Alternative headline: humiliating and abusing women on X by digitally undressing them is now a privilege reserved to paying users.

A headline to sum up our times:

Still want a Tesla?

And the BBC package ends with some crap about ‘in these politically charged times, dualling narratives’ WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD IS GOING ON!?! There is no dual narratives An innocent woman was shot dead and the Trump administration is lying about THAT in the story

In a memo issued on Wednesday, Trump said the US would withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and 65 additional UN and other multilateral groups, mostly linked to the environment, renewable energy, development, education, democracy and human rights. www.ft.com/content/3f78...

if you're still driving a tesla, give your head a wobble

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

These are apparently facial reconstructions of a 2,300-year-old Pazyryk Scythian male and female from the same kurgan in Berel, Kazakhstan and not - as I first thought - that couple I met at a Spiral Tribe soundsystem in 1992 who sold me E that turned out to be paracetamol.

useful Times explainer of why Trump pledge to back security guarantees for Ukraine - in the event of a ceasefire - is weaker than hoped

The reason for the sharp rise in the decade is police couldn't do roadside drug tests until 2015 and even then it was only for cannabis and cocaine. Over the decade the drugs they can test for have grown to also include Ecstasy, ketamine, benzodiazepines, methadone, morphine and opiates.

crazy increase in British drug-driving offences in only a decade even as drink-driving has dropped www.ft.com/content/377f...

🚨 Farage is challenged on the truth about London. "London's murder rate is the lowest in decades." "Knife crime has fallen sharply over the past 10 years." "The proportion of adults who have been victims of personal crime has fallen to the lowest level since 2002."

good morning

You’ll be shocked to hear the “10.8 million families get their news from X” stat is…not correct! www.thenewworld.co.uk/rats-in-a-sa...

amazing how the entire machine can pivot within 24 hours. no need to slowly upsell the argument; just issue new marching orders

Sublime shithousery from the @financialtimes.com 🤌🏽 Who’s who at X, the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter: shorturl.at/QkJ5A

Unhook ourselves from oil and gas and we unhook ourselves from dependency on dictators, autocrats and expansionist regimes all over the planet. Renewables and other low-carbon energy sources are not just good climate sense. They are also good political sense.

Will 2026 really be the year, as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has promised, that British voters begin to feel a “sense of hope” — not to mention a little richer? From housing to transport, our experts break down the state of play. An #FTEdit 🧵 on Britain’s cost of living crisis in 2026 👇

We just need to be better than LinkedIn. Can we do that?

still cannot process that ronald lauder, the honorary chairman of the museum of modern art is stealth buying up greenlandic companies to facilitate trump's invasion and takeover of greenland.

birds do it bees do it even educated fleas do it let's do it let's fly into a window

This is designed to have a chilling effect on all retired service members. The message is that if you speak out, you risk your retirement pay.

In 2019 Fiona Hill, who served in the first Trump administration, told Congress that the Russian government had been “signalling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap agreement between Venezuela and Ukraine”. www.ft.com/content/dcd8...

What X is allowing Grok to do is unlawful or regulatory-illegal in multiple jurisdictions, creates clear DSA violations, and continues despite regulator scrutiny. The images do not need to be pornographic, non-consensual sexualised or intimate depictions are enough.

Exciting to have a Trump position the UK govt is officially against (if I'm being very cynical may also suggest Greenland isn't seriously in scope for Trump yet) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

this must be the most banal political soundbite of recent years, via Sir Keir Starmer: “Every minute that we’re not talking about the cost of living is a wasted minute.”

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called on US President Donald Trump and his allies to stop making threats to seize control of Greenland as tensions flared between the Nato allies following America’s intervention in Venezuela. www.ft.com/content/daae...

Elon Musk, Feb 2025: "America should mind its own business rather than push for regime change all over the place.” Elon Musk now:

"Trump’s new world order is now very much a reality. It has no obvious rules, no real allies, celebrates the jungle and is almost always about money. There is a lot of wealth under Venezuela’s soil. Trump is now committed to extracting it." My column. Free to read. as.ft.com/r/08b22b7a-4...

good morning

A very long and important THREAD - The real reason the US is invading Venezuela goes back to a deal Henry Kissinger made with Saudi Arabia in 1974. And I'm going to explain why this is actually about the SURVIVAL of the US dollar itself. Not drugs. Not terrorism. Not "democracy." 1/

Zelensky on Venezuela: “About Venezuela? How should I respond to that? Well, what can I say? If… If it is possible to act with dictators like this, it means the United States knows what to do next. Thank you” Omg I love it.

finally, we're living through precedented times

good morning

European weakness on full display by these horribly contorted responses from Merz, Macron and Starmer - neither condoning nor condemning US actions in Venezuela Such weakness only risks making the Europeans more vulnerable (ie Greenland)

How the US’s audacious operation to capture Nicolás Maduro unfolded ft.trib.al/QA9oVFM

the photographer was definitely like, "ok everybody, look tough!" but we know they're all just reading tweets with their arms crossed in a country club dining room divided up by bedsheets tacked to the beams

A US president uses his for-profit (but money losing) social media site to announce a military strike against a foreign sovereign nation and the seizure by military force of a foreign government leader. Says a lot about where things are at in the US in 2026.

Five RTs. Six Likes. It would be more cost effective for Defra comms officials to dial random phone numbers and launch into a spiel about otters or whatever.

via FT live blog: Venezuela’s vice-president said the whereabouts of President Nicolás Maduro were not known. Delcy Rodríguez demanded “proof of life” of Maduro: “We do not know the whereabouts of President Maduro and the first lady. We demand Trump give proof of life” www.ft.com/content/48be...

I took this photo of a heron at Bushy Park just before dawn this morning

it’ll be interesting to see what the British government say about Trump’s presumably illegal actions in Venezuela, do they signal doubts or just keep their heads down?

Kidnapping the leader of a foreign state without any declaration of war and announcing it via social media is full-on rogue state stuff. From the world’s number one superpower.

“Donald Trump said the US had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and flown him out of the country after weeks of tension between the two nations”

I took this photo of a heron at Bushy Park just before dawn this morning

illuminated tree, Kew Gardens

illuminated tree, Kew Gardens

wonder what could possibly have caused a fall in Tesla sales? Elon Musk’s carmaker delivered 1.64mn fully electric vehicles last year, a 9 per cent fall from the 1.79mn it shipped in 2024 www.ft.com/content/c1c5...

The right dislikes him because they believe he is too far to the left, the left dislikes him because they believe he is too far to the right, and the centre doesn't like him because he lacks a clear vision for the UK.

check out this amazing photograph of a heron in Richmond Park by my former colleague Toby Melville now of Reuters