This year’s Democracy Report by @vdeminstitute.bsky.social might be the most important thing any of us will read this year. A bleak picture of the global rolling back of liberal, and all, democracy. We are at risk of Democracy becoming just a blip in history. www.v-dem.net/documents/75...

My school is hiring a maths teacher for September! www.swchs.net/blog/?pid=37... Come and work with a brilliantly supportive department, with loads of high quality shared resources, in a school that takes staff workload and wellbeing really seriously.

Family vacation to Lake Victoria. Despite being the 2nd largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, it’s only the 9th largest by volume due to an average depth of 40m. Victoria has approximately 2x the area of Baikal, but a volume around 10x smaller. What is the average depth of Baikal?

Doctor: "Your test results have returned. You are suffering from neoliberalism and corporate oligarchy, which is presenting as malignant narcissist fascism."

Get it in a dentist’s chair and say ahh

So my doctors clinic way of avoiding missing the deadlines for seeing people is to use consult and simply close it off after a certain point. Problem is without any triage it’s going to just push more needy people into A & E I guess. The consult normally ends by about 10am in the morning…

The series of insane and terrifying messages put out by President Trump overnight will be described as "wide ranging" by Trump apologists such as Sarah Smith and Justin Webb. To the rest of us, Trump is f*cking bonkers and needs sectioning. And quick. #r4today

Here’s my plea to the national security press: don’t report what he announces at face value. You’ve been suckered over and over to cover his fake trade deals and ceasefire “announcements” like they are real. He’s desperate to look like he’s got a plan. Make sure it’s not fake.

It’s insane that the world has gone to hell because of the actions of less than 10 dumb psychopathic politicians. Ten or so people are f**king up things for the entire planet.

Every single President since the 1980’s would have been told by knowledgeable generals to avoid a war with Iran at all costs. That Iran had been preparing for asymmetric warfare for decades. That starting a war with Iran would be too costly economically and militarily.

Will there be progress on this? It's not as if it's difficult. It doesn't need a new working party. Just bring it into line. whoteacheslanguages.blogspot.com/2025/08/unfa...

It’s a long read, but for those interested in the detail, it’s very good. The summary of Ukraine’s successes recently deserves much greater publicity, to counter the stream of disinfo that is Russian “Cognitive War” against the West.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... the simplest way and one which would put a spike in the global warming denialist camp would be to reform how electricity costs are calculated for domestic suppliers so that we all benefit from renewable energy when gas prices spike….

When even your energy supplier describes how energy prices are calculated as crazy!

Iran was much closer to becoming a nuclear power on 28 February 2026 than it was on 7 May 2018, the day before Trump took the US out of the UN-supported anti-nuclear deal negotiated in 2015.

Anglosphere agony vs Nordic nirvana. (PS Can't believe I'd never seen this graph before, so grateful to @stephenkb.bsky.social for sharing in his fab morning newsletter (www.ft.com/inside-polit...)

Some days your mind won’t let you at peace of even to think about the simplest of tasks

The ´mandelson files’ our media really are a desperate and sad bunch. Seriously get a grip - it’s a report of an investigation. Are these idiots going to describe every report in this way from now on? Looking forward to filegate in the future….

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cv... mandelson files? Why is our media so desperate to ape the inane press across the Atlantic??

And often by a margin which indicates that, not only there is not a single Greek person in that kitchen, but nobody has ever met any Greek person, been to Greece, heard of Greece, or indeed seen a photograph of a souvlaki.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... and we still want to resist green energy moves??

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... got to love these sane washing articles - seeking to create the idea that Trump has an actual strategy - with ´musings’ and judgement free about the complete outrageousness that one country should be able to choose who rules another…

As with Badenoch, the effect of all this is that they are supporting Trump. They are Trump supporters. I'll say it again: They are Trump supporters. They'll often couch their support in 'just asking questions', 'I'd do it differently', and 'realpolitik' but this is where they are.

When you get AI to do your English homework!

Did Trump start the war to raise oil prices and help Russia’s economy? Asking for a friend

I wrote about the story of the Four Color Theorem that I remember being told and Terence Tao and generative AI and some of my thoughts on teaching. www.peter-keep.com/2026-03-02-f...

Raises some important issues but also ignores the fact that many Humanities staff outside the magic circle are facing redundancy. They are naturally willing, indeed desperate, to apply for entry-level Oxbridge posts. The situation is grim. 1/2

If you can be arsed. I promised him I'd share it, but don't feel obliged, he's already the luckiest boy in the world having me as a dad. fundraising.spond.com/Mj8Xx3ZHHH

Just a random reminder that over 50 members of Congress collectively own millions of dollars in defense contractor stocks. They stand to personally profit from wars that enrich these contractors. Make no mistake, this is legalized corruption. Watch how they vote this week.

An Englishman on his way to work in a Sharia court/windmill

Dear BBC news can you calm down with the Trump statement. He is a loud mouth who quickly forgets - let’s just ignore what he says off the cuff rather than getting so breathless (yes Chris Mason I am talking to you). Get a f@@ing grip.

Ow is the time to negotiate with the US no cooperation over their adventures in Iran without the called for support for Ukraine.

Some thoughts on how a rational Labour Party would respond to last week's by-election. 99-percent.org/if-labour-me...

As journalists working today many of us are taught to recognise disinformation when we see it and fight back against it. Unfortunately there are some who willingly seek it out and put it on their front pages. A disgrace to the profession.

Daffodils all out now

What happens when movements built on grievance begin competing with each other? The Bear dissects the fault lines opening on the right. @eastangliabylines.co.uk @bearlypolitics.co.uk

Yes, Thatcher’s privatisation. Yes, Blair’s deregulation. Yes, the 2010s “bonfire of red tape”. But does Channel 4’s Dirty Business ignore what’s happened since 2024? Here’s what’s changed ⤵️ @eastangliabylines.co.uk @stephenmcnair.bsky.social

Allow me to once again table my deeply unpopular opinion that the thing we need to spend a lot more time worrying about, as IR scholars & in popular discussion of world politics, is ugly, unilateralist, & authoritarian 🇺🇸 power/hegemony, not its imminent collapse or absence. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

It’s been one year since the elimination of 18F. 🧵

It appears that a Polymarket account called "Magamyman" made $515,000 in a single day betting on last night's U.S. strike on Iran, with the first trade placed 71 minutes before the news broke publicly.

China adopted the circular economy as a national priority since 2009 recognising it can generate growth decoupled from resource use. This case study covers growth in the vehicle remanufacturing sector. www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-exa...

I'm guest presenter in a class tomorrow and therefore still designing the teaching I'll be doing. This involves many hours of staring into space thinking, talking out my thoughts, deciding where on the spectrum between what I've been asked to do and what I think I should do I should pitch it.

Seeing so many of the UAE based influencers stop posting about the fact they don’t pay taxes and start posting about how their perfect little utopia is turning a bit dystopian is so weird. There is, as they say, no such thing as a free lunch.

Can Labour get past vibes-based triangulation [not same as Reform or Greens, don't lurch left or right] to substance of centre-left content on key issues? Somewhere betw Greens & Reform contains at least a dozen varieties of social democracy, democratic socialism, most of liberalism & centreright

So it seems Trump watched Team America:World Police and thought it was a blue print for his foreign policy??

If you think all the voter fraud claims by Trump and now Farage sound familiar it’s probably from a history lesson you had in school about the rise of nazism. time.com/6971088/adol...

Today in “No Fascism is the Actual Popularism”

Greens had clear majority of 4400 because split the white British voters pretty evenly with Reform (a third each, Reform slightly ahead, with big contrast by age & education, Labour down to 1/4) then won over half but under 2/3 Asian voters (a local swing from Lab in July 2024, another one now)