Peter Hill

“How could this week possibly be worse than the last?

Oh…”

www.ft.com/content/fd1d...

Just finished (for now) a major project. A BlueSky thread describing the key distinctions I use to bring clarity to my own thinking as a press critic.

It's long (28 slides) but I tried to make it worth the trip. It ends with the people of Minnesota and their version of "citizen journalism."

"When in doubt, draw a distinction."

Not sure where he got it, but in grad school one of my teachers taught me that.

This (long) thread is about the key distinctions I rely on as a critic. There's a Twitter version from 2021. This one builds on that one.

I will post them one at a time. Ready?

Servants of the Mafia State Merrick Garland, Jamie Gorelick, and the truth

From 2023: "As a career criminal with deep ties in business, media, and organized crime as well as access to classified information, Trump now has more leverage over the American government than they do over him."
sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/servants-o...

“In the next few days a pall fell over the country. The quiet was chilling. We all knew that a bloodbath had taken place, though we didn’t know its true magnitude and perhaps never will.” A report from inside Iran by the novelist Salar Abdoh: www.equator.org/articles/the...

An Agent Revolt: Moltbook Is Not A Good Idea OpenClaw is a breakthrough AI assistant. Moltbook, its new social network for agents, is a security catastrophe waiting to happen. Here's why you should avoid it.

This piece is… scary: www.forbes.com/sites/amirhu...

On Polymarket, ‘privileged’ users made millions betting on war strikes and diplomatic strategy. What did they know beforehand? The prediction market’s disciples and CEO believe its an unbiased way of knowing the future. But experts warn users could reshape the world to win big

On Polymarket, ‘privileged’ users made millions betting on war strikes and diplomatic strategy. What did they know beforehand? www.theguardian.com/society/ng-i...

The age of the consumerist arts. Cuisine, fashion. These are deeplye valuable artes, but thei are also extremelye easye for the megarich to buy their waye into. Museums, theatre, literature are out of favor wyth oligarches who prefer art that doth placidly decorate their tables and eventes.

Should the Libs set up in opposition to the LNP in Queensland?
‘New Liberals’

The basic fallacy in chasing votes by being "tough on immigration" is that the modal American's position on the issue is "Deport the Bad ones and keep the Good ones," and they alone know who is which, and that simply does not translate into workable policy. So this kind of gestapo stuff (1/2)

Heard the sad news about Sly Dunbar on the school run of all places. I don’t even really know where to start with his immeasurable contribution to music and, well, everything, but watching him at work is best.

Here’s Sly and Robbie in action with Black Uhuru at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park in 1981

Andrej Tarkovskij talking to a small bird, Paris, 1986.

A discreet intellectual network has been reshaping the world for 70 years. Here's how A constant battle of ideas reshapes the world we live in, and few groups have been more successful in winning the war than the little-known Atlas Network.

#AtlasNetwork in #Auspol
Thanks to Gareth Hutchens

#NZpol

www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...

Happy birthday to John Cooper Clarke. Here's Beasley Street, performed with The Invisible Girls including Vini Reilly on guitar. It's taken from the 1980 Granada TV documentary "Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt" which you can watch in full at
📺▶️ youtu.be/tYK1-AJ4BSU

This woman speaks for the majority of Americans. 🙌🙏🫶👇

Verification (establishing truth), Deliberation (arguing about it), and Accountability (binding power to it). When these work, you have substance. When they break, you slide into performance, and eventually, simulation, and people recognise this, even if they don't use a shared terminology.

Opinion | State Terror Has Arrived

State terror has arrived, by M. Gessen, NYTimes gift article link. "It’s only natural that our brains struggle to find logic in what we are seeing. There is a logic, and this logic has a name. It’s called state terror." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/o...

Four images of 10 years of transformation in Paris: 2016–2026.
@annehidalgo.bsky.social will no longer be mayor in March 2026, but this vision of a Paris for life must live on.
Cities are places of solidarity, kindness and well-being in an increasingly authoritarian and brutal world. We need it!

White Americans are learning once again that the *only* thing that has ever made you safe from fascism is being willing to sacrifice non-white people. That is your contract with white supremacy. "Give us someone else so it won't be you."

ARTE

For Jim Moir/Vic Reeves' birthday, a reminder it's thirty years this year since this advert.

A picture of the Mary Tyler Moore statue in downtown Minneapolis, depicting the iconic moment from the show where she throws her hat in the air. But the hat has been covered over with a protesters cardboard sign, reading “FUCK ICE.”

On a downtown street in Minneapolis, as people stream out from the massive march, Mary Tyler Moore says “fuck ice.”

‘Comrade, I have always lived to smash Tories, and I am only sorry it has taken this long for my plans to succeed’

For the regime and right-wing billionaires, the value of national media is what it *doesn't* produce.

🚀🚀🚀

If you've heard me cite the Yeats poem, The Second Coming, to describe what Trump is doing then you'll enjoy this little bit of genius as much as I did...

Hard to imagine who they think is their audience with this.
Things must be in a very bad way at 7:30, and yes,
I hope things improve for them.

a young girl stood on a wet cobbled street, she is clasping a cat tightly and laughing. A woman looks out a doorway behind her.

Jean Phillippe Charbonnier, Girl and Cat, Roubaix, France, 1958

state-sponsored child trafficking

Isaac Herzog. Gosh, that name's familiar.

Is that the same Herzog who justified the collective punishment of Palestinians? "It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true."

Surely we wouldn't welcome *him* here.