Jim

(Sorry to be so philosophical at this time of the morning.)

They're driven by something inside their own heads that they didn't put there (as are we all).

It's also not the first time it's been done.

At least the article is getting taken apart in the comments.

Government votes to allow 100% faith selection by new state schools An amendment to keep the 50% cap on faith-based admissions in all new schools was voted down by the Government at Committee Stage for the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill after it wrongly claimed...

We don’t need MORE faith schools with the power to select 100% of their pupils based on religion. This does not promote diversity – it undermines it. Faith-based selection segregates children by religion, exacerbates racial division, and reinforces economic inequality.
humanists.uk/2025/02/06/g...

Around 35% of SpaceX’s revenue comes directly from the federal govt.

Less than 1% of NPR’s budget comes from the federal govt.

Well that's true.

I guess now is a good time to remind folks there is a massive glut of PV solar panels just lying in US warehouses that don’t need to cross any borders and incur additional duties to start delivering more energy to American consumers and businesses.

🔌💡

Yeah, they should all call him out for what he is, then sit back and watch him destroy the UK economy in a fit of childish pique.

1. If Trump runs out of immigrants to persecute, I suspect the next target for his performative sadism will be people with disabilities. Already, without a shred of evidence, he has blamed the air crash on disabled air traffic controllers, with horrible, stereotyping slurs about their disabilities.🧵

Word of the day is one I may have mentioned (frequently): a ‘snaccident’ is the inadvertent eating of an entire packet of biscuits.

i think it would be really cool if we had a way of evaluating different claims about reality using empirical evidence to see which, if any, is true

I can’t speak for armed forces but the other things he highlighted here, scientists, engineers and universities, have all been categorically and demonstrably damaged directly by Brexit AND by the disastrous effect it has had on the UK economy and its priorities. I can never forgive such destruction

That's blue collar workers in general though isn't it. You might as well say we should shun all products produced in the US because some of the workers voted republican.

There's no actual evidence for that though is there? We have no idea of their political views as far as I know.

This is a really tricky one. On the one hand, the multitude of Tesla employees are not responsible for Musk's antics, but on the other hand every Tesla sold is more cash lining his pockets and helping him carry out his nasty agenda.

So right. It seems every generation thinks the best times were when they happened to be in their prime. Funny that.

Andrew Carnegie and the 19th-century ‘robber barons’ have lessons for today’s oligarchs about the responsibilities of wealth The 19th-century industrialists were called ‘robber barons’ – but they did more to improve society than many of today’s super-rich.

We’re in a new Gilded Age - which sounds great, but the Robber Barons are back.
And this time, they’re more selfish than ever, as Prof Tobias Jung, St Andrews University, writes:

theconversation.com/andrew-carne...

Where do you find your news? Social media serves us up an increasingly skewed perspective on the world. Some of our traditional media is extremely politically biased.
I like @theconversation.com - written by expert academics; curated but not politically steered by editors:
theconversation.com/uk

some ways to generate electricity

A) use sunlight to drive photosynthesis in plants, let plants die, wait ~100 million years, dig up fossilized plants, burn plants, use heat to boil water, use steam to drive a rotating turbine, use generator to make electrons

B) use sunlight to make electrons

Time to dust off my favourite astrology quote: "I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re sceptical." Arthur C Clarke.

Perceived self-interest?

The scientific method served humanity well for hundreds of years but it was rendered obsolete in 2013 with the discovery of Vibes

I did not anticipate how quickly people would move to comply with Trump. Makes it much easier for an aspiring authoritarian when so many potential obstacles are removed preemptively - billionaires bend the knee, Meta changes its policies, Wray resigns, Barr resigns, DOJ drops the cases against Trump

Starmer's best moment as PM And the Powellisation of conservative thought

Have written about Starmer's speech- his best moment yet as PM. He implicitly identified what sits at the heart of this story: the emergence of a common UK/US online right, headed by the radicalised Musk.

It is making extremist, until recently fringe politics mainstream in British conservatism.

I'm booked in for day surgery in a couple of weeks and I'm half expecting to get a call saying it's cancelled. At least I don't have the flu yet!

It's not about Musk, it's about what the idiot followers in this country will do, it's about main stream media constantly bringing Musk, Farage & Reform into daily news cycles, it is influencing a lot of idiot minds in this country & it will only get worse, so much so to influence elections here.

It turns out that Farage was right; foreigners were coming for his job.

I think the answer is probably that the inventors of religions with a supposed after life knew they wouldn't win any new recruits by claims of a life before death, so they didn't bother with it.

Warning: the UK government's hydrogen plan isn’t green at all, it’s another oil industry swindle | Kevin Anderson and Simon Oldridge A taxpayer-funded drive for ‘blue’ hydrogen is good news for fossil-fuel lobbyists, but bad news for the climate crisis, say climate academics Kevin Anderson and Simon Oldridge

'Blue hydrogen' is hydrogen made from natural gas, the friendly-sounding name for methane—a highly potent greenhouse gas.

The fossil fuel industry hopes to inject it into the gas grid for heating homes.

But it’s as bad as coal for the climate, as @kevinclimate.bsky.social and I explained here.