Dear GOD if you want to save money in the asylum system 1. LET ASYLUM SEEKERS WORK 2. FAST TRACK STATUS FOR EVERYONE FROM CLEARLY UNDAFE COUNTRIES like Sudan, Syria, etc 3. Run an asylum accommodation system that is NOT FOR PROFIT #r4today

RFK Jr's response to someone collapsing nearby him was to haul ass out of the room as quickly as possible

Vital piece of investigative reporting from Sky. They've uncovered the X algorithm which feeds users extremist right wing material from the moment they join the site. It is a far-right radicalisation engine, by design. news.sky.com/story/the-x-...

Honestly TELL THE STORY. Won’t someone just tell the fucking story of how Brexit created this economic hardship, how a Muslim immigrant just saved the lives of those commuters on that train, won’t someone in politics or even media just connect the fucking dots and TELL THE STORY. IT’S RIGHT THERE

Some divorced Staten Island dad is googling sharia law rn

Congrats to dream me who last night got the chance to return to her teens and do it all again. I chose to dedicate my life to the Specialist Army Unit for the Supernatural and hunt monsters like god intended instead of this boring regular Life.

This is going to get spun as a "thermostatic shift" chart, but it should be properly interpreted as a "information environment is broken" chart. In 2024, voters didn't know what Trump would do, and so they shifted towards him based on vibes. Now they are finding out, and they hate it.

every campaign is different - every election is different. i'm not trying to do the pundit thing. but it feels vital that somebody can win a big election with a campaign that feels joyful, not based on fear, resentment, etc

democracy works when the lazy doofus can quickly and easily understand how to vote for what he likes. it’s hard to imagine a system less like that than what we have

This is what I’m fucking talking about with it being ok to just dislike Hamilton. I didn’t really care for it. You thought it was cringe and disliked it. Other people with different tastes liked it. Neither of you are wrong. It doesn’t Say Anything About Society.

I will write more about this Policy Exchange report when I’m back from holiday, but broadly speaking I think it’s the most serious thinking from the British right on how you’d cut spending and the test for Con and Reform is “if you don’t like this, shut up about tax rises”.

It’s because no-one likes admitting they’ve got older: if states were having to spend more for the same results because, say, AI meant that students needed to stay in school much longer, wouldn’t be as much widespread denial about it IMO.

truly cursed game idea: Retirement Home Polycule. It's a card-based game where you have to build the most sustainable set of relationships before the clock ticks down.

increasingly toying with the idea that this is the root of all "rule of law" issues. A democratic theory of the rule of law should begin with the idea that the rule of law emerges from the average citizen's lived experience. And that experience today is being ruthlessly ripped off at all times.

What makes is difficult in the current media environment is that Democratic politicians can say all the right things about being willing to hunt Glonzo, but there’s this expectation that someone like Jamelle Bouie should also not be allowed to say in a column “Glonzo isn’t real, you fucking morons”

Starting in Moscow and drawing spheres of influence.

Moreover, most of their critiques apply to powerful humans too and I don't see them having any plan there for human derived hyper objects

Napster was supposed to overthrow copyright. Technology is inevitable and it’s OUT THERE! So the content industry would just have to adapt or perish. And then the RIAA said “fuck you we have so many lawyers.” And, instead, the technological future *bent around their demands.*

But even if we grant that AIs are something like intelligent, and say "well y'see its ALIEN intelligence because it's not like us," the next step is to argue for them being conscious. Do AIs have a sense of the self, though? Do they have wants/desires, independent of their programmed directions?

Next up on my reading list. …I am already regretting this choice.

"i want to appeal to both pedophiles and necrophiles," says someone's grandmother

i don’t think you can maximin vote share with polls and spreadsheets, and i think it is a problem that the most prominent and influential political commentators right now are more devotees of data than experts in narrative

Kim Kardashian doesn’t care about the moon one or the other. However by taking a ‘controversial’ stance she is being talked about! People are linking to her videos! Even when those people mock her she makes money!

Great read from @iandunt.bsky.social on whether Starmer should stay or go, including the mystery of how, if you’re launching a popular climate, energy, and growth strategy, why wouldn’t you stage a press conference on it? iandunt.substack.com/p/a-world-wi...

Time for my annual dilemma between being someone who thinks that modern Halloween trends deprive people of a chance to spend time with their dead and mentally 'build an immunity' against the presence of death, and not being a massive party pooper

Ever since reading the Silmarillion for the first time I've been convinced it's actually a post-colonial work. It's often not read as that because it's post-colonialism filtered through the lens of a deeply conservative British man, who has extremely strong moral & religious convictions...

The fundamental problem: 58% of voters want public spending maintained or increased. 67% want taxes to stay at their current level or be cut. In reality, it’s a binary choice. Taxes go up, or spending is cut. That’s it.

It's a common theme that really pisses me off. There's been a complete divergence of professional standards between white collar professions and politicians. Me: I have to ask if I can accept that drink MP: Sure, I'll write that £1k-in-kind ticket package in my little book of bribes and it's ok

I think we are actually going to get him formally removed from the succession by act of (multiple) parliaments. this would have been such exciting news in 1720

“Attacks on immigration and benefits both rely on similar ugly prejudice: certain members of society “contribute” and others “cost”, and in the extreme, leech off the superior healthy and white population.” My col. on Britain’s new wave of anti-migrant policy. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

it's not simple in any way (you need to emphasize the fight obviously) but the algorithmic incentive is to message in the bleakest ways and that tends only to serve the people who are trying to court the rage of others. and it is just lovely to see reminders that politics is about community

Am I having trouble breathing because Ive had a cold the last week, because my long term illness has flaired up or because my lurcher is fast asleep on my chest?

Yeah I don’t think there is any route to replacement fertility without 15-20% of families having 4+ kids and that needs a big culture shift in how we think about tax and benefits.

Basic problem is that UK is a medium-sized, open economy that runs a deficit at a moment that is increasingly ill-advised and that public services don’t meet most people’s expectations.

I do have the secretest take that deep down the reason why starmer floundered so bad is that the ideal starmer voter is like a 25-55 wine mum and the labour right HATES IT

It's absolutely correct - so much of it is just basically 'New Labour - too effeminate, too pro-globalisation, too middle class', and I hate to inform you lads, but actually, the British electorate is in fact majority middle class and majority female, and this is even more true of your coalition.

i don’t think we ought to rely on these stories as moral formation

I suspect this is true, but one reason prominent people are having their brains cooked by Twitter is that Elon is working to turn the platform into that reflection Ioop for right wing ideas. Having 40,000 chuds call you based for saying black people are subhuman is worse than ChatGPT doing it.

This is also yet another example of the slow motion car crash unfolding in every public service involving local government in some way, as black hole of a dysfunctional, unreformed social care system sucks in everything around it. Labour's choice to punt reform into the long grass a collossal error.

None of these people believe that Richard Ayoade, Cole Palmer, Zadie Smith and David Olusoga are going to form a squadron of “The Fighting Miscegenates” and start a war against their own parents.

1980: NHS spending as a % of GDP: 5.1% Defence spending as a % of GDP: 5% 2024: NHS spending as a % of GDP: 10.9% Defence spending as a % of GDP: 2.2% This is such a common applause line, but it’s also total bullshit.

This cuts both ways - Labour have had a nightmare and fallen off a cliff but also a lot can change in three years and there are more than three years to go until next election due

It's increasingly obvious that Labour's strategy - call it Starmerism, Blue Labour, whatever - has got it badly wrong. It has alienated the party's core vote while failing to win over those leaning to Reform. There was no shortage of people warning them they were getting it wrong either.

The possibility of a rupture where younger, richer voters baulk at transferring ever more income to people who also oppose them on immigration and cultural issues could mean the breakdown of the pattern where well to do liberals support left parties against their economic interests.

Nice summary of the fiscal situation in the UK. I’ll add this - over recent elections the pattern between income and vote choice has broken down. Labour, without quite realising it, have become a party whose younger, graduate, professional voters are now the ones paying much higher marginal rates.

Labour's lowest ebb against Thatcher, poll-wise, was 27.6% in September 1983. Tories hit 25.7% in April 1995. Lab hit 22.7% in June 2009. In July 2019, Tories polled 20.9% and Labour 21.8% simultaneously. But these were absolute historic lows... until the last year...

A myriad of problems with this empty headed mush, but the pretence the public finances are particularly impacted one way or the other by defence spending is hilarious. It’s pensions and health, people. That’s where all the money goes.

What I think this demonstrates is 3 things (1) This mass deportation policy is wildly at odds with public opinion in general, and with opinion of many sensible Tory voters, members & MPs (2) Many ppl defending the policy didn't know what was in it (3) Informing and pressuring them therefore works

Just had a terrible vision of 'intra-Labour party debates in 2030'.

Is the UK addicted to “full independent inquiries”? Does it really take a years-long process costing millions to say it was a mistake to release Hadush Kebatu on Friday? Wouldn’t a faster internal process into what went wrong allow the government to *fix* it faster?