The 2026 #WomensPrize for Fiction shortlist.

Which will you be reading next?

#WomensPrizeforFiction

Russian Businesses Helping Funnel Military Equipment to Wagner Successor Group in Mali – Report - The Moscow Times Russia is leveraging commercial assets to expand its military presence in Mali, bolstering a force that has come under scrutiny for perpetrating human rights abuses, according to a new report by Washi...

The size and scale of Russia's arms shipments amount to a “sustained investment” in Mali and indicate that Moscow could be looking to establish a long-term presence there, the report said.

Putin restores Soviet secret police founder Dzerzhinsky's name to FSB Academy Vladimir Putin has reinstated the name of Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky to the FSB Academy, reviving its Soviet-era title.

🤡 Putin restores Soviet secret police founder Dzerzhinsky's name to FSB Academy

Moira Donegan is generally very good, but like so many prominent US feminists (& I think for the same reasons) cannot bring herself to consider this issue unhimpathetically

Mad fact... 42% of Labour Prime Ministers have had to fire Peter Mandelson.

So weird that Trump just happens to choose the course of action most favorable to Russian interests and no one else

CARE WORK IS HIGHLY SKILLED WORK
and only paid so poorly because of the failure of successive governments to value it properly

Ooh, hadn't realised that. Interesting

Which attracts more people moving for jobs, who are likely to be younger and healthier? Is incentivising local economies to compete for workers the policy - or are there real levers LAs can pull on health?

Rare sighting of a column chart taking a dip at Hove Beach.

#dataviz

At least these are not uncharted waters

Huh. I wouldn't have got that from her post at all. Maybe the ambiguity is intentional, to get voters on board either way... or indeed as you imply they haven't thought it through wrt their audience

Aren't these posts calling out hypocrisy, not suggesting they should be using AI? I think the subtext is "their not using it proves they know it's useless, they're just trying to get the private sector to use this useless tech because then companies will have to pay humans more [for reasons ???]"

Went quite well in Station Eleven

two images of the human body's circulatory system. One of them with good cable management

The human circulatory system, before and after proper cable management.

There's just no comparison & it's impossible not to notice, even if you're trying to be charitable & trying to squint to see any equivalence between the two approaches:

We should have festivals like for sakura

He's blocked me now, presumably for liking this post 💀

Notion?

Telling that the people demanding office working because human contact is vital now want to replace their employees with AI.

Who does this description of Kaiser Wilhelm II remind you of? (Written by Christopher Clark in 2015).

Is there any evidence of Iranian links? As you imply, I'm not sure they're the most obvious suspects...

strange these op-eds about women being too angry have all come out the last few days when during the same time there's also been a massive investigation published on an online rape academy with millions of viewers a month and none of them have bothered to even cover it, even as news

It’s exceptionally obvious this is coming and the time to pick a side was yesterday

To understand why the USA is where it is today, all you need to do is see that Trump cannot tolerate even the mildest, insightful criticism from the Pope, but Trump will allow Putin to humiliate him deeply and constantly, while still craving Putin’s approval.

This has made me very happy. Thank you @mattmuir.bsky.social.

tubesoundquiz.com

a map from 1918 showing the interurban network sprawling across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio

One side obsession from my research into the 1920s is the extensive network of ELECTRIC trains that used to connect cities and towns across the central Midwest called the Interurban. We had this more than a hundred years ago. The things we had and the things we lost.

I recommend this book, about the lost train culture of America, including the interurbans. I took a class form its author 40 years ago.

www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt...

On any given day, you might as well roll a die to predict whether Donald Trump is going to claim total victory; imminent victory; a negotiated ceasefire; an imminent ceasefire; new attacks; crucial negotiations or imminent crucial negotiations. The only certainty is that he’ll be lying.

Often think back to something I heard immediately after the lockdowns: there's a historical drop-off in *diary entries* during the 1918-1920 influenza epidemic. I interpreted that both as a trauma response and a result of boredom and having less to record day-to-day.