Tomas Wiik

Maria Corina Machado wins 2025 Nobel Peace Prize Venezuelan opposition leader recognized for promoting a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy

Maria Machado is a superb choice for the peace prize, having risked her life to resist one of the world’s most disruptive democratic crises, and created Venezuela’s legitimate elected party. And sends a clear message about who won’t be eligible for the prize

www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl...

Three persons in inflatable frog costumes. One of them is holding a nicely painted sign with two little cartoon frogs holding hands, below the text "FROGS TOGETHER STRONG"

Blessed are the frogs, for they keep making authoritarians look incredibly stupid

A cat on our street waits outside the school every afternoon to get all the pets from the children, parents, and neighbors on a well timed stroll.

Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead The children’s names below appear on a list of victims of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, maintained by health authorities in the territory. As of the end of July it ran to 60,199 names, of whom 18,457 were under 18s. Far from comprehensive, the list does not include the thousands still buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, as well as the war’s many indirect victims As of the end of July there were 18,457 children named on the long official list of Palestinian victims of Israel’s war in Gaza. Over almost two years, that is equivalent to bombs, bullets and shells killing a boy or girl every hour of every day. In reality the deaths are not spaced out so evenly. Siblings, cousins and playmates are often killed together, by an airstrike or artillery shell. Even children shot by snipers or quadcopters are sometimes brought into hospitals in groups, doctors say. Continue reading...

Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead

No sudden rupture is now required for the far right to take power in this country. For what we're seeing is a steady normalisation of extremists by the Conservative and Labour Parties, BBC, Telegraph, Mail and others. A shift once considered unthinkable beings to look acceptable, even inevitable.🧵

A disturbed man and his fanatical advisors are making potentially life-threatening decisions on the basis of what he sees on television.

We should all be very concerned. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/how-trump-gets-and-processes-information

BBC Laura Kuenssberg Show Accused of Anti-Green Bias After Cancelling Zack Polanski Interview The new Green Party leader was the only major party leader not to have been granted a conference interview on the flagship BBC show

The Greens requested an interview on the Laura Kuenssberg Show with Zack Polanski when he was elected leader, but were denied, with a promise to interview him during Green conference instead.

This was then scrapped citing the Manchester synagogue attack. Polanski is both Jewish and from Manchester

Kemi Badenoch: let's do this in Britain

ICE admits that up to 50% of arrests in its Chicago raids are "collateral.” These aren't statistics. They are parents taken from their children, neighbors taken from our communities. When does a "collateral" U.S. citizen child's trauma matter? This isn't law enforcement; it's a campaign of terror.

But think of all the business opportunities that will be unlocked when we get rid of… *checks notes* …human rights!

Reminiscent of… something in history. Can’t quite put my finger on it

The shameless lying is disturbing to behold

OpenAI’s Sora 2 Copyright Infringement Machine Features Nazi SpongeBobs and Criminal Pikachus The main use of Sora appears to generate brainrot of major beloved copyrighted characters, to say nothing of the millions of articles, images, and videos OpenAI has scraped.

The Sora thing is so bleak and shows how far we've come from AI companies pretending they did not train on copyrighted material

www.404media.co/openais-sora...

"Hi, my name is Nico. I am with the participants of Sirius. If you are watching this video, we have been attacked or abducted by the Israeli armed forces. And we ask for you to ask for your government to release us, or to make something to keep this situation safe."

the political policy cure for “male loneliness” is

- more time to hang with the fellas (4 day work week)

- more money to spend with the fellas (higher wages)

- more things to do with the fellas (taxing the rich and building 3rd spaces)

Only an administration intent on committing war crimes in the present and future would stoop to calling Wounded Knee a "battle" rather than what it truly was: a massacre of over 250 Lakotas, mainly women, children, and the elderly. 1/

So, if you’re not antifascist, then you must be …

hate to say i told you so

share.google/4FfpeWYJ8kEF...

That is (laudably!) a lot of solar, but China is also electrifying its entire economy and seeking energy security. That’s why it’s also building coal plants rapidly, and exploring domestic oil and gas. It’s not about to decarbonize anytime soon.

The richest man on earth owns X.

The second richest man on earth is about to be a major owner of TikTok.

The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post.

See the problem here?

Hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz detainees drop off the grid after leaving site As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald.

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

This ought to be engraved somewhere.

Acetaminophen Use During Pregnancy and Children’s Risk of Autism, ADHD, and Intellectual Disability This nationwide cohort study with sibling control analysis examines the association of acetaminophen use during pregnancy with children’s risk of autism, ADHD, and intellectual disability.

The @washingtonpost.com story on Tylenol & autism leaves out a MAJOR 2.5M sibling-controlled study of children in Denmark, which "found no evidence that acetaminophen use during pregnancy was associated with children’s risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disability." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

The truth: we need migration.

The problem: too many politicians are terrified to say it.

Why? They're led by a) toxicity of the charlatans & b) wealthy media organisations who demand these useful distractions rather than us talking about inequality.

Reject it. Draw the line.

ICE Is Deporting People to Africa on Nearly Un-Trackable Military Flights Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is deporting people to African countries like Ghana on military flights that are nearly un-trackable.

NEW: Air Force jets are doing ICE flights to Africa with transponders turned off, making them nearly un-trackable.

This includes the third-country removal to Ghana and another secret flight. We figured out where it landed.

From me for @rollingstone.com:

www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Curious to check out the film

Rising Christian nationalism: a threat to us all Scenes on Saturday of Christian preachers denouncing ‘Secular Humanism’ from the main stage of Tommy Robinson’s radical right Unite the Kingdom rally in London may have been surprising to see on the s...

We need to be very clear about this.

Rising Christian nationalism is a threat to us all.

humanists.uk/2025/09/17/r...

The truth about immigration Ageing societies seeking to preserve living standards will continue to rely on new arrivals — but governments can be clearer about the trade-offs

"Democracies risk falling into a doom loop, in which restrictions on immigration mean ever greater demands on the purse of the native-born population and ever worse services, which in turn deepens opposition towards immigration"

@stephenkb.bsky.social calls for honesty.

www.ft.com/content/43da...

Thank you for sharing. I didn’t know. Thinking back on my time at the HK protests and all the people getting dense clouds of tear gas welling up past their windows and into their homes. What untold damage that might have caused…