Tom Randall

Lula winning is great for the planet, great for Brazil, and great for people who aren't revanchist assholes everywhere in the world, but let's not forget that it's also going to make some of the worst people on Earth extremely sad and mad. We should enjoy that, as a little treat.

How to disable a robot dog if it attacks you. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MUr...

Nolan: I want the audience to understand that the Trojan Horse was the ultimate betrayal and one that continues to reverberate through the ages. We should not sickly celebrate it as heroics. AMC: Got it. We have just the thing for that.

Watching House of the Dragon and all I can think is - If only Rhaenyra Targaryen knew how to issue a state currency backed by the threat of dragon fire, she could solve her problem paying the Gold Cloaks overnight.

The real political scandal of the day.

really cool going from the 2010 World Cup, where Ghana’s little run seemed like a magical anomaly, to a bunch of African teams contending across the bracket and participating in the global pastime of causing fear and misery in England.

Brazil always has a presidential election a few months after the #WorldCup. Please, no country defeat them in a humiliating fashion. The last time that happened, they elected Bolsonaro. If it happens again, they might do something stupid like electing Bolsonaro's idiot son.

Imo, a perfect excuse to enact emergency WW2-style Keynesian industrial mobilisation.

Disclosure Day feels like a film that was originally twice as long, they cut half of it, but accidentally showed us the half that was cut.

It's not unlike watching current coverage of net zero or the EU prior to 2016 or Boris Johnson's ascent to power or Liz Truss taking control of the Treasury or Donald Trump etc etc. The BBC should be a bulwark against obvious propaganda & demonstrable lies, not an 'impartial' chronicler of it...

1) Taxing billionaires more would absolutely help teachers. 2) Even if it didn't, taking obscene power out of the hands of billionaires is in itself a good, and the main reason to tax them. We don't need a single $1 of billionaires money - we just need them not to have it.

An organisation's culture is set by its leader, Starmer dislikes making political arguments and has essentially convinced himself doing so is silly symbolism, so "persuasion" has dropped out of the government's mental toolkit entirely.

Mamdani has demonstrated something that Democrats have largely forgotten. You can't just do good things for voters and expect to be rewarded for it. You have to tell them about it, over and over again. You have to advertise your work in office just as much as you did on the campaign to win it.

Besides these excellent reasons not to cut tax and diesel taxes, there’s a more straightforward one: it’s perverse to respond to a shortage of something by increasing the incentive to buy that thing. If we want to compensate people of limited means who have to drive, give them cash payments.

In order to help guarantee this ceasefire, Britain should probably now request all US bombers leave UK bases as soon as possible.

#Artemis II - A beautiful new image released The Moon, seen here backlit by the Sun during a the solar eclipse. Captured by one of the cameras on Orion’s solar array wings. A bright spot visible below the Moon’s right edge is Saturn. Then a bright spot at the right edge of the image is Mars. 🚀🌓🌒

On the day humanity witnesses a new Earthrise, the planet's most powerful leader thrratens annihilation for one of the oldest civilizations ever to exist upon it.

Don't subsidise energy prices during a supply crisis: give cash transfers to low-income and vulnerable households instead.

Trump's war on cars is having sickening global consequences. When will it end?

The virgin US carrier strike group vs the chad RFA Lyme Bay.

Pay attention to Lebanon. Trump and Netanyahu started a regional war in the Middle East, creating a humanitarian disaster. And now, the Israeli army has killed over 1,000 people in Lebanon—about 20% of them are kids. Congress should not bankroll this escalating war of choice.

There's a whole array of strategic bungles in this operation, it deserves a thread. 1/ below

"Oh no, a supply shock! Let's make it more expensive to invest in measures which could mitigate that supply shock" is what the world's central banks are likely to do by raising rates.

I didn't know Ed Miliband had been cast as the villain for the next Superman movie.

Seems pretty clear Israel's objective is to prevent any possible diplomatic off-ramp for the USA by assassinating anyone who could conceivably make any agreement on a national level for Iran.

Some of the world's largest businesses urging governments to back the electrification of economies as quickly as is feasibly possible. This is so self-evidently true that it remains utterly mad that it is somehow still up for debate. www.businessgreen.com/news/4526980...

Fully expecting Keir to just go along with this without even trying to get anything from Trump in return. www.lbc.co.uk/article/trum...

All Iran had to do was paint one of these things gold and gift it to Trump as the inaugural "Middle East Peace Prize" and they'd have had all sanctions lifted by now.

I wonder why he'd say this now, of all times 🤔.

note that it's the right-wing parties, who have complained that UK should have joined US strikes on Iran, who are now also demanding the Labour government steps up household help with energy bills

Thank you for your attention to this matter - IRGC!

Jesus christ. All UK Labour had to do was say "That Trump fella.. not a great guy." about once a month and do normal centre-left things and they could have this.

I mean, should the UK have a few more operational frigates/destroyers at any given time available - sure. But also, the whole thing is part of an integrated NATO force. The idea that THE FRENCH!! might escort a UK carrier with some of their frigates is a very normal thing that's supposed to happen.

Starmer approval +5pts if he calls a press conference specifically to tell Tony Blair to go throw a shoe at himself.

Trump stops supplying Ukraine with advanced air defence munitions so that he can start Gulf War III instead. Meanwhile Putin abandons Iran to launch large missile strike across Ukraine. Shows how dangerous it is being a loyal junior 'ally' to these powers.

A fascinating bit of convergent evolution that the McSweeney-Starmer project has basically ended up leaving Labour in the same position as its Western European peers…as a result of deliberate, wholly avoidable choices.

The luge is the breaststroke of sledding. Do we really need to find out who is the quickest in the world at the slowest way of sledding? #WinterOlympics

There's no guarantee that making a marine an MP will go any better than making a random MP become a marine.

This sport here where it's a guy scrubbing the floor really hard whilst his wife yells at him from 20ft away to scrub harder. Great sport. #WinterOlympics

What if the British government adopted this novel new Canadian strategy of trying to be popular, instead of the opposite of that.

David Cameron: "Well, well, well, not so easy to find a Prime Minister that doesn't suck shit, huh?"

Even the bond vigilantes don’t like the fiscal rules.

Saying you would take a "much tougher stance on immigration" than the Labour government is (or should be) discrediting for the same reason that saying your budget plans would be "very fiscal" would be. What does it mean?

A law mandating that all new vehicles must look very derpy, would reduce traffic deaths by at least 40%.

The Matrix, but instead of growing humans in pods for energy, it's to feed the AI with human-creative input to prevent the machines from turning themselves into AI-slop.