The meltdown on X over the Hungarian election result is a sight to behold. Joyous.

💥🇭🇺With 95% of votes counted, Hungary’s map shows the opposition Tisza party crushing Fidesz 94–12 in constituencies. Péter Magyar has secured a 2/3 majority, asked President Tamás Sulyok and other Orbán loyalists to resign immediately, and announced his first visit to Warsaw.

Peter Magyar's landslide victory in Hungary inspires:
1. Even an incumbent kleptocrat of 16 years with control of nearly all media & state institutions can be beaten.
2. What is needed is a strong political leader who credibly stands for democracy, a united opposition & a free internet. /1

‘Illegal’ forest service overhaul risks causing ‘chaos’ across US public lands, union claims The restructuring will close all regional offices, which manages 193m acres of land, roughly the size of Texas

The science is clear: removing forest protections will be devastating on the environment. The Trump admin does not care. Fuel the fight to defend our forests and Stand Up for Science by donating at standupforscience.net/donate

#Forest #Nature #Climate #Science

zurl.co/KnBHN

Interesting the BBC ran with the "victory for European democracy" angle and mentioned Trump and Putin as supporters, but not Farage and Reform's clear links to Orban

More 🇭🇺 metro euphoria 🥳

oh god oh fuck I took the metro to the Tisza rally and all these kids POURED OUT of the train at the stop and started running up the escalators chanting, and briefly held hands with the older people leaving the rally and going down on the escalator, and I think I may actually just cry

Explore 1,000,000 Digitized Artworks from Across the UK: Paintings, Sculptures, Street Art & More No art enthusiast's visit to the United Kingdom would be complete without days at the British Museum, the Tate, the V&A and the National Gallery. The fact that all those respected institutions are in ...

Explore 1,000,000 Digitized Artworks from Across the UK: Paintings, Sculptures, Street Art & More

Reagan’s OMB Director:

1. US Median household income stats don't count people experiencing homelessness. And US homelessness peaked in 2024.

2. 48% of the US has no money left each month after paying rent and bills. None.

Trump says U.S. will blockade Strait of Hormuz after Iran peace talks fail Trump said the U.S. blockade will stop Iran from policing the strait and benefiting economically while the rest of the world suffers from its closure.

So US is going to blockade the Strait of Hormuz. No oil or anything else gets out. Prices will skyrocket. Nothing could be better from the Russian perspective.

www.cnbc.com/2026/04/12/t...

"What do you do if you've been beaten hollow by a Green female plumber and people don't like your links to Trump? Undermine faith in democracy!"

NEW Stewart Lee column on Farage being a bad loser.

"Maybe it’s time for Laura Kuenssberg and Nick Ferrari, and the phalanxes of Farage’s other supine news media enablers, to start calling him out"
🔗☟☟

OCBS NEWS Q LIVE Vance says no agreement reached after marathon session of direct talks with Iran UPDATED 30М AGO

Ffs… This wasn’t a “marathon,” CBS.

It was one day of negotiations to resolve a conflict whose roots go back more than 70 years.

Spurious Home Office decisions rejecting student visas are threatening universities' ability to enrol young people from abroad, it is claimed. New rules come into effect in June that will punish universities if more than 4 per cent of study visas are rejected by the Home Office. However, the changes coincide with a marked increase in the numbers of visas being refused by the Home Office on spurious and inaccurate grounds, according to research by universities that has been shared with The Times. Neither students nor universities are able to challenge the decisions, which are often taken months after a university has accepted the applicant and in some cases just days before they are due to start studying.

UKVI carries out discretionary "credibility interviews" to ascertain that a student's intentions to study here are genuine. In another interview, when asked why they had chosen to apply to their chosen institution, the applicant said they had considered several factors, including the university's ranking, employability support, student satisfaction while also noting that it was an ancient institution and cited the year it was founded. The UKVI rejected the application, explaining that they were not satisfied the applicant was genuine given they had quoted the wrong founding year. The university subsequently confirmed that the applicant had provided the correct year and the UKVI caseworker was incorrect, but the decision could not be reconsidered.

In another case a foreign student was rejected from obtaining a visa to study at the University of East Anglia due to a dispute over whether the university was in Norfolk. The applicant asserted correctly that it was, but the UKVI caseworker appeared to confuse Norfolk with Norwich, which is the capital of the county, and rejected the application - believing the applicant was wrong.

In another credibility interview the applicant was asked to describe some of the taught modules they would be studying as part of their degree. The applicant explained that they had been offered a place to study a PhD in biomedical engineering which was fully research-based so did not have any taught modules. Despite this, the UKVI refusal letter stated that they were not satisfied on the basis that their answers were "vague and generic" and had failed to explain the taught modules they would be studying.

It is almost, almost, impressive just how Labour have taken the massively dysfunctional and incompetent Home Office and managed by dint of policies and rhetoric to make it even more dysfunctional and incompetent. It is a true testament to how hostile they are to migrants.

archive.today/07Hdr

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-4190...?

If Orban loses, it will not be because of a "free and fair" election. He will lose DESPITE his making sure the elections were not free and fair. Unless journalists note this, they will both continue to fetishize elections as the only time "democracy" takes place, as well as sanitize Orban's actions.

series of headlines detailing "marathon talks"

series of headlines detailing "marathon talks"

series of headlines detailing "marathon talks"

series of headlines detailing "marathon talks"

Marathon talks? Compared to what? It took years for Obama to deliver a detailed Iran deal. The Trump admin are packing it in after 20 hours.
(H/T @bgrueskin.bsky.social)

Electric eels! Childhood nightmare! Cartoon weapon! Able to generate shocks of nearly 900 volts to stun prey and ward off predators!

But that’s an INSANE voltage, actually—why does it need to be so large?

1/7 ⚛️🧪

Right, no, but apart from THAT...

the chicago pope is over on twitter being christlike and everyone's biblesplaining him in the replies lol

Apparently, there is still money to be made from restaurants. If you’re Richard Caring. He’s sold the Ivy Collection, Annabelle’s and Scott’s etc to an Abu Dhabi investment fund for £1.4 billion. News via propel.

British National Lottery riot with eamon holmes YouTube video by alexmaccoll

Get well soon Eamonn youtu.be/CHitRcyiij8?...

there is no level of hell deep enough for RFKjr

British crypto billionaire Ben Delo says he has given £4m to Reform UK Delo, pardoned by Trump after violating US banking law, describes himself as champion of free speech

Reform donor Ben Delo, who has given £4 million to the party, is making legal threats to those who reference his 2022 US conviction for failing to implement anti-money laundering laws, prior to a pardon by President Trump.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Feels like several years of soft balling far-right and conspiracy driven protests, while pandering to the views of a tiny minority of bitter middle aged blokes, has reached another exciting milestone!

The fact that the word "escalate" comes from "escalator", and not the other way around, as escalator comes from "e" and "scala" meaning electric stairs.

bsky.app/profile/dani...

bsky.app/profile/garv...

Électrification : les mesures annoncées par le Gouvernement | info.gouv.fr VIDÉO. Leasing social, pompes à chaleur, voitures électriques… : la France accélère son électrification pour réduire sa dépendance au gaz et au pétrole et renforcer sa souveraineté. Le soutien à l’électrification atteindra 10 milliards d’euros en 2030.

The French government has announced the measures of its plan to accelerate electrification:

- a ban on gas boilers in new houses from the end of 2026
- increased support for replacing old heating with heat pumps
- 100 regions will pilot comprehensive heat transition plans to phase out gas by 2030

Home Office starts crackdown on EU citizens’ post-Brexit rights to live in UK Concerns raised over use of travel data in determining whether people are ‘continuously’ in UK, after HMRC fiasco Ministers are to start removing post-Brexit residency rights from EU citizens who are no longer “continuously” living in the UK. The initiative is legal under the 2020 Brexit withdrawal agreement but the decision to use travel data to partially determine absences has raised concerns following the HMRC fiasco that saw almost 20,000 parents stripped of child benefits because of inaccurate Home Office border data. Continue reading...

Home Office starts crackdown on EU citizens’ post-Brexit rights to live in UK