Simon Jenkins

UK to Canada to Saudi Arabia to Canada to Korea and back to Canada

[Art Hits Hard @nightwriter22]

Aaron Sorkin revealed to Vanity Fair recently he spent three days trying to persuade Jesse Eisenberg to return as Mark Zuckerberg in his new film, The Social Reckoning, but Eisenberg ultimately declined.

“He simply did not want to be conflated with Mark Zuckerberg anymore... He has his problems with the guy. He doesn’t like kids coming up to him in airports with business cards that say ‘I’m CEO, bitch’ for him to sign.”

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

Venezuelan immigrant takes Trump-supporting wife to Trump’s hotel for their honeymoon… and gets detained by ICE for 3 months. Lost his job, house, car, savings. Now she says it’s “not fair”, but still thinks he’s a good president. 🤔

https://t.co/XU12Vytj04

[Old Canada Series @oldcanadaseries]

The music video for Rick Moranis' "Ipanema Rap" song in 1990

[Team Talarico @TeamTalaricoHQ]

.@JamesTalarico: There's been a lot of talk in this race about what it means to be a real man.

Recently on the campaign trail I told the story of my adoptive dad, Mark Talarico. Every Saturday morning, he would mow our lawn, and then without anyone asking him to, he would go next door and mow our neighbor's lawn because she was a widow. My dad never talked about it — he just did it, because that's what a man does.

A man takes responsibility, upholds his commitments to his family and his neighbors, and does what's right, even when no one is watching.

Here's what real men don't do. They don't lie and cheat their way through life, sell their soul to the highest bidder, or steal from other people in order to enrich themselves. Real men serve others. Weak men serve themselves.

I welcome this debate about what it means to be a man, and I don't think Ken Paxton or Ted Cruz are in a position to tell anybody what a real man is.

[Amanda Carpenter @amandacarpenter]

About as respectful to the Lincoln Memorial as you'd think this would be.

[Molly Jong-Fast @MollyJongFast]

This is bad

https://t.co/0YpO3MIIar

[Mitt Romney @MittRomney]

Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.

[Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD DSc(hon) @PeterHotez]

The real numbers: @WHO Expanded Program on Immunization saved 154 million lives between 1974-2024, the @gavi alliance matched this, effecting 90% reduction in measles pertussis Hib. Antivaccine activists don’t care about you or your family, they have another agenda

[Emma Vigeland @EmmaVigeland]

Elon becomes the world's first trillionaire via an overvalued SpaceX IPO. It allows the billionaires who took Twitter private to cash out after new investors raise the stock price (a pump and dump), and now they're integrating it into indexes so retirees are left holding the bag.

[Megan K. Stack @Megankstack]

Amazing quote from Stephen Miller's high school classmate in this new Jazeera documentary on him:

"Having grown up with him, it makes you realize that it isn't the smartest person you went to high school with who's running the country. It's the most shameless person."

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

“We are deeply disturbed to learn so many senior members of the Trump administration gathered in the Situation Room to discuss the release of the Epstein Files as a reputational problem… we are separately concerned Todd Blanche was at that table.”

[John Jackson @hissgoescobra]

Her own “evidence” hilariously includes a warning that it is a target of Russian propaganda—which she then repeats. This woman is dumber than a bag of hammers. It might as well say “Tulsi Gabbard, Anna Paulina Luna, and other moutbreathers might lie about this” across the top.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Scientists took molecules from a traumatized father's sperm, injected them into a healthy egg, and watched the offspring grow up anxious and depressed. The father never touched them. His sperm chemistry did.

Inside every sperm, next to the genes, sits a second layer of information. Think of genes as the text of a book. The second layer is the highlighting, the sticky notes, the margin marks telling the cell which parts to read loudly and which to skip. Stress rewrites those marks. The original text stays the same.

A 2025 University of Turku study tracked 55 Finnish men and found that those with high childhood abuse scores had 68 of those molecules behaving differently than men who hadn't been abused. Several of the changed molecules shape how a baby's brain forms. One brain-building molecule in particular kept showing up reliably lower in traumatized men's sperm. That same result had appeared in a separate human study before Finland's data even arrived. Two teams, two countries, same molecule, same direction.

These men were in their late 30s and early 40s when they gave sperm samples. Their childhoods had ended 25 to 35 years earlier. A Harvard and University of British Columbia study found that one gene section tied to brain and nerve function showed a 29% behavioral difference between abused and non-abused men's sperm. Both findings survived checks for smoking, drinking, weight, and age. The body apparently keeps records of childhood long after the conscious mind has moved on.

The reason the experiment works: these molecules don't disappear at fertilization. They travel into the early embryo and begin shaping which genes switch on, at a moment when the embryo is still just a handful of cells, too small to see without a microscope. The father's history of stress arrives in the embryo before it has a nervous system to feel anything.

The same pathway carries good things too. A 2025 Cell Metabolism study found that fathers who exercise regularly put different molecules into their sperm. Offspring of exercising mice outran their peers with less fatigue. The same molecules were at higher levels in the sperm of men who exercise. Health moves through this channel as well.

In mice, the effect didn't stop at the children. About 11% of the molecular changes from a stressed father appeared in grandchildren. By the third generation, it had fallen below 1%, but it was still there.

Three separate human studies. Same molecular signature. Same direction. Proving causation in humans requires the kind of controlled injection experiments that so far have only been done in mice. But three teams in three different places landing on the same result isn't coincidence.

[Nick Kapur @nick_kapur]

"Big four" accountancy KMPG released a report on how major companies are integrating agentic AI that greatly exaggerated AI use by citing bogus cased studies based on AI hallucinations, with 40 out of 45 citations hallucinated. 😂

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

The Trump admin has just approved Paramount's $111,000,000,000 acquisition of Warner Bros.

The Trump-friendly Ellison family will now control editorial decisions at CNN, the Warner Bros. film studio, and HBO Max.

[Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD DSc(hon) @PeterHotez]

Never forget: The @WSJopinion as the print version of Fox News and Murdoch media empire waged a war of aggression on the American people. My estimate, their Soviet-style Lysenko-Communist disinformation campaign killed between 200,000-300,000 Americans during the pandemic. I have the receipts

[Acyn @Acyn]

Ingraham: What can you tell the American people tonight about the light that is there at the end of the tunnel for them on the cost of every day living?

Bessent: The underlying fundamentals are excellent and we will be on the other side of this soon.

[Washington Week with The Atlantic | PBS @washingtonweek]

"Peter, small question for you: Is the post-World War II international liberal order created and maintained by the United States over?" @JeffreyGoldberg asked.

"Yes," said @peterbakernyt. "Our understanding of what we thought the world order was for the last 80 years is over."

[Jeremy Diamond @JDiamond1]

Fahd Abu Haikal was driving through Hebron last week when he spotted a group of Israeli soldiers.
He began to slow down, but one of the soldiers raised his rifle & opened fire.
One bullet pierced the windshield, striking his son, Sam, in the head.
He was just 7 months old -- the 13th child to be killed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank so far this year.
The IDF says it is investigating the shooting.

[sarah @sahouraxo]

This isn’t some post-apocalyptic movie scene.

This is what Israel is doing to Tyre in South Lebanon.

One of humanity’s oldest cities is being wiped off the map.

And US tax dollars are paying for it.