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

Ha! If you knew the surgeon I was thinking of when composing this, he would probably just push it further in.

I had the opportunity to confront Pete Hegseth's bigoted spiritual mentor, Pastor Doug Wilson, and call him out on his history of hate, his misreading of the Bible, his hijacking of Jesus, and his cosplay Crusading.

It was worth it.

Like its hard to explain to someone who has dedicated their lives to the last 4 inches of the human colon that the reporter they're about to speak to about their massive life's work breakthrough has just come from covering a man who lit a firework that was stuck in his arse before an England match

Thanks. Picking up on your point properly though, I used to work for a hospital and the senior clinicians were generally the same.

They despaired at a lack of shared and civics knowledge. Some was generational and some was that newsrooms just cant afford specialists (e.g. health correspondents).

Oh so sorry I feel terribly rude now. I was being a bit flippant. In my brief, shit career as a journo, academics were always the best to speak to.

I vox popped father of UK psephology Robin Butler once about retail therapy. Just the most perfect uneditable 40 secs of audio I ever recorded.

Is the fact that some journalists have now become academics not a contributory but not major factor here?

The heating was turned up to ruin the forensics!

Absolutely foul play

Here they all are queuing for their blue tick

Comte, Cantal, Morbier, Brie

Is Ukraine winning the drone race? Barely six months ago it appeared that Russia was ahead in the drone race.

New post from @ldfreedman.bsky.social

"Is Ukraine winning the drone war?"

The Russians certainly think so.

What are the implications of Ukraine's innovations for the war and, more broadly, for how other countries should be thinking about drones?

(£/free trial)

open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/i...

Is that not on a double bill with The Jung Guns?

Ill have to check my TV times

Wait until these people discover potholes in the roads

Didn't we end the decade with everyone thinking our computers would think it was 1900?

There's some corner of the suns corona that will be forever England?

The begat...begat....begat....begat bit

“It’s a couple of things that work beautifully in concert. First: no music. Audiences are so sophisticated, but what they’re not accustomed to is not being told how to feel,” Wyle says. “You take all that out and it forces a level of engagement where you’re now looking for clues within the frame of the screen, which forces you to look up from your phone. And I think that is extremely engaging, especially to young viewers who aren’t accustomed to being asked to participate in a nonpassive way in the viewing experience.

“Second point, shooting it with almost exclusively 50-millimeter or 65-millimeter lenses, which is the most comparable to the human eye—and only shooting from the point of view of a human being that’s present in this space. There are no cameras on gurney wheels going in the hallway. There’s no cameras on the ceiling looking down from a God point of view. You are limited to the perspective of a participant. You can look away, but you can’t leave, and it becomes an endurance test for you to stay on your feet as long as we’re on our feet. Which [brings me to my] third point: real time. Real time has an aggregate sense of tension that you don’t get in any other form of storytelling. What happened before is happening now, and these two things are going to add up to the next thing. And if we throw more ingredients into this cooker and keep ratcheting it up, it’s going to pop.”

Wyle makes eye contact for his next point, delivering it with a Robby-esque matter-of-factness. “Fourth point: The election went the other way,” he says with a shrug. “We could have been a really good show with a lot of nice things to say in a perfectly normal Kamala Harris universe. And instead we became almost a beacon of hope and humanity in an alternative universe. But in the midst of that, fifth point—this is essentially competence porn. You’re watching really smart, dedicated people do what only they know how to do at a level that you don’t know how to do it, and you’re so fucking glad that they’re there doing it, and compartmentalizing their own stuff to put your broken pieces back together. You’re so reassured by knowing that there are people out there that laugh and joke and have the ability to lock in like that.”

this is fucking unreal stuff from Noah Wyle on the magic of The Pitt. www.gq.com/story/noah-w...

I remember getting into a massive fight with someone at the time about this.

A load of stuff about how Tony B Liar was 5 mins from getting a Nazi tattoo and I was very much of the view that, while i suported getting rid of dictators, this was tragically unforgivably incompetent.

Yeah I think there has to be a historical results aspect to it though too. If the seat has been close but with the same winning party since 2010s.....

Yeah Tehran is ok.

Dont know about you but imo its great for plot yet very silly in places.

Especially the main character Tamar's IT skills which are a constant plot McGuffin.

Ooooh. Yes.

What would be the definition of a non two party seat?

So you're saying there's a chance?

My wife says the same.

Terrible half hours though she'd add

Unrelated and this is going to be super embarrassing if im wrong but are you married to @jamesldouglass.bsky.social ?

He seems lovely!

Yes

Is the best defence of Starmer that a whole committee of MPs was told by Robbins that the security vetting was "conducted to the usual standard", and none of them thought to ask: just to check, he did pass, right?

Interesting stuff here from @migueldelaney.bsky.social

Are you saying there are bronze age perverts that came too late?

Hopefully, Iron Age Pervert will come along with his newfangled chains and sex dungeon and lock him away

I cant believe im doing this