James Ball

Enjoying my posts? (If not: sorry..?) I have a newsletter here, plz do subscribe: www.jamesrball.com Details of books I’ve written here: www.jamesrball.com/p/books And all my writing for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social is here: www.thenewworld.co.uk/contributor/... I often pop up elsewhere, too.

🦅 NEW EPISODE 🦅 The Midterms: is it finally, finally Judgment Day for Donald Trump? 🦅 With @zoegrunewald.bsky.social @jamesrball.com @nndroid.bsky.social & special guest Casey Burgat 🦅 Listen linktr.ee/ohgodwhatnow...

good closing message *HASSETT: THE AFFORDABILITY CRISIS IS A MYTH

Mourinho was once asked to come up with the saddest five-a-side team ever. This is what he wrote: Forssell, Bebe, Schuurs, Neville, Warne

The British syndrome, summarised: 78% of us say our high streets are important to us. But only 28% of us actually use their local high street even once a week – and only 53% of people said they used theirs *once a month*. We won't use it, and we won't lose it.

"The experience of reading BANK JOB is like nothing so much as hearing the ravings of someone who is furious at her smoke alarm for burning down her house. Time and again, Truss gets confused about basic facts, the passage of time, and the basics of how cause-and-effect works."

"I suspect you – and a lot of people who like the idea of underground electricity cables – don’t quite know what’s involved with installing them. The view might be nicer a few decades after they’re laid, but installing them is quite the process."

Stockton-on-Tees razed the high street and turned it into a park opening onto the river. I don't know if it will work, but at least it shows some novel thinking and ambition www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The British syndrome, summarised: 78% of us say our high streets are important to us. But only 28% of us actually use their local high street even once a week – and only 53% of people said they used theirs *once a month*. We won't use it, and we won't lose it.

"But by being such a good TV personality, genuinely passionate about what she was doing, and with some actually good ideas, Mary Portas has helped generations of policymakers deny the reality that the very way we think of high streets has to change."

This is great, because most parents think of their children as callous dullards who hate animals, so it's really picked out the traits that makes her daughter unique, here.

A newspaper promising the first images of pedestrianised Oxford Street used a single screenshot from a traffic camera. Now, why didn't I think of that when I spent two cold hours on Oxford Street last night? www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/las...

Dragging this into the light...in light of Brazil.

Coastal cities swing left, sparsely populated interior swings right

It's impossible to imagine a Conservative leader having made better decisions over the past two years than the ones Kemi Badenoch has, apparently:

I'm at the White House. I'm at the body horror cheesecake factory. I'm at the combination White House–body horror cheesecake factory.

Hi, dictator expert here! this is not funny, dictators only do this when they’re in extreme distress

Things I have inadvertently stockpiled: • Skulls of my enemies • Lamentations of their loved ones

If you *watch* Touching Grass there's a very good chance one of my cats will moon you. How many podcasts offer you that?

“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory” — Obama

"If the RNLI finds you drowning at sea, would Nigel Farage prefer for them to ask for you to produce your passport before they fish you out of the water? If you’re unfortunate enough to be drowning without the correct identification to hand, should they leave you to drown?"

"The generalised miasma of Team Trump’s conflicts of interest and complex business deals has been there for a long time. Even if absolutely everything is within the letter of the law, many Americans decided they’d had enough of such self-enrichment long ago."

Has anyone used Spark / Shortwave? Which of the two would you recommend if so? (I currently use hey.com for my email, and it's a great product that I absolutely refuse to ever pay for once my annual subscription ends for Reasons). Plz do @ in or share if you know someone using either.

Has anyone used Spark / Shortwave? Which of the two would you recommend if so? (I currently use hey.com for my email, and it's a great product that I absolutely refuse to ever pay for once my annual subscription ends for Reasons). Plz do @ in or share if you know someone using either.

"It's OK. I wrote that joke."

Sunday’s vote decides who leads Brazil — but questions about tech companies including Meta as “stewards of civic spaces” will outlast the election and reverberate well beyond Brazil, writes Daniel Arnaudo, a researcher at the School of Communication, Media and Information at Fundação Getulio Vargas.

"The generalised miasma of Team Trump’s conflicts of interest and complex business deals has been there for a long time. Even if absolutely everything is within the letter of the law, many Americans decided they’d had enough of such self-enrichment long ago."

And yet he's going to betray it for the duo. He just hasn't accepted it yet.

"If the RNLI finds you drowning at sea, would Nigel Farage prefer for them to ask for you to produce your passport before they fish you out of the water? If you’re unfortunate enough to be drowning without the correct identification to hand, should they leave you to drown?"

"Farage, who relentlessly styles himself as a proud British patriot, who wraps himself in the Union flag any chance he gets, didn’t bother correcting his host as he got the name of the country Farage seeks to lead wrong. Instead, he just accepted the far-right premise."

This new report today with my NYT colleague Anton Troianovski follows up on our earlier reporting this month on the Lukoil deal that would bring financial benefits to business partners of the Witkoff and Trump families. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/u...

quirk here is that bleecker street’s new owner is company owned by Omidyar, who has for years supported orgs that challenge big tech. more reporting needed on what’s happening here.

hang on, so Bleecker Street was sold to a Pierre Omidyar-backed group that also happens to back Tosca Musk's Passionflix... and now "MUSK" is disappearing from theaters?