"War is dangerous," according to Trump. Where would we be without this man's laser-sharp insight?
It's not that there is no such thing as an arbitrary generation. It's just that, for any two generations you can define, it will become necessary to insert a third between them, and so on to infinity, until the length of each generation is less than the life-span of the average quark.
Given Trump's obvious and sudden decline in health, perhaps Putin was behind it when they met in Alaska. What if he offered a fake rubber hand for Trump to shake and it was coated in some delayed-action nerve agent? It's no crazier than the ideas any of Trump's cabinet has on an average day.
"Valued users! We understand that over the past 250-odd years, you have come to rely on the services provided by the U.S. of A. ... Well, 250 years of free is enough." @petridishes.bsky.social on the end of America's free-trial period:
The Daily Mail and the Telegraph are all in a tizzy over Graham Linehan's detention by the Metropolitan police. How times have changed. It's not so long since the very same rags were cheering the police for wrongfully arresting Irish people.
What's the difference between the Nazi genocide and the Israeli genocide? Simple. The Nazis tried to hide it.
You think Israel's destruction of Gaza is about defeating Hamas? Think again. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...
It can be anything. This is just my guess on what will happen. Nothing more.
I'd express no view on that. This is just a personal assessment of what is most likely to happen. Could easily be wrong.
I think Heather Humphreys will be elected President. It's hard to see many outside Dublin voting for Jim Gavin. Catherine Connolly will have trouble explaining support for far-right lunatic Gemma. All the other candidates are fluff. It is what it is. I'll risk a fifty in the bookies.
Isn't it amazing that the people who respect RFK's opinions on medical science would never let him put a finger near the engines of their trucks?
And then we have the powerful Christian Zionist movement. Is criticism of them also anti-semitic?
JD Vance on Donald Trump: “I’m a Never Trump guy. I never liked him. I don’t think he’s the person. I don’t think he cares about folks. I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.” { ht: @marcofoster.bsky.social }
JD Vance: “Trump is a really bad candidate and frankly, I think, a really bad person.” { ht: @patriottakes.bsky.social }
Complete this announcement. "We interrupt this broadcast to bring you breaking news. In the last few minutes, the White House announced that Donald J Trump, 47th President of the United States, has …”
Sociologists will tell you their field is also a science.
Old Soviet joke for today: A man walks into a newsstand every day, looks around, and leaves. After a long time of this, the owner says “Can I help you find something?” “I’m looking for the obituaries.” “The obituaries are in the back of the newspaper, comrade.” “Not the one I’m looking for.”
Balance
Of course, the reality is that they can't, but anger and outrage are not the products of logic. When people see manmade pestilence and famine, it's natural to feel revulsion if they think it's being done by those they once thought of as allies. I suppose it's a sense of betrayal.
On the other hand, Israel is supported by the USA, Germany and the UK in their efforts to commit genocide. And while that might not be entirely logical, it explains why people in the mythical "West" are so outraged. They feel that somehow they might be able to do something about it.
Western governments are not providing Russia with the means to subjugate Ukraine, nor are they providing either faction in Sudan with armaments, or at least, not overtly.
The Gaza conflict is the only one of the Big Three - Ukraine, Sudan and Palestine - where countries we consider ourselves somewhat allied with are supplying weaponry to exterminate an entire people.
Somebody recently put it to me that Gaza seems to occupy more headlines than other major conflicts and while I don't necessarily agree with that point of view, I can see why it might get more prominence in what we like to call "The West", whatever that might be.
They have always existed. Largely drawn from a cohort of unemployable thugs.
You can't learn something that is completely false.
Which of us doesn't keep a cardboard cut-out of our leader in the home? Perfectly normal #Reform supporters. Perfectly normal party.
Except, maybe, as a specimen.
Let us give thanks that there are never any school shootings in America. That's because good guys with guns always stop them.
Guns don't kill people. True, but they work better than water pistols.
You can just imagine the conversation in RFK's office. - Who should we put in charge of the nation's leading science-based, data-driven institution protecting public health? - I don't know. How about a sociopathic, uncaring Silicon Valley investor with zero medical training? - Great idea! Do it!
Post Enlightenment period of *American* history.
NRA: “Guns don’t kill people.” ME: “They certainly seem to help.”
Apparently there's talk of sackings at Grimsby Town as management struggles to explain almost losing to Manchester United.
Don't say you weren't warned.
All those years of Americans telling us their democracy was the strongest in the world. Checks and balances. Founding fathers. Constitution. And now their democracy is gone. Destroyed not by some fanatical visionary, but by a small-minded con-man who still can't believe he got away with it.
I'm starting to think the Old Testament deity was an incompetent, vindictive, sadistic idiot. In fact, I'm starting to think he was Trump, which would explain why the orange clown believes he's God. Maybe for once, he's telling the truth.
It seems to me that the Old Testament God didn't do a great job of wiping all traces of life from the planet if this was the best plan he could come up with. Was he going to drown all the fish and the otters and the frogs? And by the way, which animals can't swim?
So why did Noah go to the great trouble of building an ark when he could have just herded all the animals up a hill? And why did he bring birds? Most birds could probably fly higher than 22.5 feet and land on a tree or a two-storey house.
Remember that guy Noah who built the Ark and saved all the animals who couldn't swim? Well, according to the Old Testament, the flood rose to a height of 15 cubits, which is about 22.5 feet. It might submerge an average bungalow.
Yet another school shooting in America. Let's accept the gun lobby claims that it's people who kill people, not guns. Ok. In that case, don't give them fucking guns.
Jeanine is on a roll.
I don't want to get into a trade of moral equivalences, but our people were utterly devastated by a catastrophic famine and ethnic cleansing. It's not about being against any religion or ethnicity but that revulsion towards such horrors are metaphorically burnt into our DNA. Understandably.
I think you might be doing the thing yourself but anyway, thanks for the respectful dialogue. Gotta go now. Different time zones.
It's hard to see what's worse than deliberate famine and pestilence, which tend to evoke visceral feelings of disgust. The Israelis' impunity does not sit well with people nor their muting of criticism using America as a threat. It seems their own experience of genocide has not dimmed their zeal.
He's certainly to blame for conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, although he's far from alone in that regard.
Indeed. But if you want to blame anyone for that misconception, consider starting with Netanyahu.
Imagine Trump being pissed off by Jack White. Hilarious. As if any of these dork-dancing fools ever listened to the White Stripes.
Even the lunatic Orthodox clergy confirm that the Russian soldiers are rapists and thieves.
Another school shooting in America. But hey, *good guys with guns* will always stop this, right? Right?
Ten thousand extra immigrants from the USA last year. Unvetted. Of fighting age. Did anyone notice the anti-immigration marches? No. Neither did I.
Isn't that conflation primarily Netanyahu's? Did he not define Israel as the Jewish state?
“China intelligently went in and they sort of took a monopoly of the world’s magnets. Nobody needed magnets until they convinced everybody 20 years ago, ‘let’s all do magnets.'” - Donald J Trump.
Hmm.
People are getting too excited about Trump's failing health. Remember, this man is President of the United States. He has access to the best medical advice anywhere in the world. Let us just hope Robert F Kennedy is up to the job.
They call him "that idiot".
British police have arrested a herd of endangered woolly mammoths for demanding Pleistocene Action.
Nobody has ever called him president of Europe. In Europe, most people call him "that fool".
Well, that's better than a clerical officer, I suppose.
If there were no immigrants, what would the Far Right do?
"I know it like the back of my hand," said Trump, never.
When will we get to see JD Vance's Lloyd Bentsen moment? Let's hope it comes soon.
When Trump's failing health forces him to step down, which seems to be imminent, will Miller and Vance have the force of personality to carry on? It seems unlikely. There's only one Mob boss.
Is this person a highly-qualified healthcare professional?
You'd have to ask one thing about these people who "do their own research". Why aren't they all holding down highly-paid research jobs?
Trump seems to be showing visible signs of extremely poor health. Let us hope that he consults Robert F Kennedy the Lesser for advice.
Israel does a double-tap attack on a Gaza hospital. That is pure, distilled evil.
Israel pressing for an end to the UNIFIL mandate. Why? Because they don't want witnesses.
Trump is going to spend €500 million painting the Mexico fence black because he reckons the sun will make a black fence too hot to climb. Did anyone tell him that the USA side of the fence mostly faces North where it will get no sun? Did anyone tell him that people mostly climb it at night anyway?
At my age I wake up every morning and say "Jesus Christ, am I still alive? That's amazing." But then the fog clears and I say, "Jesus Christ, please don't tell me that prick is still alive."
I really don't think we can take in all the American refugees when democracy collapses in the USA. Ireland is full. Isn't that what they were telling us?
I suppose if you look hard enough, you'll find a reason to define anyone as a terrible person. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but wasn't Kevin Spacey exonerated? Klaus Kinski was awful, but will I stop loving Nosferatu and Fitzcarraldo? Of course not. He was hired as an actor.
Einstein certainly refined Newton's work but I still don't understand how Earth bends space. Forgive my stupidity but do we understand the mechanism behind that?
What about Russia conceding that they should not have invaded, that they should immediately withdraw and that they should pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine? Vance is a fucking imbecile.
Isn't it written all over him?
Coming from Trump's right-hand man, that's the ultimate compliment.
Night.
That's a different discussion. It's not what we were talking about.
Nobody suggested you were defending Netanyahu.
There are probably people who use this to attack Jews, but it's an open goal these days. When Israeli spokespeople accuse the UN of blood libel for pointing out the obvious, then Israel really has lost control of the narrative. And it doesn't make a difference who the Hasbara attacks any more.
Could people please stop saying "I don’t know who needs to hear this"? If you don't, then shut the fuck up until you find out.
One thing is to teach them a foreign language. The other problem is teaching them not to speak it with English pronunciation, which makes them completely impossible to understand.
Israeli spokeswoman on BBC this morning dismissing UN assessment of Palestinian famine as "blood libel". There's only one reasonable answer to that. Fuck off.
Well, it's from a person who doesn't know there's such a word as "aloud". America, you really are doomed.
It is impossible to argue with somebody who claims to be chosen by God. Such a person has profound psychological problems.
Isn't that stating the obvious? I'm sure you didn't mean to deflect from the good people who are appalled by all the atrocities taking place, including the crimes of Netanyahu. But cynical folks might choose to read it that way.
Ok. It just seems a little childish to our eyes. Like pre-schoolers name-calling. Cultural differences, I suppose.
John Bolton was the loudest anti-Putin voice in the US administration and now his home is invaded by Trump's goons. Go ahead and tell us this raid wasn't ordered by the Kremlin.
Again, asking as a foreigner. Why do Americans give their opponents silly names? I've noticed Trump doing this too. Isn't his name DeSantis?
The one thing that gives us hope about Trump is the fact that he's far older than Hitler.
I never thought I'd find myself saying "Free John Bolton". Strange times we live in.
Absolutely brilliant 👇😀😀😀
Not American. Just one of those foreigners who used to bring money to spend in Florida. Are you saying the person responsible for managing an entire state has enough spare time to worry about one crosswalk?
Definitely don't ask how we can make things more democratic.
Literally all I asked was how we could make things more democratic.
