This is why people on the left who claim to care about the global south should regulate their enthusiasm for universal household bailouts in rich countries.

Menswear writer here. 👋 Let me tell you why you shouldn't wear an armband like that. 🧵

Hungary Must Arrest Visiting Leaders Sought by ICC, Magyar Says Hungary’s incoming Prime Minister Peter Magyar said he would halt the departure from the International Criminal Court that his predecessor Viktor Orban initiated, affirming that Hungary would respect ...

After Netanyahu's office claimed that Peter Magyar had invited him to visit Hungary, the PM-elected says that he will enforce all ICC arrest warrants once the country re-enters the Rome Statute.

[Hungary will] "have a legal obligation to enforce the ICC rulings and I'm sure [Netanyahu] knows this".

The Onion Has a New Plan to Take Over Infowars

Here's how we're taking over InfoWars.

a computer can never be held accountable therefore *all management decisions must be made with computers*

leaked software industry training manual (2026)

Ed Miliband to double down on net zero with measures to combat Iran energy shock As fossil fuel prices soar ‘the era of clean energy security must come of age’, energy secretary will say

This really is the only answer. Our dependence on fossil fuels must end. For our planet, and for our society.

Lisa Nandy: In a rare moment of agreement, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the gambling industry brings joy to a lot of people. He and I have discussed the harms that affect a minority of people. They are significant and important, but the industry as a whole brings positive benefits to the United Kingdom. I think he is underplaying the significant pressures on high street businesses that have existed over the last couple of decades—something that, frankly, his Government did absolutely nothing about over the 14 years that they were in government. We are dealing with those.

Yougov polling on perceptions of the gambling industry - 43% very unfavorable

Really worth stressing what a minority position "the gambling industry is good" is.

I'm not an expert etc etc but it seems to me the challenge here is going to be to learn relevant lessons without over-indexing on a single conflict which will inevitably have various features which do not generalise.

Artillery, air defenses, airplanes, precision strikes etc are still critical as well, which is why Ukraine has spent so much effort on procuring them.

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://help.ft.com/faq/gifting-and-sharing-an-article/what-is-a-gift-article/. https://www.ft.com/content/034361bc-641b-4a73-a3d1-3ee76c4ed573?syn-25a6b1a6=1 One Labour official who knows Starmer well said that while McSweeney, a protégé of Mandelson’s, wanted to send him to Washington, Starmer was never that close to him. “Keir didn’t even really like Mandy, and suspended his judgment as he does so often,” the person said. “At that point, the machine took it [Mandelson’s appointment] as his intention and does what the British state does, which is bend the process to the signal it thinks is being broadcast from the principal.”

An all-time classic entry in the hall of fame 'does the person saying this realise how damning it is?' quotes:

yep: one of the reasons i want to nip the "stabbed in the back" myth now is that it gets Americans an excuse to avoid reining in the boys in Tampa in CENTCOM

i can only assume @quantian.bsky.social is too much of a coward to post this here on bsky so i will do it for him

bsky.app/profile/ayou...

Salute to an all-time tweet

Have been wondering when candidates would start talking about this. One of the biggest corruption scandals is U.S. history playing out in real time.

The Uk needs a version of Hot Ones but for desi food called Curried which is hosted by Tim Curry, there you go, I just made your network eleventy billion dollars

A diagram showing the VDA framework and the Arc of Democracy. At the top, three icons label the essential elements of democracy: Verification (tick), Deliberation (speech bubble), and Accountability (magnifying glass). Arrows descend from each through three horizontal bands representing the arc: Substantial (truth tested, voices included, power constrained), Performative (forms remain but substance is weak, rituals without consequence), and Simulated (appearance maintained but functions inverted: propaganda as verification, polarisation as deliberation, scapegoating as accountability). A vertical arrow on the left marks the arc's direction: improvements, decline, collapse. A column on the right maps counterpublics onto the same three states: functional counterpublics act in a substantial way, hollow counterpublics in a performative way, disordered counterpublics in a simulated way. The bands shift from grey through pink to red as democracy moves toward simulation.

A society that runs on this stack doesn't stop holding elections, or debating, or running investigations. The forms stay, but what goes is their capacity to constrain power. The arc bends toward simulation, carried out in the language of defending democracy.

Opening text of a thread by Palantir from X Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different.
twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...

Child: I know your name. Mamdani.

Obama: What’s his first name?

Child: Mayor.

Mayor Mamdani and President Obama read a picture book to a group of children.

Mayor Mamdani and President Obama chat and laugh with a group of children.

Mayor Mamdani and President Obama chat and laugh.

Children hug Mayor Mamdani.

Today, President Barack Obama and I read to a group of toddlers at Learning Through Play Pre-K Center in the South Bronx. 

In between singing wheels on the bus, we discussed our administration’s vision for this City — one where New York’s Cutest have the strongest start possible.

Remarkable.

> bet all your cards on Trump
> hand him over your Nobel Peace Prize because you've heard he wants one
> watch him strike a deal with Maduro's clique to use US Army to abduct him
> clique goes on as usual
> your services are no longer necessary
> ???
> no profit

This. Though. It’s not a coincidence. A for the ages wrong analysis of the international scene complemented by a for the ages wrong analysis of UK domestic politics.

I'm a broken record on this but the radicalisation and brain rot of Gen X/boomers is a massively under-appreciated problem

My friend got promoted at his construction job and now he has to take a three day course on asbestos and let me tell you I was not prepared for what a construction worker's course on asbestos looks like

Who are the euro crypto bros? And who actually uses crypto?

in which I investigate - qui sont-ils, les breaux de crypteaux? wer sind die Cryptoscheissesprechermenschen?
www.ft.com/content/5c56...

Wait I thought these guys like coal?

*BESSENT: A CHINESE EV IS 'A COAL-POWERED VEHICLE'

[as an aside, if you could hypothetically swap all US ICE vehicles for BEVs charged off coal plants, you'd reduce emissions because of efficiency gains]

Japanese sci-fi: two robots in space, yearning

American sci-fi: man gets the author's beliefs on polygamy confirmed by the aliens of ramalama IV

french sci-fi: two horny bounty hunters visit the Galaxy of Breasts

British sci-fi: nuclear war. Everyone dead. America's fault

There are lots of things only humans can meaningfully produce. The goal should be to allow humans to spend more time on those parts, not removing them from the process.