DAWG WE'RE DOING STATE-RUN GAS PRICES AT PRICE CONTROLLED RATES DESPITE INCREASING SHORTAGES TO PACIFY THE PEOPLE AND THEY'RE SCREAMING ABOUT HOW THEIR OPPONENTS WANT COMMUNISM I AM GOING TO LOSE MY ENTIRE GODDAMN MIND

The foundational lie of Trumpism (and I’m using that word precisely to refer to the ideology of intellectual types who defend him), from day one, has been the claim that good character is a “luxury belief” and nothing more than cover for the wealthy to punish the poor. This belief is evil.

this is a useful thread I think which gets to why the whole 'I don't care about character, just policy positions!' is one of those things which *sounds* intellectual and high-minded but ends up being utterly vacuous

So there’s a famously pugilistic poster on here (who has me blocked) who said, essentially, that character doesn’t matter when choosing to vote. Only policy. And I think that is just fundamentally backwards and, ultimately, the reason why the online left keeps falling for lying grifters. (Thread)

On my way, Clacton.

Any Clacton residents who want to nominate your friendly neighbourhood intergalactic space warrior, ping me a line!

Erling Haaland comments on fans comparing him to ‘Dragon Ball Z’ character Majin Buu “I mean I don’t disagree”

Farage has announced he's stepping back from public life to finally complete the infamous FFX lightning dodge challenge and "focus on what really matters"

It’s the true US football fans I feel sorry for. Years of satisfying moaning about the dodgy ref and how you’d have beaten Belgium if Balogun had been on the pitch denied by an autocrat’s whim

Fantastic. Here's hoping for two defeats for teams with dodgy rescinded red cards tonight.

The most surreal part of the last 24 hours wrt the Balogun scandal is the number of Americans who think the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was viewed as completely uncontroversial by Europeans. Guys, I’m not exaggerating when I say it was the biggest and most discussed story in football for over a decade

From the Telemundo broadcast just now by the commentary team during a slow-mo replay of the goal and a shot of Haaland with his hair down: "This is a perfect goal. The ball didn't touch anything." In exaggerated, gravely, dramatic voice: "TERMINATOR"

Sounds like an excerpt from @ashleighyoung.bsky.social

BTW I like it when Macron does pro-Ukraine things and dislike it when he does not do pro-Palestine things. This is not hard?

We live in a bizarre world where it is somehow prejudicial to have a priority and to be honest about it. I actually think it's perfectly fine for some to care more about Ukraine, or frankly anything like climate, taxes, schools, etc than Palestine. But also it's fine to care about Palestine.

on behalf of the scottish people i apologise to the world for the existence of rockstar games

what does this mean

americans on bluesky will be like "you should simply overthrow your government" and not overthrow their own, materially worse, government

At a certain point everyone needs to come to grips with the fact that the reason voters around the globe are electing the parties they are is because many of them are atavistic racist morons and not because [random policy you prefer] wasn’t enacted

1 in 6 British Prime Ministers are alive now.

Strong defensive showing by Iran against a Western power past its prime. I am speaking, of course, about Belgium.

It is not hawkish to point out that Trump lost the war of choice that he started & it is not the duty of doves to defend a peace treaty that recognizes those losses

And people say the red wall isnt multicultural

god I can't believe I let one million Americans talk about how you can't walk to the MetLife stadium without reminding everyone of the time I accidentally got to JFK airport by foot lol

the xenoblade 1 upgrade could be literally nothing but voiced heart to hearts and it'd still be worth the $10

very happy to see that the oot remake sticks to its localized title in the german version

Live look at the GOG intern

that second clause, when people make it, is particularly funny to me. man i don't want to live under /any/ russian rule, what's so hard to fucking get

Some people are sceptical that AI could ever replace humans but I'm pretty sure I could build a Claude agent for the US government that takes over the weekly task of lying to Axios about a deal with Iran being imminent. As a bonus, Axios could automate uncritically writing that up.

Seems about right although I'd deemphasise the Atlanticist aspect these days for reasons you can probably guess.

please remember all of us who will dislike Nolan's Odyssey for non-chud reasons.

What i think is really funny is how everybody in Labour has decided to crack on with a leadership election while Keir is presumably like. Guys. I havent resigned. What are you doing

Not to put this one person on blast - a lot of folks say this - but you can't actually "just end the war." Iran has to agree to end the war. You can unilaterally stop bombing - we did! - and the war might not end. Iran is going to demand *payment* to end the war, in the form of concessions.

Tonight’s stalemate

Reached that stage of any British political nonsense where it becomes impossible to distinguish between breaking news from political reporters, shitposts from random people, breaking news from random people and shitposts from political reporters.

You must admit this would all be much more entertaining if we had a Labour Graham Brady

David Rees, 10/30/01

I'm not fond of Gonk droids.

That's the west coast mainline for you

Pondering your orb is inherently neoliberal.

Generational tweet that might even spawn a school of architecture.

The 2020s are really shaping up to be an incredibly bleak decade aren't they. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

increasingly obvious that Mamdani is the only person on the contemporary left that can use social media properly

Can you imagine going back to 1776 and telling the Founding Fathers that in 250 years, the King of England would be standing in the United States Capitol lecturing American lawmakers about the importance of democratic norms?

I think it's really underappreciated that a large chunk of people across the world are everyday being served images of the world's worst atrocities, essentially live as they happen, in ways previously only experienced by people on the frontline, who have historically had years of trauma as a result.