mid-spreca, m.n: one who speaks on behalf of another. (MID-SPRECK-ah / ˈmɪd-ˌsprɛ-ka) #OldEnglish #WOTD

🇺🇸 Prize fool, useful idiot. #PutinsGrift

NEW: Small-scale protests demanding that the Iranian government address the devaluation of the Iranian rial and high inflation rates have continued for the second consecutive day in Tehran and Hamadan City, western Iran, on December 29 amid a rapid collapse of the Iranian currency. 🧵(1/6)

5/ Russian President Vladimir Putin and high-ranking Russian military commanders held another meeting to aggrandize tactical details and create the false impression that the front lines across Ukraine are on the verge of collapse.

7/ Several dozen Belarusian smuggling balloons illegally entered Polish airspace, and Polish aircraft intercepted a Russian reconnaissance aircraft near the international border overnight on December 24 to December 25.

2/ The circumstances of this alleged strike do not conform to the pattern of observed evidence when Ukrainian forces conduct strikes into Russia.

A new poll found 76% of Ukrainians consider it unacceptable to recognize Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories as part of Russia in exchange for ending the war; Zelensky dismissed Russia's claims that Ukrainian drones attempted to attack Putin's state residence as another lie; and more.

The Russians have tried to assassinate Zelensky many times. Never seems to have bothered Trump.

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 28, 2025: isw.pub/UkrWar122825 Other Key Takeaways: 2/ Recent Kremlin statements are at odds with several of the positions that Trump presented as the basis for ending the war.

🇺🇸 Useful Idiot. #PutinsGrift

🇺🇸 Russia's Useful Idiot #Trump #IdiotInChief Imperialist Russia is the Old World defined.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stated that the 1918 flu pandemic was caused by a lab virus from vaccine research, a defective influenza vaccine. Let’s analyze what a lie this is. First, in 1918, 107 years ago, virology was in its infancy

Syrian individuals and entities on British sanctions lists... What are the messages? Enab Baladi article on UK sanctions against organisations and individuals involved in violence against civilians in Syria which were announced earlier this month. www.enabbaladi.net/789738/

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Painter Emma Haworth's painting depicting a day in winter #WomensArt

🇬🇧 📻 #BBC #Radio4 #TheWorldThisWeekend on bringing UK high streets back to life Re need for an 'anchor' eg a department store to hold a high street in place & around which smaller outlets orbit Struck me that too many high streets became just anchors & no ... & that there limits to the ⚓ metaphor!

🇬🇧 📺 Classic Cold War-era TV series and culture - giving James Bond a run for his money! #FirstEpisode #CulturalHistory

Channel D will be opening on #TalkingPicturesTV today at 4pm.... THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (1964) #TPTVsubtitles

Barbara Walker, Turner Prize-nominated UK artist #Womensart

UK based stained glass artist Harriet Love #Womensart.

Looking-Glass, by Louise Jopling, 1875, fashionable English painter of the Victorian era, who had a studio in Chelsea and was friends with Oscar Wilde and actress Ellen Terry #WomensArt

Contemporary Northumberland printmaker Rebecca Vincent #WomensArt

It was bad enough when Ukraine only had to worry about Putin delegitimizing their government. Now they have to worry about Trump, too.

According to the Turkish Ministry of the Interior and the Directorate of Migration, more than 578,000 Syrians have returned to their country from Turkey since the collapse of the previous regime. www.aljazeera.net/news/2025/12...

Poland scrambled fighter jets and placed its air defense systems on heightened alert overnight as Moscow launched one of its heaviest air assaults on Ukraine in recent weeks.

I'm sure this person would claim they're an anti-Zionist, but in truth, by basically saying there is nowhere on earth Jews are allowed to have feelings of home about, they are making the best case for Zionism possible.

ISW is aware that Russian propaganda is again spreading AI-generated deepfake videos that deceptively use the ISW brand and likeness to promote fabricated assessments and other false claims. The claims made in this video are false. (1/2) english.nv.ua/nation/russi...

Murder rate per 100k inhabitants for US, Russia and Germany. The first two recommend to the Germans to vote for AfD because the criminally rate is increasing. It's self speaking...

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You spectacularly generous people have raised £13k so far. We have a beyond-excited three year old likely to wake us at 5am, so it’s an early night here. I’ll have to catch up with the pix in the morning ♥️ #DuvetKnowItsChristmas www.gofundme.com/f/duvet-know...

🇺🇦 I do like the President of Ukraine. His commitment to Ukrainian freedom & democracy is unwavering; his ability to rise to the big questions of the day uncanny. I have no doubt that history will be on his side, and that of all Ukrainians who've risked everything against Russian tyranny. #Integrity

By this time tonight I was meant to have made my bread sauce, cranberry sauce and begun the gingerbread stuffing, and yet I find myself, tasks still undone, on my sofa, with drink and cake to hand, happily gazing at my Christmas-Grotto-garden. Rather thrilled with my new light-up deer, I must say.

“In the morally inverted universe of the plan, there is no distinction between perpetrator and victim, aggressor and defender, militarised dictatorship and democracy.”

🇹🇼 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 Happy for Taiwan, presumably happy US manufacturers, too, but I'd be happier if the US also provided for Ukraine. Send those Tomahawks already - and whatever else Ukrainians need to get Putin's Russia out of their country and off their backs. #Allies

"I'm in utter despair that the Russians are taking my apartment, and I am powerless to stop it," Anna Shevchenko, 30, who lived in Mariupol when Russia invaded in 2022, told the Kyiv Independent. "That house holds all my childhood memories. I love it very much."

'Winter Sea' 1960 by UK painter Joan Eardley #WomensArt ❄️

This Christmas 'Channel D' will open on #TPTV Channel Premiere! Classic Spy-Fiction Series begins Sunday 28th Dec at 4pm! THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (1964) #TPTVsubtitles Stars #DavidMcCallum #RobertVaughn

'Hyden Hill' by contemporary Welsh painter Sarah Evans #womensart ❄️

Detail from the Art Nouveau gesso panels by Glasgow School artist Margaret Macdonald, c.1907 #WomensArt ❄️ hunterian.blog/margaret-mac...

The earliest surviving British "talkie" version of the Dickens story. 🎄 SCROOGE (1935) 7:40am #SeymourHicks who was acclaimed as the best theatre Scrooge for many years, #DonaldCalthrop plays Cratchit #TPTVsubtitles

The Christmas Fart Roland the Farter was a jester who (according to the "Liber Feodorum") held his land in Suffolk in return for "one jump, a whistle and one fart" at King Henry II's Christmas court every year.

Hep B vaccines have been in the news recently, as the ACIP under RFK Jr voted to withdraw universal newborn vaccination. We recorded most of this episode before that happened, so we added more thoughts about why that's concerning, before explaining how special and awesome Hep B vaccines are:

🇬🇱 Greenland rising again on Trump's agenda. A seasonal re-read of "Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow" might be on the cards.

Nativity of Christ - Mosaics from the Middle Byzantine Monastery of Hosios Loukas

7/ US delegations continued separate meetings with Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Miami on December 21 as the Kremlin continues to reject making compromises to end the war. Ukrainian forces recently advanced in the border area of Belgorod Oblast and near Pokrovsk.

Emma Haworth, contemporary UK painter known for her observations of parks, with a hint of otherworldliness #womensart

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Late night music hosted by @MikeReadUK in THE HERITAGE CHART SHOW at 11:50pm on #TPTV