DuncanMSussexPol.toot.community.ap.brid.gy - Profile | ThreadSky

George Monbiot, not someone I always agree with, eloquently making the case for UK to disentangle itself from the US in intelligence and the military. I also agree that it's necessary to vastly increase military spending and to coordinate this with EU partners. Maybe we can use the necessary […]

submitted 22 hours ago • 0 comments

On this: terrific piece on my colleagues on the Russian grandfathers dying in Ukraine.

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

This false romantic idea is broadly shared within the degrowth scene prevalent among the (far) left. It's highly problematic as it actually means that we put a ban on the Global South to develop its material wealth. "A washing machine? Sorry, that's too […] [Original post on greennuclear.online]

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

There's no longer any denying it. The US and Russia are now allies, aligned against Europe. And we need to scramble like mad to work out what to do.

submitted 3 days ago • 103 comments

Merz just said on German TV that the primary priority of his government will be to ensure that Europe can achieve full strategic independence from the United States in the defence against Russia. Merz was once a die hard Atlanicist. Now, after Trump he is a Gaullist. Extraordinary.

submitted 4 days ago • 256 comments

It's only an exit poll but I'm relieved with how the results are shaping up. Bad but better than expected. Conventional bad. The CDU won (inevitable) but their rightward turn netted a very poor win, hopefully lessons can be learned. AfD result awful but less awful than feared. BSW probably out […]

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Firing America’s senior military leadership overnight and replacing them with party loyalists is definitely dictatorship stuff, if anyone is under a rock right now.

submitted 6 days ago • 4 comments

Not happy with Apple about this obviously but I’m laying the blame squarely at the feet of the UK government; faced with the choice, it was inevitable that Apple would throw UK users in the fire rather than dilute their global brand.

submitted 6 days ago • 9 comments

Journalists and commentators spent weeks writing Far Right on the march stories about the AfD only to get blindsided by Heidi Reichinnek's revival of the Socialist Die Linke

submitted 6 days ago • 8 comments

"There’s a rumour that Nigel Farage is keeping his head down because he’s off to a Trump cheerleading conference over the weekend. I’m afraid I’m being proved right - Farage is far more interested in Trump’s success than British security. He is a bootlicker and a plastic patriot." Ed Davey […]

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Had a rare return to Birdsite (via Nitter, no supporting Musk here) to check on one of the rapidly shrinking number of accounts I'm still wanting to follow there. Enjoyed seeing a retweet from Ed Davey, leader of the Lib Dems, outright call Nigel Farage a bootlicker. No paraphrasing - just […]

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Well done to Brazil. Making the obvious comparison here I think this victory for the rule of law is because Brazil (so far as I can tell) doesn't share one toxic side of US politics - seeing the law as an extension of politics rather than a bedrock for it. (Electing judges is usually a red […]

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

President Volodymyr #Zelensky of #Ukraine appealed to the #Trump admin on Wed to respect the #truth & avoid #disinformation in discussing the #war that began w/a #Russia invasion of his country, in his first response to Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine had started the war. Zelensky said that […]

submitted 8 days ago • 2 comments

Saving science and scholarship from marauders I just finished Joshua Hammer's _Bad-Ass Librarians_. It's a great story about heroic efforts to gather of hundreds of thousands of handwritten manuscripts from private homes around #Timbuktu, where they were under assault from rot and termites […]

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Germany does still not see that America is not their ally anymore: go and be brave, Deutschland: go with Europe or go nowhere‼️ […]

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Looking around for positives as the world goes to shit... Rejoice that the advance of the new nazism (not exactly like the old nazism but it rhymes) means that maybe, at last, the scales are dropping from more people's eyes. Where once the Cassandras would be scolded for hyperbole, it is […]

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

Evergreen cartoon

submitted 14 days ago • 6 comments

"It is always cheaper for the state to borrow for investment than for the private sector to borrow and then for the state to pay the private sector for use of the assets. It can only be otherwise if you have a dogmatic belief in the “efficiency” of the market. Go tell that to schools and […]

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

44 million Ukrainians have been attacked by a ruthless dictator. European countries have invested 125 billion euro in defeating Russia. But forget all that, because a Fox News host says that defending democracy is not realistic, and this whole war thing is […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

submitted 15 days ago • 9 comments

[UK Politics] This is entirely sensible, but won't be painted as such by the conservative, regressive, and ideologically entrenched zealots opposing the bill. With >300 amendments proposed and broad support across the House, some form of this bill is going to pass, but it'll be a shame to see […]

submitted 17 days ago • 2 comments

#ProLifeMyAss “ #Trump ’s NIH cuts billions of $ in biomedical funding, effective immediately The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease” […]

submitted 19 days ago • 2 comments

Also if anyone ever tells me Mastodon's UI is complex, I'm going to metaphorically smash them over the head with LinkedIn The UI of that site and app is so sodding dreadful - you can never logically find anything or understand why you see what you see

submitted 20 days ago • 4 comments

Politico's CEO and editor-in-chief, in a letter to readers, explain that US government agencies do not provide funding to the digital news company, but purchase subscriptions to its premium service. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/06/politico-note-to-readers-00202917

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

One of the most annoying things about the Rwanda policy was people saying "well what's your plan". As if me not having some magical solution obliged us to do something that wouldn't work at enormous cost.

submitted 26 days ago • 11 comments

I do sometimes wonder if the political class outright live in another world. A report says that extremism is broader than just the explicit far right and Islamic extremism (eg Hindu nationalism, most of the manosphere), recommends changing the definition of extremism to be activity-based […]

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

Daydreaming about social features that take differences in account size + differences between individual vs. org accounts into consideration.

submitted 35 days ago • 4 comments

I was expecting Starmer's Labour to be rubbish in that New Labour kind of way, huge upgrade on the last lot but still rubbish. Nevertheless, oh dear. Rejoining the EU will probably happen in the 2030s, let's just hope this kind of thing doesn't do too much damage in the meanwhile. And the far […]

submitted 36 days ago • 1 comment

Just saw the headline "Elon Musk accused of making what appeared to be fascist salute" from CBC. Is mainstream journalism too cowardly to call a straight up, broad daylight nazi salute for what it is now? How can you still be in denial about it?

submitted 38 days ago • 28 comments

Has anyone made an easy guide to taking all your data back "in house" and ideally away from the US? Just to run things in parallel initially, for a quick exit if things notch up a couple of degrees. Quick exports of pictures and contacts from Meta etc as high priority - alternatives for Google […]

submitted 37 days ago • 1 comment