Aha yes which is why you have given up your job and are be doing garden clearance. No?

Important work by @johnspringford.bsky.social surveying what is known about economic impacts of Brexit

There's room for reasonable people to debate the magnitudes & mechanisms, but the key lesson is clear ...

Mainstream economists were right that Brexit would reduce UK trade & harm the UK economy

Yet more scaremongering in the Telegraph, so it's worth quoting one of the few named experts in the piece, Simon Gallagher:

"There is no evidence of a recent spike in [transformer] fires or failure rates"

www.linkedin.com/posts/simonc...

What a chart. The Iran nuclear deal Trump I tore up was working perfectly - Iran was not enriching in that era.

Now, Trump is dancing on the edge of a volcano in the hopes of getting precisely that kind of deal back.

"What this means is that, by the time a foreigner cleans his social media in preparation for a trip to the U.S., as much of our news media has been urging us to do, it may already be too late."

SO many people will not come to the US if they risk being treated this way, undermining our soft power

That seems like “the best is the enemy of the good”

A human therapist is better.

But often that isn’t the choice. Surely ChatGPT is better therapy than nothing. Much more affordable, more approachable, no stigma, available 24x7 with no judgement.

Show Your Stripes Visualising how the climate has changed for every country across the globe

This picture is worth a trillion words

showyourstripes.info/c/northameri...

This is a a fantastic add hilarious thread. Both funny but also loads of ideas for *Very Scary* things.

A simple idea that Would raise more. Rename employEE NI as individual NI and have it levied on same basis as income tax: pensions, property, dividends. Makes things simpler & fairer. Why shoukd BTL landlords or trustafaruans pay lower teases than workers?

50+ Venezuelans Imprisoned in El Salvador Came to US Legally, Never Violated Immigration Law The US government not only denied these men due process; it has generally failed to provide their families, their attorneys, or the public any information about what it alleges these men did to deserv...

"50+ Venezuelans Imprisoned in El Salvador Came to US Legally, Never Violated Immigration Law" www.cato.org/blog/50-vene...

What a fascinating thread

Poem response to Starmer's Farage/Powell cosplay - full text in the link

Island of Strangers - by @michaelrosenyes.bsky.social m.facebook.com/story.php?st...

Antarctica's ice loss doubles since 2020, what this means for coastal cities

Your 'moment of doom' for May 14, 2025 ~ Sooner than expected.

“We’re witnessing ice dynamics that simply shouldn’t happen on these timescales. The acceleration pattern suggests we’ve potentially crossed a critical threshold that our models didn’t anticipate until the 2040s.”

It's a fantastic book - download it - buy it - or just borrow it and read it. The Dust Bowl Triolgy are worth the effort.

That Is a generous (perverse) interpretation. On universities the student visas rules make their situation worse, and also hurt finances. Same on care homes: restricting work visas means costs go up, so homes make less profit, pay less tax, some go bust - making finances worse.

DUCK EATS YEAST, QUACKS, EXPLODES; MAN LOSES EYE Rhadamanthus's Unusually Fermented Sunday Breakfast Causes It to Rise Plecemeal, Blinding Owner. DES MOINES, la. Jan. 2 - The strangest accident recorded in local history occurred this morning when Rhada-manthus, a duck, which took a prize at the recent Iowa poultry show, exploded Into several hundred pieces, one of which struck Silas Perkins in the eye, destroying the sight The cause of the explosion was the cat- ing of yeast whieh was placed In a pan upon the back porch, and tempted his duckship, which was taking a Sunday morning stroll Upon returning from church Mr Perking discovered his prize duck in a somewhat logy condition Telltale marks around the pan of yeast gave him his clow He was about to pick up the bird when the latter quacked and exploded with a loud seport and Me feriins ran into the house holding both hands over one eye. A surgeon was called, who found that the eyeball had born penetrated by a fragment of flying duck and had no hope of saving the optic.

This morning @surliertexan.bsky.social was telling me about this exploding duck and it was TERRIBLE and I couldn’t stop laughing (because I’m BAD) and they were like yeah that’s the sort of thing that would happen to you

Bay Area bartender who created the tequila sunrise for the Rolling Stones has died Bay Area bartender Bobby Lozoff, who introduced the Tequila Sunrise to the Rolling Stones, has died at 77 in Hawaii.

Among the ever expanding universe of things I didn't know, Keith Richards agreeing to try one would turn on first the Stones, and then the world to the Tequila Sunrise.
www.sfchronicle.com/entertainmen...

Ben Franklin on inoculation, after his son died from smallpox.

“In 1736, I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation”.

Carol & Rupert's fundraiser walk for Mental Health Research UK, remembering Ivan Help Carol Baines raise money to support Mental Health Research UK

We did it! Thank you all sooo much for your support. Here are a few pics from yesterday’s lovely walk in Ivan’s memory.

Many many thanks to those who donated in Ivan's name.

If you would like to donate but haven't, please do. This is an important cause.

www.justgiving.com/page/carol-b...

I don’t think #BBC Radio Six Music is on here? Listening to Guy Garvey. Really spooky: in was thinking “I bet he like Dory Previn. I haven’t heard in ages”. 20 minutes later guys who he plays?! Spooky.

Emergency motion on the Supreme Court ruling defining the term 'woman' from RDC conference 2025

Attendees at the #RDconf last Saturday voted on an emergency motion to show their opposition to the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman.
Read the motion below 👇

BMA-wide policy is set at the Annual Representative Meeting (ARM) in June 2025.

TELSEY begins tracking price increases over the past week. Some highlights:

* Abercrombie jeans: up 33%

* Amazon Echo: up 38.5%

* Target / Barbie doll: up 42.9%

Not a single international cargo ship at the Port of Seattle. The port is effectively dead. The last ship from China will dock at a West coast port on the 29th, and the last Chinese ship will dock on the East coast around May 10th. After that, there will be no more shipments arriving from China.

I was just thinking of that…

Increases total inventory - but reduces local inventory. there is no reverse supply chain to send stuff back upstream or between depots. So expect localised shortages of different products everywhere soon even if they are different in each location. We saw from pandemic how JIT can hurt.

You absolutely have to read Simon Schama's fantastic essay on Trump’s war on knowledge in the Financial Times Weekend. It is included in the very cheap FT Edit app. He ends with a quote from Hannah Arendt. "Persuasion and violence can destroy truth, but they can never replace it.”

Happy International Twin Cities Day! My favourite pairing will never not be the Scottish village of Dull being paired with Boring, Oregon. And in 2017 the duo of drab became the trinity of tedium when they were joined by Australia's Shire of Bland.

SM and CU are independent things. Barnier made that clear. Turkey & Norway/Switzerland (in opposite ways) illustrate it. There is no reason a CU requires SM - indeed, most of them around world don't. The accession proposals on UKR & WB similarly include CU long before SM or full membership.

"the" CU is defined by TFEU as "members only" so by definition that has FoM. But "a" customs union which is identical to "the" customs union (but without membership) is clearly viable: sensible, not dramatic + symbolically important. This is also on roadmap for UKR & WB accession.

oh yeah. I agree that is nonsense. I was talking about the actual specifics, not the insane grandiosity