good thing we do not have any ocean based military activities in motion right now

Tesla just unlocked sales to 50,000+ government agencies It marks a significant step in expanding Tesla's presence in the public sector, where procurement processes have traditionally slowed electric vehicle adoption.

ah cool, more tax money going to prop up Tesla's falling sales

www.teslarati.com/tesla-just-u...

This is insane, tinpot authoritarian shit.

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/u...

Other thing about this whole debate is that £100k isn't worth what it used to be!

That was for the personal allowance, I think

Just say George Osborne and be done with it!

Well, I guess that's what happens when you put a deranged fool and his lackeys in charge of the world's hegemon. Trump is making GWB look like a visionary genius in foreign policy.

Every worst case scenario seems to just keep on happening.

Starting to see the "up and to the right" movement in ad spend ahead of the UK local elections on May 7th.

Spent the day drawing on maps. Living the dream.

probably worth noting that "this worked out incredibly well" for Twitter investors BECAUSE Musk rolled Twitter into SpaceX, and that if he hadn't those Twitter shares would likely be worth close to zero due to his tragicomic mismanagement of the platform

Grim but useful read.

Global energy markets are on the verge of a disaster
economist.com/finance-and-...

Global energy markets are on the verge of a disaster Scenarios now range from bad to awful

Fifty days into the Iran war the world has lost 550m barrels of Gulf crude—nearly 2% of last year’s global output. Three factors are pushing the world towards the cliff edge

My view on the Briefing Room 5 weeks ago was:
If the Strait reopens in the next week, we have economic disruption but it’s manageable.
Closed for another 4-8 weeks & we have high energy prices throughout the year.
Closed for few months & all bets are off and we’re in a really grim economic world.

Never trust an estate agent is a good rule to live by.

The extent to which social media platforms made the experience demonstrably worse over the period in question is a truly fascinating phenomenon. Only some of it was the Musk fash madness. Lots of it was just financial decisions dominating UX considerations.

Extremely relevant to the “Is Bluesky Dying” debate.

Good morning Bluesky

Well I suppose he and Goodwin have something in common then…

As Twitter became X, use frequency has become strongly correlated with dislike of Democrats.

The more you hate Democrats, the more you post and visit X.

Posting is correlated with affective polarization:
😡 The most partisan users — those who love their party and despise the other — are more likely to post about politics
🥊 The result? A loud angry minority dominates online politics, which itself can drive polarization (see doi.org/10.1073/pnas...)

Twitter/X is a story on its own:

🔴 While users have become more Republican
💥 POSTING has completely transformed: it has moved nearly ❗70 percentage points❗ from Democrat-dominated to Republican-leaning.

📉 Visiting and posting on X and Facebook has collapsed: nearly 50% drop!

On X, it is mostly Democrats who have become inactive.

Many still occasionally log on, but rarely and quietly.

There has been a huge transformation in social media use, especially on X - which has swung sharply to the right. It’s not the same platform it once was.

Is social media dying? How much did Twitter change as it became X? Which party now dominates the conversation?

Using nationally representative ANES data from 2020 & 2024, I map how the U.S. social media landscape has changed

Here are the key take-aways 🧵

Full paper out now in in JQD:DM!

Wow, Dom Cummings is still writing his substack?

War disruption forces world’s biggest condom maker to raise prices by up to 30% Malaysia’s Karex says it has to pass on higher cost of raw materials to customers

Lots more of this kind of thing to come.
Loads of (understandable) focus on energy and fertilisers but a large range of wider petrochemical supply chains are messed up.

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... War disruption forces world’s biggest condom maker to raise prices by up to 30%

Starting a mid-decade redistricting war only to end up with -1 seats is the same fine strategic genius and subtle grasp of game theory that brough us the Strait of Hormuz.

And this geopolitical/economic shock is entirely endogenous to Donald Trump himself.

The Politics of Competence Cambridge Core - Comparative Politics - The Politics of Competence

This is pretty close to the argument that @profjanegreen.bsky.social and I make in The Politics of Competence. Sometimes shocks are so seismic they lead to complete reappraisals of parties and leaders on issues.