Dave

Here's another study examining why the need for a more technologically-skilled workforce incentivises recruitment from more affluent backgrounds, looking over a time period from 1979 to 2008:

A street sign reading union lane formerly mad lane

When you realise HR are never going to help you

US president has transformed from an isolationist to a fierce exponent of American power abroad

The "isolationist" first took office in January 2017 and was doing major strikes on Syria by April.

How can I look at my phone on boxing day and see news of US airstrikes in Nigeria and then still end February with people who get paid to think about politics telling me that this president doesn't do such things?

It's fucking embarrassing how much people who want to sound clever about Trump end up just repeating his own bullshit hype about himself. "Oh, this is such an interesting break with his previous stance of refusing direct military intervention" no it isn't shut up.

Being Iranian is funny because you get selective sympathy from the right and the left based on who’s putting your family in danger at any given moment

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.