I went to a discussion yesterday about the translation of my book Ethics and Public Policy into Armenian. So interesting. There were several examples of terms that are difficult to translate, but I could very easily have written the sentence in plainer English with no loss of meaning. A lesson.
"New rules are forcing people to sell homes they'd prefer to keep"
Yes, that is what the new rules were introduced to do. System working as intended.
“If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You
cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity
will be obvious, even to yourself.” George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English language’
Right advice. Wrong rationale.
Eye contact can be interpreted in many ways, but for me the main one is: “You matter, I hope you get what I’m saying.” Which works.
But if I’m in the front row trying to avoid falling asleep after lunch, and failing, the eye contact has a distinctly hostile feel.
I Stand With Starmer
A Primeminster who owns up to mistakes, takes full responsibility & apologises 👏
A Primeminster who’s a strong leader steading a very wobbly ship, navigating world chaos, making us shine on the international stage once more, while always putting the national interest first! 👏
#IStandWithStarmer
The Exterminating Angel and Dr Zhivago
This Is Just To Say
I have turned off
the AI features
that were in
the update
and which
you were probably
hoping
to monetize
Fuck you
they were stupid
so unnecessary
and so annoying
Having a “general” category is a symptom of the general problem with attempting to sort by category.
Just label the shelves numerically, scan the book bar codes onto “Bookbuddy” or somesuch and catalogue the books by shelf number. Then you have a searchable database for each book’s location.
This is taken from an excellent @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org thread on the latest from IEA.
The US and Canada are wealthy countries that should be massively reducing carbon emissions. They aren't because their politics is dominated by petrostate brain.
Annual change in co2 emissions by region
What do you notice about the countries above the line with increasing emissions versus those below the line with declining emissions?
To be a fossil fuel producer is to be a fossil fuel consumer.*
So bear that in mind with the drill everything people.
(*Unless you are Norway.)
What should have happened: the REIT paid no tax but the Tice companies holding shares in the REIT paid £98k tax on the dividends they received. What actually happened: none of the companies paid any tax.
Our new report: Richard Tice signed accounts wrongly claiming £98,000 of tax exemptions
A 🧵 with the evidence:
The entire city of Myrhorod, Poltava region, came to a standstill to honor the memory of a fallen Ukrainian Defender.
📹: mariikavognik/Threads
Pope Leo XIV in Cameroon: “The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants.”
Remember, if they're watching Fox News, they think: (a) war is going great, (b) economy is awesome and (c) the awful liberals & foreigners are getting what they deserve.
They're trapped in a nearly impenetrable epistemic bubble. Trump's approval rating has a mid 30s floor until that bubble pops.
Footnotes are for the readers who want more detail; endnotes are for PhD students of the subject.
Sorry, I don’t get it. If you compare the long piece with the pentagon, you will note that the end coins on the long piece have just one neighbour, whereas in the pentagon every coin has two neighbours. So the end coins on the long piece have both gained neighbours at some stage in the process.
I am sure I typed plumbed.
But we also replaced one Khamenei with another; empowered the IRGC; did nothing for the protesters, killed over a thousand civilians, including hundreds of children and lost at least 13 US service members, alongside over 500 wounded); left Iran with enough highly enriched uranium to make 10-12 nuclear weapons; gave it greater incentive to try to build them; irreparably tarnished America's reputation; did lasting damage to the US and world economies; depleted our arsenal of scarce missile-defence interceptors; diverted valuable military assets from other regions; empowered Russia with an oil price windfall; triggered further conflict in Lebanon; further eroded domestic and international law; and may have left Iran in control of the most valuable waterway in the world, in a position to earn tens of billions of dollars in revenue per year through tolls, while holding the world economy hostage.
So @jderbyshire.ft.com asked @philgordondc.bsky.social if the Iran war is the US’s Suez moment. He said no, but then pithily and pitilessly sums up how it has been a comprehensive strategic failure. Oof!
www.ft.com/content/0cbc...
Hmm, his ability to recall the names of so many of the former supporters who have turned on him suggests that his dementia hasn’t worsened much recently. But his narcissism seems to have plumed new depths.
15 women were willing to come to testify in court on behalf of the FT.
That included 3 whose allegations had not previously been reported.
Yup, before long, total eclipses of the sun will be a thing of the past. Not before human extinction, of course.
I’ve had a LaserJet printer for several years now and did use the scanner quite a lot for multi page documents. These days, however, most documents are shared as PDFs, so I hardly ever use it.
The Spanish PM: "The govt of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket"
In other news Starmer is in the Middle East today.
Imagine being behind the Moon and not getting scam calls for half an hour
A few have suggested that some aspects of this mission--joy, international teamwork, diversity--are being played up to stick it to the hateful attitude of the administration. But I don't think it's that. I think it's just that those things are essential to and inseparable from a mission like this.
When those in charge want to destroy the system that gave them the power to destroy the system it’s feels like a wrong turn was taken somewhere.
The 2026 World Cup is shaping up to be the new 1936 Summer Olympics.
A screenshot from the UK health and safety executive explaining the regulations about storing petrol at home
That looks like more than 30 litres.
Jar of Welsh Breakfast Marmalade labelled “Exceptional Orange Marmalade”
Last chance to enjoy some lovely orange marmalade before those evil Eurocrats force us to call it orange marmalade instead, thereby ending 1,000 years of British sovereignty or something.
Great rebuttal.
A government source told the Mirror: "This isn’t such a sticky situation after all. … Despite false claims that the name orange marmalade is toast, it will be preserved, so there’s no need to spread alarm"
