'Never has the connective tissue between rhetoric and reality been drawn so thin. In those 45 seconds [of Hegseth's chest-beating video], you can see the surface of American public life peeling away from reality itself.' Well quite.

It seems to have started in a small vape shop on Union Street. #ScotGov has some answering to do as vape shops have to be licenced. I think the licencing should require mega fire precautions and training for all staff. My bet is that the staff had none. tobacco.epass.service.gov.scot/frequently-a...

😂😂😂

Such a staged photo - no way would stokers wear their pristine 'going ashore' white caps while working in the engine room

The laconic description of this near disaster is mind-blowing

If nothing else, you would think that the risk of an oil-price shock months before the midterms would be enough for congressional Republicans to get a handle on this.

I’m mortified that I forgot this book from @brianlaslie.bsky.social. An outstanding book. Covers the air war in all its iterations. #histbookchat.

Not quite sure what it will take for MAGA to see Putin as an enemy.

Surprise! Cut the budget deep enough & you end up with navy in name only

A special military operation, if you will.

Beyond the INA, 14,000 Indian POWs went to Papua New Guinea as slave labour. Half didn’t survive the horrific conditions & Allied bombings. We honour these forgotten men & their suffering in our latest episode. In pic Jemadar Chint Singh identifying war criminals in Nov 1945 (from awm.gov.au)

“Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is Pete Hegseth” Carl von Clausewitz, probably.

I'm similarly worried that China and Russia will conclude that the US can't sustain a regional-scale air campaign for more than a few weeks and won't be in a position to do even that for two or so years. Particularly China might consider that a window to call BS on the US global deterrence posture.

Wholly unprepared for the consequences. As the whole operation was from the start.

Launching the Lifeboat Robert Ernest Roe (1851–1930) Scarborough Art Gallery. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution formed OTD in 1824 was to be a universal service where "the subjects of all nations be equally objects of the Institution, as well in war as in peace” a mission it follows still.

Bring back proper railway branding, cowards!

Haha www.legorafi.fr/2026/03/03/e...

This is incredibly shit but also completely unsurprising. Every single large corporate in the UK is dropping everything useful or sustainable they might have been doing in favour of miraculous snake oil sold by grifters

Brits: Please scream. This is a Labour govt proposing to hand the property of individual British workers to largely US corporations. @davidpintod.bsky.social

Using Grammarly for the first time in forever ... WHAT? As a non-native speaker writing primarily in English, I used to use it to check prepositions, point out too long/convoluted sentences etc. It now offers to summon colleagues both living and dead to "expert review" the piece??? What?

Indeed. I was up the Gulf when Iran & Iraq kicked off. We were heading to Basrah when a sister ship there got caught in the cross fire and got a shell through skippers day room. Not funny.

Sailor at the helm - all that needs to be said.

Good that the US isn't trying to maintain extended deterrence against two revisionist challengers at different ends of Eurasia.

Great effort by Obelix to get menhir up there

Recently digitised; in northern Burma, near Pinwe, in Dec 1944, British gunners of 36th Div (probably 178th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery) haul a 25-pounder into a newly dug gun pit before enjoying a cup of tea #filmcataloguing #ww2 #history Full film: IWM FUB 14 / www.iwm.org.uk/collections/...

In a high profile naval diplomacy push by France, the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle arrived in Malmö, Sweden on February 25 🇫🇷 🇸🇪 Story by @corporalfrisk.com www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2...

The (near) future is a cloyingly named AI surveillance tool micromanaging every single thing you do www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

I think that Bezos' massacre at the Washington Post has really hurt them. I cancelled my subscription then and today was offered a rate of 99p a month for year of is come back.

A big problem with Trump's unclear rationale for striking Iran: if he's really set on regime change, then Tehran has zero incentive to make concessions on its nuclear program. That's on top of his proven unreliability re commitment to all manner of agreements, even ones he has negotiated.

A question that's often asked by visitors is whether we're going to rebuild the missing port side of the Mary Rose, so that we'd have "a whole ship" But would we really have a whole ship, or would we no longer have a Tudor ship?

The Pew Research Centre has published a quiet demolition of the Quiet Revival www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS

Not saying it's looking bad for him, but in a Leicester car park right now...

"If not scrapped"🤣🤣

20 February 1912: Jo Steiner's poster advertising a new performance at the Admirals-Cabaret in Berlin

Proving that algorithms can work

Pretty much the sum total of his case to the American people for military action that could spark a regional war.

L: Private Eye front cover, yesterday. R: News headline, today. Stay ahead of the news; buy the Eye.

Wednesday

Nobody wants to admit it, but Ajax programme is dead as a Dodo, & huge sums of money spent on it will have to be written off.

Meanwhile, in Germany, the public weighs in on what they think of the Epstein Administration. #BrutalButAccurate

"In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people." Hitler, July 13, 1934 after the Night of the Long Knives.

Hungary holds elections in 2 months. And the US Secretary of State is in Hungary campaigning for Viktor Orban. And as you can see, Russian state media loves it.

“AI giant Anthropic ran a massive program called Project Panama where they spent tens of millions of dollars to hoover up used books, which they then sliced, scanned, and pulped.”

FWIW, after 2+ decades in 🇬🇧 diplomacy my settled view is that BBCWS is *the* (not *a*) vital element of British soft power and the continued attacks on its funding are nothing short of barbaric and self defeating.

Exactly. This is not a lot of money. And once destroyed you don’t get to rebuild it.

As the media moved "from deferential stenography and toward fearless investigation, that led to declining trust in the news media. Aggressive, probing and accountability-oriented journalism held up a mirror to American society — and many Americans didn’t like what they saw." @polgreen.bsky.social

The questions that Roy Medvedev's life raises, such as what one would do if confronted by evil, are unfortunately growing more relevant. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/w...