Virtual Nobody

Australian in the North of England. Retweet is not necessarily endorsement.

[Dr Francis Young @DrFrancisYoung]

Let’s not forget that even if England win against Norway on Saturday they will then immediately have to march 200 miles south and play France without so much as a hydration break

[Dan Neidle @DanNeidle]

UK tax has gone up significantly over the last 25 years

But the tax paid by the average UK worker has not

This apparent miracle was achieved by taxing “other people”: higher earners, capital, property, banks, etc

The strategy has run out of road

A 🧵 on what happens next.

[Supertanskiii @supertanskiii]

We have a press focused on clicks and reactions competing with social media algorithms primed to promote division and hate, and a government which is, despite its faults, trying to rebuild a country it had no part in destroying, all while being relentlessly targeted by both.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
"These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.
"And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.
"The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.
"Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.
Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now."
- Charles Pierce

[Virtual Nobody @EbenPeart]

@fuckedcuticles @JohnRentoul Noxious weed, noxious chemicals

[Virtual Nobody @EbenPeart]

@JohnRentoul Kith?

[Twittos Lambda MD PhD🇪🇺🇺🇳 @twittoslambda_]

Spanish adaptation of French TV show Face Your Worst Nightmare confronts city mayor Miguel Bernardos with 24 singing old men dressed as his father, who died 10 years prior in a wheelchair accident caused by the mayor’s inaccessible urban infrastructure.

[Virtual Nobody @EbenPeart]

@IMAO_ Lovely work.

[Curiosity @CuriosityonX]

It took 9 years and 3 billion miles to get this shot.

Pluto’s icy Mountains.

[Jessica Simor KC @JMPSimor]

They lied about the EU and they will lie about the ECHR. The media won’t notice or care. Rinse and repeat.

[Claude Taylor @TrueFactsStated]

This is 8 minutes long. It’s twitter so few will watch the whole thing-but I did and I now have a much better understanding of what motivated Tyler Robinson.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

When MLK was assassinated on April 4, 1968, RFK had to break the news to his campaign workers, many of whom were black.

This was 4 years after his brother's murder. RFK would be assassinated just 2 months later.

Political violence then was worse than now. Here's what he said:

[Rosalind @rosalindmar19]

Kurt Vonnegut on buying an envelope

[Virtual Nobody @EbenPeart]

@jewishmemequeen Very loosely it’s Rock, son of Rock.

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

Incredibly relevant to the times we live in

[Virtual Nobody @EbenPeart]

@SoullessAnalyst Make it collaborative. “Shall we free up the middle seat to give us more room”?

[Cyrus Janssen @thecyrusjanssen]

An Iranian man left this comment on my YouTube channel. It's the single best explanation I've ever heard on the future of #Iran 👇

As an Iranian, I can tell you the situation is no longer just political—it's existential. We are trapped between two collapsing structures: one internal, one external. On one hand, we face a deeply dysfunctional government, led by the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Republic’s unelected institutions.

Decades of economic mismanagement, suppression of dissent, and brutal ideological control have alienated multiple generations. No one believes in reform anymore—because every attempt has either been co-opted or crushed.

But here's the paradox: We are also terrified of regime collapse—because we've watched the aftermath of Western intervention in countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan.

Each was promised freedom; each descended into chaos, civil war, or foreign occupation. So no, we don't trust the U.S. or Israel. Not because we support our regime—but because we know how imperial powers treat ‘liberated’ nations in the Middle East.

Freedom, in their language, often means vacuum, fire, and permanent instability. Right now, many Iranians live with three truths at once: The Islamic Republic is morally and politically bankrupt. The alternatives offered by foreign actors are not liberation—they’re collapse. A bad government is survivable. No government is not. We are not silent because we agree.

We are cautious because we’ve learned—too well—what happens when superpowers decide to "help." In a sentence: Iran is a nation held hostage by its own regime, but haunted by the fate of its neighbors. We are stuck in a house we hate, surrounded by fires we fear more.

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Tony Blair, "By force of events, Britain and Europe have cooperated more together in the last weeks than the past year"

"By the middle of this century you're going to have three superpowers, America, China and India"

"The question for Europe is simple. Can we get our act together to sit at that table on equal terms?"

"If we can't sit at that table on equal terms, the three giants are going to do what they want without us"

"What matters to be at that table? You need an economy that's strong enough; in the technology sector. That's going to be a big determinant in the future"

"You're going to have military capability"

"And political cohesion to carry the positions you want"

"If we want to be powerful enough, in an era where otherwise these powers are going to dominate"

"If you don't carry something to the table, the giants tend to sit on everyone else, which is what giants do"

"So if you don't want them to sit on you, you have to be big enough so that they can't"

#RejoinEU

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

This is Marco Rubio explaining how the USA promised to defend Ukraine forever if they got rid of their nuclear arsenal left after the Soviet Union fell.

This is why lil marco was sinking into the couch. He was hoping we wouldn’t find it…so don’t RT right now this very second.

[Julia Davis @JuliaDavisNews]

“You don’t look grateful.”