Difficult really, to think of a single, more disgusting act a journalist can commit than lying to the public to justify someone being murdered by their government for activism. But this is who these people always were.

This, on the death of Henry Nowak, is an outstanding piece of journalism by @stephenkb.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/aa94...

Last year, we shared a paper showing that Labour's accommodation of the radical right did not work. We now have a new version of the paper online: osf.io/preprints/so...

This episode of "Today" desperately needs a historian of policing, to explain why things like anti-racism training were introduced in the first place. This wasn't some departure from a world in which the police treated everyone the same. It was an attempt to bring that world fractionally closer.

I am once again wondering whether "no, the legitimate concerns racists don't have a point, fuck off, they're racist" might have been a better way of combating the far right.

Good article on hating AI and on the growing rebellion against LLM bullshit machines.

NEW — My first true foray into AI haterdom is about how those of us not convinced by AI’s inevitability are a real constituency worthy of a voice. Give it a read:

Agreed, this is no time for empty/ambiguous signifiers!

If only Nandy could bring her *ahem* energy to the Home Office...

Reading this bland and vague "local crime" story you'd never know that the guy charged with murder, Billy Allison, is the founder of flag-shagging Raise the Colours. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Militarism does seem to be central to Starmer's brand. Last year, I wrote about how Starmer and many other political candidates foregrounded military themes ahead of 2024 - not least, by living vicariously through ancestors with military connections and other forms of vicarious militarism.

Honestly, one of the funniest tweets I've ever seen.

NEW The extraordinary ‘settlement’ agreement between Trump and his own government A complex high-value fund is being created without legislation or oversight by a court By me, at @prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

on my birthday I took to the newsletter to write about the AI commencement address backlash, and how growing anger at AI is now irreversibly tethered to justified rage at the extraction class -- whether AI boosters like it or not

In a newly published article in @fpajrnl.bsky.social , I show how rising gas prices affect Americans’ willingness to pay for victory in Ukraine and the security of Taiwan—not just directionally but in specific dollar (and cent) amounts. academic.oup.com/fpa/article/...

I don't claim to know the answer to all of Labour's problems. But I know its not Wes Streeting.

PSA: if you use an LLM to do your writing, no you didn’t BECAUSE IT IS NOT YOUR WRITING!! YOU ARE NOT A WRITER. You extruded some text from the plagiarism machine. YOU ARE A PLAGIARIST. YOU WILL NEVER BE A WRITER BY STEALING OTHERS’ WORDS.

Zelensky has issued a presidential decree “allowing” Russia to hold its annual Victory Day parade in Moscow. The decree provides exact coordinates of the Red Square that shall be excluded from the list of Ukrainian strike targets. Phenomenal power play.

ITV News just vox-popped an older northern woman who said that she had switched from Labour to Reform because she was angry that illegal migrants were “getting hotels when British people can’t get hotels”. At some point Labour surely just has to say these people are completely politically illiterate

Right-wing radicalization ≠ polarization Right-wing radicalization ≠ polarization Right-wing radicalization ≠ polarization Right-wing radicalization ≠ polarization Right-wing radicalization ≠ polarization Right-wing radicalization ≠ polarization Right-wing radicalization ≠ polarization

Every political scientist in America right now:

The US is rolling out special anniversary passports with Trump's face on them. If this playbook feels familiar, it should. Authoritarian leaders have long understood that controlling the landscape is itself a form of power.

Millions of 18-year-olds are signing up every year for a lifetime of debt so that ChatGPT can get a college education.

A British king is lecturing us - correctly! - about constitutional democracy. The Founding Fathers are turning over in their graves.

Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/so... preprint w/ Richard Rogers

unrelenting

OR JUST WRITE THE THING YOURSELF FOR FUCK'S SAKE IT WILL TAKE LESS TIME THAN WHATEVER THE FUCK THIS IS mashable.com/article/sinc...

Teaching the Forever Wars today in my American Foreign Policy class, including this great article by Ahsan Butt. An op-ed version is here: www.aljazeera.com/opinions/201... www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Palantir:

The NYT big expose on SCOTUS today pairs well with @ariberman.bsky.social and @pemalevy.bsky.social's cover story on how ~everything wrong with this country today can be laid at the feet of John Roberts: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Remarkable SCOTUS reporting in the NYTimes, which pretty much confirms what observers have always assumed, but still astonishes. (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

Peace, but only during trading hours

This

Agree and its nice to be spared the ghastly SpaceX boosterism

All hegemons rely on smoke & mirrors to project power universally when it can be applied only specifically. The British managed it with alliances & British & Indian forces distributed by the RN & EIC navies. Trump has just single-handedly destroyed the illusion of US hegemony.

Impossible to disagree with a single word that Ben Rhodes (Obama era NSC official) is saying here:

Financial markets on repeat

In what world is any of this a victory for Trump?! This is completely the wrong sentiment. By the time I finished reading the article, the title had been changed but not the thumbnail.

Starmer should immediately & unequivocally ban access to British airspace to US warplanes. The UK should not be accomplice to a US President who is threatening more war crimes. Period.

Indeed. Also, those who are counting on the US military to save democracy in America are going to be sorely disappointed.

Killed in an illegal war of aggression, driven by the “warrior” posturing of an incompetent drunk and a demented narcissist.

The. Rise. Of. Cognitive. Surrender. Study finds that people who use GenAI chatbots rely on them 80% of the time, and develop almost no capacity to recognize when a chatbot is feeding them faulty information. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

The gulf between Bluesky and LinkedIn is at least as great as that between Bluesky and X. The complete taboo on any negativity on LinkedIn produces a disorientating atmosphere, in which it becomes very hard to establish what anyone actually thinks or believes.

Everyone pointing out that US law doesn't allow leaving NATO without Congressional approval is correct. It's also beside the point. Congress can't make a president deploy the military and order troops into battle, which means the US won't defend an ally, even if the US technically remains in NATO.