Kemi Badenoch’s spokesperson has said that the shadow attorney general Lord Wolfson has recused himself from any legal advice over Ukraine or Russia because he is representing Roman Abramovich - which would include anything about the deployment of UK troops. That’s a bit awkward.

Should have studied a little incident involving Cuba around six decades ago. Subs aren’t great at escort duty unless you’re willing to start a war.

Tim Weiner's short NYT obituary manages to convey both the horror and impact of what Ames did and also why it was the result of a dreadful culture at Langley at the time:

Truly one of the best worst spies in history. Pour one out for whoever his KGB handler was who presumably died years ago from stress induced alcoholism @stephenkb.bsky.social

Other issues aside, this is only about a month or two of output from a pretty small supplier in the scheme of the things and none of it will be “high quality” because it’s Venezuelan oil. It probably wouldn’t even cover the munitions fired in the three hour operation.

Excessive defence spending wasn’t a big factor in Soviet collapse; Cavalry was still highly effective in conflict after WW1; Britain was the big power most opposed to Israeli statehood in 1947; Germany didn’t have great generals in WW2; the US won independence only because of French assistance.

Does this make it a DRONPAD?

Nothing says bold confidence and pride in your achievements like spending half your comeback post crying about your (former) audience being mad at you

It’s like he’s trying to take the position most calculated to piss off everyone; the opposition, the US domestic audience, oil majors themselves, and obviously the still very much current Venezuelan government. In six months we could still be in this weird stalemate.

Anthropic is also mogging OpenAI and X when it comes to corporate clients who actually pay money to use it, while not burning cash on unnecessary video/audio functions. When the crash comes they have a good shot at being the Amazon of AI.

Netanyahu may well not be able to travel to the US in future. But there would still be the small matter of the IDF to deal with. Could the US depose an Israeli government by force? Yes. But it wouldn't go like it did with a corrupt and incompetent dictatorship. This guy on the other hand...

The Manchester United board this morning

I get this impulse but international relations isn't a televised debate. China *does* want to do this. It lacks the capacity not the precedent. And although the US would of course point out that Taiwan is a democracy, the question is what would they *do* in furtherance of that interest.

This is the actual Trump doctrine. The only unique thing about his foreign policy is sudden assassination, as with Soleimani, and now kidnapping using the US SOF skills, honed in the GWoT era, and applied to interstate conflict.

I love this. Cites right wing political figures as evidence that there might be civil war. Makes up some numbers and then no doubt this is used by other right wing figures and himself as evidence that there might be civil war. Lovely circularity.

Me, for Military Strategy Magazine m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb5k...

Knowing this DoJ they’ll probably fail to get a grand jury indictment and their lead prosecutor will get disbarred for malpractice.

While column remains bery funny, it’s worth bearing in mind that Rubio is the key driver of policy here.

Well so much for those ideas. You do have to wonder who in the county was in on it though for anyone to be able to just scoop up the president and leave 😳

Two bits of pure speculation: a) they were getting someone/something else out. Detainees, intel, someone from the opposition? b) they were establishing contact with someone/some group (maybe in the military?) that is cooperating on the ground for a coup

The language here is also a ridiculous shifting of the blame. Grok didn’t do anything it can apologise for because it isn’t a moral agent. Its creators and owners are. Once again tapping the sign.

The really funny thing about this is he thinks it would necessarily be somewhere else in the US. And not say, London and Shenzhen.

This reads like the old Gorilla Channel article but it's actual reporting in the Wall Street Journal

We're never beating the "local council with nuclear weapons" allegations

This happened back in August. But it is interesting. It’s not an independent model but a plugin of Perplexity, the AI search engine, but that heavily relies on ChatGPT and Gemini as a back end. So it’s not surprising it gives similar answers.

Bit of a weird error here @financialtimes.com. May wasn’t PM in October 2019. Also the Johnson low point seems unlikely to be Sept 2019. YouGov has quite different numbers.

Our @yougov.co.uk data journalism extraordinaire Matt Smith has compiled all news tracker results from 2025 into this stunning graphic This tells us so much about what 'cuts through', how news cycles evolve, and what grabs attention re: flash moments vs ongoing stories yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

Better than the reverse I guess

Basically the generation who mainlined the anti-austerity economic takes after 2008, and either a) went off the deep end right then and there, or b) just never realised exactly *why* economists argued what they did then and what’s different now.

Hadn’t thought about it but in the time it will take to destroy the integrity of CBS there’s an awkward period where it’s still producing good journalism but can’t easily be called fake news.

Please someone commission a “where are they now” piece

Tomorrow marks 10 years since the greatest piece of art of our generation

In no particular order: 1. Andor (Disney+) 2. Smiling Friends (Cartoon Network) 3. Slow Horses (Apple TV 4. Boots (Netflix) 5. Mussolini: Son of the Century (Sky)

"That girl in red looked like that when I got here, bro"

The only serious professionals on the US side of this table are Rubio and Dan Caine. Embarrassing.

All this because he could never accept being fired over being a huge weirdo who couldn't be trusted with his level of security access as DIA director.

Okay but the UK isn't a 'power to persuade' constitution. He could also flip the table with massive reforms to how politics works. Proportional representation, House of Lords reform, party finance regulation. There are big levers, they're just scared to pull them.

💛/1. About a month ago, your support helped our workshop stay operational during power outages. With this setup, the workshop can run for 15+ hours a day while requiring only about three hours of grid power. Thank you for the support. 🫡

The funniest thing about this to me is implies Ian Leslie has only an intellectual aversion to violence and assumes most people are like that with Trump as a rare exception

In fairness to our cousins across the sea, it’s not much different the other way around but in a variety of languages and different degrees of hypocrisy.

Join and help to lead the Constitution Unit! @uclspp.bsky.social is looking for a Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics who will also join our senior team and contribute to our research and impact activities. Applicants must have, or be near to finishing, a PhD. Apply 👇

Just wait until the next gen ballistic interceptors come online, then that jolly menace will see what's what

All aboard the USS Small D*ck Energy

This looks insane, but even crazier is - if you had to cross an open field with full kit, where a motorbike or quad could bog down, and with as little noise as possible, a horse actually make a lot of sense. We've used these animals in war for three millennia for a reason.

say what you will about Andrew Tate, but his decision to not have a chin likely saved his life in that fight. Just one of those uppercuts would've killed Bruce Campbell.

Summarisation itself is a problematic concept in history, AI assisted or not. It’s always necessary on some level, but there’s a reason why as a field historical writing is disproportionately composed of books and not articles like, for example, political science.

Juries remain the best and worst part of common law systems

Genuinely the last time I saw a guard that terrible was Boogie2988 vs Wings of Redemption.