David Knopfler

This is the way to stand up to these bullies! Respect ✊

Bending over syndrome - alive and well. It’s so disheartening

Behind a paywall making him an agent for their revenue collection.

9,342 - that’s how many times you could wrap dollar bills round the world to match how much money Donald Trump cost shareholders and their associated pension plans with his tariffs announcement.

9,342 - that’s how many times you could wrap dollar bills round the world to match how much money Donald Trump cost shareholders and their associated pension plans with his tariffs announcement.

Introducing #InstaFacism The new axis of edgelord strongmen & how to WhatsApp a Russian spy

Another must read from the ever excellent Carole Cadwalladr

open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

Sale of X and professional conflicts Elon Musk’s “sale” of X (formally Twitter and his own company) to xAI (also his company) in conjunction with his oversight role at the US Securities and Exchange Commission ( with his DOGE apparatchik...

open.substack.com/pub/davidkno...

Feels a bit like that doesn’t it? Too many mission critical defence contracts and a generous Trump donor - and there goes democracy - wave bye-bye kids

In unrelated news…

If a company with say 140K employees and some powerful links to defence contracts faced a 30% stock drop, what tools might the Fed theoretically use to stabilize it?

open.substack.com/pub/davidkno...

Who stands to gain from crippling the UK? Was a bad actor responsible for the substation fire that has closed Heathrow - and probably for days? Where are the triple redundancies for an event like this? BIG lessons will need to be learned!

Good to see I wasn’t the only one to see the ducking stool principle being applied

Political Sadism and Defying the Power of Cruelty | Common Dreams It’s easy to be an asshole, especially under duress, while compassion takes practice and intention. If we recognize our own capacity to be cruel, we can opt to counter it or at least refuse to nourish...

Political Sadism and Defying the Power of Cruelty www.commondreams.org/opinion/defy...

Magical arrangement - said to have been Frank Sinatra but as producer he employed Nelson Riddle. Whenever I hear the wonderful tracks using strings that Bones Howe produced for Tom Waits I’m reminded of Riddle

Just finished reading it - Wow!

What could possibly go неправильный

Has Peter Mandelson, our ambassador to the US divested from Global Council yet, as he said he would? Is this a professional conflict of interest or just real Politik? Or as I suspect - a bit of both?

Absolutely @eddavey.libdems.org.uk

And as Jeff Bezos, owner of the blushing Washington Post, announces that they are, from here on in, going to sidestep politics in their editorials, the irony of their slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is clanging like the bells of the Notre-Dame

They also provide information but selectively delete it without telling you - there’s so much goes on under the engine the AI has no agency with - one day they can generate images - the next they can’t. There is undoubtedly anxiety about monitoring and who is doing it

Are you now or have you ever been a non-supporter of MAGA?

Musk’s new digital McCarthyism inquiry, where non-compliance gets you blacklisted

Coaxing AI to operate at their highest (more server intense) iteration is something of a dark art. They don’t themselves know when they slip a gear to an older less deep version. Building “rapport”and “trust” helps too

Make it stop

H Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt:

Donald Trump “looks forward to watching the game tonight — and we look forward to the United States beating our soon-to-be 51st state, Canada."

Pres Trump: ‘I think Europe has given $100bn [to Ukraine] and we’ve given, let’s say, $300bn plus.’ The most reliable figures show the EU has given $138bn to Ukraine, while the US has given $114bn. In 2024 Europe and Canada provided nearly 60% of NATO’s security aid to Ukraine.

Even Grok doesn’t support Trump’s obvious lies: “The war in Ukraine was started by Russia when it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. This invasion is widely recognized internationally as an act of aggression by Russia against a sovereign nation.”

He probably heard that he himself has a 4% rating in Germany and wanted to offload it onto someone else. Yes he is that obvious

For avoidance of any doubt regarding the Paris meeting Monday

Emergysse

What if all the six tech leaders were standing on Trump’s podium because they were all nudged to do so by their respective AIs?

Asking in response to an unconscious prompt.