deeply unfunny premise, horrid response that also happens to be amazingly unfunny, just ? ? ?

genuinely think this is actually resignation worthy btw, like we fine with the Home Sec joking about tasering and deporting Jewish and dual-heritage political opponents?

Image with the caption "Barracks, Administration Building, and Officer's Quarters at Fort Columbia, Washington (Mike Berhow 2008) The image shows the side of a hill, rising from left to right, with a number of timber buildings spanning the length of the picture, backgrounded by trees. On the foreground on the left side of the image, at the level of the photographer is a concrete structure, likely associated with fire control. All of the timber buildings have verandas running across the entire width of the front, the nearest building having a double storey veranda.

I thought it was an American coastal fort based on the gun shields for the 6-inch guns, and the wooden construction of the buildings, started flicking through the book, and stumble across this image at random.

Checking my copy of American Seacoast Defences: A Reference Guide, and judging by the layout of the buildings, it might be Fort Columbia, Washington?

The one I find really strange is the exposing of Matt Hancock's affair. The media coverage was weirdly incurious about why there was a secret hidden camera in the office of a Secretary of State, and who put it there. The one time I'm aware of it being asked was in his interview with the News Agents

Giving a middling commander an army with a less than 10% attrition rate due to disease, and watching him absolutely stomp everyone else.

Any army before 1900 that had our current rate of sickness and disease would absolutely annihilate their opponents, even if completely restricted to the technology available at the time.

As the boomers die off,

Opinion: As boomers die off, America's anti-Israeli tilt is likely to harden. Fewer and fewer Americans think of Israel as David standing up to the Arab world's Goliath. More and more associate it with heavy-handed militarism.

Very funny how FT is actually the only newspaper on the planet

I think @hern.bsky.social was exactly right that it has been a truly astonishing bit of brand destruction by Google to bundle a free, bad version of their AI into their once incredibly useful search engine. It makes people think Google's AI is much worse than it actually is per its peers!

It turns out that Dimes Square/Peter Thiel psyop money actually works amazing well in terms of poisoning the well early in a way that has insane echoes a half decade later because that’s where a bunch of it took off lol. First and second degrees from Urbit, Red Scare, etc.

It’s Evola derived Nazism (frequencies and esoterics are an immediate give away) but we still pretend this starts and stops at trad wife stuff

Eisenhower's campaign to legitimate the bomb appalled America's British ally. In their Bermuda meeting Eisenhower sought Winston Churchill's support for nuclear war if the Korean truce broke down. Churchill sent Jock Colville to Eisenhower with a message of concern. According to Colville's notes on the meeting, Eisenhower said "that whereas Winston looked on the atomic bomb as something entirely new and terrible, he looked upon it as just the latest improvement in military weapons. He implied that there was no distinction between 'conventional weapons' and atomic weapons: all weapons in due course become conventional." Colville wrote later, "I could hardly believe my ears." In his diaries Eisenhower portrays the Churchill of the 1950s as on the verge of senility, The old man made a good deal of sense at Bermuda.

ike, how are you making churchill look good?

And of course the real story for the press in every country other than this one is "British trans doctor forced to flee country", but no, for our own extremist press it's "let's continue to harass them in their new country and try to get them sacked there too"

The awful reality of where the UK now finds itself is that while ten years ago this would've created a row and seen Navratilova sacked, now the BBC will do nothing and it won't even register in the media

This is on top of the fact that the fortifications of Quebec City were the heaviest set of defenses on the North American continent. There were stone forts like Ticonderoga but QC was an entire European-mainland style fortified city, Arnold had minimal hope of taking against determined defenders.

The Continental Army would be forced to retreat from Quebec and not necessarily due to British forces. John Adams would write, “The smallpox is ten times more terrible than Britons, Canadians and Indians together. This was the cause of our precipitate retreat from Quebec."

Area warlord fails to understand what the number one killer of soldiers has been in history

The "gender critical" movement will not leave this trans woman alone, even though she has had to relocate to Australia over their bullying.

Marking an LGBT+ person out as a "sexual predator" is how bigots have traditionally endangered LGBT+ people.

Tweet by Martina Navratilova. "Predator. That is how he should register. A sexual predator…" quote-tweeting a tweet by "Biology Rules OK" about Dr. Beth Upton, a trans woman

This tweet is highly defamatory and Martina Navratilova should be fired from BBC Sport for it.

It demonstrates an horrendous level of hatred for a trans woman (who was cleared of all wrongdoing in a recent tribunal) because she is a trans woman.

Three panel comic. Panel 1: person who has post-op bandages wrapped around their nose, nervously holding someone’s hand. Another speaker off panel says, “alright… let’s get these bandages off.” Panel 2: the person is gleefully looking at themself in a handheld mirror, their friends are overjoyed. Their new nose is a gigantic, elongated and pointed sword shape. Panel 3: they are jumping out of the ocean with a smile on their face, in unison with two swordfish who are also breaching the water.

It is observably that ethnic minority politicians who loudly pursue authoritarian immigration policies end up more unpopular than white ones, because liberal voters judge them for it and authoritarian ones don't believe them, but I don't think it helps her at all to say it.

“That’s why I said this individual can just fuck right off, because I know I belong in my own country. You’re not going to be able to do that to me,” she said. She said there was an aspect of racism to the claims. “I do think there is that element of it, which is: ‘How dare you, a brown woman, say a thing that we white liberals think you’re not allowed to say?’ Well I’m saying it.”

Across the world, regardless of skin colour, the successful playbook is IMV always 'I'm awesome! You're awesome! This is an awesome country! I will avoid where possible talking about racism!' and not....this.

Fascinated as to Mahmood's theory of 'how minority politicians succeed in democracies'.

I'm old enough to remember when voting for a political party meant you *didn't* get the other party's stupid ideas.

Mahmood told Forde’s Political Party podcast at the Duchess Theatre that claims she was chasing Reform votes were “just a way of delegitimising the point of view that I bring to the table”. “It’s also a way of delegitimising the perfectly valid, legitimate views of millions of people in this country, including ethnic minorities in this country. And it’s not acceptable, right? And also, you’re trying to put me in a box, which includes a lot of people who think I don’t even belong in my own country. “That’s why I said this individual can just fuck right off, because I know I belong in my own country. You’re not going to be able to do that to me,” she said. She said there was an aspect of racism to the claims. “I do think there is that element of it, which is: ‘How dare you, a brown woman, say a thing that we white liberals think you’re not allowed to say?’ Well I’m saying it.”

Can't think of anything funny to say about this. Mahmood's repeated weaponisation of racism to defend her racist policies might be the most immoral thing a minister has done since Osborne's Philpott comments

The last 200 years is far more important than the last 5000, and we can say that the track record of the citizen soldier over that period has been genuinely liberatory for a significant proportion of humanity.

Former Odeon Cinema, Morecambe - William Calder Robson for Harry Weedon and Partners, 1937 Image © Philip Butler

Odeon Cinema, Morecambe - William Calder Robson for Harry Weedon and Partners, 1937 Image © John Maltby

NEWS: The former Odeon Cinema in Morecambe (1937), now a hardware and bathroom supply shop, has been Grade II listed following support from C20 Society.

The Streamlined Moderne style cinema was one of 7 designed for Odeon by architect William Calder Robson; 3 of which survive, all are now listed.

Obviously the answer is mostly “drugs” but it really is kind of fascinating to me how Musk oscillates between “a post scarcity utopian future is at hand!” and “the mongrel races are coming to claim the persecuted white man’s scarce resources in a zero sum game!”