Alastair Smith

Two Democratic members of Congress attacked in three days. Maxwell Frost was assaulted on Saturday, Ilan Omar tonight.

These words demand attention. “In a real sense this is holy ground, consecrated by blood spilled here. The cost is high, and so I had to be here to stand in the very place where this tragedy unfurled… I think we’re at a defining moment for our country…” ~ Rev Warnock Take a moment, so much more…

Amazing story in The Times. Reform UK failed to pay VAT to HMRC on its sales (tickets, merchandise). About £400k in all. Not tax avoidance. Not tax evasion. They just didn't realise when you sell stuff you have to charge VAT.

Edinburgh castle failing to render, likely thanks to the AWS outage

There’s a lot of things I like about working for @1password.bsky.social, but today’s DJ hour was *chef’s kiss*

Seems a lot like the Cameron/Osborne austerity programme was an entirely avoidable national calamity with devastating, still worsening consequences, but I don’t get much sense anyone has learned any lessons from it except “We got away with it by shouting into microphones”.

Found this line buried in our code: // this relationship would make Cersei Lannister blush …and honestly I think I’m done for the day.

Extremely pleased to have been able to write for Comment is Freed about the problem of low turnout in UK elections, and its wider political-economic implications. Once again, I draw on @duncanweldon.bsky.social's notion of a high-turnout "post-economic voter bloc" as a central obstacle to growth.

A strong thesis exceptionally well-argued IMO. Well worth your time.

COME ON DOWN TO THE BLUESKY BALLS RACE! PUT YOUR BETS DOWN NOW ON THE MOST AMAZING RACE OF 2025

Laughing in front of cages designed to hold migrants and refugees, many of whom came to this country fleeing extreme violence and poverty, and hoping to raise their children in a more compassionate country. And many of whom followed all the legal procedures to enter the country.

There is not a single person in the Democratic Party who is treating the death of USAID with the gravity it deserves. There’s no political issue more important than the death of 14 million people, but they’re just delivering boilerplate condemnations and nothing more.

maybe instead of asking socialists whether billionaires should exist we should be asking billionaires whether poverty should exist

u know what this *is* a really well done video and worth watching

If only there were a clinically proven, totally safe way to prevent diseases like measles…

Susan Hall is the GLA Conservative group leader. She has become the most senior Conservative to support Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain movement. One of Lowe's core goaıs is to shift the immigration debate to remigration: not how many people come but how many leave: mass deportations & net outflows

TRANS PEOPLE - If you've had your account on any social media site - but especially LinkedIn - censored, taken down, removed, etc, for using your chosen name - message me. I'm working on a story about this happening as a broad phenomena, and the more people I talk to the better. DMs open!

ICEblock, which allows users to alert others to the geographical location of ICE officers, is the top social networking app in the App Store right now after Karoline Leavitt condemned it from the podium yesterday.

This is a concentration camp. Call it Alligator Auschwitz, because that's what it is. This is America. Never forget and never forgive the people who allowed this to happen.

I got permission to share this, and I'm extremely grateful for that. The Onion got this letter from one of our subscribers in Alaska. She works with dementia patients and decided to leave a copy in the car for each one. This email made my year. Read it and you'll see what I mean. People are good.

In all this Bob Vylan pearl clutching some are conveniently forgetting the IDF is committing genocide.

this is the level of funding where all the possibilities for American politics that have been described as hyperbolic over the past decades - the comparisons to Nazi Germany and other nightmares of the 20th century - become logistically possible and politically likely

A police stop is enough to make someone less likely to vote, recent research has found. "Voting is a reflection of our belief that we’re part of the system, that our voice matters."

Many of those standing up for the people of Gaza would have been people who stood up for Jewish refugees in the 1930s because the reason they stand up is humanitarianism, religion and ethnicity play no part, it is the concept that EVERY child’s life has the same value

Christopher Taggart + Rhys MacDonald pled guilty to publishing written material to stir up racial hatred: encouraging people to attack a hotel to get asylum seekers 'gone' New Runcorn MP Sarah Pochin heard about the case yesterday + opposes the conviction as 'truly shocking' x.com/SarahForRunc...

Jurassic park irl would only be a net good. the billionaires would lose their shirts cause the dinosaurs keep killing people. tickets will be so expensive that only the one percent will be able to afford to go, and thus get eaten. the rest of us get videos of live dinosaurs... eating rich people. A+

Just so everyone is on the same page: PIP is a top up benefit. You can’t live on PIP, it’s there because being disabled is more expensive than not being disabled. PIP recipients *in work* may only be able to work because of PIP. This government is just unnecessarily cruel.

That's about the same as all the people who have died in every war of the 21st Century, and includes millions of dead children. All blood on MAGA hands.

Descartes gave us all the tools we need to survive in an era of misinformation. Simply begin with the understanding that you are real but everything else is fairly likely to be the cruel games of a demon sent to torment you specifically.

How does anyone justify this? Seriously, how?

Republicans are putting 17 million lives at risk in their “Big Beautiful Bill.” These are more than just numbers. These are real people who deserve to live a life without worrying they will go broke if they need health care.

Day after day - scores murdered by these war criminals. Today a cafe bombed with over 30 dead mostly women and children. Yet still Western media and governments rush to give them cover.

Thread. Oligarchical wealth is mind-bending in its extreme.

NEW: The death shadow cast by Musk. “When U.S.-supported soup kitchens were forced to close, babies starved quietly, their mothers said, while older siblings died begging for food.” The world’s richest man did this to the world’s poorest children. Don’t ever forget.

I want 2 things from my politicians: I want them to tell the truth, even and especially when the truth is inconvenient, like naming an atrocity, and I want them to be dreaming of a better world than this. This dude does both.