Sonny Loughran™️

Sonny Loughran™️

@sonny101.bsky.social

I write about Britain for The Economist

140 Followers 257 Following 65 Posts Joined Aug 2024
1 month ago

Hi David! I'm writing a piece about BBC radio for The Economist and would love to ask you a few questions if you'd be up for it - please could you follow me back so I can DM you? Thanks!

0 0 0 0
1 year ago

Huge W for bluesky this

1 0 0 0
1 year ago
Post image

This is real ‘mad king’ stuff. “It was not immediately clear how or where the federal government intends to transport the water.”
www.latimes.com/environment/...

515 124 22 18
1 year ago

These are truly insane times

2 0 0 0
1 year ago
Post image

Insane thing for a White House Press Secretary to say

Trumpism is a Christian nationalist movement sorry not sorry

2 0 0 0
1 year ago

Authoritarians have always understood the power of information better than democrats

I wonder how much Trump/Musk social media strategy is informed by Russia successes (& otherwise) in the information war

Hard to see Musk (and X) these days as anything other than MAGA’s chief information warrior

2 0 0 0
1 year ago

Anne simply doesn’t miss

0 0 0 0
1 year ago
Preview
Can Europe Stop Elon Musk? He and other tech oligarchs are making it impossible to conduct free and fair elections anywhere.

American social media companies write the algorithms that determine what voters read; moderation systems are opaque; political advertising cannot always be tracked. Do European democracies, or any democracies, really have sovereign elections anymore?
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

2,071 793 86 70
1 year ago

He’s like an AI programmed to deliver the worst footballing opinions possible

3 0 0 0
1 year ago
Post image

On American Oligarchy and the threat thereof - I stumbled across an insane example of how wealth inequality has accelerated

Just 10 years ago, you needed 50 oligarchs to equal the wealth of bottom half of the United States.

Today you only need two - Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos

0 0 0 0
1 year ago

It’s classic Trump - not a direct threat of violence, but an obvious willingness to accept violence against his political opponents (the Jan 6th pardons being the most brazen example)

5 0 0 0
1 year ago

say it quietly but i think having trillionaires itself is probably a *bad thing*

0 0 0 0
1 year ago

The saddest thing about watching Musk’s self-radicalisation, that Harris touches on here, is the opportunity cost. The soon-to-be worlds first trillionaire is almost certainly going to put those resources towards some abject nonsense

0 0 1 0
1 year ago
Preview
The Trouble with Elon I didn’t set out to become an enemy of the world’s richest man, but I seem to have managed it all the same.

God I’ve been waiting for Sam Harris to spill the tea on his beef with Elon and it does not disappoint

open.substack.com/pub/samharri...

1 0 1 0
1 year ago

was great having you in as ever - come back soon !

2 0 0 0
1 year ago

Best nugget of info Bluesky has given me yet

0 0 0 0
1 year ago
Preview
Keir Starmer is about to get a taste of his own bitter medicine Labour is blind to the scale of the global Right-wing vibe shift, and the fury of the Trump administration

Fascinated by this train wreck of a column. Wrong, but wrong in myriad ways. A worldview that despises Britain, revels in its supposed failures, fantasises about completely implausible US sanctions on Britain & has no coherent view of geopolitics. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01...

169 24 15 0
1 year ago

Baller

0 0 0 0
1 year ago

Doing the lord’s work 🙏

2 0 0 0
1 year ago
Preview
US agency focused on foreign disinformation shuts down A leading US government agency that tracks foreign disinformation has terminated its operations, the State Department said Tuesday, after Congress failed to extend its funding following years of Repub...

This is bad - the West continues to lose the information war (in part) because we have managed to polarise the topic of disinformation itself

Peak times

www.france24.com/en/live-news...

0 0 0 0
1 year ago
YouTube
'Boots' by Rudyard Kipling - recited by Taylor Holmes YouTube video by Vizler András

I know nothing about poetry but I’m obsessed with the Kipling poem in the 28 Years Later trailer

It’s about the maddening effect of endless marching on soldiers in the Boer war

The recording is over 100 years old and its so haunting I literally can’t stop listening to it

youtu.be/s9RYG-iMdx0?...

0 0 0 0
1 year ago

Anyway if anyone wants to pay me to define the perfect pub for the 21st century I am literally right here and talented xx

0 0 1 0
1 year ago
Post image

He does have this weird idea that beer is better in a China mug?

Haven’t tried, probably won’t, sounds weird

Can’t get it all right

0 0 1 0
1 year ago
Post image

…in more ways the one

Orwell definitely split the G

0 0 1 0
1 year ago
Post image

Particularly interested in this part where he talks about pubs as community places and not just crack dens for alcohol

Also note his recognition that excluding children, in practice, means excluding women

With loneliness etc through the roof, he kinda nails it

Ahead of his time…

0 0 1 0
1 year ago
Post image Post image

We were talking about the joys of the old man boozer on R2 today and I was reminded of George Orwell’s incredible essay on the qualities of a great pub

a genuinely hilarious and insightful read on what seems like a trivial topic from the 🐐

0 0 1 0
1 year ago
Post image

Seen people dunking on this and though idk about dictators themselves being doctors, cognitively/emotionally speaking, authoritarianism is 100% associated with feelings of disgust (and therefore purification) that are rooted in an evolutionary aversion to disease etc

Soooo kind of a based take?

0 0 0 0
1 year ago

That makes so much sense for some reason I read it an act of charity to the women of Waterloo 🤡

0 0 1 0
1 year ago

Free for women

0 0 1 0
1 year ago

If you are the social media manager for a massive international organisation plz just don’t post this i am now on a prepping website buying essentials for my bugout bag

1 0 0 0