Your universe is a photocopy of a photocopy of a… on.ft.com/4ahkNKa

I feel like this FIFA Peace Prize for Trump is in fact bringing the world together.

The new Zipcar petition just mentioned on BBC London is here. It’s an important service for many Londoners without a car and is currently due to be withdrawn at the end of this month.

@crisortunity.bsky.social Zipcar is going to disappear in London from the end of the month, making it harder for many Londoners to live in the city without owning a car. Brand new petition here to take the service into public ownership 👇 Background: www.londoncentric.media/p/zipcar-lon...

🧵This 58-year-old nurse from Maryland is seen being violently dragged along the ground by officials in Ghana. Trump deported her there. This abhorrent & disgusting abuse of a woman who saved American lives and cared for injured and ill Americans for 30 years. All the details below are worse.

Funny but... not funny

Marianne von Werefkin, Swirling Snow, 1915 Expressionist painter #WomensArt

"Those in power recognized that oppression is best maintained by keeping the masses illiterate, and those oppressed recognized that literacy is liberation. ...Don’t surrender to AI your ability to read, write and think when others once risked their lives and died for the freedom to do so."

We must copy Denmark Social Democrats' hardline anti-asylum measures in order to win back voters' trust, says Shabana Mahmood. Meanwhile in Denmark:

Asylum seekers = illegal migrants = a threat to the UK: the basis for performative cruelty and policies which would make it impossible for refugees to rebuild their lives. And of course is a narrative which encourages racism on the streets.

Going to leave you with a Home Office chart from their most recent asylum stats so you can decide whether the UK is a magnet for asylum seekers with a uniquely generous asylum system www.gov.uk/government/s...

I find it striking how little this is mentioned when people talk about how terrible Musk is. His gloating about 'feeding USAID into the woodchipper'. If the cuts aren't reversed, then the total number of deaths caused by them is predicted to be 14 million over five years.

So apparently some parts of the US Right are responding to electoral losses by calling for women’s right to vote to be withdrawn. #AllPerfectlyNormal

New 🧠🎨 for #sfn #sciart

UK still selling arms to UAE which may be used by RSF www.middleeasteye.net/news/british...

"The pace of killing can only be compared to that of the Rwanda genocide in 1994" #KeepEyesOnSudan www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl...

After I posted this I thought I should have rounded Bill Gates’ net worth to $106 billion. Then I realised the 0.3 = $300 million which does kind of drive it home how crazy this kind of wealth is.

What is it that makes politicians nod along enthusiastically to this sort of thing? In Doctor Who this plot development would be how they realise that the government is actually being run by aliens.

Free after 12 years and reunited with his family.

@responsiblesci.bsky.social looking forward to Wednesday's meeting even more now I find out you're legionnaires of the Antichrist.

I think I want all my political information to be delivered as Richard Scarry-style cartoons. It's the only way I can cope.

🔴 NEW - Why you should leave X Here’s the sad truth: Twitter no longer exists. X is something else entirely. It’s a megaphone for extremism, controlled by a deranged oligarch. 📝 latest Substack 👇🏻

On the same day in the Telegraph:

Amid all the stuff about ‘dangerous London’ and ‘broken Britain’, new figures show the homicide rate in London is at a 10-year low. Killings dropped by 26% over the last year, from 78 to 58. No one under 25 was murdered during the school summer holidays.

The rise of anti-immigrant sentiment and the media's fawning over Farage pose a huge challenge for the rest of us. A good first step would be some sensible comms (like this) from Government in response. Not blathering on about 'legitimate concerns' and further stoking fears about asylum-seekers.

Is the word motorist actually ever used nowadays except when tabloids bewail a 'war on motorists'? A 'car driver' is someone who uses their vehicle to get from A to B. A 'motorist' sounds like it's a hobby: someone from the 1930s going for a jolly jaunt down to Brighton in the old automobile.

🚨1000 authoritarian actions. 7 months🚨 I've been tracking Trump's authoritarian actions. From dismantling democratic institutions to militarising immigration enforcement, Trump is reshaping America. In my new post I highlight key authoriarian attacks christinapagel.substack.com/p/grand-desi... 1/2

Love the sign language interpreter here, including the flappy hair sign for Trump.

"The first flying saucers were produced in the early 1950s when an Antwerp-based producer of communion wafers, Belgica, faced a decline in demand for their product." Thought this was a great obscure fact - turns out all my friends already knew it. Downside of having friends who like obscure facts!

New YouGov polling. A monumental failure of our political class to educate, a monumental failure of our media to report fairly, for a generation

Someone on here compared AI produced material as "digital asbestos " which in a few decades' time we will have to work out how to eradicate from the fabric of research.

We are probably going to look back with nostalgia on the days of hand-made artisanal misinformation. Two examples, not even particularly malicious as these things go:

Horrific article/thread. I wish I couldn't see the parallels with other articles on my timeline about climate change. The history of warnings about pushing the climate beyond tipping points / denying a population adequate food ignored. Acknowledgement only coming when it's too late for so many...

Things that are better now than they used to be… it’s a short list, but: Municipal planting. More Mediterranean, fewer bedding plants. This lovely hibiscus bush was in a random street flower bed not far from Whitechapel station (East London).

Yesterday, we organized the Flour March. Thousands of us, Jewish and Palestinian, marching with sacks of flour in our hands and fire in our hearts. We came because we refuse to stay silent as our government commits atrocities in Gaza.

Quite something that the government has made themselves look both callous and ridiculous in their priorities over Gaza. Leaving the moral case aside, did no one foresee just how bad this juxtaposition would look?

“I do not want to spend another day operating on children who have been shot and starved by a military our government supports.”

The UK did have one standout product that was considered globally valuable- universities- and unilaterally decided to stop providing the product because it was more important to be xenophobic than successful

This is some pretty impressive high school journalism.

The children of Gaza are children. They deserve the same as children anywhere in the world. They deserve food, clean water, shelter, warmth, safety, education, play, joy, and the right to their own futures. (3/3)

The equivalent of a classroom full of children are killed in Gaza by the Israeli military each day, according to UNRWA. No child should have to live through this. It must never become normal. (1/3)

Do you know who they are? Take a good look at their faces. 20 members of the Arafat family, incl these children, were buried under the rubble after the IDF strike on their home. Some were killed instantly, others can still be heard alive beneath the debris, civil defense has no fuel for rescue

Oh great. Rachel Reeves touting Thatcherite economic theories and ignoring the lessons of more recent history when financial deregulation resulted in the 2008 crash.

99% of people crossing the channel in small boats apply for asylum. About 70%+ receive it. The manner of entry to seek asylum does not determine if someone is a "genuine refugee". Nobody is risking their life crossing one of the world's busiest shipping routes to work for Deliveroo. #r4today

The state of the world, when someone on social media referring to planned concentration camps could be talking about either Florida or Gaza. This is not supposed to be a thing anywhere folks.

"Reform UK to introduce less stringent ‘common sense’ vetting system for candidates": www.theguardian.com/politics/202... Also from yesterday: Reform has lost 11 councillors since May's local elections, not counting a 12th charged with assault and criminal damage. www.markpack.org.uk/175323/sam-b...

This is poetry. And hits hard because it's true. therickwilson.substack.com/p/in-texas-t...

From the country that brought you the Post Office scandal.

Forgotten in the glare of all the other world mayhem, but the Georgians continue to show that you don’t give up in the face of an authoritarian takeover. Day 214 of protests.

Besides the (by now very realistic) nightmare scenarios, there are more mundane political implications: this is a police force that can be used to affect elections. I predict that it will be deployed to discourage voting in Democratic strongholds in the next elections.