Alex von Tunzelmann

Glasgow Central Fire Sparks Travel Chaos Across the UK A major fire beside Glasgow Central has shut Scotland’s busiest station, triggering nationwide disruption and raising urgent questions over UK rail resilience.

Awful news about Glasgow Central, I'm still hoping the station itself escaped serious damage.
But while we're here, can anyone spot the problem with the news photo below, from thetraveler.org/glasgow-cent...?
We've really got to STOP using AI to fake things.

love how we killed the old, frail anti-nuke ayatollah just to have him replaced with his young, healthy son who wants nukes and who just had his father, mother, wife, and child murdered on the same day by his mortal enemy. surely this will bring peace to the region

Trump's decision to bomb Iran is now the greatest windfall to the Russian war effort on record. If it continues, it might save the Russian war economy.

Things look grim in the markets right now, but at least the U.S. economy wasn’t already being propped up by a massive speculative AI bubble that is highly sensitive to rising energy costs.

A handicap blue and white painted sign on the asphalt of a parking space. The symbols are meant to be a pregnant women and a baby stroller, but it doesn't look like that. It looks like pac man being killed with scissors next to a dancer

Twerkers at the barbeque get priority parking 🫡

gonna be so cool to watch the government try to explain and implement gas rationing by odd-even days to 2026 America

His Instagram is STUNNING

It’s marvellous. I highly recommend it

Swanky Jerry on the cover of Atelier Magazine rocking a yellow suit, leopard hat and monkey fur cape

Swanky Jerry as a hot bejewelled matador

Swanky Jerry on a plane in a black Tuareg style ensemble

Swanky Jerry in a turban and sensational wrap

This is now a Swanky stan account

Swanky Jerry in an immaculate white suit and jewelled cap

Swanky Jerry doing a kind of Michael Jackson meets Muammar Gaddafi but make it sequinned

Swanky Jerry giving Prince does Bridgerton in rhinestone cowboy boots

Swanky Jerry serving bedazzled Bram Stoker’s Dracula at the Met Gala

If you need cheering up, I’ve just watched a season and a half of Young Famous and African on Netflix. It’s exquisite. The cast are all the reality TV dream of wildly needy & emotionally volatile, but the breakout superstar is Swanky Jerry, one of the most fabulously dressed men I’ve ever seen

A far right protestor holds up a sign reading "we are Jeffrey Epstein"

There was a far-right protest against mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York yesterday and well, that's quite the sign

Oh totally. He could go with “we were trying to do right and by contrast this isn’t even trying to pretend to be right,” but maybe even that isn’t enough to hold it together for him at this point.

Yes. Those of us who protested were right. He was wrong, & his judgment was stupid & abhorrent. I think he’s spent the intervening decades in a profound & tortuous state of denial about this, & it’s fragile enough to need constant maintenance, which is why he’s spoken now bsky.app/profile/jonn...

Aside from all the grift, I wonder if there really is something psychological in Blair, part messianic, part dogmatic, part self protective, that means if he admits his role in the Iraq war was a horrendous error & he is responsible for that, his entire sense of self will collapse like Jenga bricks

It is absolutely insane that the US appears to have targeted desalination plants first – putting them onto the board. Iran seems to have already retaliated against one in Bahrain. This is one of the most obvious ways this could spiral.

Oh thank you! I missed that - will look it up.

Oh sorry, meant to say thanks to @bigbamboo.bsky.social for that link!

Lol. Yeah, this feels a bit beyond “influenced” bsky.app/profile/otto...

Oh for sure. It’s just the similarity of the language.

I’m fascinated to know how many people received the instructions and what they said! bsky.app/profile/alex...

I’d love to see the instructions because they don’t even seem to have done much of “please rewrite this in language that sounds vaguely like you”

I started by noticing a meme on Insta: “you live in [Gulf State], aren’t you scared? No, I know who will protect us”, plus heroic music & slo-mo footage of the relevant absolute monarchs. Lots of parodies - some well-chosen slo-mo footage of Starmer & Merz falling over, etc - but plenty are sincere

I expect this sort of thing from hosted influencers of course, but am struck by it also coming from some people who are usually rather more independent thinkers and/or not political at all.

I have been wondering about the memes/messaging from ordinary people in the Gulf States. A lot of extremely similar language about being “grateful” to “our government who protects us” plus slamming “the west” for “spreading misinformation” etc. Just influenced or more proactively coordinated?

It’s already happening. Iran attacked a desalination plant in Bahrain.

This war has to end immediately. If it turns into a water war we will be dealing with a whole different level of a humanitarian catastrophe across the region.

aje.news/64yl8m?updat...

The King is supposed to be visiting the USA *next month*. This is the definition of a diplomatic nightmare. In all seriousness, I would urge him to pull a sickie.

It is weird to watch even the relatively moderate figures on the British right, Dale is normally wrong but he's not bonkers, completely radicalise themselves into a position of pro-Trump, pro-war extremism out of a combination of expediency, partisan loyalty and Twitter.

I really do not want the consequences of Trump's actions but in a way my brain *needs* them to happen because it simply can't be healthy the way we keep living in this state of "nothing really matters ever"

This is no different from Putin saying MH17 was shot down by Ukraine or Assad saying rebels gassed themselves.

Get ready to be annoyed when petrol prizes go up and a) a bunch of politicos declare the government's poll ratings have gone down because Starmer didn't go in with the US on Iran and b) a bunch of politicos who support the war blame the government for increased energy costs.