The idea that if you abandon enough of your principles you can make yourself too small a target for the right wing to bludgeon assumes a fidelity to reality on the part o their messaging that's simply not in evidence.
Trump is on TV pretending Biden gave Ukraine F-35s and space lasers.
Does anyone have a favourite book on the history of nuclear weapons? I'm particularly interested in how the physicists grappled with the ethics of what they were unleashing on the world. I fear computer scientists might be the next to have such a reckoning.
Same with me, except it was 2003.
Truly the Fyre Festival of strategic campaigns.
Reform are in denial about why they lost by 12% in Gorton & Denton (60% white, 80% UK-born) after losing by 11% in Caerphilly (98% white, 98% UK-born) to Plaid Cyrmu
Both seats unusual in seeing more people vote than at last Welsh Senedd/last GE: more voters turned out to stop Reform than supoort
The absolute state of this and everything else on this thread
There's a lot of mean-spiritedness about people who have gone to live in Dubai. We need to help, and ensure they have secure accommodation in the UK for 91 days of the next tax year.
Yup.
Thanks for the reminder
"Never" is a very long time.
Of course they are
The world could be such a nice place if we allowed it. It's all so goddamn unnecessary. There's no need for any of it. It's so beautiful here. It should be so cool to be alive
WTAF
So the Telegraph is taking this well
The screenshot of the release notes reads: A new version of TeX Live Utility is available! TeX Live Utility 1.55 is now available-you have 1.54. Would you like to download it now? Release Notes: Changes Since 1.54 • Fix bug 137, homepage link in Help Book. • First release in a long time, since I don't use TeX anymore and resent the very idea of paying Apple annually for the privilege of giving away free and open-source software. Also, I'm really lazy. Please accept my apologies for all the annoying issues you've encountered in this mission-critical software. • Updated mirror list, which was three years out of date. • Added missing legacy mirrors, which was even more out of date. • Added an alert on startup when user tries Homebrew's lobotomized MacTex, because those lunatics left timgr but removed its database. Thanks for nothing, guys. Bug 142 and 144. • Use a custom user-agent to work around the Anubis bot trap on texlive.info. Can't wait to see what else breaks because of this, thanks to the profusion of degenerate Artificial Insemination fetishists scraping websites to feed their models. • Lists of countries in Repository/Continent are now sorted. No idea how you people let me get away with that one for the last fifteen years.
There's a "is anyone even reading this" sort of honesty you get in the software update release notes from a project that's been around for a long time.
That's very nice, that really shows what it actually looks like.
Nigel Farage in answering Nick Robinson's question about why he believes Britain is broken gave an analysis of falling net migration that is demonstrably factually inaccurate. "It is so broken and its declining so quickly that anybody with a dispassionate view can see it. It is quite interesting. Just look at the net migration numbers. 'Oh isn't it good net migration is coming down?' But do you know why? It is because there is an exodus. There is now an exodus.Those who are of a situation and a financial position to have a choice are now fleeing the country in numbers". This is factually incorrect. Net migration fell year on year by 465,00 in the most recent Official of National Statisitcs figures: the year to June 2025. This was not because of an "exodus" (an increase in emigration). It is because immigration fell by 401,000 (to 898,000 from 1.299 million the previous year). That accounts for 90% of the big drop in net migration. The increase in emigration by 41,000 was a minor component. Most of the increase in emigration was of non-EU nationals. British citizens made up a third of emigrants, but there was no significant increasse in British emigration, which was at very similar levels in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025: it is not a significant cause of the drop in net migration. Nick Robinson did tell Mr Farage that he was exaggerating the number of people who don't speak English - and BBC Verify did produce an analysis showing that was a five-fold exaggeration. But this central incorrect claim about immigration and net migration was not caught in the programme, or before broadcast. It should at least be scrutinised and corrected afterwards - so that an accurate account of why net migration fell (primarily a reduction in immigration visas to the UK) can be communicated to the audience.
I have asked the BBC to scrutinise + correct the factually inaccurate claims made by Mr Nigel Farage about why net migration fell in 'Political Thinking with Nick Robinson'
Here is the link if you want to do something like this.
www.bbc.co.uk/contact/comp...
Amusing - I'm hearing a comeback of XP (Extreme Programming) practice.
In the early 2000s these used to be popular (championed by @kentbeck.com). Then died down. They are now surging again.
XP practices like small releases, frequent integration, and constant customer input!
Cozy
There is no exception to the major questions doctrine for emergency statutes. Nor does the fact that tariffs implicate foreign affairs render the doctrine inapplicable. The Framers gave “Congress alone” the power to impose tariffs during peacetime. Merritt v. Welsh, 104 U. S. 694, 700. And the foreign affairs implications of tariffs do not make it any more likely that Congress would relinquish its tariff power through vague language, or without careful limits.
(a) IEEPA authorizes the President to “investigate, block during the pendency of an investigation, regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit . . . importation or exportation.” §1702(a)(1)(B). Absent from this lengthy list of specific powers is any mention of tariffs or duties. Had Congress intended to convey the distinct and extraordinary power to impose tariffs, it would have done so expressly, as it consistently has in other tariff statutes. The power to “regulate . . . importation” does not fill that void. The term “regulate,” as ordinarily used, means to “fix, establish, or control; to adjust by rule, method, or established mode; to direct by rule or restriction; to subject to governing principles or laws.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1156. The facial breadth of this definition places in stark relief what ”regulate” is not usually thought to include: taxation. Many statutes grant the Executive the power to “regulate.” Yet the Government cannot identify any statute in which the power to regulate includes the power to tax. The Court is therefore skeptical that in IEEPA—and IEEPA alone—Congress hid a delegation of its birth-right power to tax within the quotidian power to “regulate.” While taxes may accomplish regulatory ends, it does not follow that the power to regulate includes the power to tax as a means of regulation. Indeed, when Congress addresses both the power to regulate and the power to tax, it does so separately and expressly. That it did not do so here is strong evidence that “regulate” in IEEPA does not include taxation.
Supreme Court absolutely bodies Trump on IEEPA.
Just complete groin kicking.
They could have said that IEEPA lets him impose tariffs in an emergency but that this didn't qualify as one of those, or he failed to define one.
It didn't.
It ruled IEEPA doesn't let him impose tariffs at all.
NEW
How Palantir captured the Ministry of Defence
How a close read of public domain documents show how MoD was commercially colonised by Palantir
By me, at FT
www.ft.com/content/5207...
A 01:46 introduction to what kind of problems capture checking in #Scala solves. Pushing forward what type systems might do!
youtube.com/shorts/TJofT...
So much for free speech
Fair point.
Maybe you were a bit less cynical then? ;)
😁 Any other East London Irish pub favourites? Have you been to Moyletts?
People find my posts confusing because they can’t tell if I’m anti-AI or pro-AI. To me that’s like asking if I’m anti-internet or pro-internet.
It’s a tool that can be used to build great things and also create terrible outcomes. We wouldn’t have Trump without the internet but I’m not anti-internet
Agreed!
Rupert Lowe tweets his Restore Britain party will vet councillors who want to join - to avoid accepting those who "don't have the stomach" for what needs to be done.
His most openly racist supporters say they are "ecstatic".
They believe he will set no boundaries at all on overt racism for members
That's a voter for the Leopard's Eating People's Faces party for sure.
