Michael Steen

Both my two teenagers started going to the library to get school work done a few years ago. (One now at uni, the other now taking same approach.)

Hard agree. That’s a bare minimum.

F.I.B.S. | Robert Hutton | The Critic Magazine “In your case, fine.” It was Wednesday, and Nigel Farage was backing away from his Monday announcement, explaining to a caller on LBC that when he’d said people like her should be deported…

Americans have "Trump Always Chickens Out", in Britain we have "Farage Isn't Being Serious" - FIBS.

Republicans are honoring Charlie Kirk’s memory by declaring war on the First AmendmentThe guardians of ‘free speech’ sure had a change of heart.

We cannot make the headlines blunter people www.theverge.com/policy/77979...

Bessent, Like Fed Governor, Made Contradictory Mortgage Pledges US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent once agreed to occupy two different houses as his “principal residence” at the same time, mortgage documents show — the same kind of contradictory pledges that Pres...

Et tu, Scott Bessent? www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Liz explains the coup An Odd Lot

Ah but @tobyn.bsky.social Bailey *knew* a high-spending, tax-cutting budget was coming and *that's* why he deliberately queered the pitch with his totally unnecessary QT announcement because he was a Big Lefty Keynsian out to get Liz!

Liz explains the coup www.ft.com/content/30e5...

Good piece by @rafaelbehr.bsky.social -- someone needs to keep saying it. I've grown tired, moved on to Trumpworld, but good if the debate is coming back.

How do you get the teen to do things?

Jim Sanborn has a secret The sculptor of the CIA’s ‘Kryptos’ has spent decades guarding its last secret code. What happens when he’s gone?

What’s going to happen to the unsolved riddle from the sculpture in the CIA’s garden when the only person who knows the answer dies? Great long form journalism here - worth buying the FT in hard copy so you can read the magazine for this
on.ft.com/3JbOOjh

Sunday at the garden party for Curtis Yarvin and the new, new right [FREE TO READ] What you learn at a gathering of neoreactionaries, Very Online rightwingers and the formerly cancelled

I spent the day with Curtis Yarvin and the "dissident right" at a garden party in Surrey and wrote quite a few words about it.

My cover story for today’s FT Magazine

on.ft.com/4ooXS4t [GIFT LINK! 🎁]

Happened to me the other day in Germany. Then realised I’d been running a VPN to get BBC Sounds to work 😂

98%

That's the decrease in the annual number of single-use plastic bags in the UK since a 5p charge started 10 years ago (it's now 10p)

Not all environmental problems are that easy to tackle, but change is possible

Resharing the Mail's 2015 splash, which has aged well

www.gov.uk/government/p...

Preliminary conclusions from my #CrossChannelRail project - #CrossBorderRail OK, I have to face it: I bit off more than I could chew. When I conducted the research for my #CrossChannelRail Project in March and April this year I thought I would be done with the report from the ...

Trains from London to Frankfurt or Geneva are not impossible to do, but they are hard (and I am also perplexed - why Geneva and not Basel, as Basel looks easier)

Anyway, preliminary conclusions from my #CrossChannelRail project here: crossborderrail.trainsforeurope.eu/preliminary-...

Photo of a news story displayed on a screen in Frankfurt underground station with the headline “Deutsche Bahn plans train connection from Frankfurt to London”

Old enough to remember last time this was promised (in 2010). Weird that doesn’t seem to be mentioned much.

Congratulations!

Also: a very warm and friendly man. (Having met him briefly in 2014 at Jackson Hole and shared a group hike with him and others.)

#Gewitter in Hessen

This is a very good Trichet anecdote and surprises strongly on the upside

Brilliant.

Confused over who's in the running to become the next pope?
But you do have some knowledge of financial-crisis era central bankers?
This is the thread for you!

Photo shows induction hob and some non functioning dials below it from a previous hob.

Still have the old dials from the (not so good as not induction) hob below as a kitchen appliance memento mori.

Yeah, the aggressive beeping of our newish induction hob drives me crazy. One set of beeps seems reserved for “a pan is too near the edge” which rather negates its selling point of allegedly being allowed to put the pans “anywhere” and it just senses where they are.

Superb exhibition.

It seems the potential economic effects could be particularly severe for the Netherlands

YouTube video by Deutsche Bank Is now the time for the euro? How geopolitics is moving FX markets.

Plugging George here m.youtube.com/watch?v=pRYJ...

‘I still have nightmares’: the tourists shackled and jailed for weeks at US borders Visitors suffer hostile treatment since Donald Trump’s return to the White House

Head for Disneyland and landup in shackles. Seems Trump nativists locking up tourists as well as would-be migrants.
www.ft.com/content/2197...

Can the dollar remain king of currencies? The greenback’s global dominance was forged on trade, alliances and institutions — now that era is at risk of drawing to a close

"The US has provided a steady supply of dollars to meet the liquidity needs of an expanding world economy without supplying so many as to erode confidence in their value. But if this has been true until now, US fiscal and financial woes could...push the dollar over the edge"
on.ft.com/4kM0cAz

Bundesbank enlists AI to prove ECB’s dovish bias Germany’s central bank compares Eurozone bank policies and rhetoric in study powered by artificial intelligence

Bundesbank enlists AI to prove ECB’s dovish bias

https://www.ft.com/content/bd9392a2-f7a9-4fa8-bf8d-175a48e3c6fc

Oh, there’s a printer that just works? A revelation to me too.