Ian Hall

India's snakebite crisis is killing tens of thousands every year A new report has found that 99% of healthcare workers in India face challenges administering antivenom.

50,000 fatalities a year - and perhaps more. Not as deadly as the awful roads (150,000+ per year) but still a lot of avoidable deaths. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Also evidence that essentially eliminating irregular immigration - as Australia has - doesn't, by itself, stop the radical right.

The biggest operation in a while, I think.

As someone posted the other day, we need to be thinking about mandating or allocating time consuming off line hobbies to the over-50s.

Lol

There is probably a good book to be written about how UK foreign policy lurches backwards and forwards between often risible moralism (remember the "ethical foreign policy"...) to near xenophobia without ever approaching a happy medium.

Middle aged white men (and I’m 49, so I’m in the demographic) absolutely need ridiculous Dad Hobbies or they get squirrely. I think if you’re can’t prove you have a preexisting Dad Hobby or 2 by age 45, you get entered into a national hobby draft and get assigned one. It would solve so many things.

Yeah...

Tesla bet big on Elon Musk. His politics continue to haunt it. Tesla struggles to regain its footing in the electric vehicle market, hindered by Elon Musk’s political activity, impacting its stock price and performance.

New: Tesla 4th quarter profit plunges 61% year-over-year; annual profit down 46%

the brand damage:
-1 million lost vehicle sales, per study
-Declining revenue, profits, deliveries in 1st half of '25
-Lower total production/deliveries than '24
-Lost crown as world's leading EV seller
wapo.st/3LYTef1

The Whitewashing Of Trump It Is Never His Fault When It Always Is: A Case Study

Just sent out this free piece. The response to the execution of Alex Pretti reveals how we have gotten into this mess. The anger is not directed at Trump, who caused this whole situation. open.substack.com/pub/phillips...

Xi Jinping will be pleased. A "new era" indeed. Yikes.

A chopping board? That’s…ominous…

Note too that if the EU gets this trade deal over the line, it will have done better than the first Trump admin, which failed to negotiate one, and the second one, which has so far failed to negotiate one.

US secy Scott Bessent ballistic over EU's trade deal with India, says ‘financing war against themselves' via Russian oil "Just to be clear again, the Russian oil goes into India, the refined products come out, and the Europeans buy the refined products,” Scott Bessent said| India News

This ranting and raving does not make the US look strong, regardless of the rights and wrongs. www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/f...

Sir Mark Tully obituary BBC correspondent and author whose sensitive reporting from India made him a revered public figure in the subcontinent

End of an era for some of us. RIP.

Suggestion: let’s have a Cathy Freeman Day. 25 September or nearest Monday. It can replace the problematic one… and we need more public holidays in the second half of the year.

Ha! I've never seen those clips. Fab.

Very much a read. It’s about regional Queensland, folks.

*Queensland outside Brisbane.

New Yorker cartoon by Ivan Ehlers: Want to watch coverage of the politicians encouraging fascism or the politicians doing absolutely nothing to stop it?

New Yorker cartoon by Ivan Ehlers

Yikes

China’s top general under investigation in latest military purge | CNN The Chinese military’s top general is being investigated for suspected serious violations of discipline and law the Defense Ministry said Saturday,

Zhang Youxia, the senior of the two vice chairs of the powerful Central Military Commission, is the latest figure to fall in a long-running purge of military officials.

Never change, universities.

The Trump Administration Is Publishing a Stream of Nazi Propaganda Government social-media managers have transformed official feeds.

A post-by-post dissection of the Nazi and neo-Nazi tropes used in U.S. government social media accounts. By @alibreland.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com.

Move over, democratic peace theory. Glittery condo peace theory has dropped.

Correct.

“Power that rests on the performed compliance of others is more fragile than it looks. The strong do what they can, until the moment they discover that “what they can” was always bounded by what others were willing to tolerate.”

I don't think we can rule out the possibility that these things are actually intended to tank the market and thereby facilitate another round of short selling by insiders - apart from being useful distractions, of course.

He isn't a well man.