Not to make light of the accusations but how do you, as a former very senior government minister, have a pretty French (!) person 20+ years younger than you, with an obviously ridiculous codename, supposedly fall for your charms (!!), and not wonder what's up? At best, assume it's DGSE, like come on

It remains shocking to me that we have seen a full scale reversal of the post-COVID trend in wage growth. Since March 2025, real wages are down across the distribution. Only the 25th is up (+1%). let’s look at how odd this is in the context of the last 40+ years. @innovateeconomy.bsky.social

Slight bugbear of mine here, but the anecdotal evidence shows this control over resources is a strong preference, down to (and especially at) the household level. "Those damn children best respect ME" kind of thing.

Jim Pickard@pickardje.bsky.social · 5d ago

I'm sorry if this is obvious but the Tory proposal to exempt family homes completely from IHT will lead to 1] pensioners buying the biggest houses they possibly can 2] pensioners refusing to downsize which can only be bad news for younger families trying to buy family homes

Chomping at the bit on this because I thought it really didn't work *at all* (except for it being technically brilliant), but I can see the contrarianism mount up that no, no, no, it's actually so bad on purpose, that it's good. But unfortunately saying more at this point is massive spoiler, soooo

Keith@mosheroperandi.bsky.social · 5d ago

The hot and cold reviews on this are kinda wild. From what I can tell I'm in the audience of people who will probably end up "hot". But I feel compelled to see it regardless just to understand what it's done.

The people nitpicking the welcome change (or clarification) of tone/position are fundamentally unserious about the threat and the extent of the drift to this point. We 100% need conservative politicians to start speaking like this, and any objection as to the form is a nth order concern right now

Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · 6d ago

Endlessly wearying that so many responses to this section of the speech are to point out that Badenoch's worked examples are wrong. Sure, but, in a very real sense, who cares?

🚨 I wrote a post about how US MBS are a (longstanding) part of the US Treasury doom loop machine. www.ft.com/content/a04e...

How US mortgage bonds can trigger a ‘vicious loop’ for Treasury yields

One little cog in the bond market’s feedback machine

ft.com

Don't want to worry anyone, but not gonna lie, getting some "Jeb!" vibes from the rest of that French presidential field.

Under the constitutional regime of the Vth République, the president is directly elected by the people of France in a three-round election (editors/Claude, please check for accuracy)

Toby Nangle@tobyn.bsky.social · 2w ago

We've reverted to pre-Whatever-It-Takes spread levels

I have watched the full 9 minutes of that JRM video, and I am afraid to report it's was... not an entire waste of time. He is obviously a madhouse in terms of what he implicitly requires from immigrants, BUT he's a stickler for *his* own obligations towards people who fulfill the contract

Alan Beattie@alanbeattie.bsky.social · 3w ago

Rees-Mogg is bonkers in almost every way but his views on nationality (also that you can’t strip citizenship from British terrorists however convenient it is) are often quite surprising. I wonder if it’s connected with the family being recusant Catholics.

"Jusqu'ici tout va bien ... jusqu'ici tout va bien ..."

Judah Grunstein@judah-grunstein.bsky.social · 4w ago

As I've long said, global warming is like a French movie: It starts out great.

One of the funniest bits about this website (and don't take this wrong, I love you all) is how everyone agrees smartphones are the source of most social devil, but if you bring up the topic of surveillance of kids by parents, there is a good amount of 'well in some cases it's fine actually'

Goddammit we're so fucking old. (Still one of the bangers of the century though)

WHAT A FUCKING RECORD@whatafuckingrecord.bsky.social · 4w ago

30

quite something this paragraph.

Five Minute Macro@fiveminutemacro.bsky.social · 4w ago

via www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

This used to be the worries of some of us wrt how technical and 'this one neat trick' the advocacy had become (cough shmemem-tee cough). At some point, there is no shortcut, you need to actually pitch the thing you want to fund on its own merit.

Duncan Weldon@duncanweldon.bsky.social · 4w ago

I do worry that a lot (not all, a lot) of the left somehow lost the ability to talk about the non-macro policy benefits of public spending at some point in the 2010s. The case for the NHS doing more knee replacements or paying teachers more isn’t that it is part of an expansionary fiscal policy.

There is a grim reading of this, unfortunately: a country achieves those outcomes, but on relatively high-level comparison, has no marked difference in animosity (masked thugs on the streets, increasingly essentialist language in most media and platforms) versus peer countries, then what?

Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · last mo.

One reason England does so well is our second generation immigrants outperform their peers which is not true in most OECD countries. We are also very good at integration. And it's v sad that this is never acknowledge in debates on immigration.

Website idea to radicalise a certain type of person (me) into wishing the guillotine was back: 'Rightmove sold house prices', but for concert tickets. "We used to be able to see Prince for how much??"

✅ Historical precedents exist, we live in societies where you still need some sort of popular consent to exist and if/when the incidents start becoming visible, that can go away very quickly

Michael Caley@michaelcaley.bsky.social · last mo.

❌ AI companies and employees are just hyping up their products when they talk about the risk to humanity ❌ we need to take p(Doom) deadly seriously if they talk about like this ✅ this is just how rationalists talk about normal but large problems, we should treat it like a normal but large problem

Can someone more knowledgeable in my mutuals explain to me, a five-year-old child, what's the likelihood that the implicit claim in there is true?

Micah Warren@micah541.bsky.social · last mo.

cloak and dagger navier stokes cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/st...

I used to make that literal 'stocks vs flows' analogy as a quip to make people realise where we were going, and I was constantly told off for being too dramatic. Well,,,

Hard to say how much is cope from sitting on the platform experiencing the most severe attrition, but the platform wars always sounded silly to me for that reason. It's crankville wherever you look, and for a lot of normal people the benefits have completely collapsed either way

e.w. niedermeyer@niedermeyer.online · 2mo ago

highly anecdotal, but I've been getting the growing sense that certain demographics are just kinda over social media more broadly

highly anecdotal, but I've been getting the growing sense that certain demographics are just kinda over social media more broadly

Sarah Perez@sarahp.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Bluesky’s active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

Response to the OP downthread is always <lung cancer death rate.jpg>

Michael Caley@michaelcaley.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Audience-Capture Miserabilism is the great enemy all of us on the liberal posting app must fight every day you can get so much engagement for saying obviously false things that resonate with people who are extremely sad

It's notable that no cultural property (fiction category) that has tried to handle this in any way or form. Or at least I can never think of one. Interesting given how fast we have otherwise become at turning historical events/characters into content.

The Fig Economy@figgityfigs.bsky.social · 3mo ago

One of my Crank Theories of Everything, at least of Everything in the Recent Past, is that we are dealing (badly) with COVID trauma we’d mostly prefer to pretend never happened.

This is just to say I have eaten the sun god's cattle on the island which you were probably saving for Apollo Forgive me they were delicious and so charred and so warm

There aren't many examples of a country self-inflicted ignorance of its national successes as glaring as how little is made of the tremendous, really wild footprint of the British stage/TV/movie educational pipeline on the global scene

Mina Kimes@minakimes.bsky.social · 3mo ago

People know him from Industry but I encourage everyone to watch RYE LANE, quietly one of the best romcoms of the last decade

RETVRN

Quantian@quantian.bsky.social · 3mo ago

After intensive discussion I have concluded that it is necessary to build an entire Potemkin internet exactly as it appeared in 2005. You get Wikipedia, forums, news sites, whatever, but no short form video, social media, or AI. When you graduate college you get the password to the real Internet.

*very deep sigh* Everything is going to sound like this now, isn't it?

Yeah thing about the Canada stuff being nonsensical flailing is that so was the tariff stuff, and so was the bombing Iran stuff, and so was the defending USAID stuff, and so was the eliminating the department of education stuff, and so was the invading Venezuela stuff, and so was the abortion stuff

Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast@irhottakes.bsky.social · 3mo ago

tl;dr: Canadians who think there's a master plan being hatched at the Legion of Doom and this isn't nonsensical flailing are wrong and Americans who think this is reassuring are wrong because it's like saying "Don't worry about the taxi driver, he's just drunk" to someone you're sharing a cab with.

I have acquaintances (some of them #onhere) who complain about tiki taka and boring Spain football, but in my book they are now 2-0 against football terrorism in WC finals

Quite the achievement in terms of likeability to have the greatest player ever, who everyone loves, on your side, and still have your (famous last words) likely demise be rooted for around the world