"Brexit will allow the Parliament more legal autonomy to legislate and regulate independently at the cost of making Britain measurably poorer" would have been a much more accurate and honest framing of the choice facing voters.

Excited to unveil the new @washingtonpost.com slogan: "Democracy Dies in Darkness - But Anything Dies When We JDAM it. USA! USA! USA!"

A desperate desire to live forever in the Vinnick vs Santos debate episode of The West Wing, and an unshakeable, utterly baseless belief that if the centre-left throws enough progressive principles under the bus a civil, moderate, responsible centre-right will emerge to engage with.

Like the President, I too have been denied proper credit from the ivory tower elites for the conflicts I have halted between Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea, Portugal and Atlantis, and the United Federation of Planets and Klingon Empire.

How your email finds me.

MAGA have found this neat Gamergate cheatcode whereby you unleash your lunatic internet army to make death threats against staff of the corporation you're trying to bully, thereby allowing its leadership to neatly sidestep the moral implications of caving by claiming it's a staff safety decision.

Find a man who looks at you the way I look at a plate of tiny baked goods.

This is as good as everyone is saying it is.

US President back-pedalling furiously after his administration treated some innocent hard-working Koreans like they were innocent hard-working Latinos.

The thing is mate, it's actually really hard to make out the fact that you don't like Tommy and think many of the fellow marchers are arseholes from the satellite photos of you among them at the rally, or the newspaper headlines about how 110,000 of you marched with them.

Don't know how to articulate this cleanly but something inside me rebels at using "radicalized" to simultaneously describe an impressionable teenager drowning in meme culture, and also a 40-something pundit turning fascist because social media progressives are annoying and conservatives monetizable.

Not sure having every major party in the country focus its energy, rhetoric and strategy exclusively on pandering to these people is going to produce good outcomes.

I know it's not politically correct or fashionable but even if we disagree with their tone, or even their policy prescriptions, it's incumbent on all of us to respectfully listen to and take seriously the concerns of those the economy has left behind like... <checks notes> ... Elon Musk.

-FBI Director studying a young man's possessions, which are covered in Warhammer 40,000 references- "This bullet says 'For the Emperor!' which makes me think he's a Japanese spy..." "But this bullet says, 'Suffer not the Alien to Live' which makes me concerned he might be a conservative hero..."

If he'd been radicalized by a leftist professor the bullet engravings would have been an unreadable 90,000 word rebuttal to another leftist academic over a purely semantic disagreement they've been arguing back and forth since the 70's and he'd have shot Reviewer 2.

"Well, nevertheless." - The entire MAGA-sphere today

> be me, 17 year old meme lord > see neighbor 69 years old (nice) > tilting hard, carrying heavy bags > not on my watch! > BEAST MODE ACTIVATED > tip fedora > "I'll courier quest those, m'lady" > swole arms lift bags like I'm carrying noobs in wood tier LoL > thanks anon! ur poggers > am poggers

This is because radical-centrists treat progressives as responsible, not only for their own words, but for the words of everyone with progressive vibes, and those of right wingers who are considered to be primal elemental spirits lacking agency but requiring appeasement lest they smite us all.

In a world where politics is just another thing one can be an 'influencer' in, the most valuable thing one can be to one's fellow actors is a content catalyst. 'Reaction' videos are the easiest to make, and people like Kirk generated thousands of hours of ready-to-thumbnail fodder.

I'm just not sure I trust the objectivity of career debate bros rushing to tell us that, irrespective of one's message, the mere act of public debating is the highest contribution one can make to a democracy.

To ensure this never happens again, Starmer should once again ignore the foreign service Mandarins and to go with his gut. Welcome, Ambassador.

We should condemn political violence, even against people we find abominable, unless we are prepared to trust the judgement of every violent individual as to who the villains are. We can believe this and express sympathy for the victim's families without retroactively lionizing their politics.

Is the alternative they're proposing here that someone faked Donald Trump's signature on a birthday poem 22 years ago? Or that Democrat deep-staters edited it in but for some reason didn't edit Clinton out?

-massages temples- LOCAL COFFEE PRODUCING MUM DISCOVERS ONE WEIRD TRICK TO EVADE TARIFFS, BORDER OFFICIALS HATE HER

Just so unbelievably exhausting that an entire mini-industry of punditry built themselves a following for "defending free speech" by yelling at college kids who don't think Nazis deserve to speak at the Harvard Student Union, only to disappear when real, top down cancellations actually materialized.

I wish we'd spent 2022-24 living under the Biden foreign policy regime that exists exclusively in Republican talking points.

Impressive Farage is hitting this threshold before even winning power.

Quick question, how do all the people who assured me the US couldn't arm Ukraine because pissing off an unstable, nuclear armed dictator is too great a risk, feel about Trump sending Navy SEALs into North Korea where they promptly massacred a bunch of civilians? www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

"Maximum lethality - not tepid legality" is the kind of thing the Hydra agent who seized control of the US military says right before before Captain America throws a shield at his face.

A fun day to remember that a not-insignificant portion of global prosperity is currently built on Americans feeling confident enough in their job security and employment prospects to keep buying stuff at wildly higher rates than their counterparts in other countries.

Putin saying Western troops in Ukraine would be fair targets is... confusing. The only way they'd ever be there would be to monitor and guarantee a ceasefire Russia agreed to. Is Putin saying, "when we decide to violate this thing, we're rolling right over any Finns that happen to be in the way?"

It's a strategy that imagines a voter who cares so deeply about immigration that they'd be willing to make Nigel Farage Prime Minister but is willing to come home to Labour if Starmer shows 60% of Farage's performative cruelty. Maybe they exist but I don't think there are millions of them.

Are newspapers aware they don't actually have to write a, "... but this speaks to a larger, important point" article about every single trend on TikTok? 40 year old social commentators writing philosophical treatises of the latest little dance meme for teens like they're interpreting the Talmud.

I don't think my pro-Ukraine credentials are in doubt, but even I'd struggle to argue that Russia, which Trump is neutral to positive on (h/t @josephpolitano.bsky.social) selling oil to India while fighting Ukraine, which he's negative to neutral on, constitutes a US national economic emergency.

Parliament should be sovereign to make its own decisions, unrestricted by busy-bodies in Brussels or any foreign power... except obviously the Trump administration which can and should dictate UK social media due to its own unimpeachable free speech record.

Think-tanks in the US: "Welcome to the Foundation for Enterprise Freedom, we have a budget of $30million, 200 staff, and a headquarters within view of the White House." Think-tanks in the UK: "We are two part-time professors and an unpaid research assistant. We bring our tea from home."

Can I just again point out how stupid the people who thought this man was going to commit nuclear suicide are? Grown ass national security pundits writing in seemingly serious publications that Vlad the Immortal here was going to push the button if the US sent Ukraine one too many mortar shells.

"Hey ChatGPT, are we cooked?" "That's a great question, and if OpenAI is able to raise $40 billion more in funding at a valuation of $950 trillion, I'll be able to answer you, incorrectly, for the low, low price of $200 a month - and still somehow lose money on the interaction."

Prediction for today's statement: Trump to announce the DOD will now be the Department of War and do a liberation day-tariff style reveal of which countries the US plans to invade and how hard.

A lot of the "we need a social media public square to have civil political debate about the issues" chat seems to imagine an unmet demand for Socratic dialogue on like, infrastructure planning, which only actually exists among like 6 Substack authors.

1/ The elimination of de minimis is emblematic of the worst kind of reactionary, knee-jerk policymaking that's sadly not confined to the US. For those who don't know: The US has largely eliminated a rule that let packages of lower value (<$800) to skip most customs formalities and tariff duties.

According to the latest calculations by @piie.com the US has collected $93 billion in tariffs in the first six months of this year. By way of comparison, in July alone total US government revenues were $330 billion. Nothing is getting obliterated or destroyed. He's such a drama queen.

"Why wouldn't you want the President of the United States to flood the streets of your city with soldiers to very temporarily and completely unsustainably suppress all human activity, including crime? I am a very serious journalist."

The people who want you to put down the sourdough because liking nice bread makes you a posh woke lib are trying to make you fight battles over aesthetics so they can win the war for power unopposed.

This is from the, "how come we don't ever talk about immigration?" school of British political analysis.

1/ As we celebrate for them, here are twelve ways trade policy could impact the upcoming nuptials of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce...

Kidding aside, I'll believe Trump is on death's door when I see the goobers in his entourage suddenly start dumping their Trump Coin holdings.

1/ The role of experts in a democracy is to provide: 1️⃣ Advice to democratically elected leaders on the options available to achieve the objectives those leaders select; 2️⃣ Advice to democratically elected leaders on the likely outcomes and consequences of leaders' proposed plans.

If the President dies then either SCOTUS rules 6-3 that Stephen Miller can keep running the country because "Trump's Mandate Persists In Heaven" or JD Vance has the entire Cabinet entombed with Trump so he can replace the US government with an evil Palantir AI.

Appeals court says Trump's fentanyl and reciprocal tariffs are unlawful. Looking forward to the 6-3 SCOTUS decision which upholds them anyway because the Constitution clearly states Trump is an omnipotent God-Emperor destined to reign upon the Golden Throne until all is returned to dust.