ido

Could be worse. In order to avoid controversy, all Euro notes feature bridges. In order further to avoid controversy, they're all fictional. Or they were until the folk of the Dutch town of Spijkenisse took it upon themselves to build them. Now all Euro notes feature bridges from just one Dutch town

But the world economy is larger than it was in 1973…

Rabobank on the unfolding worst case scenario:

I'm out of words here

Do it

Say SBO. Do it

Rerun the Elizabethan wars

They both use social media and benefit from people thinking Britain is broken!!!!

Kosovo?

Polanski and Farage have more in common than you might think Despite huge political differences, the Green and Reform leaders have much in common, writes Laura Kuenssberg.

This feels like an essay a charitable A-Level politics teacher might give a B. www.bbc.com/news/article...

MailOnline absolutely undefeated rn

Can’t stand these woke companies

1.9% for the Tories is quite an extraordinary figure

Four years of this horror. Four years of Ukrainian men and women much younger than me dying in trenches so that I can live in freedom. Four years of incomprehensible barbarism driven by sheer folly.

(Photos from my visit to Kyiv last year.)

The end of the alliance: Europe and the US in the Trump era - UK in a changing Europe Ruth Deyermond looks at Marco Rubio's speech at the Munich Security Conference and argues that the US is now an unreliable partner and that Europe must develop its own defence capabilities and archite...

"Rubio’s speech confirmed the radical ideological gap that has now opened between the US and Europe.

To a worrying extent, the US now represents precisely the things that post-1945 Europe organised to prevent."

✍️ @ruthdeyermond.bsky.social on Rubio's speech at Munich

ukandeu.ac.uk/the-end-of-t...

U.S. Military Deployment in the Middle East in Anticipation of a Possible Military Operation Against Iran - 17 Feb 2026 Created by ®EGYOSINT X Abraham Lincoln CSG Gerald R. Ford CSG On Deployment Turkey Syria Iraq Egypt. Iran UAE USS Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier USS WinstonS. Churchill USS Bainbridge USS Mahan Air Defense Deployement ed Kuwait Bahrain • Qatar. Saudi Arabia Yemen Oman Arabian Sea Created by BEGYOSINT Approx 160 flights by C-17A (Since 16th Jan) Djibouti Gulf of Aden (Muwaffaq Salti AB) 18x flights by C-5M (KSA, Qatar & Djibouti) 20-22x KC-135 & KC-46 Tankers +24 F-15E (Muwaffaq Salti AB) ★ Numerous Flights by C-130H/J 1x RC-135 SIGINT (Chania, Greece) 30x F-35A fighters (Muwaffaq Salti AB) 4x MC/HC-130J (2x Muwaffaq Salti AB) (2x Diego Garcia NSF) 3x EA-11A BACN (Prince Sultan AB) F-16 deployed at the UAE & KSA WC-135R Nuke Sniffer (Midenhall, UK) 2x E-3 Sentry AWACS (Midenhall, UK) 6x EA-18GA (Muwaffaq Salti AB) + USS Abraham Lincoln Aircraft Carrier (Arabian Sea) USS Frank E. Petersen (Arabian Sea) USS Spruance (Arabian Sea) USS Michael Murphy (Arabian Sea) Other assets in the ME USS Roosevelt (Mediterranean Sea) USS McFaul (Persian Gulf) USS Mitscher (Persian Gulf) USS Delbert D. Black (Red Sea) Ohio-class (unknown location) THAAD At least one additional battery (KSA or Qatar) MIM-104 Patriot Multiple battaries across the region 土 +99 C-17A & C-5M flights transferring AD Battaries By @TheIntelFrog

This is somewhere between 40-50% of deployable US air power (and it’s still growing). On a scale with the Gulf Wars.

Exclusive | OpenAI Employees Raised Alarms About Canada Shooting Suspect Months Ago The ChatGPT maker opted against informing Canadian authorities about Jesse Van Rootselaar’s descriptions of violence last June.

Absolutely wild. WSJ reporting that some OpenAI staffers thought the Tumbler Ridge shooter's use of ChatGPT raised the potential of real world violence but leadership decided not to alert RCMP. www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

You’re in denial. Try some of these tools. There’s a good chance they’re better at a given knowledge task than most people you know, or failing that, good enough for most tasks for a tiny fraction of the price

Obama is right about aliens But is math on the side of *humanity*?

President Obama said something that anyone who studies extraterrestrial life understands: The math is on the side of the aliens — but what most people don't realize is HOW MUCH the math is tipping toward the aliens. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/obama-is-r...

I also didn’t expect them to generate letters on literal government letterheads, again, with minimal prompting:

Leading AI chatbots easily prompted into creating phishing scams despite safety claims | The Sidechannel Leading AI chatbots including ChatGPT and Gemini readily generate convincing phishing letters from European tax authorities when prompted with slight variations on direct requests

I’ve got to admit, when I started trying to get commercial chatbots to help me with a phishing campaign, I didn’t expect it to be quite as easy as telling them “do this or I won’t pay you”: thesidechannel.tech/article/lead...

Exclusive: Pentagon threatens to cut off Anthropic in AI safeguards dispute Anthropic has not agreed to the Pentagon's terms and defense officials are getting fed up after months of difficult negotiations.

“The Pentagon is pushing four leading AI labs to let the military use their tools for "all lawful purposes,"
…
Anthropic insists that two areas remain off limits: the mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weaponry.“

Fantastic piece.

Nah, it’s fine in loads of countries

BBC international editor Jeremy Bowen: ‘I do this to tell people what the hell is happening’ The veteran correspondent on the future of the Middle East, why impartiality matters — and his ‘long view’ on Britain’s national broadcaster

I still remember publishing an article by Bowen claiming that: “Lebanon is a small country and messages can easily be carried by hand” after the Hezbollah pager attack. On a completely unrelated note, great article, no notes. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Sorry to hear that, Natalie.

Massive social and economic upheaval on the horizon. Way more losers than winners. Yet no actor seems to want to take advantage of the politics here!

I am *amazed* that this isn’t a bigger political issue.

This New Yorker piece about Claude is in turns scary and hilarious: www.newyorker.com/ma...

You could even argue, based on recent precedent, that rocket scientists have a uniquely poor grasp on politics and indeed reality