"“Crazy how monoculture no longer exists because I don’t think I’ve actually ever heard this song,” wrote one user on X." Crazy how there's a world outside the white supremacist owned, CSAM producing website! Makes you think!

Demise of the monoculture: why so many have never heard UK’s record-breaking No 1 single

Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In is longest-running No 1 single in UK chart history, and yet it seems to have passed many people by

theguardian.com

Check out our latest analysis of partisan differences in polling accuracy. Based on a lot of polls...

Chris Prosser@caprosser.com · 21h ago

Using ~8.5k election-poll-party observations from 372 elections in 32 countries, we find a persistent partisan asymmetry: polls tend to overestimate the left relative to the right. On average across elections, polls the month before an election overstated the left by about 1.4 points

Some of the initial coverage of Raise the Colours was embarrassingly credulous.

Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social · 2d ago

The High Court also heard RTC leader Ben Cullen had threatened physical violence to a resident removing flags, boasting that he was a “violent criminal” who had served 15 years in prison. Full report in today’s Clarion: oxfordclarion.uk/the-clarion-...

Haven't been online much the last 24 hours, has this received any national coverage?

Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social · 2d ago

Leaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.

I recall we had a period of time where the response of Starmer and Cooper to concerns about these groups was ‘I like flags’

Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social · 2d ago

Leaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.

People will say this is comms, but really it’s a function of policy (there has been a flurry of action) and character/content (Burnham is just better at this stuff than his recent predecessors, including BoJo).

Luke Tryl@luketryl.bsky.social · 11h ago

Burnham seems to be commanding the battle for the attention economy 36% have seen content from Burnham - including over half of 18-24 year olds. 16% have seen Farage content, no one else cracks 10%. Some of this will be the prime ministerial pulpit; but it’s lodging with people.

Less often on the American right where the GOP tends to follow a repeating loop between (1) and (5) without anyone resigning.

Dorian Lynskey@dorianlynskey.bsky.social · 11h ago

Story that keeps happening 1. Scandal breaks out involving someone with obvious bad vibes 2. Colleagues and admirers circle the wagons 3. Another revelation 4. Doubling down intensifies for some reason 5. Damning no-way-back career-wrecking revelation 6. “But how could we have known?”

Story that keeps happening 1. Scandal breaks out involving someone with obvious bad vibes 2. Colleagues and admirers circle the wagons 3. Another revelation 4. Doubling down intensifies for some reason 5. Damning no-way-back career-wrecking revelation 6. “But how could we have known?”

Burnham seems to be commanding the battle for the attention economy 36% have seen content from Burnham - including over half of 18-24 year olds. 16% have seen Farage content, no one else cracks 10%. Some of this will be the prime ministerial pulpit; but it’s lodging with people.

Clouds over North Wales

New working paper from Stuart Perrett, @drjennings.bsky.social , @jonmellon.bsky.social , @cbwlezien.bsky.social and me: Do polls underestimate support for right-wing parties? Assessing variation in polling error by party family osf.io/preprints/so...

“Why all the bankruptcies?” Answered.

New York Magazine@nymag.com · yesterday

Per a new report, Trump ordered workers to scrap some of their completed work on the multimillion-dollar helipad project because he didn’t like how it looked.

This is a very interesting and topical paper (even though the fieldwork is from 2022)!

Joe Phillips@polpsychjoe.bsky.social · 5d ago

At least in 2022, Northern resentment of the South had clear political effects. It moved people away from the Tories and possibly towards Labour. Southern resentment's effects are absorbed by other attitudes. Peripheral resentment, while prevalent, does not appear politically consequential.

The funny thing is that even Grok is like "yo, this is bullshit." But then the replies to that are "you can't trust Grok, it's too woke." Being on X melts your brain.

Jonathan Howard@joho.bsky.social · 2d ago

These guys are freaking out over their own imaginations again.

Update: now at least 15 countries/territories which have had their highest ever recorded temperature in 2026: Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Guernsey, Hungary, Jersey, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Poland, Slovakia, South Korea, Uzbekistan. Possibly Kenya too.

Ben Barclay@benbarclay.bsky.social · last mo.

That means at least 7 countries and two territories have had their highest temperatures ever recorded in the past week or so, in some cases beating their old records on several occasions and by large margins.

A hummingbird hawkmoth?

just written a thousand words on drought in Britain do it starts to rain i have magical powers

I don’t think it’s supposed to look like that…

Well done to the contractors who today dug through a pressurised oil-filled 33,000 volt electricity cable underneath the road that goes through our village 😱

Is this bad?

Aron Lund@aronlund.bsky.social · 2d ago

Iran has now gobbled up nearly all U.S. ATACMS and PrSM ballistic missiles, plus half of Tomahawk cruise missiles and a very considerable share of the THAAD and Patriot interceptors, sources tell @reuters.com’s Erin Banco, Jonathan Landay, and Michael Stone. www.reuters.com/world/us-has...

YouGov most important issues tracker, 1-3 August 2026 Economy: 48% (-3 from 25-27 July) Immigration: 48% (+1) Health: 28% (+3) Defence: 26% (-3) Environment: 23% (+4) Welfare: 22% (+2) Crime: 18% (-2) Housing: 17% (+1) Tax: 15% (-1) Britain leaving the EU: 12% (-1) yougov.com/en-gb/tracke...

Personally I would love to see Bluesky expand. It shouldn’t just be the app for leftists who can’t stand Matt Yglesias! It should also be the app for liberals who can’t stand Matt Yglesias. And apolitical folks who can’t stand Yglesias. And, yes, even conservatives who can’t stand Matt Yglesias!

Probably would've been nice to know this before the 2024 election, but sure

@GottaLaff@gottalaff.bsky.social · 2d ago

ABC has picked it up now. "Capital One says it closed hundreds of Trump's bank accounts in 2021 'for anti-money laundering reasons'"

Well done to the contractors who today dug through a pressurised oil-filled 33,000 volt electricity cable underneath the road that goes through our village 😱

Fun fact: as part of their Water Resources Management Plans, water companies are required to assess the full range of options for securing water supplies, which includes... ...towing *icebergs* up the Thames

Akshat Rathi@akshatrathi.bsky.social · 3d ago

This wasn't on my adaptation bingo card. "Romania used 180kg explosive to blow rock to divert water from drought-hit Danube to nuclear reactor." www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Why is it always a single sock that escapes from the washing machine drum into the door seal?

Thank you, @donmoyn.bsky.social, for covering our new survey—part of an ongoing project that tracks populist sentiment among Americans. More below 👇

Trump's Hardcore Populist Base Has Declined By a Third, ISMA's Survey Finds

They are uneasy by his extralegal use of executive authority even as some express greater hostility toward Muslims, trans people and university/entertainment elites

theunpopulist.net

Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 4d ago

First, @theunpopulist.net published a poll showing that hard core Trump support has declined by about a third in the last two years. Now that Trump is governing, and governing poorly, fewer think he is on their side. (Would like to see more polling on this). www.theunpopulist.net/p/trumps-har...

Apropos of nothing today it’s fascinating to see how group identity works among elites - especially those who change their tribe (willingly or unwillingly).

Imagine a bank closing the accounts of the sitting president and the reason listed is money laundering. Just imagine the appropriate level of political scandal that something like that should cause. Now imagine the leading newspaper of the country, @nytimes.com, not writing a word about it

Allison Gill@muellershewrote.com · 3d ago

NEW: Capital One closed hundreds of Trump accounts for money laundering. We wouldn’t have known if Trump hadn’t sued. Now he’s got tax immunity. My latest: www.muellershewrote.com/p/new-capita...

Lots of analysis about threat of the Greens usurping Labour on the left. Reform usurping the Tories on the right. But none about how Binface has completely usurped the Monster Raging Looney Party for the joke vote. Another party that just couldn’t adapt to the attention economy