Bob

Mad, right? I too - 72, declining health, compromised lungs - had to pay 90 quid too. So will my daughter, who teaches in a secondary school. Surely teachers, front-line NHS guys should be a shoo-in right? It's surging again, who needs a collapsed lung AND and collapsed NHS?

This is the way.

JB Pritzker also talks about his inability to get any top Trump officials on the phone, probably because they *want* this to be experienced as an invasion. He explains why this could make law enforcement officials on both sides *less* safe. Total dereliction. 3/

newrepublic.com/article/2016...

Trump Wants to Take Over Cities. Influencers Are Giving Him the Fuel to Do It The Trump administration has built its own content mill to justify its law-and-order immigration agenda.

NEW: Trump Wants to Take Over Cities. Influencers Are Giving Him the Fuel to Do It

Wrote a bit about the content mill for consensus the Trump administration has created to justify its law-and-order immigration agenda.

More here:
www.wired.com/story/trump-...

Why does the Arctic matter to Britain? The Big Ask | No. 41.2025

🧊 ‘The Arctic will continue to heat up, literally and figuratively, and 🇬🇧 relative proximity means that all of this will demand domain surveillance, infrastructural sustenance and analytical scrutiny,’ says @klausdodds.bsky.social, @randeurope.org

#BigAsk #BritainsWorld

MI6’s new chief aims to restore British influence in Middle East Blaise Metreweli, 48, is the youngest ever boss of the Secret Intelligence Service

Dr Dan Lomas @sandbaggerone.bsky.social recently contributed to this @thetimes.com piece on the priorities of the new MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli

Read it here 🔗 tinyurl.com/4puhmcud

Find out more about Dan and his research on intelligence services 🔗 nottingham.ac.uk/politics/people/daniel.lomas

In academia, the pinnacle of achievement is a pdf no one can access and I think that's beautiful

NYT headline: "Rutgers Expert on Antifa Tries to Flee to Spain After Death Threats" subheadline: "Mark Bray was teaching courses on antifascism. Turning Point USA accused him of belonging to antifa, which he denies. His flight to Spain was canceled abruptly on Wednesday night."

you'd think a prominent news outlet like the New York Times might mention that "antifa" isn't an actual organization in a long story about antifa, but nope!

and the subhead helps props up a false claim this professor was up to something seedy as something up for debate

Some people in Scotland will never get gender clinic appointment on 224-year waitlist Revealed waiting times of all GICs in UK: Most Trans+ people in the UK will wait more than a third of their adult life to get an appointment, and some will never receive care

Most Trans+ people in the UK will wait more than a third of their adult life to get their first appointment at an NHS gender clinic, and some will never receive care, QueerAF can reveal 👇

www.wearequeeraf.com/gender-clini...

Re-read @timjacobwise.bsky.social's essay “The Face of American Terrorism is White,” available in the compilation Dispatches from the Race War (@citylightsbooks.bsky.social, 2020). Wise lists 90+ “far-right extremists” by name—quite a rebuke to Musk’s claim that “the left is the party of murder.”

Nicely done

Curious Reindeer and Hungry Polar Bears: Warming Is Upending an Arctic Island

“Their data tells a clear story. The ice is forming later, melting earlier and getting thinner each year, and the snow cover is lighter. What was once a glacier 17 years ago has melted into the sea. As the ice disappears, more heat gets absorbed by the dark fjord water, contributing to warming”

Inside billionaire Peter Thiel’s private lectures: Warnings of ‘the Antichrist’ and U.S. destruction In leaked recordings of private lectures by tech billionaire Peter Thiel he argued that “the Antichrist” is likely to take the form of a critic of technology.

😏

Thiel said: "“​​It’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money...An incredible machinery of tax treaties, financial surveillance, and sanctions architecture has been constructed.”"

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

it's wild that R, the ubiquitous statistical computing language, was co-created by a Māori prof (Ross Ihaka) — and yet the vast majority of scientists who use R don't know

this is like inventing the toaster. possibly the largest impact of a single member of an indigenous community on modern science

Judge blocks Trump from deploying troops in Illinois for now Officials in Oregon and Illinois had challenged the Trump administration’s push to dispatch the National Guard in both states.

“I’m trying to put this delicately,” Perry said. “There has been evidence submitted that the very presence of federal agents, that the way they’re interacting with the populace, is itself the cause of violence.”

{ gift article } wapo.st/4nJP5sQ

The following is REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised.

My Bloody Valentine

Your bar trivia team excels at music from 1975 through 2003 and at world events outside those years. You rarely feel more alive than on long drives at night, but your back can't handle it these days. You have, unironically, played Talking Heads for a toddler.

The Smile

When you picked up Autumn from the airport after her semester abroad, you put on Bending Hectic, and let the RAV4 carry you both home for the summer. "It's Traveling Wilburys for Radioheads" she said as you parked, "and I love that for you.

Mekons

Sure, you're still down for a whiskey drink, a vodka drink, a lager drink, or a cider drink, but what you learned from your mates, & what you taught yer kids, is if a Tory comes round to the local pub, you throw the empties at 'em til they leave

What Your Favorite Sad Dad Band Says About You The War on Drugs You make your own paella and take super long naps on Saturday. Like over two hours, consistently. You prefer the smallest possible...

Can't stop thinking about the McSweeney's Sad Dad Bands, (first published January 14, 2022.)

Back on Twitter, I started a thread of my own riffs on Sad Dad Bands on January 17, 2022. Here is that thread, recreated.
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wha...

Calling law students interested in public law: the ALBA mooting competition is now under way. Details here. Academics/practitioners - please pass on. adminlaw.org.uk/event/the-ca...

This is terrifying!

ICE breaks into this woman’s car in the pick-up line at West Loop Elementary school in Chicago and detains her before she can pick her kids up from school. (They were eventually let go after showing their documents)

This is Trump’s America.

The Boat Strikes Are Just the Beginning What the U.S. government is portraying as a drug mission may be about a lot more.

NEW: The Trump administration is portraying its boat-bombing campaign in the Caribbean as an anti-drug mission. The evidence suggests it's about a lot more, report @nancyayoussef.bsky.social, Gisela Salim-Peyer and @jonlemire.bsky.social
www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

We are launching a new Undergraduate Network for IR and Foreign Policy with British Foreign Policy Group 🎉

For undergrads across the UK interested in IR, diplomacy, and foreign policy 🌟

Join our first meeting to find out more about the network 👉 https://ow.ly/4nNu50X8uR7

Got my first book deal by tweeting at an author "someone should write a book like this" and he responded "you should write a book like that" and tagged his acquisitions editor.

And those are now official government records that must be retained and can be FOIAed.

Great work, Pam.

The flawed Silicon Valley consensus on AI Serious questions remain about what will happen if we do — and don’t — replicate human intelligence

The flawed Silicon Valley consensus on AI - excellent column by @johnthornhill.bsky.social. "Instead of hyperventilating about AI ushering in a new era of abundance, wouldn’t it be better to drop the rhetoric and build AI systems for more defined, realisable goals?" www.ft.com/content/3474...

I love how Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House and #2 in line for the presidency, is always like, “What? News?! I never read or hear anything that happens in the world, anywhere. I’m totally offline. What even is ‘social media’? They play news all day on TV!? Wow! That’s a surprise!”