Dee Chapman

RN Aged Care-nature history art politics travel - survived 2020 fires.
India Scotland.

[Vlad Vexler @VladVexler]

The Real Reason Everything Feels Broken Right Now - what history teaches us about political frustration

Throughout history, people have lapsed from zones of safety to zones of ruinous danger. Often, with a frightening suddenness. And it is a version of normal for humans to be left stumbling as the world around them is transformed.

In the recent history of my country, Britain, the First World War is perhaps the greatest example of such transformation. In Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain gives a feminist account of innocence smashed by catastrophe and loss. Vera lost her fiancé Ronald Leighton - killed in December 1915. She lost her brother and only sibling Edward - killed in June 1918. She lost two of her closest friends - Victor Richardson, who died of wounds in 1917, and Geoffrey Thurlow, killed in 1917. Immediately after the war at Oxford, Vera formed a magical friendship with Winifred Holtby, an upcoming writer five years her junior. Vera lost Winifred to "Brights Disease" in 1935, when Winifred was 37.

Christ Church, where I was a graduate in the early 2000s, was one of 26 colleges and women's societies in 1914. During the First World War, it lost 238 men. Oxford's losses were astonishing - one a half times higher than the national average and in some cohorts many times higher. At Corpus Christi, of the 16 men who entered in 1916, 15 were killed. A death rate of 94%.

Why did I just give you a microcosm of privilege collapsing into disaster?

It's not because I want you to think that humans in the past endured much worse than us, and therefore, we should suck up our temper tantrum about how Trump and Putin are ruining the world.

What I want to do instead is get you to think about what it feels like to get something from history which you didn't ask for. Our overwhelm about Western democratic decline is a case of wanting something from history and not being able to have it. That is to say, it is a case of human frustration.

Frustration poses many dangers. So let's name two of the big ones.

The first danger is giving up ON one's desire: the world is so screwed up that I don't want to want what I want anymore. You anaesthetise yourself, and let your desires retreat into the subconscious.

The second danger is becoming very rigid about how you want to realise your desire: I want to avert democratic decline, but I only want to do it by going back to the "historical normal" of the recent past, 1989-2014, and I don't care if you tell me that's impossible. Now, you are giving up not on your desire, but on your desire being open-ended.

With this second danger, a common type of self-talk is: the reason we lapsed from 1989-2014 is because IGNORANCE did it, or IMMORALITY did it, or malign foreign interference by Russia did it. This is a voluntarist and highly moralised description that obscures what you actually need to know about how you got here, and what you might actually do about it.

So: how do we handle the dangers of unconstructive frustration?

What you want to do is keep your desire, but loosen your picture of how it must be satisfied. That means you keep wanting what you want, but stay curious about reality. You keep wanting liberal democracy, institutional checks and balances, the failure of the monarchist "might is right" politics of Trump and Putin. But you don't turn that desire into a demand that history must satisfy it in the form you expected in the recent past.

The fantasy here is: Trump disappears, politics normalises, the old centre returns, institutions behave like theY did before. The tragic element of the phantasy is that it guarantees that you don't get what you want. Being fixated on a recent past that cannot be brought back, you'll miss other forms of democratic renewal that do not resemble a return to the world you have lost.

Not being able to get the politics you want, doesn't mean you give up on politics. That itself is a form of politics you don't want - it is a step in the direction of hyper-neoliberliasm, the Trumpist and Putinist idea which blends consumarism and raw power: I must be able to buy what I want, and if I can't buy it, I can take it by force.

Instead, what you do is try to acknowledge that the political environment has changed - and allow yourself to be disappointed by that fact. Don't pretend that the loss isn't real. But do remain open about what can be done about it in the world as it is. That is to say, do not run away from frustration. And know, that this is not just part of being a good citizen, but part of leading a good life. In On Giving Up, Adam Phillips, the most articulate psychoanalyst in our culture, takes these issues beyond politics and further than I have done here.

[Marek Fanatyk @MarekFanatyk]

Jesteśmy w dupie z edukacją wyższą.

I nie chodzi tylko o Polskę, ale o sporą część Zachodu.

Kształcimy setki tysięcy ludzi w zawodach, których za dekadę nikt nie będzie potrzebował.

Tymczasem Chińczycy w ciągu ostatnich kilku lat zlikwidowali lub wstrzymali nabór na ponad 12 200 programów studiów na swoich uczelniach.

Jednocześnie uruchomili ponad 10 000 nowych, mocno stawiając na dziedziny związane z najnowszymi technologiami:

- AI i technologie pokrewne,
- robotykę i future robotics,
- automatykę i inteligentne systemy,
- półprzewodniki i układy scalone,
- nowe materiały,
- technologie energetyczne i lotnicze,
- bioinżynierię i biomanufacturing.

To tylko kilka przykładów.

Kiedyś Chińczycy masowo jeździli studiować na Zachód. Dzisiaj sami przebudowują system edukacji pod technologie i zawody, które będą potrzebne w przyszłości.

I nie jest to plan na kolejne dekady. Ogromna część tej transformacji już się wydarzyla w ciągu ostatnich 4 lat.

Europa jak zwykle zostaje z tyłu. O zmianach w polskiej edukacji wyższej szkoda nawet wspominać.

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔Oracle's 5-year credit default swap spread just hit a record 230 basis points, more than four times the broader investment-grade index at 55 bps. The spread has quadrupled in the past year and now exceeds financial crisis levels from 2008. For comparison, Turkey's sovereign CDS sits at 245 bps. Oracle is one notch above junk and the credit market is pricing it as a bigger risk than it was during the worst financial crisis in modern history.

My Take
Oracle's CDS is priced worse than 2008 and Ellison is still signing hundred-billion-dollar AI deals. I think he's operating on the assumption that Oracle is too big and too embedded in government IT systems to be allowed to fail. That may end up being true, but it's a bet that someone else covers the downside rather than a financial strategy.

S&P cut Oracle to BBB- in July and said they "underestimated the scale of the investments required." One more notch and Oracle is junk-rated. Every institutional fund with an investment-grade mandate would have to sell, and that's a forced liquidation Oracle isn't prepared for.
Half the backlog is OpenAI, which by its own pre-IPO numbers burns $278 billion more than it takes in through 2030. I don't think Ellison has a plan for what happens if S&P downgrades him and OpenAI can't pay on schedule at the same time. And I think both of those are more likely than the stock price assumes.

Hedgie🤗

[Maria Avdeeva @maria_avdv]

Russia killed seven people in Kyiv today. Moving around the city has turned into a deadly game of hiding from drones. You drive, walk, go to work and suddenly you’re running for cover.

I know this won’t be heard, but I want to leave it here anyway.

[Tomer Burg @burgwx]

@ContentWxGuy Re: 12-hourly vs. hourly, the 12-hour plot is a simple difference of that time vs. 12 hours ago. If the location you circled had an artifact at that time but not 12 hours ago, that artifact will be clearly visible in the 12-hour difference plot, as it was in this case.

[Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien]

Lord, President Xi just insulted Trump and the USA, right to Trump's face-in the White House. Xi referred, yet again, to the "Thucydides trap". This is a reference to the US being in decline and China replacing it.
And Trump sits their making moo eyes like a lovestruck teenager

[Carole Bruce @CaroleBruce17]

This is trending! #ME people do keep sharing or posting or quoting if possible. We’d love to get out of the bubble.

[Vladyslav Vlasiuk 💙💛🇪🇺 @vladvlas]

A strong investigation by the Financial Times. Its journalists dug into a huge leak from inside A7, the Kremlin-backed payment network, and it confirms what we have been saying for a long time about how Russia finances its war. What was an informed assumption is now documented.
Here is the essence:
Russia's oil export earnings stay abroad. Exporters, including Coral and Rosneft-connected traders, deposit them into the accounts of front companies and in return receive roubles inside Russia. The foreign currency then pays for components and other imports for the war. According to the FT, Rosneft-connected traders alone supplied more than $2 billion to this network.
Forged paperwork provided the cover. Inside A7 this was called "legend creation": invoices for "fuel oil" or "grain" delivered to an Algerian port. In one case, in August 2025, 39.9 million dirhams ($10.8 million) from Coral was offset by an equivalent rouble payment to Hurus.
The roles of the oil companies and traders, A7, third-country banks and Tether are confirmed. This is state-scale money laundering serving the war against Ukraine.
Here is what the response must be:
1Sanction every entity and front company exposed in the leak, and the people behind them.
2Apply secondary sanctions to third-country banks that keep servicing this network.
3Require stablecoin issuers, including Tether, to freeze linked wallets and cooperate fully with enforcement.
4Treat these flows as money laundering and document fraud cases, not only as sanctions violations.
5Banks should re-check past transactions built on similar "legends".
The U.S. government can do all of this now under the Lindsey Graham Russia sanctions law. The tools are there. What is needed is the decision.
Every dollar in this pool buys drones and missiles used against Ukrainians. Closing it is one of the most effective ways to cut the Kremlin's war financing.

[RS Archer @archer_rs]

I must be missing something, Trump is celebrating his agreement with Greenland which is in reality identical to the 1955 Greeenland Agreement which was already in place and had not lapsed.

Is it possible his staff just said it was a new deal to make him happy?

[Chris Hale @ChrisHale23]

Essential reading

[Linus ✦ Ekenstam @LinusEkenstam]

Hi. 😊 Swedish dude here.

When our children get sick, we have 60 paid days per year to stay home with them.

Per parent.

They're separate from my 25 paid vacation days.

Meaning I don't have to use my own paid sick leave.

If I'm a single parent: 120 days.
If my child has a chronic illness: 120 days
If my child is hospitalized: unlimited days.

These days reset every January.
By law. every year until child is 18.

Follow for more glimpses into life in a social democracy, where dignity is not a privilege.

Peace ✌🏼

[Vera Kober Art @vera_kober_art]

My flower art

[Emma Mitchell 💙 @silverpebble]

September hedgerow flora-a small scientifically proven bit of botanical relaxation for your brain. Zoom in to the patterns and details and an extremely cool experiment has shown that these good sprigs will help you recover from stress 60% more quickly 🌿

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Too on point not to share, “Aussie reply to Trump rant about NATO not being there for us.

Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you.
And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you're calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
"NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess.
So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your fucking mouth. Credit (borrowed from) Jim Scroggins - original author 📷 unknown”

[Rima Med 🇺🇸🇱🇹🇺🇦 @rima_medUA]

Mozzie was one of a kind. From transfusing his own blood to a casualty to doing pretty much anything to help get them out alive. He was one hell of a combat medic.

I met Mozzie at basic training when I was instructing. After that, I worked with him to help with a few casualties over the winter. He was always willing to do whatever it takes.

Its a big loss for our medic community.

RIP

[Summer 🌻 @LadyLeo1976]

I sat with my anger long enough, until she told me her real name was grief.

—C.S. Lewis

[Anne Louise Avery @AnneLouiseAvery]

They buried the Snow Goose that morning, in the apple orchard, in a quiet corner where the winds from the Atlantic still blew. In spring, the sweet blossoms, as white as her feathers, would drift gently across her little grave, and in the winter, the snows would blanket her. The service was one of great solemnity. Many birds attended, perched in silence on branch and wall. At the end, Old Fox sang an ancient Inuit song of mourning from South Greenland, a song which spoke of vast skies, of a thousand icebergs and a thousand birds, of the dark, star-lit seas, of the salt- brine smell of harp seals and narwhals, and of the rosy light that fills the world at the great dawning, the light that gilds wings, the light that cannot be lost.

[my🌎🌍🌏 @jsc180world]

@MrMatthewTodd @DailyMail @DailyMailUK Good law project maybe.

[Geoff @GeoffBrown82]

This is freaking GREAT!

[Flightradar24 @flightradar24]

An unusual visitor to Moscow this morning. 👀

A US Air Force C-17A Globemaster III flew from Riga to Moscow Vnukovo Airport

https://t.co/D7vylYesDQ