Josh Spero

The US president accused the two institutions of turning away his business, escalating rightwing claims that the banking industry has denied service to conservatives for political reasons.⁠ on.ft.com/4foUIJQ

Trump on roof

Trump on roof

(h/t @helenkennedy.bsky.social)

This is real: President Trump is standing on the roof of the White House briefing room right now and no one knows why

bsky.app/profile/josh...

Donald Trump rules out Scott Bessent for Federal Reserve chair President says US Treasury secretary took his name out of consideration

“Both Kevins are very good”

www.ft.com/content/2a6d...

📝 I watched 35 minutes of ads and trailers at a movie on Sunday and I would like to talk to the manager. daverupert.com/2025/08/thea...

It's called [moving hands around] Stagflation. Ok? When I heard that I said wow, what a word. You have stag and flation and they're coming together like you've never seen. But we'll be eating beautiful toothpaste sandwiches and our teeth will be stronger than perhaps ever before

‘We have to clear our names’: Venezuelan makeup artist who survived Ice detention tries to rebuild his life Andry José Hernández Romero was one of 251 men flown from Texas to the Cecot prison in El Salvador. Now he’s seeking justice

“President Donald Trump and President Nayib Bukele must face the consequences of everything we went through in that prison. International authorities need to take action."

— Andry Hernández: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

“I think Andry Hernández is still going to be the same Andry as always,” he said. “I’m still the same person who cares deeply about the world of makeup – and about justice, especially when it comes to diversity and the LGBTQ community.”

There's no way to prepare you for this. "Kindle edition now complete with cover!! Raphael, a young man in his mid-thirties, returns to the rustic coastal village of Hopetown, where he spent the last few days with his son, Clay, before his son suffers an unfortunate, near-sudden death in a devastating car crash, and during which he, the father, was driving.  Join him as he relives the anguish, the blatant incredulity, the consequent meltdown and intermittent pangs of guilt, and which are then followed by an unfathomable void alternating with a sudden surge of emotion, all in that order, on realising that things had forever changed. While reviving memories, he also crosses paths with a roaming woman spirit of the sea, who claims that he needs her and that she knows Clay's whereabouts, and who is continuously transforming as the relationship grows.  The story also teases a complex interplay of emotions and secrets, as some friends also introduce him to Celine, another young woman, who initially seems to be the perfect antithesis of the other woman, and yet is vaguely similar to the other woman in some ways, also setting the stage for an unpredictable narrative in subsequent parts." Actually sobbing and it's like the ninth time I've read this lol

I got served this incredible advert over on twitter. It's a book summary written by AI but I bet the book is AI too. It's just so incredibly stupidly funny and every time I read it I start WHEEZING

I've never hit on a downside to this. Almost everyone I've shared sources with has been incredibly gracious. One senior professor went out of her way to thank me in her footnotes for sending her the German original of a source from my phd research notes.

Britain’s medical exodus is a warning sign for the NHS Doctors are increasingly prepared to travel abroad in search of better pay and conditions

This is a truly excellent piece by @stephenkb.bsky.social
Face it guys, you have to pay the doctors
www.ft.com/content/e263...

After 14 years in power, the Conservative party's record on law and order. From FT: "England’s prison network came within days of collapse on multiple occasions between autumn 2023 and the summer of 2024, according to a new report that chronicles 18 years of capacity crises in the system."

Red-lit bar with neon slogan Start with a beer, leave with a bear

New gay-bar slogan just dropped.

Joooke it’s some stupid adult soft-play centre next to St Paul’s

When anti-corruption campaigns become corrupted Events in Ukraine and Bulgaria show how easily such bodies can become politicised

Ivan Krastev in FT: ‘As thousands of angry citizens demonstrated in Kyiv, thousands of equally angry Bulgarians flooded the streets of Sofia protesting against the abuse of power by the nominally independent Bulgarian anti-corruption commission and demanding its closure’ on.ft.com/40OFU0Z

finally caved and googled Labubu. haven't been this disappointed by a meme since I found out what Hamilton was

Google’s healthcare AI made up a body part — what happens when doctors don’t notice? The basilar ganglia does not exist.

I don't think AI is ready for medicine but Google sure thinks otherwise www.theverge.com/health/71804...

Hulk Hogan, lying inexplicably sideways in his open coffin, being visited by a chihuahua dog, who looks distraught. The people behind the coffin do too

I'm sorry, but this may be the funniest Facebook AI slop I have ever seen. Bury me sideways in my coffin, brother. Let my dog see

In 1988, a fire at London King's Cross killed 31. The inquiry spurred years of investment. The London Underground now looks like this. As I say to NYers, there is no Tube stop dirtier than the cleanest NY subway station. Surely NY doesn't need a mass casualty event to find the motivation.

In the past 7 days: major power failure knocks out subway service in rush hour; flash flooding forces line suspensions and has commuters climbing out of stations; Clark St station closes after awning suddenly collapses.

[Johnson's formulating adult shampoo]

no. let them cry.

While I GLARED at her she described FT Weekend entirely inaccurately, FORGOT arguably (not that arguably) the UK’s most famous restaurant critic, declared that the client would “only get coverage digitally with influencers” and “national papers don’t care”.

Went to a proper restaurant for an Old School Lunch and on the table next to me close enough that I heard every word a food and drink PR was pitching a client about the launch of their new restaurant.
“We want to be in the FT”, they said.
“Well the FT doesn’t really do restaurants”, she said.

the scene from midsommar of a path with swedish women dressed in white with flower crowns and the duolingo owl saying “this is your last swedish lesson!”

gm bsky

Williams’s book is impaired by slapdash prose. His writing abounds with interminable, convoluted sentences that teem with digressions and then awkwardly limp toward disorienting conclusions. Here is one from the prologue: For non-whites, even though the mixed-race population has become the fastest-growing segment of the American demos and, in real terms, a disproportionate but statistically small and decreasing number of unarmed Black civilians were killed by police annually (typically between 15 and 25 per year from a population exceeding 40 million, according to The Washington Post’s “Fatal Force” database) — and indeed other quality-of-life markers have been equalizing for significant numbers of Black people since the civil rights movement — the death of [Trayvon] Martin followed by [Michael] Brown (regardless of the specific contingencies of that case), and a high-profile slate of videotaped police and vigilante killings that converged with the proliferation of camera-equipped smartphones and the pervasiveness of social media, thwarted any self-congratulatory sense of the inevitability of social progress still alive in the first half of Obama’s second administration. Huh? In addition to such passages, “Summer of Our Discontent” includes many distended excerpts — some spanning three pages — from not-so-obscure sources, including The Times. Midway through the book, Williams chides another writer on the race beat for propounding “an excruciatingly simplistic tale, fueled by a powerful unwillingness and incapacity to grapple with contemporary American racial and social complexity.” Regrettably, I know the feeling.

jesus christ this is an actual fisking

So, you've decided to complain about a paywall… You don't like encountering paywalls. Writers don't like getting social media complaints about paywalls. Let's talk about that.

“Junk articles produced for almost nothing, to get passing ad clicks was the end point of the advertising model of the internet. Now that AI exists, it can be extended even further. … The ad-driven model of publishing never worked all that well, but it’s truly broken now.”

UK is being ‘left behind’ on crypto, says George Osborne Former chancellor who now advises Coinbase says Rachel Reeves should set up a framework for stablecoins

This reminds we of one of a post I did on my old site, where I replaced every mention of "cyber" in an excruciating 2015 George Osborne "cyber is the future" speech with "spider".

He now has a shiny new word.

www.ft.com/content/2b55...

Entering second week of retirement and the ‘actually looking at the news they need me to come back and run everything’ phase.