We must encourage Farage to get him on the Reform UK campaign trail, his negative rizz might just save us.

It’s a long way from the most important part of this, but seeing JD Vance’s reverse-Midas touch is the cherry on top, the big ham-faced loser.

I’d actually forgotten what it felt like to read good political news.

A chink of light for democracy over in Hungary

Cui bono indeed

At this point I just assume every one of these insane moves is someone's insider trading positions.

The list for Irish counter-signers is much, much shorter. Bank employees, doctors, lawyers, teachers, priests. And IIRC they have to be Irish or British.

No doubt you've got this in hand already, but if you have time for a day's safari in Nairobi National Park, do it. Not the best safari experience in the world, but seeing actual giraffes and lions when you can still see the city in the distance is proper surreal.

Fab craft brewery, the Crafty Chameleon, next to the Social. Has a lovely beer garden, but nice place to eat even if you don’t drink.

Perhaps their yardstick is how long it would take them to run an actual marathon?

It’s the hope that gets you in the end

Oh a scale of 1 (a bit fucked) and 10 (Armageddon), just how fucked are we all now the Iran war seems to be back on?

Are we all running out of oil in a week’s time, again?

True, but also means far less will be spent on this vital research for a long time to come.

There have been a bunch of cases of people having benefits issues because they’re shown as leaving the country but not returning, plus people who went within CTA to Ireland and left from there, and whichever they use for those calculations isn’t fully accurate.

UK starts crackdown on EU citizens’ post-Brexit rights Concerns raised over use of travel data in determining whether people are ‘continuously’ in UK, after HMRC fiasco

Given most flights are non-changeable, so plenty of people will have travel records that don’t reflect where they actually are… this feels like something that will be riddled with problems.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I don’t possess a driving licence.

Plus my bike cost €200 to buy and maybe €20 a year taking it for an annual service. That’ll do me, thanks.

I saw one in real life when I was last jn the US, a year ago. It looked absurdly big even on a giant Chicago street. I don’t think it would fit down my road even if that road were cleared of all the currently parked, normal-sized cars.

It’s almost certainly that

Have US carmakers considered that the thing blocking supersized pick-up trucks from our roads is… they don’t fit on our roads?

I’m the same. I’ve never considered it but there’s some psychological barrier to tucking in before the film has begun. Maybe from childhood?

Nor would I want to. Eating food off your lap, in the dark. No thank you.

Good grief, the same. This sounds dreadful.

Hot food? Seat ordering? Madness.

At best, you buy an extra large wine on the way in, or two beers, so you don’t have to leave your seat (save for a discreet pop to the loo).

There's an exception: if you take Dutch nationality through marriage, you can keep your original. Assume that also works in reverse.

Great piece on the problems caused by the Netherlands refusal to allow dual nationality.

(It’s having to give up my Irish passport that stops me doing it)

www.dutchnews.nl/2026/04/a-ta...

My favourite device review of recent times: www.theverge.com/23642073/bes...

A History of the World in 47 Borders, by @jonnelledge.bsky.social is very good

Local folks: fair warning if you’re trying to get anywhere today. Road closed to people/bikes all the way from Rozengracht to almost Dam Square. Can’t cross anywhere.

Not at all unrelatedly, I am now late and quite some distance from where I wanted to be.

(City is looking fine today, mind)

JFC there are now seven people in the pool and every one is either taking photos or posing for them.

When did the world collectively decide that posting “look at my fucking brilliant life” on socials was more important than actually enjoying it?

Real life is now just the rough draft. The swim, the meal, the view — raw material. The point is the processed, filtered, captioned version, optimised for people you vaguely know and don’t even like to scroll past in four seconds while they’re supposed to be somewhere else.

The truly bleak part isn’t the posting. It’s that the experience of joy has been so completely hollowed out that most people wouldn’t know what to do with it if they had it. Look at a sunset with your actual eyes? Feel something privately, that no one validates with a like? Absolutely not.

At some point humanity looked at its finite allocation of days on this spinning rock and decided the correct response was to perform enjoyment for strangers rather than experience it.

We had consciousness, opposable thumbs, the capacity for genuine awe, and we used all of it to get a better angle.