Ethan Plotkin

We have come full circle, people.

BBC viewers can access Mark Rutte's inner monologue by pressing the red button.

If The Founding Fathers Were Alive Today, They’d Be Too Fascinated By A Garbage Disposal To Do Anything Nowadays, it seems like our country is more divided than ever. It’s tougher and tougher to find something all Americans can agree on, and amid all this acrimony and infighting, one can’t help but wond...

theonion.com/if-the-found...

Robert Jenrick sacked from Tory shadow cabinet over ‘plotting’ to defect Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has removed figure seen as possible successor from the shadow cabinet

Robert Jenrick sacked from Tory shadow cabinet over ‘plotting’ to defect ft.trib.al/ckcMCLi

[Al Michaels calling the kick return from Dark Knight Rises] would you look at that. meanwhile you got uh. Ward. how do you figure

"Voters want contradictory things: low #prices when they shop, high #wages for themselves; not many immigrants but lots of cheap labour; rising house prices when they own and lower ones when their children want to buy." www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

Extremely funny to call the pope “holier-than-thou”

Bitter fight over 2020 Microsoft quantum paper both resolved and unresolved --The Register, 31 Jul 2025

2025 Headline of the Year nominee (July)

End of The Line: how Saudi Arabia’s Neom dream unravelled Mohammed bin Salman’s utopian city was undone by the laws of physics and finance

NEW: The End of the Line: the centrepiece of Saudi Arabia’s Neom gigaproject - a 500m tall, 170km long wall-like building intended ultimately to house 9 million people - can’t get out of the ground, say more than 20 former Neom architects, engineers and senior executives.
ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-l...

I can take a guess

What a cover

Israel seems more important — and less desirable — than ever for British Jews Amid rising antisemitism at home, our lifeboat abroad seems less attractive

My column this week: on a world in which your lifeboat seems ever more necessary- but ever more unappealing:

Lance st. Laurent: when you see this blatant anti-moon propaganda, consider the source The Sun: Super blood wolf moon may trigger the end of the world this weekend

It's profoundly saddening to read that AP will no longer be assigning or running book reviews because readers don't engage with them enough and they take too much effort to plan and assign. People complain about critics as gatekeepers; wait until all that's left is marketing.

The west ignores Rwanda’s dark side – and political prisoners like my mother pay the price | Rémy Amahirwa She was arrested after planning to run against Paul Kagame. It’s time democracies woke up to the true nature of his regime, says Rémy Amahirwa

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It's also just not true. Cyrus the Great is so revered in Jewish history that some considered him to the the messiah. The authors of the Talmud lived under the Sassanians and often had good relations with them (the Talmud loves king Shappur I). Israel was an ally of pre-Revolution Iran.

“Special thanks to our sponsor: Coinbase”

Who’s afraid of Nigel Farage? Plus: Rachel Reeves’ problems are piling up ahead of the autumn budget

Starmer v Farage and Reeves’s fiscal fix, dissected by the brilliant @stephenkb.bsky.social @chrisgiles.ft.com and @annasophiegross.bsky.social - plus hot @lucyfisher.ft.com baby news
www.ft.com/content/c005...

Trust in European Union at highest since 2007, poll shows Trust in the European Union and its institutions has risen to an almost two-decade high, a report released on Wednesday shows, as U.S. President Donald Trump upends global trade and foreign policy.

Trust in European Union at highest since 2007, poll shows reut.rs/4k9VQ5z

(Not about any of my bosses at the FT, to be clear!)

The end of this passage, from the @ftweekend.com essay, really hit home on.ft.com/3Za27pe

. . . It was, for example, a running joke at the Court that outsiders frequently mistook Souter and Breyer for each other. No one could really understand why this happened, because the two bore little resemblance. One day when Souter was making his usual solo drive from Washington to New Hampshire, he stopped for lunch in Massachusetts. A stranger and his wife came up to him and asked, "Aren't you on the Supreme Court?" Souter said he was. "You're Justice Breyer, right?" said the man. Rather than embarrass the fellow, Souter simply nodded and exchanged pleasantries, until he was asked an unexpected question. "Justice Breyer, what's the best thing about being on the Supreme Court?" The justice thought for a while, then said, "Well, I'd have to say it's the privilege of serving with David Souter."

From Jeffrey Toobin's 2008 book THE NINE, this remains the greatest Justice Souter anecdote I can possibly share. RIP.

OpenAI chief Sam Altman: ‘This is genius-level intelligence’ [FREE TO READ] The tech entrepreneur on the risks and opportunities of AI, his dispute with Elon Musk and why he has the ‘most important job maybe in history’

Good morning why not have lunch with Sam Altman. He's cooking on.ft.com/44qGt3J

watching baseball @jonbois.bsky.social

Kept trying to press the second button but it wouldn’t work

FT commenter 'grrrf' asking the important questions on.ft.com/3RwFiIn

Israel’s Dangerous Overreach in Syria Making an enemy of a potential new ally.

A good piece from two Israeli analysts on Israel's overreach in Syria: "Its approach resembles its efforts to create a security zone in southern Lebanon in the '80s and '90s—which resulted in a war of attrition that deepened Lebanese resentment." www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israe...

Map from The Economist showing the papal centre of gravity, calculated using the known or estimated birthplaces of 260 popes, weighted by their length of reign.

To be continued...
www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

Anxious Trading Partners Promise to Buy American to Stave Off Trump’s Tariffs Countries are offering to buy more American goods in a bid to eliminate their trade deficits with the U.S., but not everyone is splurging.

To try to stave of tariffs, Vietnam is expediting approvals of a $1.5 billion Trump Organization resort www.wsj.com/economy/trad...

No trade deficit with these guys. So I guess the US will just go for the simple 10% baseline tariff?