When the US appears to be on the slide towards tyranny, how should screenwriters handle projecting possible near futures? Thoughts on Peter Watkins' effort to do this under Nixon, and on two bids to do similar in the age of Trump: Civil War and Succession. www.thenewworld.co.uk/phil-tinline...

The return of the 1971 film that saw Trump coming

Punishment Park, the brutal mock-doc by Brit Peter Watkins that anticipated our age of rage and recrimination

thenewworld.co.uk

warfighting

Mar-a-Hell-No!@mara-hell-no.bsky.social · 2h ago

A Ship doctor warns exhausted sailors may go insane on the USS Abraham Lincoln. After 9 months at sea & 5 consecutive months in combat operations, conditions are deteriorating incl moldy showers, food shortages & severe lack of basic supplies. All for Trump's war. www.rawstory.com/uss-abraham-...

Compare and contrast with Mr Me Me Me I Won I Did, aged eight(y).

MeidasTouch@meidastouch.com · 5h ago

A gracious concession: “I want to congratulate Abdul El-Sayed on winning the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. He is a doctor, a community health official, a Rhodes Scholar, and a dedicated Michigander. I am proud to offer my support as he takes on Mike Rogers in the general election…

Latest Daily on Monocle Radio. @philtinline.bsky.social and Tira Shubart on the Michigan primary result and the day’s other stuff, and @alexei-korolyov.bsky.social plays tennis in Vienna. monocle.com/radio/shows/...

What lessons is the European centre-left taking from the Michigan Senate primary?

As the Democratic Party redefines itself, Tira Shubart and Phil Tinline explore what lessons European centre-left parties are taking from...

monocle.com

Love it. Solar for everything.

David Roberts@volts.wtf · yesterday

Don't look now, but the world has now installed 3TW of solar. Took 10 years to get from 100GW to 1TW. Less than 3 years to get to 2TW. Less than 2 years to get to 3TW. Analysts expect *9TW* by 2036.

I don’t think it’s too far fetched to say that it’s the difference between someone who goes to karate classes for three years throwing down against someone who’s a black belt in Streetfighter.

Traffic accidents on two different celestial bodies. Unmistakable sign of genius.

Rich Holman@richholman.com · 11h ago

I see Elon decided to bomb the moon. Tracks tbh. www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

gah, this is the bit I hate - I never use AI products and very much go out of my way to never interact with anything produced by AI (I'm not even on Linkedin!) so it will....make me worse at weeding it out of my life in the future? I just want to opt out! why can't I be allowed to opt out!

Will Davies@will-davies.bsky.social · 12h ago

Stunning opening sentence to this piece www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

When the US appears to be on the slide towards tyranny, how should screenwriters handle projecting possible near futures? Thoughts on Peter Watkins' effort to do this under Nixon, and on two bids to do similar in the age of Trump: Civil War and Succession. www.thenewworld.co.uk/phil-tinline...

The return of the 1971 film that saw Trump coming

Punishment Park, the brutal mock-doc by Brit Peter Watkins that anticipated our age of rage and recrimination

thenewworld.co.uk

And at last, the machines had filed all the facts, and history was complete. The end.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · yesterday

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

Is the "he" here Miliband or Rubio?

Lucy Fisher@lucyfisher.ft.com · 21h ago

Foreign secretary Ed Miliband will travel to Washington tomorrow to discuss the Strait of Hormuz, Ukraine and Gaza with his US counterpart Marco Rubio, as he seeks to move beyond past criticism of Donald Trump and build ties with the president’s team www.ft.com/content/bea0...

“Elon Musk kind and considerate lover, possibly true representative of the godhead on earth, certainly a genius, and also good at computer games, says Elon Musk”

Stop reporting wild motivated speculation. Report the news instead.

nicola@gleanniucha.bsky.social · 22h ago

By polluting the Earth’s atmosphere

Every fkn day. There is something genuinely creepy about men sitting around designing endless new stealthy intrusion machines.

J.M. Berger@jmberger.com · 22h ago

Just in case you didn't already hate Amazon enough, they just added a non-turnoff-able Alexa AI chat window that generates spam based on every product search.

EXC: UK govt is “stripping back” onerous public procurement rules in pro-growth shake up of system, Louise Haigh tells FT Overhaul will make job creation/skills development the only ‘social value’ requirement for biz competing for Whitehall contracts worth £90bn annually www.ft.com/content/9878...

UK to strip back procurement rules to focus on job creation, says Louise Haigh

Burnham’s de facto deputy PM says requirements for businesses vying for Whitehall contracts will be streamlined

ft.com

y tho

George Pearkes@peark.es · 22h ago

Elon is talking about using robots to build a mass accelerator on the moon in support of an economy 1000x to 1 million times the current earth economy. It's a bad sci fi novel not an earnings call.

What awful news. Life is unfair. This is a beautiful tribute by @drmatthewsweet.bsky.social

Matthew Sweet@drmatthewsweet.bsky.social · 23h ago

My obituary in today’s Guardian for the much-loved Simon Trewin, my literary agent for three decades.

Generally think if you going to be a p8Tr10t for a living you should know a little bit about the history of the country in question

Lewis Baston@lewisbaston.bsky.social · yesterday

The borders of the U.K. have been in place since 1922.

A great maker of theatre and one of the last of the postwar heyday. Rare that someone listens so closely to working class voices and monkeys with form and timelines so deftly. Interviewed him for my first piece for a national paper, along w his assistant director, one Josie Rourke. He was a gent.

David Benedict@eggsbened.bsky.social · yesterday

No-one in British theatre had a finer ear for dialogue than Peter Gill (1939-2026). The most meticulous of directors, unfashionably loyal to talent not stardom, he was also a superbly compassionate writer whose charged, emotional plays charted gay sexuality and working-class lives like no other. RIP

Aaww heck. Never a word or a move out of place. Always on target. RIP Peter Gill.

David Benedict@eggsbened.bsky.social · yesterday

No-one in British theatre had a finer ear for dialogue than Peter Gill (1939-2026). The most meticulous of directors, unfashionably loyal to talent not stardom, he was also a superbly compassionate writer whose charged, emotional plays charted gay sexuality and working-class lives like no other. RIP

Watched season 2 of Beef. Here's my review: Where's the beef?* *I thought the format was a feud that starts partly by accident and escalates from there through the series. That wasnt really what happened - felt like they started that way but couldn't keep it building so just kept chucking stuff in

Genuinely a choice to give the son of a billionaire column space to argue for him to further consolidate the media, especially given the pretty abysmal track record of on journalism he has already implemented at CBS

Also reminded me of this post on r/Anthropic: “but the top take away from me is: • ⁠everyone’s a workaholic. • ⁠tons of huge egos. The guy who ran my “culture” interview literally compared himself to Oppenheimer.”

This is tremendous.

Twitter Exile@twitter-exile.bsky.social · yesterday

#PhillipBlair, an American anti-abortion preacher from #TorchOfChrist Ministries, boarded a packed Syd train at Martin Place & began lecturing passengers about sin, #jesus & unborn children. Commuters, led by #MalcolmFrawley (known as Book Man), repeatedly told him to shut up. #NoReligion #AUSPOL

Will no one think of the potential net zero blackouts

James Ball@jamesrball.com · yesterday

Pretty stark effect of a month of no rain on 'Green' Park.

On Berlin public transport there are announcements asking you not to play music/video out loud. And people don’t. Could we have that in London please - just re-establish the norm!

Exactly. See also the case for a broad, open BBC. Just been writing about this.

Marie Le Conte@youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · yesterday

saying this not as a dig to Paul but as a general point, but it does worry me that we've ended up in a world where the two options are seemingly "leftist bubble" or "oh hey the nazis are here" - surely we should be able to have a politically heterogenous platform with tight rules on hate speech etc?

As a general rule: explaining something you know well to smart people who ask good questions but do not know the topic well is a really useful exercise. If nothing else, they tend to ask interesting questions which you hadn’t considered.

Had two entirely different sets of "4 C's" from two different senior leaders a couple of years back

I once went to a presentation by a very senior manager who said leapfrogging wasn't enough; and brought up a picture of a frog on a pogo stick to show we needed to go further than that. The noise I heard told me how well it went down on my table of folks.