Opinion | What Hulk Hogan Left Behind

The NYT has a heavy house style that prevents me from using more, shall we say, colorful, language to describe Hulk Hogan but I think I still got my central point across here www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/o...

"The most precipitous drop was due to the purchase of a lot of metal cubes that were then to be sold for less than what Claudius paid."

I'd read a complete history of public perceptions of the Epstein case but I think basically: few people had heard of Epstein until 2018, when the Miami Herald noticed the weirdly lax treatment he got for shockingly terrible crimes. Public outrage then pressured prosecutors into bringing new charges

1. Qe5. Then black must play 1. ... Qc5 (otherwise 2. Qxd5). 2. Qxg7 Rf8. 3. Qxh7 and white has won 2 pawns. But I feel like there's something more exciting to do than Qxh7.

Stephen Miller Is an Immigration Hypocrite. I Know Because I’m His Uncle. If my nephew’s ideas on immigration had been in force a century ago, our family would have been wiped out.

🚨This is 💯 worth your time

“I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country”

www.politico.com/magazine/sto...

Well, obviously, the biggest problem was that a person was murdered. But the biggest systemic problem that could actually be addressed was adults not talking to kids. Fucked up kids will always exist. Just focusing on the "fucking-kids-up-mechanism-du-jour" won't stop the next one.

France to use UK drama Adolescence to teach teenagers about toxic masculinity French education ministry follows Britain and Netherlands in incorporating Netflix hit into school curriculums

The whole "show Adolescence to kids" thing is really weird. The biggest problem in that show was parents and teachers not having a clue. It should be compulsory viewing for school governors, not kids. "Is this happening in your school? How do you know?"

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

I thought this was a parody headline, but it's real.

www.telegraph.co.uk/money/earn-3...

I’m a fisherman. Starmer’s sold me out Tony Heinemann accuses PM of using fishermen as ‘pawns’ in negotiations and hammering another ‘nail in the coffin’ of the industry

Funny, I searched through the telegraph archive, and I couldn't locate any "I'm a student/exporter/farmer/touring musician/traveller/scientist. Johnson sold me out" headlines.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05...

As well as the White Paper, the Home Office published a lot of very useful research yesterday.

Funnily enough, this chart didn't make it into the White Paper.

[NB median PAYE earnings for all employees was £28K]

www.gov.uk/government/p...

If that log scale chart is correct then he has not really outperformed the S&P since 1995. What changed in 1995?

Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Just some basic fact-checking would be nice.

Anyway, I wrote about Eostre here:

florencehrs.substack.com/p/eostre-pag...

Twitter post asking: Should we be told where we can walk out dogs? Yes or No Above a screenshot of a news headline: 'This is an Islamic area now. Don't walk your dogs here': Police probe sign in east London park

Are Muslims really banning dogs in parks? 🤔

Let’s look at this perfect example of how rage baiting works, and how disinformation spreads, sticks, and fuels division, even years after being debunked…

🧵1/22 (1/1)

Tariffs xkcd.com/3073

Video Shows Aid Workers Killed in Gaza Under Gunfire Barrage, With Ambulance Lights On (Gift Article) The U.N. has said Israel killed the workers. The video appears to contradict Israel’s version of the incident, which described the vehicles as “advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency ...

Video obtained by my colleague Farnaz Fassihi shows how the IDF deliberately attacked, over several minutes, a convoy of ambulances and other emergency vehicles in #Gaza. #Israel wrongly claimed that the vehicles drove without emergency signals and headlights. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/w...

Will St Pierre and Miquelon gain more from the publicity from being the highest tariffed territory than it loses from the tarrifs?

YouTube video by Gregory Mullins Claude Malhuret, Senator of the French Republic, speaks the truth about what is happening in the US

ICYMI
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmDV...

🧵 Yesterday I shared my views on how disordered discourse has captured the US state and the risk of that happening elsewhere, but I don’t want to leave you hanging without proposing a solution.

How Temu sellers dodge millions in tax — by pretending to be UK firms Rogue traders on the Chinese platform grab details of innocent British small businesses to avoid VAT — but the government has a simple way to close the loophole

Temu sellers dodge millions in tax — by pretending to be UK firms

Rogue traders grab details of innocent British small businesses to avoid VAT.

Billions of public revenue lost.

Tax dodges result in unfair competition, threaten jobs.

Make platforms liable for lost VAT.
archive.ph/cmiJZ

Why do we need "innovative proposals to generate the funds"? If this is worth doing, surely it's worth raising income tax to do it?

Ww2 top rate was over 90% which is unnecessarily high.

The test for a policy that increases spending should be: do you still think we should do this if we pay for it, and just it, by a general increase across all current taxation, not just the taxes that you don't pay.

The default way that we should pay for something new is to distribute the burden proportionally to how we pay for things now.

Advocating increasing other people's taxes (left wingers) or a reducing spending (right wingers) is just exploiting a crisis to fight a different political battle.

#bbcqt: "If we increase defence spending, where should the money come from?"

A half-penny on income tax.

If the world has changed and we need to spend more on the military then we have to pay for it. Collective actions are, sooner or later, paid for by taxation. #ukpolitics

Charts showing the marginal effect on lifetime earnings of improving a GCSE result by 1 grade at each grade boundary for Maths, Science and English

The authors say that they cannot determine causality, i.e. the results do not show whether it's the grade itself or the ability to get the grade that makes the difference.

Although the peaks at the D/C (4/5) "pass/fail" boundarys suggests it could be the grades themselves.

A one-grade improvement in [one GCSE] is associated with an
average increase in the present value of lifetime earnings of £8,500. It's £14,500 in maths.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/60c36f...

If recent events mean that we should increase defence spending then we should (partly) fund it using the main revenue-raising mechanisms. Income tax needs to go up.

Proposing that we cut increase niche taxation is just as opportunistic as proposing cutting other public spending.

Here's why Trump's "VAT is a tariff" claim is beyond stupid. But also why America's *lack* of VAT puts it at an unfair disadvantage.

Does it get better? Is there some kind of sensible explanation for this parallel world with terrible maths?

Would anyone have written a TV series about painters in which no-one was allowed to think about colour? Or a series about physics where no-one could think about energy?

Also, maybe the bit where the "best maths grad student in 30 years" puts "prime numbers" into a library search engine. Or the bit where he says that flowers usually have 3,5 or 13 petals, which are all primes (conveniently missing 8). Or the whole idea that you could suppress prime number research.