💔 Ukrainian soldiers unexpectedly arrived from the front for their daughters' graduation ceremonies.

I know it's pointless to even say, but the press in the UK play a really insidious role. It's not differences of political opinion - they undermine the ability to even debate by poisoning the public with lies and misinformation. It was ever thus, but that doesn't mean it won't lead to a crisis

This is very good on the logical preposterousness of the trans bathroom ban. It simply cannot have been the intention of the Equality Act or the governments which administered it. www.liberalcurrents.com/the-end-of-t...

This is superb reporting, a really heartbreaking story.

Reform trying to improve their standings with the white supremacist who owns X? Or is he saying it for the love of the game? But also a lot has been written about racial hierarchy by both psychologists, sociologists and historians. He should read some to understand what's wrong with himself

This is the most literal example of fascist dehumanisation you could come up with. Dehumanisation is an essential step on the road to genocide and it needs to be identified and condemned whenever we see it

That which you permit, you encourage.

"Over in 3 days" Russia is now at the point of going full cyberpunk - setting up companies as private militaries haha. Which will help if one of the larger ones wants to start a coup I guess but is a sign of a failed state

The most clear-headed analysis of the two essays I've read so far

Here you have a senior US government official making openly misogynistic, transphobic, childish soy-boy type attacks on an opponent because he has no arguments (with a racist wolf-whistle thrown in). Miller is an odious creep but that this is a routine broadcast in the US is worse

Gent with beard, "My concern is that many of the AI platforms are owned by companies already doing societal harm" "How are we going to regulate them in AI when we haven't regulated their social media platforms over the past ten years?"

Dear media, You don't have to say "E Jean Carroll accused Trump of defamation and rape." You can say "Trump defamed and raped E Jean Carroll." It's been adjudicated. Thank you

Democracy can't function on this basis. Yes, this is about climate change. But it's also about the ability to critically engage with information. An extraordinary deficit. More than half of Americans don't believe climate change is caused by humans. www.forbes.com/sites/maryro...

How to Stop Billionaires From Buying British Politics Nigel Farage's £5 million handout from a crypto billionaire is a worrying sign of things to come. We must act now to prevent a complete oligarch takeover, argues Oliver Bullough

This is a terrible idea. It is for the government to prove that this technology can be applied safely to children - which is unlikely. Accuracy is lower in some skin tones and females, and AI hasn't been trained for all regions where refugees come from etc. Is this problematic? 🧵

i dunno, but maybe it's time the government recognised a foreign white supremacist is using his global social media app to bolster the far-right, bury other voices, and hopefully radicalise users to disrupt the political landscape of other nations

We really need to fully bed in the idea that the default position of someone wearing the Meta camera glasses is that they are a pervert

Slightly interesting. Kallas said the US embassy had left Kyiv but the US embassy then issued a denial. Either the EEAS is incompetent, or is actually very competent and has preempted a future US withdrawal by making them issue public denials?

🗓️ Three months ago today #Iran shut off access to the global internet. While connectivity has now largely returned, metrics indicate that users still face heavy filtering, similar to the interim period between the January protests and the start of the war.

Oxford, the longest running continuous weather station in UK history, with temperature observations stretching back to 1815, has preliminarily broken its maximum temperature record for May yesterday by OVER 3ºC with a temperature of 33.7ºC. Unprecedented in its 211-year history.

Not now guys. But also Greece still has phantoms!?

Hey everyone read this please

This is good for public health

Blair essay: "Though American security strategy is couched in very ‘America First’ terms, it identifies the principal threats... no differently from how Europe sees the world" Did he read the NSS? - Russia not mentioned as a threat - European "civilisational erasure" is as a threat Really?

Blair essay: defines two epochal changes as geopolitical shifts and AI. Conveniently omits climate change!? Also ignores rising inequality and social media - they have already changed the world, toppled governments, started wars etc. Almost like he's arguing to a specific political position!

Back to the Blair thing. I think he's right that all political projects need a base these days. The reach of bad ideas keeps growing. E.g. the idea that north sea oil and gas would lower prices in the UK. You can't reason with people who say that nor convince them, so you need your own base

Good news - but we urgently need to bend down those black and brown generation lines.

Agree with this. If I daydream my version of Blair's essay... yes I would have some fantasy about innovation and growth, and I would definitely pull R&D and productivity levers quite forcefully. But realistically, we need to manage with finite resources in a hostile world so I'd focus on:

It has long baffled me that this axiom is lost on so many people (there is obviously a coordinated campaign by the greedy to obscure this truth) Few people ever ask what an economy or 'growth' is for

Tony Blair appears to be calling for the Conservative manifesto only with more EU engagement and funding for international development. Maybe he's just found himself politically homeless!

So the Blair essay in which he argues that Labour don't have a coherent plan... is itself bizarrely incoherent? Just full of baseless statements, easily contradicted assertions and glaring omissions. But I'll bite I suppose... 🧵

Just a reminder that we can't aircon crops even as the world successfully rolls out huge amounts of solar energy and moves towards other adaptations. I mean we can GM some of them but that doesn't help when your coastal rivers become brackish www-aljazeera-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.alja...

A decade ago, analysts were calling Spain a cautionary tale. Too much solar, too fast! Today, Spain is rapidly on its way to having the cheapest power in Europe. Maybe this time, solar naysayers will learn... haha, jk, they'll just move the goalposts.

Solidarity is where it’s at. ✊🏽🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

The fact that Reform are spouting this stuff and that some people believe they have a chance of becoming the next government is incredibly harmful to a lot of people whose lives in the UK suddenly feel precarious. Nobody in politics seems to care about that, it's a race to the bottom on cruelty

ZELENSKYY: We attack military targets in Russia, or their energy, which they sell to fund war. Russians deliberately target civilian objects: museums, schools, apartments. They destroyed this Chornobyl museum that we built for 40th anniversary just one month ago. Crazy assholes.

Here's what average May temperatures look like from 1890 onwards. Not scary at all!

Given how much coverage the BBC gives to Farage, why are we not seeing news of his phone being hacked by a foreign adversary plastered all over BBC News?

Kaja Kallas warns that the US, China, and Russia all dislike the EU and prefer a divided Europe because a united EU represents a force capable of challenging their dominance.

Worth reading all of the decade-old article linked (& translated) here. Quite shaming for a lot of UK hacks happy to let him bullshit away to his heart’s content…

Russia is pathetic. It can hit shipping centres and apartments and yet it's still losing on the battlefield

Next time Vance has something to say about free speech in the UK let's just ignore him

If someone (especially a child) is quiet in the water and doesn't answer when called, you have only seconds to save them from drowning. Skip paywall on article: gcaptain.com/drowning/

NEW The Harborne Receipts: Follow the Money Billionaire Christopher Harborne gave millions to Nigel Farage & Boris Johnson & their parties. Then the pro-crypto announcements began. We mapped a timeline of Harborne's £30m political donations and crypto-friendly announcements by Farage & Johnson 1/

Disgusting, predictable and illogical. This 'nebulous third space' is also used by able-bodied people who are desperate. Should the government tell those people which toilet to use too? Also disabilities are increasing - call for more provision? No. Attack the 0.5% of people who are trans? Sure.

It's just obvious that there is no good reason, at all, for the government to legislate what toilets you can go into. This is a thing that civil society was quite capable of working out. We're here because the GCs found civil society didn't share their rabid obsessive hatred so they played the refs.

Not fruitful meaning Ukraine refused to surrender even though the US tried it's best to convince them to

Let me get this straight, Burnham wants to replace Starmer and yet has u-turned so far on: Immigration Brexit Trans rights Fiscal rules So socially conservative while further left economically. Blue Labour V2. And with some tax choices like scrapping inheritance tax. So stupid.

Satuday's @theguardian.com cartoon #transrights #EHRC #LGBTQ