Brexitus

Věnováno všem "průkopníkům", kteří se odvážili pokořit dno a posunout lidstvo opět o něco dále. Všem exitům z vesmíru a zdravého rozumu, vážně i nevážně.

[Alex & Books 📚 @AlexAndBooks_]

The Atlantic’s new cover story about the end of reading is absolutely frightening.

Here are 5 concerning facts from it:

1) 51% of adults read 0 books a year: According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits, fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022.

2) Reading for fun has gone from a mainstream hobby to a niche one: Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023.

3) Everyone is reading less: The decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. Even the demographics that traditionally read the most—retirees, women, and college graduates—have seen a collapse.

4) Books are getting simpler and shorter: New York Times best sellers today have sentences that are about one-third shorter than they were a century ago.

5) Kids are struggling to read and doing less of it: Fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores have slid for the past decade. From 1984 to 2025, the percentage of 13-year-olds who said they rarely or never read for fun rose from 8 to 29 percent. "Every year older a child gets, the less they like to read."

For most of history, the biggest reading problem was illiteracy. People didn't know how to read books.

But today the biggest problem is post-literacy. People know how to read books, but don't.

A society that doesn't read loses more than just books. People lose the ability to think critically, focus deeply, and see life through multiple perspectives.

The world needs you. Please consider picking up a book today.

https://t.co/P8Sq3pAa6K

[max seddon @maxseddon]

Russia’s fuel crisis has brought the war home to more people than ever before. The shortages directly affect some 50mn Russians, or 35 per cent of the population, according to an FT analysis.

A great deep dive by @NastyaStognei:

https://t.co/F3l6ybM8Ps

[Alexander Stahel 🌻 @BurggrabenH]

Russian refinery throughput has now collapsed to 2.8mbpd from 5.1mbpd in 2022. Omsk is severely damaged, though not yet fully offline (see below).

Gasoline, diesel and jet shortages are now emerging simultaneously. With multiple crude distillation units (CDUs) knocked out across the refinery system, there is no quick path to restoring refining capacity. Sustained product imports are becoming Russia's only viable medium-term solution.

Good luck with that. Belarus' Mozyr refinery is the Kremlin's best hope for securing up to 90kbpd of gasoline and a bit of jet and diesel. But it sits just across the Ukrainian border and is itself an obvious strategic target - expressis verbis by @ZelenskyyUa.

@MFA_Ukraine

[ChrisO_wiki @ChrisO_wiki]

1/ Russian mobile air defence teams are stuck in queues outside gas stations and are being denied preferential access to scarce fuel, a Russian source says in a plea to a warblogger for help. The problem has arisen because the teams don't drive military-registered vehicles. ⬇️

[Bára Ka🍀 @honestBara1]

👏👏👏😱
Wow ! @R_Bartonicek se naštval!

To si nenechte ujít!👇

[Acyn @Acyn]

Nichols: It’s almost like we have a relative in the room, and there’s something deeply wrong with him. And we’ve all agreed not to talk about it. But there is something deeply wrong with him.

His friends know it, his critics know it. His staff, I’m sure, knows it. The world knows it. World leaders know it. And most importantly, our enemies know it, which is why they don’t take him seriously.

Nobody hangs on his words. They kind of do, but mostly out of freakish curiosity to see what kind of wild thing he’s going to say next, not because his words have any inherent meaning or reflect policy.

You know, I spent years teaching students that when the president speaks, it’s policy, and you must pay attention when the president speaks because nobody can contradict him.

Now, you know, are we really cutting off all trade with Spain? Who knows? Maybe. Maybe not. It might have just been a stray electron, you know, careening around inside his brainpan. Who knows?

But this is really dangerous because in the middle of all this stuff—and we can laugh about, you know, the Islamic Republic of Japan and all of that—but he made several statements about an ongoing war that the United States is losing. And no one’s even trying to pretend that they can make any sense of it.

And I’ll just add one last thing that you just brought up.

If this were any other president, this would be a national crisis. I mean, Joe Biden got somebody’s name wrong, and it was headlines. The president gets all kinds of things wrong, completely, you know, is out to lunch at an important NATO summit, and, you know, it’s Wednesday.

[Jiri Melda Melichar @JiriMelda]

Milý vlastenci, tím že jste si zvolili do vedení země právě člověka, který v ČR všechno skoupil a zprivatizoval a je majitelem největšího holdingu v ČR, tak vám nezůstane ani to letiště.

[Jamie Kay @TheRealJamieKay]

Oh, the irony!

[Annemarie Ward 💜 @Annemarieward]

The joke isn't the bin. The joke is pretending the man inside it is some random eccentric. Jonathan David Harvey is an Oxford-educated writer with three decades at the heart of the BBC comedy establishment, writing for programmes such as The Thick of It, Have I Got News For You and Yes Minister. He's won awards, been celebrated by the media, and is hardly an unknown outsider.
So let's stop pretending Count Binface is just a bloke who wandered into politics wearing a wheelie bin.
The costume is the gimmick. The career behind it is anything but.

[Jana Černochová @jana_cernochova]

Pan redaktor @R_Bartonicek.. je borec. Donutil Babiše k odpovědi. 💪🏻

Tak tohle jsem fakt nečekala. 😂
Andrej Babiš se teď na tiskovce chlubí muniční iniciativou — tedy přesně tím, co roky shazoval, zpochybňoval a proti čemu stavěl předvolební kampaň. Když jsme Ukrajině pomáhali my, bylo to podle něj špatně. Když se tím může pochlubit on, je z toho najednou státnická zásluha. Tomu se říká mistrovství světa v pokrytectví! Nemáte zač, @AndrejBabis. těší mě, že jste uznal výsledky naší práce ve vládě @P_Fiala 👍🏻

[Stuzi 🐝🐝 @stuzi_pants]

Wow you can actually see the moment where Reform’s Laila Cunningham’s soul exits her body
This is the car crash of all car crashes, and again it’s all because they’re out under strict instructions to defend Farage’s abject shittery and greed

Embarrassing

[Poslední skaut™ @Posledniskaut]

Babiš si stěžoval, že nám spor vlády s prezidentem dělá špatné jméno v zahraničí.
Nikoliv. Tohle nám dělá špatné jméno v zahraničí.

[BarbV 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇬🇱 @Tearfultellall]

Absolutely brilliant 👏👏👏👏

[@BrennpunktUA 🇩🇪🇺🇦 @BrennpunktUA]

💥🔥 Imagine standing with your car in a long line for fuel ⛽️ in the middle of the night in Mikhailovsk, Russia 🇷🇺, and infront of your eyes the fuel depot gets struck by a UA 🇺🇦 strike UAV.

[Visioner @visionergeo]

‼️‼️🛢️🇰🇿🇷🇺 BIG | Kazakhstan has officially gone into lockdown mode at its border with Russia, slapping a strict "one-entry-per-day" rule on all passenger and cargo vehicles.

🔻The goal? To stop the massive "gray market" exodus of fuel. With Ukrainian drone strikes systematically dismantling Russia’s refineries—including the massive Omsk facility—Russian drivers are flooding into Kazakhstan to hunt for cheaper gas, effectively draining the Kazakh market. In just 48 hours, border agents intercepted over 60 smuggling attempts involving modified tanks and hidden canisters, forcing Astana to prioritize domestic stability over the needs of its desperate northern neighbor.

📍​This isn't just about border security; it’s a quiet but powerful act of economic self-preservation. By choking off this illicit pipeline, Kazakhstan is sending a sharp, pragmatic signal to Moscow: "We won't let your self-inflicted energy crisis burn our economy to the ground." The fact that a regional partner is taking such aggressive, non-diplomatic measures to curb the influence of Russia’s domestic collapse shows just how deep the rot in the Russian infrastructure has actually gone.

[Jamie Bonkiewicz @JamieBonkiewicz]

Donald Trump has pardoned more than 70 people convicted of fraud.

[Derek Cressman @DerekCressman]

Notice this fraud was caught without needing to pass the SAVE act.

[Jon Brady @_jonbrady]

BBC: "have you ever been to Clacton?"

@CountBinface: "no, because I understand from the current incumbent that is part of how you do the job."

politics is BACK, baby

[Nora Fridrichova @NoraFridrichova]

Právě jsem opět dostala zákaz vstupu do poslanecké sněmovny. A to za rozhovory s motoristy Turkem a Klempířem, které jsem v ní natočila minulý týden. Podle vedení sněmovny jsem "natáčela mimo povolené prostory". Záběr s Turkem, který přikládám, začíná v "povoleném prostoru" a o pár metrů ho přesahuje. S Klempířem jsem natáčela v přilehlé chodbě. Ne náhodou jsou zrovna tohle politici, kteří se nepříjemným otázkám zcela vyhýbají. V české poslanecké sněmovně jim ale vychází vstříc tuhý režim, který dozoruje Tomio Okamura, kdy se v celé obří budově smí natáčet už jen na pár čtverečních metrech. A když jsem popošla, ihned BAN. Nikoliv upozornění, ale rovnou zákaz, chápete? Vytvoříte extrémní pravidla a tvrdě trestáte. Dokonce i ve slovenské Národní radě smějí novináři natáčet mnohem víc a to je tedy fakt co říct. Tento opětovný ban beru jako ocenění mé práce, ale i jako potvrzení, že situace se mění k horšímu.

[Janusz Konieczny @kleentik]

Kdysi premiér Stanislav Gross rezignoval na funkci premiéra i předsedy strany po tom, co nedokázal vysvětlit, odkud vzal 2,5 milionů Kč na koupi bytu. Dneska řada politiků odmítá sdělit, odkud vzala desítky či stovky milionů Kč jelikož ví, že jim to projde. Pro změnu Ševčík odmítá říct, komu půjčil 50 milionů Kč. Fakt mi věřte, že v nějakém vyspělém státě (třeba Dánsku) by tohle v žádném případě projít nemohlo.

Když někdo získá moc nad majetkem státu a je vrcholným politikem, tak je nutné, aby odhalil například to, kdo mu poslal 100 milionů Kč, jaký je původ majetku atd.. Je to z preventivních důvodů a hlavně je to zcela logické. Pokud to někdo zatajuje, tak jde obvykle o něco velmi pochybného a dotyčný je často v něčem "namočen".

Berte to tak, že dotyční fakt si dovolí to, co jim projde. A je to čistě na nás, co jim dovolíme.