Magnus Jonsson

US accused of threatening EU diplomats during bid to kill green shipping rules Negotiators at shipping talks in London were told both they and their countries could be punished unless they voted with the U.S.

Omg😱

European negotiators were personally targeted by their American counterparts during a brutal negotiation over green shipping rules, European Commission officials told POLITICO — a highly unusual gambit that left diplomats shaken after the meeting.

www.politico.eu/article/us-a...

I think flags are kind of bad. Natives are blind to them and to non-natives it’s a constant reminder of otherness.

I know what you mean about charges like Communist and Socialist without nuance, especially in the American context.

With charges like Fascist and Nazi when directed at the current administration and its supporters, I would have a hard time to call it baseless. What is the missing nuance?

”Republican” might suffice soon if the momentum isn’t reversed.

Trump is holding a Great Gatsby/Roaring 20s-themed party at his private club in Palm Beach tonight as he tries to withhold SNAP and health care subsidies from millions of Americans. (via Kellie Meyer)

Today @dennislytton.bsky.social writes about the need to put presidentialism down for good

The incredible parochialism about What The NYC Mayor Election Means For 🇺🇸 Politics And The Democrats (bsky.app/profile/mcop...) is surpassed only by the incredible hysteria about What Zohran Mamdani Means For The Jews And Europe And Middle East Politics And Democracy Around The World.

cc: Janet Mills
leedrutman.substack.com/p/why-americ...

One of the key barriers to electrification is the ratio of electricity to gas prices.

The tax rate on electricity used in industry is much higher in most European countries than the tax rate on fossil gas.

There are many options for reform: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@ember-energy.org

Can Faster Buses Really Be Free? (Gift Article) An analysis of the possible promise and fundamental tension in one of Zohran Mamdani’s big plans for New York.

Beautiful writeup in @nytimes.com exploring the ins and outs of bringing @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social's vision of Fast + Free buses to our streets, including a neat interactive example of how to shave *40%* off trip times o the B41! 🚌💨 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Democracy does not just mean elections. In widely accepted parlance today, democracy is defined, as a minimum, as a system of institutionalized popular sovereignty that plays by majoritarian rules and treats all citizens as equals.

You wouldn't necessarily need to increase the size if you weren't adopting a method like German-style mixed multimember proportional. The states with one member delegations wouldn't get proportional outcomes, but you'd still see a big change in Congress overall

Interesting. Makes me realize how much I don't know about the workings of other government types. I always just blindly (now seems foolishly) followed the "our system is best" dogma

It’s only the way every. single. effective. democracy who learned from our mistakes functions. But yeah, maybe we are special and need to be different 👀

Agree! The Speaker should have been booted out with a no confidence vote as the state machinery has failed.

Add lists to it to stop wasted votes and you’ve got one of the most popular electoral systems in the world: open list proportional representation (OLPR)

More and more people are on the train!

Presidentialism was a mistake

Finnish baby baskets coming to New York?

Wales: A Labour member introduces bill for STV Just as Wales is approaching an election that will be its first under a new closed-list proportional representation system, a Labour member of the Senedd is proposing that Wales adopt the single tr…

Wales is going to use a new closed-list PR system next May, replacing MMP. Already at least one Member of Senedd wants to change to STV. fruitsandvotes.wordpress.com/2025/10/24/w...

Even then I think its really bad: people *vastly* underestimate how much income inequality there is even within small geographies. I have this short paper I need to get off my ass and finish on this, but basically like 99%+ of income variation is within county, and like 80% is within *block*

I mean, Gripen *is* a plane that is designed from the ground up for the sole purpose of letting a smaller country fight against a russian invasion.

In Germany, the police academy is 2.5 years. In Finland, 3 years.

Even the NYPD is 6 months.

ICE is was already 3 months. Now 1.5 months.

Pure indifference to any actual skill or ability. Makes them both more dangerous and less effective.

Hell of a double-edged sword.

Over 200 Democracy Scholars Call on Congress to End Single-Member Congressional District More than 200 political scientists, legal scholars, and historians released an open letter calling on Congress to reject the United States’ winner-take-all elections.

Single-member districts unavoidably mean the tyranny of the map. You can try to be a benevolent dictator about it, and that's certainly preferable to a malignant one, but you're still deciding the vast majority of the results before a single vote is cast.

sometimes you hear critiques of the national presidential system compared to parliament, but hardly ever the local systems.. maybe they’re too low turnout to even notice

nyc could well sustain several parties in a city council parliament and get more turnout too

America doesn't need a president.

We need a council of governors collaborating. We need proportional representation. We need structures that teach, encourage, and incentivize civic engagement. We need corporate money out of politics. We need publicly funded campaigns.

* Party List Proportional Representation
* Parliamentarism

Netherlands curtails intelligence-sharing with US over ‘human rights’ Dutch spy chiefs cite concerns about Trump administration’s ‘politicisation’ of services

The Netherlands has curtailed intel sharing with the US over fears the Trump administration could violate human rights or help Russia

Extraordinary, really. I’m old enough to remember when the US president being a Russian asset would be the plot of a shoddy TV thriller

www.ft.com/content/af80...

Trivia: In Germanic languages, reification is called “forthinglying”.

I always stumble on sentences like “X saw …” where X isn’t something that can see things.

"[some] were blindfolded and handcuffed, others bore marks suggesting they'd be run over by tanks"

My Goodness. #Israel #Gaza #Warcrimes