Most of the roses for sale in the US are raised in hideous labor and environmental conditions in Colombia and Ecuador before they're loaded onto 747s to fly here. I know because I visited one of the rose plantations/sweatshops for my book Orwell's Roses. Give your love a book or something.

You can't... repeal... a scientific finding. At that point it's just called lying about it.

I think it tells us that the Cab Sec role (and Perm Sec roles) are now political appointments in all but name.

Take your pick from Captain John Smith and Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Behold the incredible shrinking Starmer: the PM who promises more while giving less | Aditya Chakrabortty

NEW ANALYSIS: China's CO2 has now been 'flat or falling' for 21 months * Down in 2025 * Still below Mar 2024 * Clean energy wave a key factor If this is China's peak (TBC) it's the climate story of the century so far… www.carbonbrief.org/...

Reading and writing can lower dementia risk by almost 40%, study finds

Anthropic leaning in this heavy on anthropomorphizing their model is such a huge tell of "We've got nothing" in the same way that OpenAI finally giving in to ads and sexbots was. The core value proposition is gone. There is no true game changing efficiency through Centralized Rentier AI Models.

💯 is this the fundamental problem with Labour. It was before the election. It still is now.

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW: “.. In our in-progress research, we discovered that AI tools didn’t reduce work, they consistently intensified it.” hbr.org/2026/02/ai-d...

The Summoning of Bertrand Russell - existentialcomics.com/comic/641

it really boils down to who do you hate more, rich sex abusers or the left, and I’m afraid that from Thatcher to Starmer we’ve been run by people for whom the answer to that question is “the left”

They want you to believe Starmer's going because of Mandelson. He isn't. He's been on the way out since summer because the polls are disastrous because half the Labour base have gone to the Greens for entirely political reasons. This is why Starmer will go: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

This week someone reviewed my work "development plan" and their feedback boiled down to "this would be better if you added the same stuff normal people do." Hey ho. Chalk another one up to the "neurotypical people don't mean it when they say be your authentic self. #Autism #AutisticLife

I don't believe that all mental health challenges are downstream of politics but I've been finding it increasingly rough, watching autism & ADHD turned into a new theatre of the culture wars. The hit pieces on SEN kids, the endless badly-researched columns on 'overdiagnosis' - I feel really crushed.

Just.... Wow. 🤯 The strategic genius whose pursuit of voters who will never support Labour has led to them polling below 20% less than 2 years after a historic landslide. I have no words.

Not *all* Labour MPs wanted McSweeney out. “Gutted about Morgan”, one texts. “So many of us know he’s brilliant to work with, so exceptional at the bigger picture strategic thinking, relentlessly focused on the moving pieces… and credit him with winning the majority”.

Fresco of the Virgin Eleousa (“Virgin of Tenderness”) at Chora/Kariye Camii

You want them to stop relying on SM? Create spaces outside of school and home for them to hang out!

Kids can't hang out in parks. They can't hang out at the mall. They don't have 3rd spaces because no one wants kids around and then we are surprised when they rely on SM for connection. If you take that away, what do they have left?

The good Pol Prof is back with another good thread!

All of which is just a long winded way of saying that the asteroid that will eventually obliterate what we call ‘conventional politics’ and which lots of us kept pointing to is no longer on its way. It’s already hit. (6/6)

A disappointing five 👇 What links Derek Malcolm, Roger Ebert and Philip French? The Saturday quiz www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

What the Epstein files reveal more than anything is a gilded elite who believe the rules and laws don't apply to them. The test of our times is do these bastards end up in jail www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

‘HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS,’ EMILY DICKINSON famously wrote, and that often leads to pictures of doves sitting quietly and looking sweet, but what if hope is an albatross that can soar for years without stopping, or an osprey that can haul a thrashing salmon out of rough waters?

There's no reason to accept this as normal, though. Much of Starmer and Labour's unpopularity is not misfortune but his own doing. Mandelson was a choice. Consistently pursuing policy positions designed to appeal to people who will not vote for you - and alienating core supporters - is a choice.

The Labour Party has achieved the same level of end-state malaise in a single year in government that took Tory Party 14 years. Welcome to the Year of the Five Emperors. Strap in.

Realistically, there will probably be a change in leadership before May, but it won't stick. I predict a succession of short-lived premierships (likely Streeting first), none addressing fundamental problems, whilst the ship of state drifts.

Parties that have undergone the rapid consolidation of power in the hands of a few individuals become brittle. They cannot self-correct and bend with events. How can McSweeney and Starmer course-correct on such an existential problem? How can another equally compromised leader replace him?

There is an idea that reading makes you more and more clever but actually reading makes you (realise that you are) more and more stupid.

A review of John Bellamy Foster's new book on Epicurus and Marxism. marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/2248...

Books are not clutter. Clutter is all the other stuff that gets in the way of having more books.

The loss of the threat of revolution is one of the worst things to have happened for the calibre of our ruling class; it's led to a loss of standards. Competition matters.

The long-term cost of high student debt in the UK is not just for graduates | Heather Stewart

Emma Bernard, 38, had been looking forward to a classic movie marathon with friends, but found herself unable to enjoy the evening after someone (Becky) incorrectly set the volume to a stupid, wrong number and just left it like that – like a monster.

Bentham's Panopticon was *a prison*. Wanting the whole of society to be *a prison* is a statement of megalomaniacal totalitarianism which even Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini etc were embarrassed to whisper. 'AI' is but a thin modesty veil for the fascistic impulses of the worst people in the world.

A quick reminder of what #BigFebruary is about… Thanks to the magic of the cosmos, we start gaining daylight much faster in Feb than in Jan. Over 20 mins a week - setting us up for Spring. This chart is by @neilrkaye.bsky.social and is one of my all time favourites.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ to Marx and the Robots. An interesting set of essays, mostly published in the 2010s and therefore dating fast #BookSky 📚 💙 app.thestorygraph.com/books/50ecbb...

Notes on Sweezy’s Theory of Capitalist Development I recently came back to Paul Sweezy's Theory of Capitalist Development, a book described by David McLellan as 'the best modern continuation of Marx's economic ideas' (McLellan 1983 p.480). It's ten years since I last read Sweezy's book, and it's…

After a mild bread disaster we have garlic dal with mango and lime glazed tofu and (less than planned) bread. No #KeithFloyd to console me either.

Not bad, eight and half 👇 Catherine Connolly is the third woman to become what? The Saturday quiz www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

"Not only don't people work less when they are guaranteed an income, they might actually put in more effort at work. And the fact that they have more money to spend leads to the creation of more jobs." Nobel Prize–winning economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Good to hear @iaindale.bsky.social engaging on some good old fashioned racism on @lbc.co.uk

it's free because it's essentially advertising. tech companies paid for it, to try and get more customers because they've lost prodigious amounts of money

The person opposite me on the train doesn't look sick, but just popped a throat lozenge 👀🫠

Labour risks election wipeout unless it improves Britain’s high streets, study finds