M.B. Drapier

aaaahhhhhhhh policyexchange.org.uk/publication/... h/t @igmansfield.bsky.social

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Forgot one: -Woke Hukou on Public Transit

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... www.theguardian.com/education/20... www.thetimes.com/uk/education... www.timeshighereducation.com/news/uk-univ... www.dailymail.com/news/article... Just a few of the articles that are barely peeping...

I'm a Meta-Effective Altruist™️ I believe that Effective Altruism needs to be redistributed from where it is least effective (Silicon Valley sex cultists) to where it would be most effective (British pensioners who leave their life savings to the Donkey Sanctuary).

The biggest influencers of 2026: -Seven Hour YouTube Reviews of Theme Park Rides -NOT Antisemitic Per Se (Wink Wink) -Squid Games But Real and For Kids -Wholesome Lessons From The Bible and Camp of Saints -Gamer Bronze Age Pervert -Become Handsome By Slamming Your Face With Bricks

Frank McCourt taught at the Bennington July Program when I attended in 1984, and he was reading the stories that made up Angela's Ashes at the coffeehouse open mic every weekend. So yes, they were indeed highly polished by the time they were published.

Actually sad what AI has done to the world of souvenir fridge magnets, postcards, etc. It's kind of microcosmic of the whole issue: the people in charge of fridge magnets don't seem to care that fridge magnets actually matter to people who collect fridge magnets.

This is Higher Education. It is in disarray. Nothing is being done.

Kotz's Law

Early signs are not encouraging about whether Burnham is willing/able to improve on the most odious failure of the Starmer government: responding to racist violence by condemning the violence but being silent, or even placatory, about the motives behind it.

Important: the data source for schools is just an 1868 report. People do read these things eventually! Wonks and civil servants take note, please keep producing reports and storing them in accessible, resilient, multimedia ways, and open your archives.

Australia’s eSafety commissioner buried a report (released Friday afternoon) that shows the under 16 social media ban didn’t tangibly reduce teen social media use, and also resulted in parents tuning out of kids usage. We traded our privacy for no reason. theconversation.com/more-than-80...

this is not true. there was no conspiracy. it didn't matter whether the streetcars were publicly owned (seattle, detroit) or private (los angeles, atlanta). a thread (because i wrote a whole-ass book on this): 1/?

NEW: UK journalists are self-censoring stories about Trump and the right over safety fears Government-backed investigation finds risks are normalised in newsrooms. The abuse now means some journalists are changing what they write about… Grim findings: www.theguardian.com/media/2026/j...

Why is a large, out of control cyclospora outbreak in the USA trending as 'Entertainment'?

Superb thread, by Robin. He’s totally spot on. He’s very eloquent and uses far less swear words than I want to use 🤣 Read it, repost it and understand it. This is our liberties being removed by the myth of sAvE tHe ChIlDrEN

If a policymaker denies that that's the intended outcome - or even a by-product of it - the test is simple: ask them to show what, in the law and its implementation, prevents this from creating a surveillance state. 7/7

🥵Why are so many Europeans/Britons unnecessarily sweating through a heatwave without cooling? Why are portable AC units so crap? The answers are both interesting and maddening. My latest on air conditioning👇 edconway.substack.com/p/the-missin...

This is... insane. The EU spent untold hours of human labor and political effort to create the DSA's intricate system of rules for platforms. And the CJEU is just smashing it, like a toddler.

There’s no Schaltung like Gleichschaltung, like no Schaltung I know … 🎶

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

A fool and their data are soon parted

Centre-left and LW people who are reacting in horror to this, Millennials and older in particular: what did you think The Science™ meant, guys? Vibes? Papers? Essays?

It wasn’t just the child tax credit. And it’s not just the Republicans.

This chart doesn’t account for number of hours worked (which have declined), non-wage income, or how CPI is based on the spending habits of higher income people.

A big share of future historians will conclude that the difference btw US und EU in the 2020s was not in the scale or violence of their respective deportation enforcement regimes but in the scale and ferocity of public opposition to it. On average, Europeans cared far less.

On the hellish detention and deportation system built by EU countries. With quotes from the current and the former German chancellors expressing their commitment to the inhumane cruelty of this apparatus, described here in forensic detail.

"A modern-day concentration camp ... People have been killed by the staff here." Irish citizen Seamus Culleton has been in ICE detention since September, despite having a valid work permit and his own business in the US.

Irishman living legally in the United States for >20 years incarcerated by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) since September 2025. Report @klillington.bsky.social www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

Irish Times: US aircraft carrying out secretive deportations to Africa and the Middle East have landed in Shannon Airport on 10 occasions in the last year. Deportees are kept in chains on the aircraft. Our Govt does not want to know. www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026... @gbrockell.bsky.social

Trump's assistance to the Russian attack on Ukrainian power and heating last night was so egregious that I put together this short, free piece on it. He helped Putin kill Ukrainians. If the USA does not do something soon, the US should be seen as a Putin ally. open.substack.com/pub/phillips...

(RTing as I can’t reply:) Not an expert, but: after the companies do go bankrupt he’s going to use that $1tn US of personal wealth to lead a management buyout, right? AFAICS that’s nearly the only reason he’d even need that kind of cash, & he doesn’t seem to want to build Coleridge’s Xanadu.

Unfriendly reminder, AI is being used to destroy trust. Do not normalize the use of AI. AI can not reliably enhance videos or low-quality images. This is the quiet replacement of reality. Do not let this be normalized.

Buy paper. Fund lousy, money losing entertainment. Bezos next needs to lose a governor’s race and mourn the pure, simply days of youth with his sled on fresh snow.

Even if nothing else happens, as long as things remain febrile the odds of some accidental or semi-accidental domestic flashpoint incident, something like a Matteotti or a Sumner-Brooks affair, will continue to approach 1.

Shimmering gates in the Oxford Oratory; Pevsner describes the furnishings here as "a rich haul"! The Historic England listing says that the marble altar rails form an arcade of Caernarfon with foliate capitals; the gates are iron with brass plates cut with the ‘IHS’ monogram and with fleur-de-lys.

Splendid Fairywren Couple. The splendid fairywren is a passerine bird in the Australasian wren family, Maluridae. The splendid fairywren is found across much of the Australian continent from central-western New South Wales & southwestern Queensland 📸: @darrenstephens_photography

Sudan is the most upsetting to me. It's a racist ethnic cleansing bordering on a genocide, in which black people are being mass murdered for being black. The worst war currently being waged. And virtually only black people seem to care.