Thought inspired by this post - what was the last technological innovation where your first thought wasn't a) this will be dead within 18 months or b) this is just going to make society worse?

It's interesting to me how much the Spanish Flu has traditionally been brushed over in discussions of the upheavals of the 1920s. I wonder if we'll start to see some new histories that take seriously he idea that it may have been a major cause of social disruption.

This is definitely one of those "ah, social norms have definitely changed in my lifetime" things, in that I can't imagine William and Kate separating would have the same repercussions?

Slightly diminish a book: The Pickwick Substack

I do think it sums up “the weird way the Internet shapes politics unnoticed” that “some chants that people should knock off but are mostly an ignorable part of an in-person march” are given more explanatory power than “the website that is full of antisemitism of every stripe that MPs hang out on”.

This was 2016, two years after the annexation of Crimea, so it's not like the warning signs weren't there. In hindsight it's amazing how quietly the alarm bells were ringing when Russia just nicked a bit of a European country

While this is obviously true, I think the issue is wider than the violence - it's news and events constantly pushed towards us. It's overwhelming and leads to bad decisions.

I think the bots have found me...

Sorry but Finland doesn't exist

You always get a lot of angry replies here if you complain about the Greens blocking solar farms or power grid upgrades. Maybe they should stop instigating pile-ons and start instigating pylons.

Think you might be on to a loser here lads

Flew into London last night and my daughter took this spectacular picture.

They should pursue Yvette Cooper for costs for irresponsibly encouraging this.

The thing about the online anti-bedtime left is they - allegedly? - believe in things that take huge societal buy-in, like action of climate change or a functioning welfare state or full communism or whatever and then they also seem to believe societal trust…doesn’t matter?

To circle back to this, I think paradoxically Brexit has led to a lot of policy makers looking enviously at continental Europe and forgetting that the UK's comparative advantage when it was still in the EU came from having a distinctly Anglo political economy, with everything that that implies

Gollum:

I wrote about my wonderful daughter! open.substack.com/pub/pubchat/...

This is also just bad politics. Because the costs of this crisis are going to squirm their way out of the system somewhere, and all Labour are doing here is foregoing the opportunity to pin the blame squarely on someone else.

Why not both??

Indeed. A huge misread to think that racism is the preserve of the stupid. Racism - particularly in its 'modern', quasi-scientific form - makes the people who practice it stupider than they would be. But they can still be very smart!

I've been aware of US politics for 25 years, and in that time more or less every presidential campaign has involved a candidate who did or did not dodge the Vietnam draft, a war which ended over 50 years ago.

Speculum

Yes, hahaha look at these morons sharing a post that's factually incorrect But obviously people sharing this dont care that it's complete bollocks. So while we're talking to ourselves picking clever holes in their moronic posts, these go round like wildfire. And these people still have the vote

Don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that an organisation making these kind of claims one minute past polling close is clear about who saw things, where, and what they saw. It’s Tuesday night, polling closed Thursday night, and some of these things are still not clear.

The Tories spent two years ignoring their collapse, and look what happened. Labour got a cold hard dose of reality. But political parties can remain irrational for quite a long time.

TK Maxx promote themselves with "Always up to 60% off" and by God it irritates me.

Okay so only skimmed through so far but at first glance the new SEND policy looks... Okay? The devil's in the detail of course, and as always will depend if it's properly funded.

I have a friend. He's posh, speaks English with a cut-glass accent. Went to an expensive private school. Parents are divorced. He is, in other words, a walking stereotype of the English upper middle classes. Except in one regard: he's German, so he gets away with it.

(Anyone who's a) British and b) in the Epstein files must be shitting it after today)

Okay, this is quite outstanding from Bedford Council.

Can we please get back to treating these guys as the loons and fruitcakes they are - ie completely ignoring them - rather than treating their ideas with a modicum of sincerity because there's the smallest chance they might get some power.

All the other passengers muttering that they just want to get to work...

People Keir Starmer has hired, then fired for stuff he knew about when he hired them, a thread and a list: 1. Tulip Siddiq, given the economic crime brief, despite her aunt being PM of Bangladesh and mired in corruption allegations. Siddiq herself had faced questions over London properties.

One under discussed element of AI is how mentally draining it is to constantly have to work out if what you're watching is actually real. I saw a video earlier of "Obama" complaining about Trump; now, I'm politically astute enough that it didn't seem to fit Obama's style, (1/4)

On Starmer: I was never a big fan, but saw him as a competent administrator. After the Tory psycho drama, I didn't expect miracles. I would have been happy with a steady ship. And honestly, it can be difficult to swallow that I was wrong - it would be much easier to blame the media

This is, I think, a good and correct case. If we expect our MPs to treat it like any other professional job, we shouldn't be surprised when they behave as such - after all they are, almost by definition! - ambitious people!

Nipped into a newsagents to kill some time waiting for the bus, and this is what counts as top shelf material nowadays. To think, we used to be a country.

Can't think why this headline has come to mind recently, but it's really striking how much this stands out on the Guardian's website, and how clearly it was a headline written for a physical newspaper, rather than for SEO.

Country's going to the dogs. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

ICE isn't like the Gestapo. They're not that good

Excellent thread from @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social on Northern Powerhouse Rail (in its various guises) - do read the whole things- but as a Leeds resident this is the bit that really stands out. There is a lot of skepticism up here about pretty much any major transport announcement

I made a New Year's promise to myself that I'd write a bit more, so I wrote about revisiting my Grandparents' old village, and increasingly seeing the importance of community: open.substack.com/pub/pubchat/...

I made a New Year's promise to myself that I'd write a bit more, so I wrote about revisiting my Grandparents' old village, and increasingly seeing the importance of community: open.substack.com/pub/pubchat/...

I think you'd struggle to find anywhere with a stronger river game than Newcastle. Absolutely iconic. Bristol also performs well. Leeds is sadly sub par. A hugely underutilised part of the city.

Completely understand and respect why high-follow accounts on here would want to limit replies, but it's always a shame to feel like I could contribute to a topic then find I can't. Would be better if twats weren't twats, is what I'm getting at.

Something I've been thinking about recently: how when you lose someone associated with a certain place, you end up losing the place as well. I went to my Grandma's old village recently for the first time in a decade over Xmas and it was physically the same as it's always been, yet oddly different

Sharing this excellent piece from @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com's (equally excellent) substack www.motherjones.com/environment/... When I first heard about this idea it sounded borderline conspiracy theory. And yet...

A core part of “why Labour is failing” is that the backbenchers given prime retirement seats - the people who ought to be the brains of the party - are not asking “what decisions should we be taking to defend ourselves and our allies and to increase resilience?” “How do we reform public services?”…