This was very insightful - US passenger trains are slow not because we've invested uniquely little in the rail infrastructure (as I always thought), but because the infrastructure is optimised for freight given the size of the country. americanaffairsjournal.org/2026/02/why-...

The situation in Lebanon is truly bleak, Israel effectively occupying the south, regular strikes into civilian areas of Beirut, half a million people displaced and even if the strikes on Iran slow down or cease this is likely to persist. It's horrific the news continues to fail like this.

At least 42 people killed in days of floods across Kenya https://aje.news/efsr3w

Images verified by Human Rights Watch show Israel fired white phosphorus in populated areas of southern Lebanon.

“EXCLUSIVE: I’m the Palestinian Who Has Been in ICE Detention for Almost a Year” Writing for Zeteo from inside of prison on International Women’s Day, Leqaa Kordia asks us not to forget the female detainees being held and mistreated in ICE detention camps.

“The US military is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases of any institution on Earth, generating an estimated 636 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent (a standardised measure of greenhouse gas emissions) between 2010 and 2019”. www.sciencefocus.com/news/us-mili...

In other words Trump-Netanyahu have effectively carried out massive uncontained poison gas attacks on Tehran and its people.

1/The failure to investigate Renee Good’s death at all is ongoing scandal. The independent autopsy suggests that Renee Good was still alive after the first shot; it was the third shot that killed her, www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news....

March 8, 2026 - Tehran at sunrise today. But the sun is hidden behind a sky filled with smoke. After a night of intensive strikes on oil facilities, thick black clouds now hang over the city, turning morning into something that feels like night.

It is absolutely insane that the US appears to have targeted desalination plants first – putting them onto the board. Iran seems to have already retaliated against one in Bahrain. This is one of the most obvious ways this could spiral.

Number transcription errors are one of the most common kinds of errors in manuscript traditions for similar reasons - really easy error to make even copying within a single language, much less between two languages.

It feels like another tipping point is being crossed rn… back-&-forth refinery strikes, Tehran in flames. Trump demanding unconditional surrender, de facto boasting of bombing Iranian desal. US & Israel are pushing Iran to fire everything it has at the region’s weakest links. Unimaginably dangerous.

NEW: Trump aides declared an emergency over Iran to bypass Congress to sell more than 20,000 bombs to Israel valued at $660 million. The State Dept. hasn't publicly disclosed info on half of the bombs. US gives $3.8 billion of arms aid to Israel annually. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/u...

I always drop this or something like it in front of my students and as them what this tells them about the economic paradigms present and how operations in Africa might be effected.

Ok, since I’ve gotten a few “you don’t know for sure it’s not true!” let’s briefly say why. In a hyper-strict Cartesian sense of “know,” you can’t really “know” whether anything or anyone is conscious except yourself. But in the everyday sense, outside the dorm room…

"I didn't see a single building standing the entire time I was in Gaza. I didn't see one building intact or standing. Everything was flattened. And when I mean flattened, it was hard to even tell that they were buildings there before." www.instagram.com/reels/DVMK-u...

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Hegseth needs to stand trial after this as a war criminal. Between this attack and the girls' school, there's no ambiguity. He is responsible for mass murder and must be held accountable.

He's putting up record job losses, driving the country into a war he can't even explain, and was credibly accused of raping a teenager in the Epstein files released yesterday - so of course it's time to try and ruin more trans people's lives

700,000 people! There's only 5.3 million people in all of Lebanon!

14 cases, that are known. DHS refuses to respond to inquiries. “In response to the outbreak, the facility has been closed to visitors and legal advisers and isn’t expected to reopen until March 19”

This is the point about Labour introducing retrospective changes to the immigration system. They set the precedent for any Govt. to say that they can go back on promises to migrants and people of colour as far back as they want.

“The drones that hover over the skies of Lebanon…collect large swathes of data — Wi-Fi, IP addresses, phone signals — which are then organized by AI…in what some scholars and activists say amounts to a “digital occupation.” Fascinating by @justinsalhani.bsky.social www.thedial.world/articles/new...

Just devastating. A landslide triggered by heavy rains appears to have killed over 200 people, including 70 children, at a mine in the DR Congo. This is about a month after a *different* landslide killed over 200 people at the same mine www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/202...

The story of slavery we tell in the United States is Black and White. But Europeans also enslaved Indigenous people of the Americas. And our enslavement, spanning over four centuries, helped build the institution of slavery itself. www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

Claiming asylum is a right; getting a UK student visa is also both expensive and quite hard in the first place. This is punishing folks from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan for daring to dream of studying here, and daring to wish to be safe. This is, once again, so needlessly cruel.

The approximate cause of death for Anne Frank was the Nazis. The specific cause of death was the outbreak of Typhus at Bergen-Belsen camp, which overtook her (and others) from chronic malnutrition and medical abuse. These conditions are not, in character, unlike our system of immigration camps today

This is not going to end well www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/p...

Another big reason obsessive poll-sniffing is silly: “Public opinion” on most issues quite literally does not exist. It is an ephemeral artifact of the process of polling itself. Ask again a day later with slightly different wording & the numbers change radically.

‘We’ll run out of food this week’: Israel’s Iran war brings new Gaza siege

For a new research project in Kenya, we are looking for an updated list of EAs (2019 Census EA frame), ideally with their centroid coordinates. Any help would be highly appreciated.

Can’t stress enough that it’s actually extremely economically beneficial for everybody in a community if fewer people overdose and die

this will be a public health disaster. We could end the transmission of HIV this year. That has been true for a decade. That we have not done so is a public policy choice.

they just won't stop, will they? a 2.5 year sword hanging over the heads of those fleeing war or persecution - not knowing if the gov will decide to deport you because your home country is declared 'safe' www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

President Trump launched strikes on Iran after a weeks-long lobbying effort by Israel and Saudi Arabia, according to four people familiar with the matter. U.S. intelligence assessments saw no imminent threat, but regional allies argued to strike.

if you assume for everyone immediately affected there's 3-4 also impacted (partners, children, parents, close friends) that's 4-5 million people or 6-7% of uk adults

whatever the big apocalyptic fears from AI + weapons, the most realistic fear is that it's used the same way a sloppy commander is happy to launch raids based on suspect tips from informants. The AI is a permission structure for targeting, an oopsie-doodle generator that leaves dead civilans behind

The acts of defiance can be big or small. Painting over a bigoted piece of graffiti. Running a youth club for refugees in an area that mostly loathes them. Wearing a rainbow flag in an anti-queer neighbourhood. These acts all accumulate towards something better, I have seen that in action.

“Iran reels as more than 100 children reportedly killed in school bombing” The United States armed and funded Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Now such atrocities are being inflicted on Iran’s people, but this time the United States is a full participant. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

The government of Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian described the killing of the supreme leader as a ‘criminal attack’ that would not go ‘unanswered’. Follow our live blog for more updates and analysis: ft.trib.al/8j6wHWI

We learned nothing from our experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.

Senior expert on Iran at @crisisgroup.org Ali Vaez.

This stunt where ICE releases people far from home with no proper clothing and no way home should be treated as attempted homicide. In this case, actual homicide. These cases are not accidental or based on misunderstandings. They are deliberate attempts to inflict bodily harm.

I don't think anyone pretending there isn't an effort underway by Republicans to eradicate trans people from public life can be taken seriously at this point.

This cannot be constitutional. An obvious equal protection violation given that if they knew who to send letters to they could just as easily have issued replacement licenses

An NPR investigation finds the public database of Epstein files is missing dozens of pages related to sexual abuse accusations against President Trump. n.pr/4qTItsU

This is also the political economy of digitalisation.

NEW: Local officials blocked from visiting migrants at Portsmouth airport who were stranded on ICE deportation plane for 14 hours. Full writethru with new images: gillianbrockell.ghost.io/breaking-sha...

Hey, so all those rocket launches people love cheering on are probably destroying the upper atmosphere. Repairing the ozone layer in the 90s is one of our all-time great achievements as a global civilization; private rocket men seem intent on reversing that.