Leaving the Planet

Today is the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on London on 7th July 2005, a terrible day on which 52 people were killed by four bombs on three tube trains and a bus. The King and Prime Minister Keir Starmer will lead national commemorations today www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025....

After a stellar climb to the heights, the giant member started guffing off about replacement theory and supremacy. His debris is now scattered across the stock exchange.

Brexit was a referendum on whether the UK should leave the European Union. The UK has left the European Union. Referendum fulfilled. If the people bleating about "Brexit Betrayal" wanted the Referendum to enshrine their pet policy preferences, they should have included them in the question.

Who could have predicted that “Nigel Farage is right, don’t vote for him” would anger voters who oppose Farage without impressing a single one attracted by him?

In short, Starmer has taken a massive hit among Labour voters, for no gain elsewhere, while boosting Farage's popularity, including doubling his ceiling among Labour voters. I.e., the political scientists were right, Morgan McSweeney was horrendously wrong.

Pretty incredible that Jeff Bezos' Amazon announced a "$5 billion-plus" partnership w/ a Saudi AI co launched by Mohammed Bin Salman and sent CEO Andy Jassy to meet with him less than 7 years after MBS murdered Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for Bezos' Washington Post. techcrunch.com/2025/05/13/a...

Meanwhile in America... A food delivery driver was shot in the back after he got lost trying to deliver food The driver was seriously injured The shooter, John Reilly, is an elected official and licenced gun dealer 🤷

The most astonishing part of this. Starmer still avoids to talk about Brexit as one of the main factors why growth has stalled. Instead he claims immigrants aren’t ‚necessarily’ contributing to growth. Which is true. But also dishonest when he omits other factors. Incredibly depressing morning.

The fascism playbook hasn't changed—only the speed we're flipping through its chapters.

Are Nigel Farage and Donald Trump really 'anti-establishment?' Byline's @mattmgallagher.bsky.social and Quinn Slobodian discuss the mainstream roots of the Far Right, and how libertarians mutated into right-wing populists... ⬇️ youtu.be/UqfeXz4rgBo?...

History of NAFO 58 Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Fellas Bloch-Bauer (1907) #NAFO #HistoryOfNAFO

On #VEDay — 8 May 1945 — Nazi Germany surrendered. But in 1940 the outlook was grim. France had fallen. An invasion of the UK seemed inevitable. Here’s how East Anglia, open & vulnerable, prepared for resistance in secret. Andrew Chatterton has the story

feel quite strongly that I should be able to tell the Home Office that I'm on the News Quiz this eve and have a column on the cricket in the paper on Sunday and surely that ought to be enough to grant me citizenship, no need for all that bureaucratic unpleasantness

Elections do not shape preferences. They reveal them. And I cannot think of a more revealing result (for all involved, politicians and voters) than the Runcorn & Helsby by-election. It contains significant lessons, but also plenty of things that selectively can feed cognitive bias. Choose with care.

We're getting pizza and I'm obsessed with this slightly broken mural that used to be about eating with your hands but now it reads like Saruman's manifesto

There was a flurry of news about tariffs. It passed. The real consequences will hit US consumers around Memorial Day. Important then to remind everyone of cause and effect.

🔥 What a title! "Trump wanted a trade war. Now America is losing it" Ironically, it was Trump who said: “When you start a war, you got to know you can win.”

As Trump tanks in the polls, he “is absolutely livid over the latest polls showing that his approval rating is tanking just three months into his White House return. In fact, he wants pollsters … to “be investigated for election fraud” for not publishing glowing results from their surveys” RAVING

Barry Blitt’s cover for this week’s issue, “The First Hundred Days.” #NewYorkerCovers nyer.cm/ysrCZ47

EXCLUSIVE: Two DOGE employees have access to a network used to transmit classified nuclear weapons data and a separate network used by the Department of Defense, sources tell NPR.

Tremendous opportunity for Britain here. Let's see if we can swap our riot-inciters for their cancer researchers.

I had a really quippy and thoughtful post on my head earlier. Needless to say it's long since gone, but it was a whip cracker! Follow for more fumbled opportunities.

Ed Martin's latest target: Wikipedia. The interim U.S. attorney and pro-Trump bulldog has sent a letter seeming to threaten the Wikimedia Foundation's tax-exempt status over allegations that it is "spreading propaganda." Our story: www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Love this system. Tasty!

This is what we all feared. The United States and Russia bullying brave President Zelensky into a terrible deal. Time for the United Kingdom and Europe to stand up to Trump and seize the Russian assets so we can go it alone.

Not sure who made this but thank you because I laughed so much

I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return.

We continue our Speaking truth to Power week with some more of the fantastic David Davis Dossier /1 #TruthToPower @yorkshirebylines.co.uk yorkshirebylines.co.uk/regular-feat...

Exclusive: Ed Martin, now the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, did not disclose his RT and Sputnik appearances from 2016 to 2024 to the Senate. The State Department has said the networks act like arms of Russian intelligence.

Denounce thy neighbor www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

Trump has diverted media attention from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to his fake "peace" process. In fact, American weakness enables Russian aggression as a new offensive looms. Useful corrective here. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Spot the American. Is it someone who speaks his mind and does the work to get citizenship? Or is it someone born into citizenship who covers his face while abducting people in a Черный ворон?

3/4. If we accept the idea that moving a person from one place to another undoes rights and disempowers the judiciary, we are endorsing the basic Nazism practice that enabled the killing of millions.

1/4. On the White House’s theory, if they abduct you, get you on a helicopter, get to international waters, shoot you in the head, and drop your corpse into the ocean, that is legal, because it is the conduct of foreign affairs.

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Watching Harry Melling give a storming performance amongst a stellar cast in the Pale Blue Eye. Christian Bale is brooding and bruised, so the eye is drawn to the deft eloquence and morbid charm of Poe. Dudley Dursley is quite the talent.

THE RISE OF END TIMES FASCISM My first major piece of the new Trump era, co-written with @astra.bsky.social. The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

A brilliant read, crystallizing a lot of the near-inexplicable behavior of Trumpians and their ilk into an overarching, dark ethos. Prepare to sit with it a bit and read. A few favorite quotes follow. 🧵

British laws that heavily restrict what information police can share before trials are not "fit for the social media age", a report into the UK's summer riots has found A parliamentary committee found misinformation about the Southport attack spread in a "vacuum" www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/w...

Trump's Europe strategy is disjointed and incoherent. It may also cost US arms companies valuable business with Europe as it tools up. My latest in @foreignpolicy.com

@sturdyalex.bsky.social Would love to hear the thoughts of you and @pimlicat.bsky.social on whether the current crisis is an opportunity for the UK to launder it's international diplomatic reputation? Perhaps on quiet riot? We've lived through populism, if we can get through our bureaucrats PTSD?

"Given that the US economy is entirely dependent on Chinese sources for vital goods (pharmaceutical stocks, cheap electronic chips, critical minerals) it's wildly reckless not to ensure alternate suppliers/adequate domestic production before cutting off trade" www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

This represents the single biggest moment for the UK to paint its tarnished diplomatic reputation post Brexit. We've lived through identical bullshit. We flounced out in 2016, and now, like a wise old man, can explain so much of what is going on. Think of it as therapy for UK PTSD bureaucrats...

Westminster Council are suffocating London. Hope Khan is about to persistently overrule them. They won't behave of their own accord. www.standard.co.uk/news/politic...

Racist window cleaner: last true conservative was Thatcher and Rivers of Blood speech was "right". I point out the damage Thatcher did. He agrees. However he's trapped inside a radicalisation loop. I warn him it's really dangerous. He continues to keep banging on about nonces until down the door.

Biggest commitment to a 3 second joke I've ever seen

Israeli soldiers murdered these medical workers, buried them in a mass grave, libelled them as terrorists and then lied about it. One of the ambulance crews' last words were: "I only chose this path because I wanted to help people." www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...

Booker: "I've never seen an administration in my lifetime do something so monumentally wrong and that so staggering hurts American people."

Donald Trump is trying to push out academics who study progressive issues in US research institutions. The EU wants to take them in. buff.ly/5EVrf9v

Wow. There is no end to her awfulness, no beginning to her talents.