Andrew Brown

The Daily Mail going to Tony Blair for a take on conflict in the Middle East, is it?

😂😂😂

This is the Platonic ideal of a social media exchange, never again to be equaled or even attempted:

Going to say this isn’t the *greatest* of attack lines.

Not, to be clear, that she is the prosecutor. But everyone knows the ogre is watching and listening from behind the curtain as Stalin did in the show trials.

Dario Amodei being interviewed by Zanny Minton Beddoes is giving me terrible Darkness At Noon vibes. Poor Rubashov!

Such a shame, he and Markwayne could've made *such* a lovely couple.

There is a quote something like that in his essay on Kipling but I've not got the reference handy.

Timothy Snyder cuts to the chase on Iran. Follow the money (to Trump).
snyder.substack.com/p/why-attack...

Yet, when considering this administration, the best bet is the most cynical. Whether Trump planned it or not, he might have created the conditions for a deal with those who control Iran's levers of power. Such a deal would be acceptable to its neighbours, who do not want a democratic Iran. US power would have been demonstrated. Europe and China would have been discomforted. Iran's rulers (and the Trump family) would be richer. What would be not to like about all of this, at least for Trump?

Martin Wolf, here to ruin your breakfast:
My quarrel with this analysis is that it leaves all consideration of religion off the table. Whoever emerges to run Iran must I suspect be pretty sincerely devout to have risen to where they might be considered.

The @ipso.co.uk ruling of Telegraph’s preposterous “We earn £345k but soaring private school fees mean we can’t go on five holidays”, reveals the article to have been a fabrication. There is no such family as Al, Alexandra, Ali, Harry and Barry Moy. Glad to have acted as lead complainant on this.

It's not complicated: Maga is where the money comes from these days.

En guise de représailles, Dubaï parachute 3000 influenceurs sur Téhéran Après les frappes aériennes de l’Iran ce week-end sur le territoire des monarchies du Golfe, l’émirat envisage une riposte violente qui fait déjà débat.

Haha

www.legorafi.fr/2026/03/03/e...

a thing historians will marvel about when they study this era is the extent to which the "war is a thing that happens to poorer, browner people" class went about systematically dismantling every aspect of the global political order that confined the costs of war to poorer and browner people

Sorry, but it had to be done.

The new threat is *foreign* assassinations. Mitt Romney spent $150,000 a month on personal security in after voting to impeach Donald Trump. And who has forgotten the chants of "Hang Mike Pence?"

She’s learnt her lesson about wanting hotels full of foreigners and immigrants being burnt down. See. Prison does work

There is a problem afflicting old media: their audience isn't replenishing. As 80+ year old TV viewers and print readers die, they aren't getting replaced by new 45-year-olds. Milennials are sticking to the Internet.

That means old media is competing for a shrinking, unrepresentative audience.

This map shows widely dispersed dots representing the guesses of US survey respondents about the location of Iran on a world map. 23% placed a dot in the correct area.

Where is Iran?
Each dot represents an American's guess.
pro.morningconsult.com/articles/can... 🌐

> @covie93.bsky.social

Obscene.

While the US & Israel are now carrying out military strikes on Iran, which is responding with military strikes of its own, I have one request for you readers & journalists. Don't forget #Ukraine. The past has taught us that Putin will take advantage of this & that attention can shift all too easily.

Private equity makes risky $1.1bn bet on hospice care Kinderhook’s acquisition of Enhabit comes with thin margins, heavy debt and increasing scrutiny

Private equity is buying hospices. What happens in the US will arrive here.

Palliative care and impending death is seen as a profit opportunity.

PE destroyed care homes and vets. Patient deaths have risen in PE owned hospitals and nursing homes.

UK handing more of the NHS to PE.
archive.ph/uO3aF

I think that Bezos' massacre at the Washington Post has really hurt them. I cancelled my subscription then and today was offered a rate of 99p a month for year of is come back.

To complete the T-levels, UK students have to do a work placement. What we discovered this week is that an employer can cancel a placement on a whim, putting a student’s qualification & university place at risk. Seems like a shockingly big design flaw. This week has been very stressful.

Should biology put complexity first? The dictum “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” poses a problem for biology. How simply can it be told without doing dama…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... this is so very very good

Reform's Britain: where your landlord can fuck you, but your boyfriend can’t.

I keep an account at The Other Place because so many other people do. Also a foothold on Mastodon, the holiest of holier than you (pl) sanctuaries.

I thought I had a copy of _Autumn Journal_ but I can't find it and MacNeice seems to be for the most part out of print. Also I feel I should read Thom Gunn about whom I know little except that he was a friend of both Oliver Sacks and Bob Conquest.