Elise Thomas

I only very recently learned from someone that going to Dubai for holidays was A Thing among the British. Very weird for an Australian, we transit Dubai but I don't believe I know a single Aussie who's actually chosen it as a holiday destination.

always worth remembering that "the cloud" is actually just someone else's computer (or their many, many computers)

Who knows in the long run but in the short to medium term this probably works very much in their interests

Hard to know all the implications but it’s probably a net benefit to Russia. They’ve mostly localised Shahed production, they’ll benefit economically from an oil price spike, benefit diplomatically from the US being distracted, benefit militarily from the US having less weaponry to sell to Ukraine

Same with all the “why didn’t Russia replace Iran’s air defenses after last year??”

Guys they don’t have a lot of spares lying around

Some of comments directed at the Gulf airlines right now are an incredible reflection of how alien the concept of armed conflict is to people from lucky countries like Australia.

Dubai airport: literally on fire after being hit by missile shrapnel.
Customer: Will my March 3rd flight be delayed?

genuinely mind-melting that Iranian leadership are still posting on X

I'm sorry how many loom weavers do you know

Exclusive: Prior to Iran attacks, CIA assessed Khamenei could be replaced by hardline IRGC elements if killed, sources say In the run-up to the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Saturday, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency assessed that even if Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the operation, he would...

Maybe the most vital reporting I've seen today. Trump admin went to war today with his own intelligence saying that Khamenei's death could lead to the IRGC taking over.

oh for sure, the UAE and Qatar will be very mad about the disruption to flights, among the many other more important reasons for being mad about this situation

No, over Central Asia and then hug the southern edge of the Black Sea, which they do already

I'd pick Central Asia for sure if I were the airlines

Yeah the relatively recent proliferation of both anti-aircraft weapons and pretty cheap drones which could pose a risk to commercial aircraft among various armed groups in Yemen, and in many parts of Africa, make a lot of previously viable routes a much riskier proposition IMO

I guess you could cut through Saudi and Egypt like this maaaybe? You'd have to avoid Yemen and hope that flying over Oman and western Saudi would be safe

They take the same route over the Eurasian continent. Flying over Africa is also very complicated! No one should be flying over Sudan and Libya, so you'd need to swing out way west and come up via Nigeria/Niger/Algeria maybe? I have no idea how much fuel or how commercially viable that would be.

This obviously very stupid but is it also smart? We’ll talk to some liars after this break.

I guess if Afghanistan/Pakistan also becomes unsafe maybe they'll have to go further north over Central Asia...?

On a trivial and parochial note, this is all really going to mess with commercial air traffic between Australia and Europe. The only viable commercial route at this moment is over Afghanistan and Pakistan, which apparently are ALSO on the brink of all-out war www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/...

“Mr President, the bombings have begun in Tehran and also customers are complaining we have run out of shrimp at the pool buffet.”

Panic in the Gulf as Iran lashes out at US allies Tehran targets regional countries housing American bases despite their refusal to allow attacks from their territory

Feels very timely right now as we see how the US’s actions are directly impacting regional allies hosting US bases www.ft.com/content/136d...

Lots of Iran experts being dragged out of their beds and in front of a camera to say that yes, Iran probably is quite unhappy about all of this, and yes, we will find out in coming days what happens, because that's how linear time works

We've entered the stage of the news cycle where the clear initial information has been reported, fresh reporting is hours or days away, and the gap in between is full of talking heads either constantly re-stating the bleeding obvious and/or speculating wildly based on nothing.

How could he sully the FIFA Peace Prize like this

Blind refugee abandoned by Border Patrol dies in Buffalo. A nearly blind refugee abandoned by Border Patrol miles from his home dies in Buffalo after having been missing for nearly a week.

www.investigativepost.org/2026/02/25/b...

“We’re deeply committed to our values unless they could cost us money in which case we’re deeply committed to money”

Pretty amazing that comms person at FBI called my @ms.now colleague @kendilanian-nbc.bsky.social a liar and demand a correction only for Kash to post a photo from the locker room

I love the hater pope

Wikipedia blacklists Archive.today, starts removing 695,000 archive links If DDoSing a blog wasn't bad enough, archive site also tampered with web snapshots.

The headline does not convey how completely batshit this story is. The Archive Today (archive.ph etc) admin weaponized the site's captcha to attack a blogger who wrote about them and *altered archived screenshots* as part of the attack.

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

DOGE Bro’s Grant Review Process Was Literally Just Asking ChatGPT ‘Is This DEI?’

Federal grants that had been approved after a full application and review process were terminated by some random inexperienced DOGE bros based on whether ChatGPT could explain—in under 120 characters—that they were…