Israeli soldiers using sexual assault to force Palestinians out of West Bank, report says Experts say attacks, also carried out by settlers, are leading girls to quit school and enter early marriages

As an Indian this fills me with a particular flavor of dread and recognition of how fully genocidal Israeli policy in the West Bank is

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

It’s Blue Shirt Day 2026.

There are 22,000+ political prisoners unlawfully detained in Myanmar suffering brutal conditions and torture in cramped cells.

We call for the immediate release of all political prisoners!

#blueshirt4politicalprisoners
#FreeAllPoliticalPrisoners
#blueshirtmovementmyanmar

Clean energy generation exceeded rise in global electricity demand in 2025 Output from solar farms rose by a third while electricity from fossil fuels fell, research from thinktank reveals

"Clean energy is now scaling fast enough to absorb rising global electricity demand, keeping fossil generation flat before its inevitable decline."

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

THE CENTRE FOR HISTORY AND ECONOMICS

The Cambridge Centre is pleased to announce its Easter Term 2026 seminar schedule. Speakers include: Sophie FitzMaurice (Cambridge), Charles Troup (Yale) and @mattinbiglari.bsky.social (Bristol). Please join us! Click for dates, times and abstracts!
www.histecon.magd.cam.ac.uk/seminar_hec....

We asked what repairing the harm of enslavement would look like. This is what we found Our Legacies of Enslavement team has found humanity and dignity, not blame or guilt, are at the heart of the conversation

www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

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’éle...

Policy shifts coming fast. France accelerates Electrification

- a ban on gas boilers in new houses from 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
www.info.gouv.fr/actualite/el...

Just read the Yale report on Trust in Higher Education. You will be shocked, no doubt, to learn that it did not occur IN THE SLIGHTEST to a committee at a top American university looking at trust in American higher ed to use any other country's experiences to pose intelligent counterfactuals.

🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈⚖️🇭🇺 A legal earthquake - CJEU finds Hungary to have violated EU law on multiple counts with its anti-LGBT+ legislation (as expected) but also for the first time in history, in an EU law-reshaping precedent, finds Hungary to violate Art 2 TEU in a self-standing manner.

It’s fascinating how this vision loss (hopefully temporary- we find out ok Thursday if it’s permanent) has made me reacquaint myself with older modes and media of communication and how habits, not technology, is the main thing limiting my functioning.

Also: REALLY mad at myself for getting out of the habit of writing long form on paper (I still write habitually on notepads but they are always in telegraphic note form rather than actual structured polished writing that I could still do up to the initial years of grad school.)

So for the last couple of weeks I have been dealing with a flare up of my ocular shingles that, for the first time, has significantly affected my vision. Enough that I can’t really read and time on screen hurts. All I can say is I am so glad we reinvented radio (how my brain translates podcasts).

Even with them attending, signs are not pointing in a positive direction. But Trump also desperately wants an out, so an extension of the ceasefire is very possible.

Next 48 hours will be critical to see where this goes.

North Korea Uses Cluster Bombs in Latest Missile Test: KCNA North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles that tested the power of its cluster munitions, its government news agency said on Monday, confirming the latest in a flurry of launches by th...

North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles that tested the power of its cluster munitions, its government news agency said on Monday, confirming the latest in a flurry of launches by the nuclear-armed state

thedefensepost.com/2026/04/20/n...

Japan eases arms export rules to enable weapons sales The Japanese government revised limits on defense equipment exports Tuesday to enable the sale of weapons overseas, as it seeks to boost security cooperation with partner countries.

Japan eases arms export rules to enable weapons sales

english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/7...

One of the fascinating things about life in a society ruled by fundamentally anti-social ideologies is how much people conflate practices of care (a political commitment) with love or friendship, because the baseline assumption is that you only extend care within networks of intimacy.

There are multiple bullet points about how necessary it is to not criticize tech elites or scrutinize their actions.

They want to make it illegal to do anything other than praise them.

The Palentir statement on its desired “Technological Republic” is one of the scariest things I have seen in a while. It is a call for a world dominated by an authoritarian U.S., generated by AI (both the statement and the world), run by tech-surveillance companies. Technofascism pure!

Clearly, this disqualifies Palentir as a business partner for any other country than the U.S., not just in defense and security related sector but ANY sector — as information is power.

European countries should not just start new collaboration with Palentir, they should divest it ASAP!

a lot of men never recovered from women being able to have jobs and demand fair treatment and have been waiting for any opportunity to punish them for it

Every time a Democrat mentions how to talk to "ordinary people" they mean "how I was told to talk by a handful of weirdo consultants in DC with gross fixations on throwing certain groups under the bus and who would not last a day in an ordinary job interacting with ordinary people."

I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.

We need a poorer parliament. when the elected members are mostly billionaires in a country that is at its most unequal, they cannot in any sense be called representatives.
www.indiatoday.in/diu/story/lo...

Israel escalates attacks on medics in Lebanon with deadly ‘quadruple tap’ Lebanese health ministry says killing of 91 healthcare workers shows ‘total disregard’ for international law

The Israeli army struck civilians in the Lebanese city of Mayfadoun.

And then, the Israelis double-tapped the medics who arrived onto the scene.

And then, they triple-tapped the next wave of medics.

And then, they did it one more time for good measure.

some things about becoming a parent are radicalizing in ways I expected - e.g being reminded viscerally how screwed we'd all be if childcare and other care work disappeared. but other things are radicalizing in ways I didn't - like experiencing constant spontaneous solidarity in ways big and small

Trump, IRS In Talks To Settle U.S. President's $10 Billion Lawsuit Trump's adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization are also plaintiffs.

Trump is reported close to a "deal" with himself under which US taxpayers would pay him $10 billion.

I served in multiple communist and authoritarian dictatorships, but I never witnessed corruption on this scale or this blatant.

The stupidest take you ever saw. Comparing a twitch streamer to a genocidal war criminal... Both these things are the same. I am Very Smart. 🧠🧠

this is very much not a new phenomenon, nor does it have much of anything to do with 'modern dating'

A federal judge in Illinois today ruled that the Trump administration improperly coerced Facebook and Apple to remove ICE-tracking apps in violation of the First Amendment. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Lol me too. And I still absolutely talk about posting people here and there.

Oh god it might be me (scanning vocabulary)