2024: can Europe defend itself ALONGSIDE America? 2025: can Europe defend itself WITHOUT America? 2026: can Europe defend itself AGAINST America?

A fistbump across the centuries to this one monk writing a stroppy text about his boss.

damn what is wrong with me, i am having the hardest time concentrating on work, i lament as i compulsively refresh live feeds of unspeakable horrors

White Americans keep looking to 1930s Germany for lessons on authoritarianism, but they ignore Black Americans who have survived it here. Slavery, Jim Crow, and racialized state violence are forms of American authoritarianism.

hey Mom can you come pick me up. yeah everyone on the niche microblogging website is arguing about who has the correct emotional posture to the unknowable future again

I vote we call things like this "a toothcomb" I find them kinda delightful tbh.

The US government is demanding lists of Jews from universities. One has objected. How many have ignored the request, or worse, complied? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

A few months ago, ICE hired me I didn't sign and submit any paperwork. I almost certainly failed the drug test. I'm real outspoken about my opposition to the Trump administration, and I am extremely googlable And yet, there it was, in plain English. "Welcome to ICE!" My latest for Slate

This is wonderful news, and I'm joyed to hear that as well as being a meticulous and lyrical documenter of rural life, Ronald Blythe was a prolific gay shagger.

The disinformation promulgated by X is so essential for the global polycoup that the US, an already-compromised state, will blackmail any government that threatens to ban or discipline it.

Which word am I supposed to be stressing in this headline?

Grab it while you can! Burial site ‘akin to Sutton Hoo’ sheds new light on Anglo-Saxons www.thetimes.com/article/1528...

Here, I reflect on my experiences of trying to get African food catered for university events that I have organised. I also explain why providing edible Jollof (or other international food) in UK HE is a vital decolonising matter in an educational setting. folukeafrica.com/decolonising...

For those keeping score, Bellingcat, The New York Times Visual Investigation Team, & Washington Post's Visual Forensic team have all published analysis showing the ICE shooter wasn't in the path of Renee Nicole Good’s vehicle when he shot her, contradicting statements by the President & his cronies

I don’t think fascist ideas are simply instrumental for gaining power, to be honest. I think they’re the ideas that arise when you give resentful people a permission structure to indulge in whatever beliefs excites them most, without any requirement those ideas cohere together.

Extraordinary panel featuring colleagues at Stanford who are experts on Venezuela happening this Wednesday at noon pacific. Zoom open to public. Strongly recommend joining for this, if you can. cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/events/venez... @stanfordcddrl.bsky.social

There are really four levels to what happened last night: US, regional, global and Venezuela. I'll go through them in that order, as it moves from easiest to hardest in terms of making sense of them. 🧵

Flashbacks to the time I got the 0730 from KGX to Edinburgh, a hen party got on at Peterborough, a stag party got on at Newark and then the train stopped for an hour outside Morpeth for signal failures. I was a shell of a human by the time we got to Waverley.

wait a minute how are the "your body has gone soft from not eating the raw meats of your ancestors" guys also the "the computer should summarize the big scary email for your inadequate brain" guys

What a harrowing, thorough, unflinching piece of journalism. The more you read the worse it gets.

Mo Farah would not have been a British citizen for the 2012 Olympics if Labour had introduced their new asylum plan.

A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death. Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written." Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating. 🧪🧬🧫

Vital piece of investigative reporting from Sky. They've uncovered the X algorithm which feeds users extremist right wing material from the moment they join the site. It is a far-right radicalisation engine, by design. news.sky.com/story/the-x-...

me @ Labour politicians re: Zohran Mamdani

NOAA retirees “volunteering” including one who is working as an “unpaid intern” in order to help. I would like to never again hear anyone bitch about civil servants’ work ethic tyvm.

Fellas, is it racist to say that you don't like black people?

The responses to this are gold. Mine? A friend lamenting having bought cheap horses at an auction by explaining, "A bad horse eats as much as a good horse".

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

Definitive, devastating piece from @edwardluce.bsky.social. Must read on.ft.com/4qoZJHn

I do think this sort of open, gutter racism becoming normal enough that they feel comfortable saying it on TV is probably the most damning indictment of the last 5 years.

Books. No cookie preferences. No cookies. No GDPR. No pop ups. No bots. No floating videos. No AI. No ads. No trackers. No misinformation. No fascist techbros. No distracting animations. No paywalls. No influencers. How good are these things? Books are frickin awesome

"The idea of deporting people with settled status is disgusting, and anyone proposing it should be immediately drummed out of polite society. Breaking promises made in good faith to our friends and neighbours is racist, extremist and immoral." I'm basically shouting at the sky here, but still.

You came to the UK as a kid from a country that doesn't allow dual citizenship. You're married with British kids and grandkids. You've worked your whole life here paying taxes, but you kept your original nationality and have ILR. You claim the pension your taxes paid for. Deported. It's lunacy.

The north isn't a dumping ground for inconveniently shitty people.

Here Lam explicitly sets out her proposal - which is official Conservative Party policy - to deport long-standing legal permanent residents who have *ever* claimed any benefit, including the state pension or child benefit (even if the child is British), or who earn less than £39K.

The more you read of this the worse it gets

Nigel Farage is no Ramsay MacDonald, keen to secure establishment respectability for his movement and class, argues Ben Jackson. The Labour line has to be hardened in a way that makes the political and moral stakes much clearer to voters.

Here are the little darlings they’ve created. Horrifying. www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

A month old but worth the read. Nature is not a cure-all.

A really intriguing read that also made me want to scream forever. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

It cannot be made clearer. If you continue to support the Harry Potter franchise in any way, you are directly funding the removal of trans people's human rights in the UK.

"Gentlemen, you can't propose employment on the grounds of religious discrimination in here, this is Rangers Football Club"

A letter from the Scottish Universities Jewish Staff Network, signed by over a hundred people including rabbis, published in the Herald today: archive.ph/BRTCY

*gasp*

Written ten years ago by @keithkahnharris.bsky.social, and is now sadly useful. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The breadth of Jewish disapproval of Netanyahu is significantly under-reported in UK media. Views are never monolithic but the median British Jew feels an attachment to Israel and feels Netanyahu has been a disaster for Israel (Institute for Jewish Policy Research) www.jpr.org.uk/reports/what...

My essay on stupidology (originally published in N+1) is in today's Guardian www.theguardian.com/news/2025/oc...