a group of soldiers are standing in a row wearing helmets and armor . ALT: a group of soldiers are standing in a row wearing helmets and armor .

I'm going to try asking nicely on Saturday.

Young adult happiness is falling. Percent of young people who are pretty or very happy has dropped from 88% to 76% over the last 15 years after having held fairly steady between 1980 and 2010

My hottest “I have no data to back this up” take is that phones aren’t making young people less happy. What’s making them less happy is living in a world where everyone is having their reality defined by recommendation algorithms that can only care about whether something keeps you watching.

It's technically accurate, and we've done the same thing before with JSA and PIP. Ultimately, people won't really care as long as the money keeps coming, but it'll help prepare for the difficult conversation we'll have to have in the next 10-20 years. #ukpolitics

Which got me thinking - we probably need to change how we talk about the state pension, otherwise the problem will persist. The gov should start referring to it as "retirement benefit" or something similar, then slowly drip-feed that over 2-3 years for adoption.

The state pension probably won't exist by the time I retire, and it's currently the single biggest line-item in the welfare budget - but people, broadly, don't think about how it works, don't consider it a benefit, and, frankly, pensioners vote.

It was quite a hard conversation to have without making her feel attacked, given how being hard-working and taking no hand-outs is intrinsic to her identity.

When challenged on that, it turns out she'd just not really thought about where that money comes from and sort of assumed it came from the taxes she'd paid when she was working.

Not too long ago, I was talking to my grandma about WFA and she thought she should get it because "she's never claimed benefits in her life" despite getting the state pension.

I see it more like the dot-com bubble than the GFC. There'll be an element of leopards eating faces and schadenfreude when the evangelists get stung, then pain when the market corrects, but like early 00's internet, it's here - it'll become a part of life, albeit more slowly than the bros wanted.

Tim Roth just saying "Ofcom" before swearing on the radio is absolutely sending me.

I expect once polling comes out and this war is proven to be deeply unpopular among all demographics, the attack line will be closer to "why are you allowing the US to use our bases". It's all so desperately transparent.

A very real Allister Heath headline for the Telegraph: The chilling rise of anal fissures proves that the culture war is already lost

Phenomenal

@alanstricklandmp.bsky.social any chance of us getting something similar on the table?

At some point, the social + ai tech-bros will turn on elmo. His companies keep bringing regulatory scrutiny in the EU that they know any future, non-corrupt administration are likely to copy.

Black Ops 7 is a Failure to be Celebrated YouTube video by Bricky

Black Ops 7 is a failure to be celebrated.

It is the vanguard of the worst possible iteration of the game's industry and I pray its abject failure staves off a disastrous second half of the decade.

Devs and players alike benefit from this game's poor sales.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6udz...

I worry more about those who won't. They're still >30% of us, completely ignoring what they see with their eyes because it's too painful to admit they made a bad decision (or, in the rare case, because they enjoy the culture wars it fuels).