David Fickling

Grace Jones is only two years younger than Cher. Let that sink in.

Though I have a soft spot for Belgium’s Kamer van Volksvertegenwoordigers

And actually if you get past the banal familiarity, House of Lords is just insanely metal and Game of Thrones

Hard to beat Austria’s Nationalrat

www.chosun.com/english/mark...

Does this bag look black or gold to you?

I love his sweetly stilted delivery almost as much as the 5W lasers. Have watched a bunch of these with my science nerd son 🤓

The target market used to have everything they could want on just one of the US Virgin Islands

Though by the same rules I reckon Aus/NZ are entitled to claim Blackpink

They just invented the JCPOA

Mind blown by this photo of a 10-year-old Orson Welles from 1926:

Closer to 4x what Iraq’s population was in 2003!

Electric Vehicle Sales Boom as Ethiopia Bans Fossil-Fuel Car Imports The East African country is making use of cheap hydropower and Chinese electric vehicles to ditch the internal combustion engine.

‘Well, look, if I’m going to import the cars anyway, then I’d rather import less oil. We may as well import the one that cleans up local air quality and is cheaper to buy.’

The Great Story of the Extraordinary EV boom in Ethiopia www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Is this some sort of joke? 😡

That every government on earth (aside from professed theocracies) is functionally utilitarian is a wild outcome when you consider what an obscure weirdo Jeremy Bentham was.

“Murder Most Foul” was almost 60 years after Bob Dylan’s debut!

“Hurt” by Johnny Cash was nearly 50 years, and also wins the perennial “cover versions better than the original” question…

The Insurance Crisis Is About to Get Even Worse The Trump administration will soon make it the official policy of the US government that greenhouse gases don’t endanger Americans’ well-being and therefore don’t need federal regulation. Insurance co...

The EPA's decision to quit regulating emissions might be symbolic, but what it symbolizes if scary: a government that puts antiquated ideology and corporate profits over the health and welfare of its people

Gift link to my column for @opinion.bloomberg.com

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

“Still investigating” …

It’s not like he was speaking Voynich manuscript!

America has almost as many Spanish speakers as Spain does.

“Not since Michael Collins has a Cork kid done more to undermine the British establishment!” ☘️

My favourite subset of Morgan McSweeney coverage is Irish publications writing variants of “County Cork boy in the news for completely screwing up the British government”

The year is 2035. British foreign secretary Peter Mandelson is under pressure to resign for lobbying President Taylor Greene about BYD’s ongoing takeover of General Motors.

Sex and snacks, but no seat at the table: the role of women in Epstein’s sordid men’s club Files reveal a world of flattery and fratboy tones, where rich men are cultivated and women provide services

'The Epstein files reveal a patriarchy in action. This is a world where the men are rich and powerful, and the women are not. The emails showcase the private behaviour of a male ruling class, as they network, joke and trade information.'

Perhaps it was coincidental timing, but nothing underscores the collapse of the Washington Post like firing most of the Pulitzer prize winning #climate reporters the very same day as their opinion pages publishes a BS screed by climate misinformer Bjorn Lomborg.

My assumption from the start has been “blackmail on a massive scale” but I am yet to see a hint of where and who. Has any reporting that I missed turned up any clues yet?

Help me out here: has anything useful come out of the Epstein files yet about the enduring mystery of how, exactly, he made his money?

www.ft.com/content/a07b...

No, “gas” is the almost invisible blue line. The brown, “thermal”, is coal. India barely uses gas in the power grid.

There is a wonderful urban myth that this advert is the last directorial work of Orson Welles.

It’s got a ring of plausibility about it (Welles’ late career *was* pretty shit) but a while ago I repeated it on here asking for verification, and the person who started the rumour as a joke fessed up!

A sign saying “No spikes allowed beyond this point”, and for some reason the words are in completely unnecessary quotation marks.

Such a great quote. Can’t remember if it’s Voltaire, or Cicero, or WH Auden?

Yes, though I haven’t seen the term used much outside India and Pakistan, unless I am missing something? The structure of Discoms is far from universal, especially if you consider state ownership part of the model. Whereas BESS is increasingly the standard acronym worldwide now, IMO.

India can keep lakhs and crores as long as I can have BESS and CUF

Energy people: can we put “BESS” alongside “prepone” and “do the needful” as a notable coinage from Indian English? I am pretty sure I first saw the acronym cropping up in Indian energy discussions.