Megan Darby

"Since the first messenger who told Tigranes that Lucullus was coming had his head cut off for his pains, no one else would tell him anything, and so he sat in ignorance while the fires of war were blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him."

-- Plutarch, ≈ 100 A.D.

1 in 3 doctors were born overseas.

1 in 2 builders were born overseas.

1 in 6 nurses were born overseas.

1 in 4 transport workers were born overseas.

1 in 7 UK business founders were born overseas.

1 in 5 university academics were born overseas.

The UK would be screwed without them.

i still have the Sunday Times mug that was my only compensation (stolen) for saving a seasoned journalist from embarrassment. in the same week, I watched agog as the foreign desk cooked up a conspiracy theory that DSK (remember him?) was set up

This slope on this chart is INSANE

on a week's work experience at the Sunday Times back in the day, an education correspondent asked me if the data in a spreadsheet showed exams getting easier. it didn't. to his credit, he didn't try to force the story but I was shocked at the open innumeracy from a journo with a major platform

think this is sort of interesting as actually.....no you probably didn't need to do "more research" into it? you just had to trust the state and local authorities to know better than you when it came to vaccinating your child? not good that the internet has killed faith in institutions!

the cost of #notzero

Joint statement on Gaza from AFP, AP, BBC News and Reuters

All famines are man-made, all famines are political. Historians of empire and humanitarianism have known this forever. Gaza is not starving, Gaza is being starved, by Israel, and this starvation is enabled by our government and by every other government that does not step in to force food and aid.

Aid Groups Blame Israel’s Gaza Restrictions for ‘Mass Starvation’

The distance between what is in happening Gaza, fully backed with US dollars and political support, and the reaction of American politicians who by and large just don’t seem to care or support it is just completely brain-breaking.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/w...

A front page of the Guardian newspaper is entirely given over to the famine in Gaza. A large photo shows a mother holding her emaciated child’s body. The banner headline says, “We have faced hunger before, but never like this'

Tomorrow’s Guardian front page

I am pretty professionally hardened to this stuff but "children tell their parents they want to go to heaven because at least there is food" is a) not a sentence I ever want to read again and b) not the sort of thing staff casually throw in a major public situation report

what a weird choice to advertise that you're harassing people who provide a service other people value

gov: "would that takeaway pizza taste so delicious if you knew an *asylum seeker* delivered it?"

normal person: "er, yes actually"

'Aker BP said it had left the advisory panel after finding its “ability to influence” the standard “limited”.' 🤨

= FINANCIAL TIMES 'Net zero' emissions standard paused as Shell quits Energy group experts left after draft guidance on global warming plans 'did not reflect the industry view' Shell said the industry standard should provide companies with 'sufficient flexibility' to become net zero by 2050 © Peter Boer/Bloomberg

Shell and other fossil-fuel companies have abandoned the Science Based Targets initiative—a six-year-long attempt to define a global, corporate “net zero” emissions strategy—after being told that such a standard would require them to stop developing new oil and gas fields. 😶

The Israeli government continues to deny there is starvation at their hand in Gaza. This is nonsense. The evidence is there for all to see.

An unbearably sad statement from the Editorial Committee (SDJ) of the AFP news agency, please read:

"Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die.
AFP has been working with 1 writer, 3 photographers and 6 videographers, all freelance, in the Gaza Strip… /1

loved a suitable boy to death as a teenager. read it several times. as an adult... the maan storyline is *problematic*

I followed a Nigella pastry recipe where the filling matched the pastry perfectly. it was precisely written for the size of ready-made pastry you get in supermarkets here. blew my mind

181. Stop burning fossil fuels.

One like, one opinion about how to solve climate change.

congratulations on the impending second child!

Yep. Normalize just getting renewables done as a job!

Should have wide-eyed idealists who do not know how anything works but want to Do Good, finance folk who see everything as a series of revenue flows and barely know what they work in, incompetent activists and horrible fossil lobbyists.

Brazilian president: "I'd like to say something to the American people; If Trump was Brazilian and did what he did at the Capitol, he'd be on trial in Brazil for violating the Constitution. He would be arrested if he had done that."

(ht: @ronxyz.bsky.social)

It’s One of the Weirdest Mistakes in Movie History. I Spent Months Investigating How It All Went Wrong. The story behind cinema’s most mysterious bird.

I am enjoying this article via @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com 's Substack about a bird, or rather three birds, used as a plot point in the 2000 Charlie's Angel film and the solution to a 25-year-old mystery.

slate.com/culture/2025...

How fringe is this position? YouGov found only 5% believe the climate is *not* changing last November. 71% said it's manmade, 15% said changing but not manmade.

Striking chart in new Economist.

Just look at lung cancer's mortality rate rise then fall

Corresponds almost exactly with the lobbying efforts by Big Tobacco to undermine efforts to limit their product's deadly impact - followed by when their influence waned.

Now need same for fossil fuels

1/ In one more chapter of "Brazil is hosting COP30, but environmental destruction is still the norm at home", our Congress passed legislation that will destroy environmental licensing and allow harmful industries to "self-license". We've named it the Devastation Bill.

Musk’s Neuralink falsified federal forms, claims to qualify for racial diversity program The company, owned by the world's wealthiest man, says it is a "small disadvantaged business"

BREAKING

On April 24, Elon Musk's Neuralink falsely self-certified as a "small disadvantaged business" on a federal filing, a designation that qualifies the company for preferential treatment as part of a racial and ethnic diversity initiative.

hopefully the journo led on that option because it was the easiest to understand, not because it's the frontrunner?!