Toby Vogel 🇪🇺

Apple Weather not mincing words

Oh no! The secret is out!

Silly me, mistaking the Post for a newspaper

Fair. Like I said, not a human rights expert.

Not an expert but if the Iranian vessel was unarmed and Hegseth’s warfighters knew this, wouldn’t this be clearly a war crime? You know, on top of the crime of waging an unprovoked illegal war?

A glimpse of what an absolute nightmare Beirut must be right now

also serious question: why does the Post piece read like PR copy?

Minab school bombing: how the worst mass casualty event of the Iran war unfolded – a visual guide A strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh school during the US-Israeli bombing campaign killed up to 168 people. The Guardian has pieced together the incident and its aftermath using verified footage and images f...

To be fair, I had missed this, from the Guardian

Today in insane headlines

And it’s no coincidence that this reporting didn’t come from the Times or the Post or CNN, who’ve all underplayed the story

New reporting makes the most horrific event of this war to date so much worse: girls’school in Iran hit by a double-tap strike right out of Israel’s Gaza playbook

We were supposed to get an SMS from Cyprus's civil protection at 7pm and none of my friends here got one. Not exactly reassuring.

Because the first Sykes-Picot was such as success

Hegseth is PATHETIC

Does this administration have any idea how ridiculous they look to the rest of the world?

I think much of the criticism of Starmer's position is overheated. But I also think this notion of purely "defensive" operations by the US out of UK bases, and by the UK directly, is pretty meaningless in the real world

Greetings from Cyprus

And by “support” I mean cynically using them to make it appear like the US knows what it’s doing

Direct product of the Trump administration’s stupid decision to advertise US support for the Kurds

Hmmm that's a good point, Stephen, that's indeed one way to read that sentence – though I very much doubt that this is what the headline writer had in mind

A born diplomat, clearly

Not to be pedantic but Cyprus isn't "hosting" UK air bases. The UK simply kept them as sovereign territory when Cyprus gained independence in 1960. Not much the Republic of Cyprus could do about it then, or now.

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Irrespective of the wisdom of the plan itself, I'm also mystified why anybody would think it's smart to advertise it?

CIA working to arm Kurdish forces to spark uprising in Iran, sources say | CNN Politics The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran and the Trump administration has been in active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish lea...

Sounds like a brilliant idea. Bullet-proof. No downside at all, and guaranteed to work.

Good. It’s a dumb idea.

Next nervous breakdown about refugees in three, two, one...

Epstein, ‘Lolita’ and a Culture of Disembodiment

Astounding to me how anyone can read Lolita and think its narrator – and Lolita's abuser – is anything but a monster.

Then again these people probably never even came close to the book

As predictable as night follows day: there's a conflict somewhere in Europe's vicinity and the EU feels compelled to cozy up to the autocrats it otherwise loves to lecture, all because of the hypothetical possibility of "refugee flows."

www.politico.eu/newsletter/b...

“Apparently?” Are you saying 007.... is alive???

Missing Amman but I'll take Nicosia as a decent second best

I've been to Reading and Slough, does that count?

He makes it sound like the worst place imaginable. Which it probably is