jamesmeek.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

The theory that bombing will cause a population to rise up against its government is probably one of the oldest theories of how air power can win wars. Why does it persist, despite limited to zero evidence that it works? Probably because it promises an easy military fix to difficult problems.

submitted 3 hours ago • 7 comments

In awe of the new-to-me word 'failson'. A five-acter to the sketch of 'nepobaby'

submitted 21 hours ago • 1 comment

Tipping you over the edge, but with world-beating tech www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/t...

submitted 22 hours ago • 0 comments

Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 1944 Have not seen this one being quoted much by Hayek's disciples...

submitted 3 days ago • 4 comments

on.ft.com/4jMIjA2 Winter fuel climbdown exposes big problem plaguing UK politics

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Welcome to the archives.

submitted 4 days ago • 96 comments

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

This is true, and it's got worse, in speech as well as writing. I first noticed it interviewing people in the post-Soviet space in the 1990s, and recently it's commoner here. You say something like 'What would you say to people who argue x' and your interlocutor assumes you're an x-partisan.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Just 0.2% of all millionaires moved to another country in 2024, but news outlets around the world spun this into a “millionaire exodus”. 11,000 news pieces were published in 2024 about an exodus that did not exist. #BogusExodus #TaxTheSuperRich bit.ly/43Al0EF

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

Social media creating two media universes: one in which you drive yourself into, at best, a lowkey depression being continually served videos of atrocities, one in which you are so under-informed that you vote for someone pledging to deport 20mn people and then go 'wait, he wants to deport people?'

submitted 4 days ago • 21 comments

This is a brilliant piece from @trillingual.bsky.social. I go back and forward on how much it matters to fix the genre of wickedness; sometimes it’s like ‘is this a war crime, or am I just being murdered’?

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

I think we have to see the UK's AI strategy in the context of a government that is absolutely desperate for economic growth and therefore highly vulnerable to anyone selling a way to deliver it.

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

“Firing back”

submitted 5 days ago • 111 comments

Melania and Grimes tonight.

submitted 8 days ago • 13 comments

“A Busy, Busy Day at the Airport” By Ruben Bolling Genius. Click in.

submitted 9 days ago • 26 comments

Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya offers a cogent articulation of the argument that Ukraine's daring drone strikes over the weekend risk escalation and psychological effects that will harden the Kremlin's resolve for regime change in Kyiv without adding to Ukraine's long-term security.

submitted 9 days ago • 14 comments

Given the difficulty for Russia of escalating militarily, I fear Putin’s resumption of ‘terrorist’ rhetoric towards Ukraine signals an intention to begin more systematic direct assassination attempts on its leadership, and/or strikes on national symbols of government. Hope I’m wrong

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Investors Disappointed As Artificial Lance Armstrong Confesses On First Challenge

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

I strongly recommend this remarkable LSE post from Martin CW Walker in 2021, pointing out how Bitcoin - which has distinctly British fingerprints on it - appeared suspiciously soon after the authorities shut down the criminal-friendly e-gold system blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessrevi...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Incredible feat of the Ukrainian secret service today, smuggling scores of tiny hobby-type drones fitted with explosives into Russia, hiding them in shipping containers, parking the containers near four of the airbases for bombers that launch missiles against Ukraine, and blowing the bombers up

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

This is terrific www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/ame...

submitted 15 days ago • 2 comments

Normally you would accept the use of ‘peace talks’ in the sense of ‘at least they’re talking’, but is it justified, when the ‘peace talks’ are simply Russia saying ‘are you ready to give up now?’

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/o...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Is it true they saved a million dollars just by removing the unAmerican woke particle ‘de’ from the middle of ‘Federal Government’?

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Very late indeed to this remarkable Helen Sullivan piece, the opening of a crack into another (to me) world www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

The Great Replacement Theory: all British people will, over time, be replaced by the progeny of Boris Johnson

submitted 20 days ago • 12 comments

Wow you really should never look at the news after 6

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

@nickames82.bsky.social has been writing wonderful and moving football pieces from Ukraine - I urge you to read them

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

Just thinking how up to my mid-twenties I would, several times a month, hand-write long personal essays to people before putting them in a metal box, knowing that nobody but the recipient would ever see them and that I would probably never see what I'd written again.

submitted 24 days ago • 2 comments

Another solipsistic Anglo take on the rise of ‘fringe’ European populism that presents contingent external proclivities (candidates are pro-Trump, candidates are pro-Putin) as if it’s a key reason people vote for them. These countries have economies & politics & fucked-over voters of their own.

submitted 24 days ago • 2 comments

"If you don't do what we want, then we'll do exactly what you want" is a curious negotiating strategy, if that's what Vance is implying here.

submitted 25 days ago • 1 comment

I am wary of a politician who talks about his plan to be a populist before he is popular

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

Struck by how this paragraph could apply to so many European countries, including the UK

submitted 29 days ago • 6 comments

If you really want to hurt Keir Starmer, don’t say he’s evil: say this is him doing his best.

submitted 31 days ago • 8 comments