Thomas Jones

Making pizza as the sounds of Star Wars: Battlefront* drift into the kitchen and Darth Vader appears to be saying ‘history will not protect you.’** For some reason I expect him to follow up with ‘time will say nothing but I told you so.’***
* Secondhand copy picked for £2
** He isn’t
*** He doesn’t

Thomas Jones · Lords of the World: Keeping Up with the Caesars As Mary Beard has put it, ‘How could you control and defend a vast empire, stretching from Spain to Syria, with a...

For a deeper and more informed version, do read this brilliant new essay by @moonjets.bsky.social

Same thought -- especially after reading @moonjets.bsky.social on 'Lives of the Caesars' www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

cover of The Washington Post on Wednesday Feb 4, 2026. Headline on bottom, right: Musk wanted to hook users; his chatbot got more sexual

My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power

Jessica Mitford’s Handbag Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · 04/02/2026 · 51m

On the podcast: Rosemary Hill joins @moonjets.bsky.social to talk about Jessica Mitford’s eventful life, her work as a civil rights activist and writer, and her complicated relationships with the other Mitfords.

Listen wherever you get podcasts, or here:

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

heard?

Thank you

Thomas Jones · Lords of the World: Keeping Up with the Caesars As Mary Beard has put it, ‘How could you control and defend a vast empire, stretching from Spain to Syria, with a...

I wrote about Suetonius’ portraits in corruption

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

The problem is not Signal (the encryption in which the FBI can't touch), but large chat groups that include people unknown to each other and which are therefor easy to infiltrate.

🧵1/2

Yes but did you move away from the microwave

Trump and his outriders are intentionally trying to destroy even the idea of truth

Trational media strictures - reporting he said, she said; not reporting more ‘extreme’ claims by those not in power - plays right into this

It’s a playbook, and it’s already in U.K. (cf Farage’s Dulwich racism)

Shooting mothers, nurses, while arresting priests and toddlers - this is what comes of that. Their terror campaign is completely backfiring on them. People aren't backing down, they're just getting enraged and radicalised.

Worth remembering that they all lied in their original reports because they had no idea Holliday was filming them

Do things like ‘in a minor key’ or ‘up tempo’ not count?

Buckley, MAGA’s Patron Saint Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · 21/01/2026 · 48m

On the podcast, Thomas Meaney joins @moonjets.bsky.social to discuss William F. Buckley’s life and legacy: his proselytising for segregation at home and imperialism abroad, and how he laid the groundwork for Trump’s path to the White House.

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

But definitely not Zimbabwe

🥸

Josephine Quinn · At the Institut du monde arabe: ‘Trésors sauvés de Gaza’ This show has excited controversy: should we even be talking about damage to antiquities in the context of so much...

Which I know because www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Yemen

Mafia goon: Nice house you got here...it'd be a shame if something happened to it

Media outlets: Mafia goon rules out use of force. Expresses regret at the mere thought of it

Was he explaining that simply stating you own Greenland does not in fact mean you own Greenland

I mean these images are great but they’re not exactly - surprising?

It’s used twice in Stranger Things, I think: Peter Gabriel’s cover in season 1 and Bowie at the end of season 5. I didn’t mind either instance: I think the show gets some of the irony.

Hard agree. Doesn’t help of course that the single version cuts off the beginning which provides some useful context: ‘You, you can be mean, and I, I’ll drink all the time, cos we’re lovers and that is a fact, yes we’re lovers and that is that’ etc

Fifteen of these countries—Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, Iran, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Algeria, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, and Haiti—have qualified for the 2026 World Cup

It seems that AI might really unleash a productivity and innovation revolution in the UK if we use it this way: we identify everyone who thinks it's a good idea to rely on AI, and fire them immediately.

Thomas Jones · Bowie’s Last Tape

Ten years, stuck on my eyes

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...

NEW YORK POST "What we have to get back to is being able to have a reasonable disagreement where violence is not an option' Charlie Kirk 1993-2025 Assassinated trying to change people's minds

NEWYORK POST Page SiX® FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2026 / Afternoon rain, 51° / Weather: P. 30 * * LATE CITY FINALI nypost.com $2.00 'WARRIOR' KEEP TRACK OFICE VEHICLES IN YOUR AREA, THE Renee Nicole Good, who was shot dead after her car ran into an ICE officer, was part of a group of activists who tracked immigration officers by app (above) and hoped to "resist and disrupt" them. "She was a warrior," a neighbor said. PAGES 4-7 Mom killed in Minnesota was part of 'ICE Watch' activists trained to 'resist' immigration officers

There are no rules, they don’t actually care about respect, decorum, bipartisanship or debate, and only pretend to do so to browbeat you into submission. Nothing is going to change until more people realise that and respond accordingly; including to the media and politicians who have failed them.

Of all the flimsy rationalisations for continuing to use a nonconsensual image generation application as a core comms channel, this is the flimsiest.

X is very, very obviously algorithmically skewed to bury fact-based research, and boost the fever swamp brain worms of Muskian stressheads

What was your #childhoodcinema

The ABC in Basingstoke, long since demolished: Snow White, ET, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future… I think Young Einstein might have been the last (and least good) movie I saw there.