Thanks to countless scenes of peril in films, TV shows, books and comics, I thought quicksand would feature in my life a lot more than it did. Parker Bros. even released QUICKSAND the board game in 1989! The playing pieces cleverly came apart to replicate sinking into oblivion...

Indonesia imported 3GW of cells (and 0.5GW of wafers). These solar panels are primarily for export, to countries with Chinese tariffs. Over half the value is in assembly, so this isn't quite as disingenuous as it might appear. It means countries with China tariffs can still import cheap panels.

**NEW CHINA SOLAR EXPANSION STORY** China has doubled the export of solar cells+wafers to assemble abroad in the last several months. It still exports about the same amount of solar panels. In October - for the first time - it exported more cell+wafers than panels 🧵

Also sir, she’s bailing on the exact day her 5 year pension kicks in.

Greene is lying low for ‘28.

My latest in the Guardian is about the AI singer who just signed a $3m recording contract… while rumours of the return to analogue fun continue to spread. www.theguardian.com/technology/c...

‘Loyalty should be a two way street’: Marjorie Taylor Greene nods to rift with Trump in resignation post – US politics live www.theguardian.com/us-news/live... I guess that leaves her options to run for higher office in the years to come open...

This piece was greenlit and then killed by a British newspaper, so I’ve decided to publish myself instead. Trans People Deserve Better. "Gender critical" feminism doesn't help women but it does help the far right open.substack.com/pub/wellread...

Kathy Hochul out of nowhere with a steel chair

It’s not entirely true. Trump will change his mind. He always does. But it probably buys New York a week or two in regards to ICE. If true it’s a big victory for Mamdani on that alone. He also made it out without bowing, lying or being made foolish.

The Courier Mail: Bob Katter, Pauline Hanson war over preference deal betrayal Firebrand Queensland politicians Bob Katter and Pauline Hanson are on the verge of war after a clash over preferences in the #Hinchinbrook by-election. archive.is/ODsT3 #qldpol

"Trump is a fucking idiot who gets rolled by anyone who's nice to him" theory remains undefeated, putting someone like Mamdani in there is like having Randy Johnson sub in for a 5th grade Little League game

#Newspoll Vic (state) ALP 28 L-NP 36 Grn 14 IND/other 22 2PP 51-49 to L-NP (+4 since June) Allan net -42 (26-68) Better Premier Wilson leads 47-33 (cf Battin 41-36 in June) #springst

The former leader of Reform UK and UKIP in Wales sentenced to 10 years and 6 months over bribes to make pro-Russian statements www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-n...

If Mozilla is anything like my job this is being driven by a 50 year old IT director who has made himself insane by reading LinkedIn all day, and absolutely nobody else

Big Antonio Salazar’s aides pretending he’s in charge and then just throwing his orders in the paper shredder the second they step out the door of his office vibes

if co-presidents trump, miller, vought, vance or rubio wanted to do something about this, they could try, but everyone knows president sundown is just having a sundowning tantrum and looks the other way

sort of underlining how dysfunctional and unfocused the administration is, the president tweets out a deadly serious allegation of sedition and calls for hanging sitting senators and the DOJ’s official course of action is to do nothing, no one’s in charge

"The rise of China’s electric truck sector is one of the more under-reported stories in the global energy transition" 💯 apnews.com/article/chin...

The right-wing nutjobs think all of these places *have* collapsed

Without any explanation, @state-department.bsky.social deleted 15 pages from a Reagan-era FRUS volume on how the 1983 Able Archer drill nearly sparked nuclear war. The move threatens the integrity of America’s official diplomatic record, argues Nate Jones @washingtonpost.com 8/10

China has been quietly reviving its Lop Nur nuclear weapons testing site. Since at least 2020, new roads, horizontal tunnels for lower-yield tests & vertical shafts for higher-yield weapons have been built, reports @washingtonpost.com 6/10

A great reminder of the dangers of teaching a sanitized history www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It’s fun to think about the surgeon who will botch your surgery 20 years from now and what he’s doing at this moment. He just ran all his homework through ChatGPT. He just read that article about vaccines and autism at the CDC website. He just watched an Instagram video about the moon landing hoax.

whole thing here, I also talk about media complicity and our frothin' murderous president

talkin' about the AI bubble

For all the understandable criticism of COPs & the need for more ambitious emissions reductions, the fact projected global warming has gone from towards 4°C or more to about 2.3–2.5°C now really should be mentioned more often to highlight that global progress is being made & can be built upon

Two of Riley Gaines’ teammates say they’re frustrated she’s used her platform to vilify trans women as an existential threat to women’s sports—while barely mentioning the serious problems they say actually affected them. “She’s very, ‘Protect women’s sports.’ But not when it comes to our team.” 7/

Gaines’ teammates also care about protecting women in sports. But their concerns are different. Their head coach is facing a rape lawsuit. Another was suspended for sexual harassment, per university records. And UK investigated other reports of abusive coaching, eating disorders, punishments. 6/

I’ve spent a lot of the last three years investigating the rise of anti-trans politics. Often, it came back to the controversy over trans women athletes. So I teamed up with @pablo.show to look into the leading figure on the issue: Riley Gaines. www.motherjones.com/politics/202... 1/

And this is why the model appeals so strongly to ego, if the system has no real rules for choosing or constraining the sovereign, supporters can imagine themselves, their allies, or their ideals sitting close to the centre of power. It’s an aspirational fantasy for those engulfed in self-delusion.

Some people read it as a tech-CEO state, others imagine a national-populist leader, others map it onto the CCP or a hereditary monarchy. Because he never commits, each group hears a version that suits their own political fantasies.

One thing worth adding about Yarvin is how he handles the question of “who picks the sovereign.” He never gives a real mechanism. The gap is intentional, it lets every audience project their preferred strong executive into his model.

'Home electrification and energy upgrades, including nation-leading new rules governing the thermal efficiency of rental properties, are at the centre of Victoria’s new five-year plan to cut emissions, as it strives to reach net zero by 2045.' reneweconomy.com.au/state-plans-...

Former Liberal candidate Katherine Deves preparing legal challenge of teen social media ban www.crikey.com.au/2025/11/21/k... #auslaw #auspol Unsure if the ban is workable, but its noteworthy how strongly the hard & far right is working against it (that's why eSafety Commissioner is a MAGA target)

Shelley's novel remains one of the great texts of modernity, and artists are still grappling with it, still riffing on it. Del Toro had his shot, it was exceptional in some ways, less so in others, and the dialogue continues.

Their coins are so cool. "Ah yes, ZEUS NIKE, Zeus the victor is putting his hand on the 8 spoked wheel of Dharma. He's cool with the Buddha and king Menander II is cool with both" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menande...

"Mahadharmaraksita was "a Greek Buddhist head monk" who led 30,000 Buddhist monks from "the Greek city of Alasandra" (Alexandria of the Caucasus), to Sri Lanka for the dedication of the Great Stupa in Anuradhapura during the rule (165–135 BCE) of King Menander I." World is trippy dude

"Greeks living in Afghanistan were Buddhist 500 years before China and a thousand years before Southeast Asia" is one of those things that sounds made up but is in fact true

⛰️🏔️ Episode 20 is now live! 🏔️⛰️ In this episode, we look at the amazing story of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Find out how the world's largest empire rose, flourished, and finally fell in ash and flame. YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRYd... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6AeH...

French public prosecutors are investigating allegations that Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, made statements denying the Holocaust. The Paris public prosecutor’s office said it was expanding an existing inquiry into Musk’s social media platform, X. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Ten months into the president’s second term, Trump 2.0 is for the first time starting to resemble the chaotic original. That new sense of political weakness in the president has not just emboldened Democrats who have been despondent for much of the past year. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

This has gotten very little coverage in the US, but on Monday US military contractors or troops or some other paramilitary group placed signs on a beach in Mexico, claiming it as US territory. (The contested location is close to the SpaceX base outside Brownsville) www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11...

New in PN: The hysteria over Biden's pardons seems extra ridiculous now "Trump has perverted the pardon power far beyond the most questionable actions of any other modern president, emboldening a diverse cast of crooked politicians and outright fraudsters in a new American age of corruption."

Real estate agents in Victoria will be required to publish a property's reserve price at least seven days before it goes to auction under new laws to be introduced next year. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11... #springst #auslaw

The curse of leaked talking points reveals the Coalition for who they really are on climate change. #auspol www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Pretty embarrassing the Victorian Liberals had to go to the NT to find a keynote party speaker from a culturally diverse background for their “multicultural” fundraiser. All it says is they have no one prominent at the state or federal level www.trybooking.com/events/landi... #springst #auspol

The current period in history is defined by people with power seeing a system as it exists, asking no questions about how it got that way, and assuming they can change everything about it with no impact to how it operates

"I've gotten pulled into the Brexit thing this morning with Nigel, Boris and Rees Mogg." Then, in what appears to be a reference to Theresa May, Bannon tells Epstein "The guys are trying to move on. may today / tomorrow…" 2018. As Gill took the bribes www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

New #EpsteinFiles @bylinetimes.bsky.social investigation: how Steve Bannon’s planned “European revolution” ran through Nigel Farage’s network – with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein quietly helping in the background. 🧵 1/12