HK

A war that isn't a war, documented with videos that may or may not be real, funded by elected leaders who are neither for nor against it, is the most dystopian thing that's happened in my lifetime

The use of AI to identify targets (without subsequent specific human confirmation) should be considered a war crime.

And by that I don't mean "we should make a rule" I mean that straightforward application of the existing rules would tell you that it is a war crime.

so the £10k payments to asylum seekers to incentivise them to leave is pretty much a BNP policy from 2010s, the only difference being that the payment is worth a lot less in real terms now

Wealthy Dubai residents race back to UAE to avoid tax bills Some risk spending too few days in the emirate and too many in the UK

Tax exiles stuck in London desperately trying to get *back* to Dubai to avoid becoming tax resident in the UK? Just great stuff. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

As expected the far right is not actually against war if they’re allowed to brutalize brown people at home.

I’d actually send him some kimchi as a thank you gift

Possibly the funniest (stupidest) outcome would be a Qajar restoration

I actually think I would be fine getting interviewed by Isaac Chotiner. If anything we’d probably become friends afterwards

Going to be kind of funny to see Reza Pahlavi get fucked over by Trump, who absolutely sees him as a pathetic loser not worthy of his respect. I imagine he’ll probably try start a podcast at some point

The destruction of USAID and my grandfather's legacy by Colette Shade This piece will go out in the next edition of the Hell World newsletter. Consider a free or paid subscription to support our work. Support independent media Read Kim Kelly on the m...

Since we’re now 100% ignoring international law, here’s a piece I wrote for @lukeoneil47.bsky.social about how we fucking got here www.welcometohellworld.com/the-destruct...

They’re saying the wind is halal

I love working at the local sharia court where it’s my job to whisper into the wind, therefore making it Muslim

What did you think being a reactionary was? YouTube videos? Twitch streams?

Matt Walsh is having an absolute public meltdown today.

The Conservatives are, after all, well placed to know a lot about this morass, since they introduced it. In 2012, the coalition government launched the Plan 2 system of student loans and raised university fees across Britain to £9,000 per annum. To put Plan 2 in simple terms, loan repayments were laid out via a seemingly innocuous series of calculations. The first to consider is the threshold at which repayments begin. If you left education with, say, £27,000 worth of debt, you would only start paying it back once you met a predetermined salary. On its face, this might not seem like a particularly onerous demand. “Low-earning” graduates would avoid being saddled with repayments before they were financially able to begin making them, while their “high earning” peers could start chipping away at their debt, and provide an income stream for the state.

As any of my fellow literature or history graduates will tell you, however, the devil is in the details. For one thing, the threshold at which someone becomes a high earner was never particularly high and, following years of inflation, is now preposterously low. Rachel Reeves’ announcement that the government are freezing the threshold at April 2026 levels (£29,385) for a further three years only makes this worse. The real living wage for London is currently calculated at £28,860, which means that any London-based graduate making just £40 more per month than the minimum needed to live there will automatically begin paying their debt. In real terms, this means practically any graduate in any form of full-time work will be paying as much as 9 per cent of their income to the state, and for a very, very long time. Worse still, the amount owed by those graduates below the threshold does not remain static – it accrues interest, year on year, whether you’re working for low wages, volunteering, taking a career break or on maternity leave, ensuring that if you do pass the threshold some time later, you will be returning to find your original £27,000 much enlarged.

If the state’s attitude to what constitutes “high earnings” makes you think it’s oblivious to the concept of inflation, let me put your mind at ease. When it comes to the calculation of student loan interest, they are very conscious of inflation indeed. Each year, the interest charged on student loans is calculated by two components. The first is the Retail Price Index (RPI), which generally records a higher number than the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Governments prefer the latter, lower figure for many of their other calculations, just not when it comes to adding extra debt to every graduate in the country. To this is added a second component, a percentage tied to each graduate’s earnings, meaning that as your salary increases so too does the interest you’re paying on the loan you took out. If you think this seems like a predatory and punitive way to bilk students for as much money, and over as long a period of time, as possible, then you’re just about up to speed on this scandal, which amounts to a regressive stealth tax on every graduate in the UK. One which, it’s calculated, you would need to be earning £66,000 per year to pay off in anything like a timely fashion.

The debt burden of UK students is one of those things where, the more you look into the details, the more insane and predatory it is. So I tried my best to explain the numbers involved without making my, or your, head explode.

Saying a prayer for the influencers.

One of the funniest things to come out of this are the brits who won’t leave Dubai even as it’s being bombed. One influencer adjacent guy went on a live stream on his balcony and said he’d rather be killed by Iran than go back to Wigan

What a deeply evil and pathetic time

incredible, he did the joke

This is why they killed him

Regardless of what the man did, I will miss Ayotollah Khameinis book reviews

No matter where you are, they’re using the same playbook

It’s called a shituation

Patrick Bet David

The basic argument is “would you like to survive and have institutions that work even at a basic level” and that will be refuted by a sizeable % of people saying “no”

Mine is that I’ve over promised on a lot of assignments and may have to come to terms that I can’t reasonably do them

What situations are we in today, folks

The UK's permission for the US to use its bases in attacking Iran amounts to complicity in the crime of aggression. It drags us into what could be an endless war, without democratic or even parliamentary consent.

Christopher who? In May, a party founded eight years ago, with no record in national government and only eight MPs, will fight elections in Wales and Scotland, and for control of councils across England, with every chance of winning many of them. British politics is being reshaped by Reform UK. This is a result of Nigel Farage's personality and of Christopher Harborne's money - £9m, from a fortune amassed largely through cryptocurrency investments. The party would not be able to field candidates, run social media operations or door-to-door campaigns if it weren't for the Harborne war chest. There is a template for crypto-funded campaigning - in the US, where it is viewed as having led to securing crypto-friendly legislation and sweetheart deals to enrich crypto charlatans and undermine transparency and accountability in politics. Reform threatens to destroy the Conservatives as a party of government and divide communities, increasingly along ethnic lines and with overtly racist arguments. It also poses the most serious threat to Keir Starmer's government, Harborne lives in Thailand and owns a 12% stake in the Tether stablecoin. Little else is known about this intensely private man. Yet he can influence the course of politics, seemingly without either much of a business or life in the UK. It's a lot like overseas interference in British democracy. Didn't someone once say: "Take back control"?

From yesterday's Observer.