R to @BallouxFrancois: Benito Mussolini and his co-author for “Doctrine of Fascism”, Giovanni Gentile, would have approved of this manifesto ...
The self-professed values of, and 'expected' behaviour from members of a military are totally irrelevant. What matters are adherence to operational discipline and ethical standards and the willingness to investigate and discipline inappropriate, abusive or criminal behaviour.
Regrettably, the IDF has an appalling track record on essentially any metric that matters.
I'm clean, I'm majestic, and I put up with the naked apes for 10,000 years. Stay outside you smelly beast...
Unconscionable indeed.
The most insulting irony is that people who defend Israel’s prohibition of journalists entering Gaza tend to argue that it does this to safeguard journalists’ safety.
Meanwhile, Israel was responsible for ~2/3 of all journalist killings globally in 2025.
I'm not a wild animal. Let me in!
This article, in isolation, might be dismissed as the brain fart of a retarded think tanker under pressure to deliver something, anything, edgy. Concerningly, there is currently an explosion of similar pieces calling for preemptive war on Türkiye.
These people are fucking insane ...
For all its flaws, Türkiye is not an existential danger to Europe. It remains a (largely imperfect) democracy, a secular state and is the only militarily powerful country in the Middle East, which, despite major challenges and tensions, can be considered as an ally to Europe.
R to @BallouxFrancois: Source: https://www.opencrime.us/international-comparison
Interesting questions ...
European bat lyssavirus 1 and 2 (EBLV-1/2) are distinct from, and only loosely related to 'terrestrial' rabies virus (RABV).
Rabies was never widespread in the UK, historically, and for reasons largely beyond me, rabies in the UK was circulating primarily in dogs, and not foxes, which were the primary hosts for the 'sylvatic' form of rabies widespread in continental Europe.
Rabies was eradicated in the UK through a mix of measures such as culling of stray dogs, dog muzzling and leashing (1897 General Rabies Order), dog licensing and registration, and import controls. The last recorded case of human rabies in the UK was in 1902.
There was actually a later minor resurgence of rabies (in dogs, not humans) in the UK in 1918-1922. It was caused by WW1 soldiers smuggling back their pet dogs back from the trenches in France and Belgium.
The 'self-domestication' of London foxes is a remarkable evolutionary feature. Though, it remains unclear to me to what extent this little dude, who lost his mum, might be wild, feral or tame. That said, while he's adorable and incredibly gentle, he stinks, and he can be incredibly annoying.
There are likely good reasons why our ancestors domesticated cats and dogs, and not foxes ...
If governments started taxing oligarchs in the places where they have a pied-à-terre, would it be devastating for local communities if they chose to leave, given that they hardly paid any tax before and generally contributed zilch, nada, niet to local communities ...
I believe a similar policy of aggressive taxation of vacant properties -- ideally without the 'eat the rich' performative nonsense messaging -- would be fantastic for London.
Free market capitalism should not lead to local communities being shut out from the most desirable neighbourhoods by Russian oligarchs, despots, drug lords and other random international criminals using property as unoccupied investments.
~30% of Switzerland's population is foreign born, vs. ~20% for the UK, but that totally misses the point I was trying to make, which was that punitive vacancy taxes are good actually, economically, societally and culturally.
People are really having to twist themselves into pretzels to criticize New York's proposed pied-à-terre tax.
Switzerland taxes holiday homes to death for citizens, and forcefully limits access to foreigners. I'm Swiss and I tend to be critical of some Swiss policies, but the brutal restriction of holiday homes /second residencies is one of the best Swiss policies, economically, politically and societally.
The 'eat the rich' messaging is unhelpful at best, but vacancy taxes are actually pragmatic, sensible and fair, and an excellent instrument to encourage urban revitalisation.
I recently posted that London was beautiful, cool and fairly safe. This was met by a torrent of outrage, with one recurrent theme being that London was the capital of rape. In fact, London has the lowest rate of sexual offences in England and Wales.
Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/sexualoffencesvictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2025
i hate to say it but a 1% tax on property over $5m you don’t live in is hard to argue against for the average voter
like, the solution is simply “actually live in NYC”, “what are you so broke you can’t afford 1%?”, and “well you could just leave NYC”
all are ego hits none of these property owners don’t wanna take and have a hard time refuting
love or hate him, he’s actually doing something vs most mayors and tells you in the slickest way possible
Grok casually admitting I wasted five hours of my time because it was lying to me ... 🧐
What is even more infuriating is that after this admission, it just reverted to giving me the same incorrect file over and again, with the same incorrect hard coded counters ...
Quality of life however. But of course yanks are obsessed with numbers that don't benefit them.
I'm no fan of Tucker, but he's absolutely right to state that Muslims view Jesus as a revered prophet and a servant of God, emphasising his human nature and mission as a messenger, and they even accept that he was born miraculously to virgin Mary, but if they dispute he was Son of God.
Too many people seem to accept the argument that while it is terrible for other countries to kill civilians in war, when their own country does it, it can be justified.
Explains much of the strategic and ethical disaster we are facing.
Greta ranked 2nd worst antisemite globally ...🤪
This is significant repudiation. Italy’s agreement was a bilateral defense cooperation memorandum signed in 2003 (ratified in 2005). Only 3 other European countries have similarly comprehensive military agreements in place with Israel (the UK, Greece and Cyprus).
Two years ago, the West was discovering with horror that the Russian army was using double-tap attacks (i.e. a delayed second strike to kill off first responders).
The Israeli double tap routinely, if not systematically in Gaza and Lebanon, and even the US seems to increasingly engage in the practice - The Minab school bombing was a double tap.
Double-tap bombing is disgusting, it should be outlawed, and called out, whoever does it.
https://kyivindependent.com/double-tap-attack-understanding-one-of-russias-cruelest-tactics-in-ukraine/
Not sure what's wrong with this journalist. She reports on Lebanese casualties as if they were humans.
This article is utter tosh, whatever one's position on Trump, Pope Leo XIV, or the morality of the Iran war. Essentially every paragraph is nonsense. It reads like borderline satire at times. One example of the idiocy of the piece among others, I quote "... 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘮𝘣𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴", which is a truly insane thing to write, given that the first salvo of the war was literally a double-tap on a school that killed ~150 schoolgirls.
It's puzzling this embarrassing piece passed an editor at the Times.
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/pope-leo-attitude-iran-war-h3003hmsw
"Emergency workers and paramedics are being killed at an astonishing rate in Lebanon"
@AlexCrawfordSky talks to emergency workers in Lebanon. One of them talks about hearing children buried under the rubble screaming - "unfortunately we couldn't reach them"
🚨🇬🇧 They’re not documenting London’s “decline.” They’re manufacturing it.
New GLA research found that:
🔺“London in decline” narratives have surged by 150–200% in just two years.
🔺Migration-related content is up 350%.
And this isn’t happening organically. The push is being driven by coordinated networks:
🔺UK far-right ‘patriot’ accounts
🔺Russian and Chinese state-aligned bot operations
🔺MAGA-adjacent outrage merchants like Tommy Robinson and Adam Brooks
One Vietnamese network reportedly used AI-generated imagery and fake local news branding to build an audience of more than a million followers.
Meanwhile, London’s homicide rate is at its lowest level on record.
So no, this is not fearless truth-telling or “citizen journalism.”
It’s narrative engineering, disinformation dressed up as reporting.
[SOURCE: GLA/BBC, April 2026]
Research Associate/Research Fellow on the discovery of resistance genes with effectoromics, with a focus on pathogen genome analysis, functional screens in plants and identification of genes that lead to resistant plants for indoor farming systems for Brassica. #scijobs @VivianneTwit https://ntu.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/Careers/job/NTU-Main-Campus-Singapore/Research-Associate-Research-Fellow--Molecular-Genetics-and-Functional-Genomics-_R00023897
Pope Leo is WEAK on crime ... 🤪
Americans can be so weird ...
Maybe not, but a treaty of Westphalia for the Middle East would be welcome ...
I tend to be a cynical optimist. I believe in the ingenuity of humanity and that the world is tending towards constant improvement, in the long run, as an expectation.
That said, I feel extremely pessimistic about the prospects of peace and harmony in the Middle East. I cannot think of any realistic scenario leading to a positive outcome in the short, or even medium term.
This raises the question about what the wider world should do about the Middle East. And as ruthless and brutal this may feel to supporters of any of the various warring factions, we should probably do nothing, nada, niet, disengage, support none of the tribes, so that they are forced to find an agreement, similarly to what European factions had to do to end the 30-year war.