Today, President Barack Obama and I read to a group of toddlers at Learning Through Play Pre-K Center in the South Bronx.  In between singing wheels on the bus, we discussed our administration’s vision for this City — one where New York’s Cutest have the strongest start possible.

The Israeli army struck civilians in the Lebanese city of Mayfadoun. And then, the Israelis double-tapped the medics who arrived onto the scene. And then, they triple-tapped the next wave of medics. And then, they did it one more time for good measure.

Gee, I wonder how that could have happened if true? Maybe killing multiple ranks of civilian & military leadership created opportunities & anger for harder-line & para-constitutional governance, hmmmmmmmmm, WHO COULD HAVE IMAGINED.

This, I think, possibly overstates the case but is well worth the time. www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/35...

This is superb. www.nber.org/papers/w30451

"Upon their return, the entire team was fired without explanation, though Cellini believes the university was afraid because they had found “too many slaves” and could be bankrupted as a result" www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

they called the COPS on a grad student?? incredible stuff here

“Researchers that have attempted to make the university’s connections –and potential obligations– to the Caribbean explicit say their efforts have been stymied. …“The conversation is not happening,” said Carla Martin, a Harvard professor of African and African American Studies. “We all have tried.””

When Hegseth torpedoed a regular Iranian naval vessel hundreds of miles from the theater of war and committed the war crime of failing to rescue sailors, corporate media paid attention—it was a thing to write about. That it was strategically meaningless was context that got lost.

I did not sign this but I 100% would if I could "We Reject the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence for Reflexive Qualitative Research" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I think the Iranians might have gotten in some of the close of business Friday side-trading yesterday.

Tremendously depressing read. Also: proper reporting. open.substack.com/pub/londonce...

The fun part is: this was loudly denounced as an insane conspiracy theory, right up until those books came out that were filled with McSweeney and Reed bragging about how all of it was true, and they really had suckered the press into repeating all of this awesomely dishonest horseshit.

Netanyahu is keen to keep Israel in perpetual state of war and emergency. If the war in Iran and Lebanon is indeed ending, the next targets are likely to be Gaza. The failure to reach an agreement on Hamas disarmament would be used as a pretext for Israeli invasion.

I don't recall any previous transformative technologies that had to be sold to the public so hard. No one in 1999 was going, "Guys. Cell phone? It's coming, whether we like it or not. I think it's important, FOR WOMEN ESPECIALLY, to learn about cell phone. So that we're not left behind!!"

Everyone who writes for the New Statesman or aspires to do so: "I'd love water to be re-nationalised but alas and alack it is privatised and it is very very difficult to unpick that. I wish you were smart enough to understand." Also them: "The Greens are monsters for wanting publicly owned solar."

So the same agency that was responsible for the scandal rejected claims from the people affected? Pikachu shocked face.

Racists gonna keep on being racist

"The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, said in parliament on Thursday that the gambling industry 'brings joy to a lot of people'. She said: 'The industry as a whole brings positive benefits to the United Kingdom.' Labour thinks gambling brings joy and positive benefits?!? Yes. Only to shareholders.

“The good news is that, from Zohran Mamdani and [Congresswoman] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York to Pedro Sánchez in Spain, from Lula in Brazil to [Green Party Leader] Zack Polanski in the UK, we may be seeing the early signs of a new cross-border alliance taking shape against global oligarchy.”

Omer Bartov on why Zionism isn’t redeemable www.instagram.com/reel/DXPkszw...

UK be more like Spain

Grateful for people like Bartov. More ppl need to understand that there’s no path forward with Zionism. And it is completely valid for someone like me to repeat this ad nauseam. To even ask a Palestinian/Lebanese/Syrian to compromise on Zionism is to be part of its violence.

The IDF has allowed 5 Israeli soldiers who raped a Palestinian detainee from #Gaza at Sde Teiman military facility to resume duty. The rape was filmed. Israeli PM Netanyahu described the IDF soldiers as "heroes". The charges against them were dropped on "procedural" grounds. #IsraeliTerrorism

As we all knew, Israel has never seen a ceasefire it was willing to keep.

i think folks might be unfamiliar with "the pharisees", so let's make it clear: he's saying the jews run the press, and that they are conspiring to undermine the military. it's not just antisemitism, it's indistinguishable from nazism.

The richest 1% own 50% of global stocks. They vote with capital, 24/7, in every market. You get one vote, every 4 years. That's not democracy vs. capitalism. That's democracy being outrun.

ZOHRAN: “TBH, I don’t think too much about how Republicans portray me. The power of an ideology is judged in the worth of its delivery— to be told a city-run grocery store is implausible but $500 MILLION/day to kill ppl in Iran & Lebanon is necessary speaks to a broken politics.”

The complete untethering of the entire right side of our political spectrum from anything resembling integrity or honesty is a phenomenon that deserves a lot of ink. Everybody should be throwing themselves into this, psychologist, sociologist, theologian, everybody.

Exempting Israel from the rules is a significant driver in the belief that Israel has some undue influence over the political systems we inhabit— that belief is primarily a misdiagnosis of the underlying ideological problem in Washington DC but it’s not a totally irrational thing to believe.

Iran on Trump

And there it is.... Update in Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against his own I.R.S., in which he seeks taxpayer-funded damages for the prior release of his tax records Trump legal filing says he's in "discussions" with his own I.R.S. to "avoid protracted litigation"

Note that this post effectively admits that Trump and his entire admin have been lying for the last 7 weeks about Iran having been close to a nuclear bomb, with Trump reverting to the position he took just weeks before the war began that Iran's nuclear material had been effectively "obliterated."

📹 Vídeo | "Les voy a pedir disculpas en nombre de la sociedad española". Sánchez se disculpa con Lula, Petro y Sheinbaum por "los insultos" de Ayuso y Abascal. social.elpais.com/ns7…

Wes streeting admits what he is doing is "humilating and cruel". But only for trans men (that look and sound man enough). Perfectly happy to inflict cruelty and humiliation on trans women. Source. LBC

The fact that Mamdani just seems like a cheerful normal guy who's policies are things like "we're going to tax second homes to fund pothole repairs" or whatever and yet this generates panicked responses like "This is basically Stalin's great purge turned up to eleven" is... telling. It tells things.

This story is crazy! The Jim Dolan had a Knicks fan obsessively monitored at games just because she was trans.

A new analysis published by UN Women shows that more than 38,000 women and girls—including over 22,000 women and 16,000 girls—were killed in Gaza between October 2023 and December 2025, representing an average of at least 47 women and girls killed per day. www.unwomen.org/en/news-stor...

Starmer is a big fat liar. He cannot continue

His whole demeanour reminds me of a Year 8 student arguing that the homework really was left on my desk... This is the most unusual resignation speech I've ever seen.

on the same day

The facts are clear. Netanyahu convinced Trump to exclude Lebanon from the cease fire (despite previous US understandings with Iran). He boasted about "delinking" the two fronts. He vowed not to stop fighting, even after negotiation started. 1/

2026: Keir Starmer repeatedly says he was not told that Peter mandelson failed security vetting 2025: Oliver Robbins to parliament on November 2025, "It was clear the Prime Minister wanted to make this appointment himself. The FCDO was informed of his decision and acted upon it"

This is the text message journalist David Maddox sent to No.10 Director of Communications Tim Allan. They knew Mandelson was a security risk, had failed vetting, but appointed him anyway. Then they orchestrated a cover up; now firing the Foreign Office Perm Sec who wasn’t even in post at the time.

I wonder how those Political Journalists (Pippa, Peter, Paul etc) could have possibly missed this or how members of Starmer’s cabinet did not read (or were not told) about it. It’s a real puzzler

because solidarity leads to systemic change and individualism prevents solidarity. Our feelings of smug superiority, of punching down, of blaming the "other," are exactly what the powerful need to remain powerful.

Keep in mind that this capitalist hellscape is DESIGNED to turn marginalized people against each other and DESIGNED around anti-Blackness, imperialism, and cisheteronormativity, and DESIGNED to disappear disabled people from society,

Trump Jr. advises Polymarket. The CFTC dropped their Polymarket probe last year without bringing charges. I asked the CFTC Chairman, Michael Selig, did the White House ask for that? He was “insulted” by my simple question. Guess what he didn’t do? Answer.

This is such bollocks. People can't honestly believe this. He's lied consistently and now we're meant to believe he isn't lying. It doesn't work like that. His credibility is shot because he's lied to get into and power and now is lying again to stay in power.