Spot on from the Economist.
What a second week of war will bring
economist.com/middle-east-...
09.03.2026 07:21
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Spot on from the Economist.
What a second week of war will bring
economist.com/middle-east-...
It’s fine for Russia to use drones to freeze out your population — by the way, can you give us your drone defenses? This is the actual US position.
Just a reminder it’s been two days since reports came out, later acknowledged by Trump and his Administration, that Russia has been helping Iran to try and kill US military personnel.
And the Trump response so far has been...drum roll please...to reduce sanctions on Russia!
- Cancers
- unexplained scarring on the lungs
- impaired fetal growth
- premature birth
- heart disease
Canadian doctors warn of alarming health trends near fracking sites:
share.google/Y3bkaYqgOUfb...
In 2025, leading mathematicians met in secret to test a new AI model. Its proofs sounded like those of a real mathematician presenting a complex argument.
But were we giving it more credit than it deserved? Are we at risk of accepting proofs we can’t understand?
1/10
Worth saying that this knee-jerk profoundly fails to understand how much a middle-weight country like the UK has benefitted from a "rules based international order" (and especially the existing order, designed by and tilted towards the interests of historic powers):
The impact of Brexit on UK immigration - new research by @johnspringford.bsky.social & me for @centreeuropeanref.bsky.social & @ukandeu.bsky.social
Brexit
a) reduced EU-origin employees by 785K (2.3% of workforce)
b) increased non-EU origin employees by 992K (2.95%)
www.cer.eu/insights/imp...
My class was scheduled to read Thomas Schelling this month in our course on Nuclear Weapons and World Politics. It turned out to be a current affairs course. Here's part 1 of my series on reading Schelling in this crisis.
open.substack.com/pub/musgrave...
Fracking waste has a mix of chemicals from fracking fluid + others leached from underground.
Arsenic, lead, cancer-causing benzenes, radioactive radium can all be present.
It's being dumped in Pennsylvania landfills.
Mounting evidence says it's getting into rivers:
share.google/p7PRFqzizPVZ...
Strongly suspect that as this war and its negative effects escalate, we're gonna see a massive increase in disinfo and unsourced "news" - starting right the hell now.
PLEASE don't share "breaking" news from rando or disreputable accounts who provide no links.
This is an absolutely huge jump in oil prices.
It's also why Europe needs to get off fossil fuels asap (beyond climate change impact). We can't be beholden to this.
The people who told us austerity was crucial, Brexit would be brilliant, Boris Johnson’s amazing and Liz Truss is an economic genius, are now insisting the country should join an illegal war
#BBCLauraK
I'm out of words here
“Our government is treating the suffering of the Iranian people as a backdrop for our own entertainment … But, in the end, we lose our humanity when we are thrilled by the destructive power of our military. … The longer we remain blind to the terrible consequences of war ...
🇮🇷🛢️ CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen says black, oil-contaminated rain is falling over Tehran after strikes on oil facilities by U.S. / Israeli airstrikes.
My recollection of Suez (in 1956 I was a child stranded on a ship to Kenya in the Mediterranean that got barred from the Canal so we to turn around and circumnavigate Africa) was that the UK & Israel & France were blocked by … the USA (Eisenhower).
This is well worth reading, on such an important issue.
We use 30 year averages to show climatology (average weather conditions). During the 20th century the UK climatology followed a path around a confined box. With #globalwarming and #climatechange they have escaped out the box. This #dataviz shows UK rainfall and temperature.
Chart showing the exponential collapse of the lag, extrapolated to 2.0C. Reference points show 10, 20 and 30 year lag scenarios projecting 2033, 2043 and 2053 respectively.
1/🌡️ Global warming passed a milestone on 17th Nov 2023 that barely made the news
For the first time ever, the world's daily average temperature was 2.0°C above pre-industrial levels
Here's what the data says about when that becomes the annual norm, & whether it's coming sooner than anyone expects🧵
Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick
Caitlin KALINOWSKI over X I resigned from OpenAl. I care deeply about the Robotics team and the work we built together. This wasn't an easy call. Al has an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got. This was about principle, not people. I have deep respect for Sam and the team, and I'm proud of what we built together.
OpenAI head of robotics just resigned over company deal with the Pentagon saying…
“Surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got”
With 18 months to the World Cup, I suspect you're right. I doubt England will want to change coaches too close to that.
Explains a lot about the failure of Brexit that its main adherents should right now be prostrating themselves before the US because they think that's what an independent UK means.
Nigel Farage is in Mar-a-Lago tonight (not Clacton, obvs). Via Politico: "What Farage should be doing: Sorting out his Reform documents with Companies House. The party is overdue on submitting a [legally mandatory] statement."
1/ I have done a data dive on ‘The Two Deprivations’ and the govt’s Green-Reform dilemma: parables.substack.com/p/the-two-de...
It references the work of @luketryl.bsky.social @robfordmancs.bsky.social
Absolutely insupportable. Labour have a massive majority. It’s a hugely popular issue. To fail to act would be a dereliction of historic proportions, and utterly inexplicable.
Our prisons also include some (not many, but ...) innocent people. There have been several stories over the last few months about people finally being released years after being imprisoned for things they didn't do. If they'd been killed in this kind of incident, they'd never have seen justice.
Our cover this week. Says it all
Now don't complain, he has "concepts of a plan" you know.
