a quiet word of caution in the 27-year-old’s ear now not help to temper his line?

What a photo

Zsolt Bayer, a founding member of Orbán's Fidesz party and one of his most loyal and aggressive media attack-dogs, at a vigil in Budapest for the murdered Charlie Kirk. Facing the collapse of the economy & public services, Orbán is happy to import a bit of culture war from 4000 mi away. Photo: Telex

I am in close contact with the Estonian government. We will continue to support our member states in strengthening their defences with European resources. Putin is testing the West's resolve. We must not show weakness. (2/2)

We verbazen ons over Trump, maar nog geen 24 uur later volgt Nederland. Zojuist stemt de Kamer voor het aanmerken van Antifa als terroristische organisatie. Met steun van de VVD worden ook hier inmiddels onwelgevallige meningen met een pennenstreek verboden.

I would love to be part of the conversation on MSNBC related to the Kimmel story and it's chilling effects on first amendment, but unfortunately I was terminated by MSNBC for stating that "hateful thoughts lead to hateful words which lead to hateful actions".

This was exactly what I thought of first. meduza.io/amp/en/featu...

Extraordinarily corrupt. I watched FCC chair Brendan Carr's full interview on Hannity. Carr basically said straight out that coverage of Trump he deems overly hostile can be decreed contrary to the "public interest," and thus grounds for yanking licenses: newrepublic.com/article/2006...

Indeed. What they, and the Founders, could simply not imagine, is the absolute & total cowardice of everyone who swore oaths on bibles & now occupies positions of power under Article I of the constitution.

See the thing is, what Orban did in Hungary could never happen in America, because it’s too big and diverse and wealthy, its institutions are too strong, and freedom-loving Americans would never put up with it. They said www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09...

Europe will never be taken seriously in security circles until it has a scary animal. American eagle, Russian bear, Chinese dragon, Indian tiger. I back the gryphon, traditionally valid and currently unclaimed

At Hungarian National Museum, rather remarkable statue of Mary. Wondering whether it might be worth investigating aesthetic influences of traditional Eastern Europe on current US national conservatism

“ABC and CBS are making a serious miscalculation. Their servility to Trump will not earn them peace, only greater pressure.” That’s the German professional association of journalists, @djv.de, calling on major US media to support their journalists instead of preemptively silencing them.

This can be a moment when people wake up to what’s happening or it can be just another data point in our Democratic slide into this kind of squishy Trumpy authoritarianism.

When we warned about authoritarianism-canceling two of the four late night hosts because Trump doesn’t like them, that’s what we meant.