So after all the speculation, Hungary gets a political agreement on almost all of the suspended EU money. It's important that the money is *not* yet flowing. Let's look at the details & concrete promises in exchange 🧵 www.euractiv.com/news/eu-unlo...

To deter Russia from sending drones (accidentally on purpose) into NATO states they could begin shooting down Russian drones within Ukrainian airspace and in territorial waters over the Black and Baltic Sea. They would need some cost effective anti drone systems first however.

Who is this MP and why does he make such bad arguments?

Ideal President to put on a bill that will mostly be used for money laundering and corruption

Cheap energy is renewable now. Might put this on a t-shirt. Who wants one?

The odd story of a Hungarian anti-Orban print paper subsidised by the pro-Fidesz KESMA comes to an end. In practice nobody really read it. Innovative opposition media that survived on its wits and reader support replaced it. But we should mark this episode in the history of a 153 year old paper.

Indeed. The progress in solar wind and batteries has been incredible.

What’s up with all this protectionism? They’ve three arguments, one of which is the need to bail Germany out…

Counterpoint: it would reduce engagement by helpful individuals pointing out un fixable typos

3 1 - Industrial policy is good for Europe. 2 - Protectionism has costs but it is justified for non-effociency reasons 3 - We need to (be seen to) do something to keep our tie AFD

2 / But though the CER is full of universally lovely people that doesn’t mean they’re universally right. It is necessary to distinguish there arguments here.

The protectionists are out in force buoyed by this piece by @soumayakeynes.ft.com building on the work of the always wonderful people at the Centre for European reform in this case @sandertordoir.bsky.social 🧵

Interesting thread on EU's protectionist turn and what its for. (I guess if we all take turns bailing each other out, we'll keep afloat.)

The protectionists are out in force buoyed by this piece by @soumayakeynes.ft.com building on the work of the always wonderful people at the Centre for European reform in this case @sandertordoir.bsky.social 🧵

This is an error on the commission’s part - funds are conditional on rule of law. It’s not a pot of money over which Comm has arbitrary discretion. I would like Hungary to support UA accession but Hungary is a member state and entitled to have its own positions on enlargement

@davidhenig doing his best to fight back against trendy, foolish protectionism here

I’m surprised to see this from YouGov. It’s a perfect example of how not to ask a polling question. “Clean energy” can be – and in most instances is – “cheaper energy”.

This breakthrough caught the nation’s attention - “the silicon strips may provide more power than all the world’s coal, oil, and uranium” - April, 1954 The solar cell went on tour showing off use cases, mostly entertaining - but highly applicable when considering distant communications.

Things’ll get complicated when Dune gets classified as hate speech arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/u...

Do remind me how much money TBI has received from hydrocarbon producing states.

Russia is launching a new phase of pressure on the Baltic states. Moscow has announced its intention to appeal to the International Court of Justice over the "suppression of the rights of Russian speakers" in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia⤵️

'What Europe lacks in terms of combat power is not numbers of aircraft (or even tanks or ships). What it lacks are munitions stocks of sufficient depth and types for combating Russia’s most significant capabilities for a NATO self-defence scenario' writes Justin Bronk in the latest RUSI Commentary.

Blair’s speech contains a staggering number of intellectual mistakes. He’s clearly past the peak of his powers 🧵 institute.global/insights/pol...

US people: is this allowed under the NDAA?

“The world is turning on its axis and today’s politicians living in a 24/7 pressure cooker have barely time to recognise the turning let alone study it” Tony Blair was able to write once

This image will live in infamy

At Manchester after switching from physics I went on to study politics and modern history. What would a relevant placement have been? WRONG ANSWERS ONLY

Özgur Özel is using an Eid celebration to ho hold a rally on Saturday after his party was seized from him by authorities. The size of this “celebration” could determine whether Turkey will become a complete dictatorship.

As we’re in a heatwave here’s your regular reminder that the cheapest way for almost everywhere to decarbonise their grid is currently solar wind and batteries with hydro and combined cycle gas turbines for peak demand/bad weather. New nuclear is not cost effective.

I don’t object to the left claiming these good policies (pro immigration, opposition to rent seeking) as their own. They’re good liberal policies that I hope people of all economic colours can adopt.

This exchange shows why the deterrence model of managing migration has failed. People are trying to leave pretty bad circumstances so we have to be extremely horrible to them directly, or indirectly by making smuggling gangs a rational choice, to persuade people not to try. 🧵

Every so-called post liberal regime drowns in corruption. That why we have the rule of law, watchdog NGOs, free media and a non-partisan civil service. To stop people abusing state power to steal.

Finally an explanation for why foliage in Berlin parks is so messy

Erdogan is trying to put his own man in charge of Turkey’s main and oldest opposition party, the CHP. He had a court cancel the party congress (from 2023!) where Özgur Özel was elected to replace him with the predecessor Kiliçardoglu now believed to be colluding with Erdogan.

1. Shouldn’t any competent politician do this 2. heheh

Repost with the Russian agent that spies on your posts

Iran regime - famous for its refusal to countenance police brutality

BBC News - Turkish riot police storm opposition offices after leaders ousted www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I dont’t have a problem with @theguardian.com trying to make money from their journalism. But their pretense that it isn’t what they’re doing is annoying. This piece now requires me to register. “just a little hurdle” - no, you’re collecting my data to sell which is ok but admit it

Glucksmann and Citizen Convention on Immigration The French presidential candidate Raphaël GLUCKSMANN has published proposals for how he would run the country - in book form, of course, this being France. A striking proposal highlighted by Le Monde today is a Citizen Convention on Immigration.…

Reintroduce mixer taps next

This was inevitable. Ukraine will not settle for anything other than full membership on the same terms as anyone else. Western European leaders, think tankers and pundits need to stop proposing second class membership.

Okay. Makes sense. Now press Germany/Nordics/Visegrad/Balts on treaty reform. The current problem with the enlargement discussion is that it is all about what Ukraine needs to do… and not what Europe needs to do. But the EU ain’t enlarging unless there is treaty reform - and an end to unanimity.

Peak Brussels horeca

In immigration and trade mercantilism appears plausible when you only think statically but it’s wrong. The underlying idea of exchange is that transactions create value for both parties, otherwise they wouldn’t happen. That’s still true if they take place in different things called “countries”.

At a seminar recently in an East European country the keynote speaker Prof Dr Hab XYZ gave a talk about EU geopolitics that only mentioned Germany France and Russia, despite having been invited to give the talk by a former student from the aforementioned EE country. Enlargement happened in 2004!

More evidence that LLMs change software development but don’t yet improve it. But software engineering is about a lot more than writing code, but we’ve known that since we stopped measuring productivity by thousand-lines-of-code-written, right?

Free business idea

I’ve long thought this is the biggest LLMs can do. We moved from command line, mostly to visual “direct manipulation” interfaces, now we’ve got natural language interfaces for approximate computing.

Roland’s really very good at addressing this complex and fraught subject with care, empiricism and compassion.