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There is currently about $100m of bets staked on moves in the Ukraine war on Polymarket. To make a more compelling interface on this war betting, the guys who do the Pentagon Pizza thing are accused of scraping frontline mapping data without permission. #NotBlackMirror dev.ua/en/news/deep...

Solid, atmospheric reporting from the frontlines of #Somalia's faltering war against the jihadist insurgent group, Al-Shabaab. observer.co.uk/news/interna...

👖🌱 Ever wonder where your dropped-off clothes go? Some travel thousands of kilometres – Spain to Pakistan and even back – sometimes tripling emissions vs local processing. Once outside the EU, the trail goes dark – and new Brussels rules may worsen it. Read more: www.ftm.eu/articles/eur...

African Parks runs conservation sites all over the continent. Former staff describe the organisation’s operations as a ‘shitshow’ of toxic mismanagement and lawlessness.

Fifteen Years xkcd.com/3172/

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I have so many questions… and now Zipline is getting $150m from State Department?

Document now deleted by the OBR intern, have reuploaded the PDF here: smallpdf.com/share-docume...

Can confirm this is true

I already know every detail of this sordid affair and I am still cackling throughout this @brianphillips.bsky.social explainer www.theringer.com/2025/11/25/n...

Exclusive: First interview with negotiator in the room in Geneva. Ukraine's First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya tells me the US and Ukraine drafted a new peace deal but left the most politically sensitive elements to be decided by the countries’ presidents. www.ft.com/content/883e...

This “counter-proposal” incudes this clause on “grain shipments”. Noting the Black Sea Grain Initiative, this is a red flag. Ukraine, like Russia, is entitled to use the Black Sea. There is no need for a special agreement, nor for that to be limited to grain. www.reuters.com/business/fin...

I see a lot of Paidchecks on X didn’t realize that a whole lot of people on social media lie about their location to grift off the naïveté of the rage-addled American right. Turns out this problem is real and it’s a thing those of us who worked on “disinformation” pointed out.

I'm less confident I understand what's happening with this Peace Proposal Saga than I was three episodes into Severence season 1. Perhaps because like in that show, several of the key protagonists appear to be operating on about half a brain.

this week's newsletter is titled "aren't you tired of feeling insane all the time?" and I think it speaks for itself it is also free to read youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/arent-you-...

Sudan's war has caused a humanitarian crisis, but a video of a woman pleading for help as she holds her two children is AI-generated. Published on Instagram, the post also appeals for donations on a crowdfunding page with question marks over its legitimacy u.afp.com/ShZm

SUPERB and angrily unvarnished response, by former BBC chairman, Lord Patten. "I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that the BBC is only any good, if it reflects the prejudice of the last person who shouted at it." ~AA

Really looking forward to this today! #SFSCon

Starting now. What questions should I ask?

I'm looking into usage of #ai / GenAI in the grey literature of the aid industry. First stop: 150,000 job postings on #aid worker site ReliefWeb. Can there be any explanation for the increase in frequency of the em dash other than #chatgpt?

Something intensely frustrating which I've seen across academia, NGOs, media orgs and corporations (I mean, just, every professional space in the world) is "WHAT IF WE JUST DIDN'T" is **never** considered an option, and it's the same for this report. Error rates like that, 3 years in? Ditch it ffs

Rebeca Grynspan stepping down from @unctad.bsky.social while she campaigns for UN SecGen www.letemps.ch/suisse/genev...

“ UN80, Secretary-General António Guterres’s reform initiative, has been criticized for focusing on cost-cutting rather than on fundamental changes. Cosmetic surgery, or even amputating some limbs, is insufficient to make the UN the body the world needs.”

Testing : I’m connecting my Mastodon and BlueSky accounts but now I have to change my handle ?

INSO endure une situation épouvantable au Burkina depuis juillet, qui empire encore aujourd'hui. Soutien et courage à leurs équipes

Great to see more positive deviance job opportunities in #globaldev orgs www.nrc.no/tender/posit...

Divisions in Tigray relished by others: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

Inside the digital publishing industry, which I try to monitor closely, this is the big news. By Julia Alexander at Puck.

Between 27 May and 19 June, the Red Cross field hospital in Rafah received 1,874 “weapon-wounded patients” and recorded 18 “mass casualty incidents” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

After weeks of daily attempts, @UNOPS.org in #Gaza retrieved 280,000 litres of fuel from storage tanks last night. But this positive step covers only a day's worth of the most critical needs. To keep essential humanitarian work running, we need sustained access to fuel in Gaza and new supplies.

“The South Sudan contract is one of a growing list of business opportunities for Fogbow, an outfit of about a dozen people that first distributed food last year in Gaza and Sudan.“ www.reuters.com/world/middle...

Now @crisisgroup.org ponders the same: “The world, it seems, is witnessing an experiment: an attempt to indefinitely maintain Gaza’s population below the famine threshold while turning food into a weapon of war. “ www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-...

The scientific journals already have multiple articles talking about vegetative electron microscopy a thing that doesn't exist theconversation.com/a-weird-phra...

Confirmed as the same plane N588AT and so far looks like same route back as over.

🚨 #Gaza: Two legal submissions by TRIAL International request Swiss authorities to monitor the activities of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. 👇 trialinternational.org/latest-post/...

“Look, here's burial sites all over the place. These are all white farmers that are being buried,” Donald Trump said during today’s White House meeting with South Africa’s president. The image he was holding up, however, is of the Democratic Republic of Congo. www.barrons.com/news/trump-d...

Oh, it’s South Sudan that’s “chaotic”?

JUST IN: Attorneys for Burmese and Vietnamese migrants accuse the Trump administration deporting them to South Sudan in violation of a court order. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

“Might Israel’s new aid scheme feed the starving while satisfying its demand for absolute security? … [It] might keep enough people fed to avoid the IPC’s arcane threshold for famine… but it would be gaming the system, not preventing widespread starvation.” www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ma...

For eight years running, Finland has topped the World Happiness Report — but what exactly does it measure? Our writer, Molly Young, headed to Helsinki in the dead of winter to find out.

Gaza and the 'FAFO' factor Write about starvation in Gaza and you get: "Tell them to release the hostages." Write that Palestinian children were incinerated by an Israeli airstrike and it’s: "Who cares? Hamas started this" substack.com/home/post/p-...

Newspaper strains bounds of the bit. Cause this is a bit, right?

The church said it's terminating a decades-long partnership with the federal government to help refugees arriving in the U.S., citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa.

“After careful analysis and engagement, this mechanism appears practically unfeasible, incompatible with humanitarian principles and will create serious insecurity risks, all while failing to meet Israel's obligations under international law,” www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2025/05...

🗞️ In the latest Inklings aid policy newsletter: UNRWA’s private-sector fundraising, more humanitarian R-words, and David Beasley’s new Fogbow collab.

MSF says deaths and injuries reported after organization's hospital bombed in Old Fangak, South Sudan; NGO says facility was last functional one in area https://x.com/MSF_SouthSudan/status/South%20Sudan%20militant%20conflict

Uno de los barcos de la “flotilla de la libertad” de Gaza dice que ha sido atacado con drones, está en llamas y a punto de hundirse cerca de Malta. edition.cnn.com/2025/05/02/e...