Dave

Israel closes crossings into Gaza Strip, including for humanitarian aid workers, Israeli government agency says

Honestly... It's fair to say that norms are shifting but buying into this liberal mythology can't be excused.

An era of historic peace for some, mostly white, people in some, mostly rich, countries. The rest of the world has been target-practice for decades.

Orientalism at every turn.

"Iran must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon". There are some countries which can simply never be part of the special club because of something essential and unchangeable about them. And there are some countries who get to decide what is and is not allowed on the world stage.

In answer to some queries: this is not a joke, Melania Trump actually is presiding over a UN Security Council meeting Monday, and apparently they scheduled that knowing they were going to launch an illegal war on Saturday morning

Which heading does the school fall under?

China's heavy reliance on Iranian oil imports China, the world's largest crude importer, is the main buyer of oil from OPEC producer Iran, leaving Beijing uniquely exposed to any supply disruption fromconflict in the Middle East.

This is about oil, not nuclear, isn't it

Jumping straight in with "some of our own must gloriously die for the greater good" is a crazy way to announce some airstrikes.

Love that the journalists are deciding actually, no, I don't want to be made to look like a clown by taking this one seriously, thank you very much.

Nothing captures the contemporary moment of global politics better than the perfunctory and dismissive tone with which Bowen says "This also appears to be against international law though I don't think that that is a big issue for either Trump or Netanyahu".

God this juxtaposition is just 👌

it’s, no joke, the Labour Party’s birthday today

One really good thing about the AI/data analytics boosters is that they're fucking stupid and don't appreciate the Humanities enough to care about the bits of theory that cover the limitations of data analysis.

Heartening in a way because Goodwin's petulant tantrums this morning are the kind of things you might say to consolidate a fringe extremist base when what Reform clearly wanted from this by-election was to complete its transition to being a mainstream party for normal people.

Like Trump and other populist reactionaries, Reform is turning electoral defeat into an opportunity to recruit and incubate a small but hardened core of wilfully gullible supporters united around the conspiratorial myth of their own persecution. They say their loss is *why* you should support them.

The problem with adopting the terminology "late stage capitalism" is that it becomes progressively more and more funny to cite your work as time goes by, like "as has been shown, late stage capitalism is hurtling us towards rapid collapse (Smith, 1974)".

Crucial insight into the right wing mind here that he thinks "inclusivity" means a single homogeneous culture that everyone has to participate in, rather than there being lots of different ways to engage.

So funny for Labour to go from "Reform must be defeated at all costs" to giving press statements this morning saying "Reform losing is the worst possible result".

The people of Gorton and Denton have voted overwhelmingly to give heroin to Sir Keir Starmer’s son, and I hope the prime minister will now do the decent thing.

family voting is like the red wall, it might be a thing psephs talk about but as far as an actual object in consensus reality it's basically being brute forced into existence.

Yep. "Family voting" (as opposed to the more general and well established language of voter coercion etc) seems calculated to play into certain tropes.

You know, I don't think I've ever seen human extinction plotted on a GDP chart before but I guess it's fitting.

It's actually a mistake to interpret this as cops being scared of snowballs. It's more correct to interpret this as cops wanting to shoot teenagers. Every aspect of the "I feared for my life" playbook is establishing plausibility for drawing and shooting.

Dream big.

Shit, might have to have a conversation with your child about how to make good choices instead of just hoping the threat of prison will do the job for you.

To be clear, this is extremely evil and wrong-headed in concept, but also I'm telling you now that it'll never fucking happen for straightforward operational reasons, namely that you'll never get all those systems and databases to talk to each other.

Man, truly an integral component of my teenage years.

Public health is not pursued as an end in itself but only as a means to maintain a workforce available for profitable exploitation.