Joost

Joost on X: "Ilaria Salis: an Italian election result with an important Hungarian dimension" / X Ilaria Salis: an Italian election result with an important Hungarian dimension

Context in this Twitter thread from last year: x.com/almodozo/sta...

Italian anti-fascist Ilaria Salis, whose election as an MEP liberated her from house arrest and a likely 24-year prison sentence in Hungary, keeps her parliamentary immunity thanks to the tightest possible vote in the European Parliament: 306 to 305

I was gonna make a wry joke here about how "everyone knows you're either a centrist or a communist, and if you're not a communist you must be a centrist," but the problem is that you probably actually believe that

I'm actually impressed that almost half a percent of New York City's population is Albanian

Also, I did not know that Mayor Adams's son took part in the Albanian equivalent of “American Idol,” lol

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/n...

Are you seriously going at me, in a reply *and* a quote post no less, because...

you didn't get a reply to your bluesky post within half an hour?

Jesus christ man. Before this, I merely disagreed with you. Now I think you're completely unhinged. Good job!

Without info about how many of those 20% would be solid Republican voters regardless, that number doesn't tell us much?

Maybe we should have wanted to change the world though ;)

Billy Bragg, famously a "centrist"

The Israeli population, facing increasing isolation abroad, has only become more radicalised — and it's not just government voters

edition.cnn.com/2025/10/05/m...

Did not expect, here in Deep Spain where I can count the number of times in a year I hear people speaking English on the fingers of one hand, to see a guy in the supermarket wearing a Never Trust a Tory hoodie. Good timing though

[If you see this, post a random picture from your device without explaining it]

I imagine the algo means we all see different results, but BBC News serves a global audience so my top stories on the overall news page are about Ukraine, Gaza, Trump, and climate change. Little to object to there, really. On www.bbc.com/news/england it's the top story.

Britain's panicked parties rushing frantically to the far right

www.bbc.com/news/article...

It's literally the top item on the BBC News England page right now, though, and in the top 3 on the BBC News UK page

You can say a lot of things about Tories (in this case, a shadow minister and a former cabinet minister), and almost all of them are bad. But they do give good quotes:

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

(And significantly more of the Labour vote, of course.) Just to say, this is living memory and not the 1930s, and that's probably part of the issue — living memory is hard to let go off, esp when wrapped up with visceral identities, even when it is time

You're not wrong, but in the 1970s (when, maybe not coincidentally, many Labour politicos were kids) there were still like half a million people working in the mines, in steel factories, or on the docks, and manufacturing & construction as a whole still accounted for almost a third of employment

they do vote there? For whom? (Not just far right?)

Good point. My impression has been the same, that left wing parties on the continent (whether trad soc-dem or left-populist, except for a short era post-2009 crisis) haven't been successful with that group anymore either. But @mariosrichards.bsky.social , you said turnout rates suggest...

Like, I just wanted to quickly doublecheck a thing. But I can see (and did see) how it can really pull people in ever deeper when they're desperately looking for someone to validate them, agree with them, spur them on. Fine if it's basic advice; less so if they're going down.. unhelpful rabbit holes

We probably underestimate how addictive ChatGPT can be, in particular to people with lower self-esteem or greater mental instability, because honestly, it is *such* a suck-up. C'mon now.

‘Reverse Midas touch’: Starmer plan prompts collapse in support for digital IDs Net public backing for scheme has fallen to -14% after prime minister’s announcement, according to polling

Earlier this summer, the idea of digital ID still enjoyed majority support in the UK. But thanks to Starmer's "reverse Midas touch," net support dropped steeply from +35% to -14% once he announced the plans.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Though I think Simon's point was that the depth the Kieskompas's dueling axes were supposed to add is actually less substantive than you'd expect. (Wonder if that used to be different?)

Yeah, de Stemwijzer is the OG voter tool, but it doesn't do fancy charts. Great for seeing who you agree most (and least) with, but in the middle things can get a bit weird 😀

Is the Kieskompas now more popular than the Stemwijzer?

You can see two orange ex-LD blocks and one ex-Green block in the Reform stack. Negligible amounts

I think they didn't care whether someone would or not, and aren't bothered by critical NYT reporting

Such a wholehearted apology, too. "I think I had misread that, [but] still"

Not ICE but Border Patrol, but legend anyway. Just needs Benny Hill music

(and an abiding, sentimental loyalty to Cuba that's also rooted more in nostalgia about a time that far back in history than anything to do with the country's current realities)