Aidan Foster-Carter

56 years as Korea-watcher & sociologist. Hon. fellow Leeds Univ, also freelance. Paterian, tx @Kate_Hext. Proud father of @scaleupdad, Rufus (14) & Laurie (8)

[Zara Hussain @zarahussain999]

A British national living in Southampton had her car and property damaged. She said,

“I’ve never felt so unsafe in my house.”

She did not feel unsafe because of Sikhs, Muslims or migrants but because of other British nationals, a section of whom were far right.

[Paul Mason @paulmasonnews]

Quietly seething anger shared by all decent people in UK politics at @elonmusk interference promoting far right narratives 👇🏽✊🚩🇬🇧💥

[David Yelland @davidyelland]

"We've made ourselves irrelevent..." the now late Alex Younger on the effect of Brexit. We are living through a time when the smart people are away from public space. He was an exception.

[Jeremy Konyndyk @JeremyKonyndyk]

DOGE didn't make a dent in the deficit, but it did bring back screwworm and enable a historically large new Ebola outbreak, so it's not like they didn't achieve *anything*

[Aidan Foster-Carter @fcaidan]

Never forget.

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Remembering the excitement of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement and the brutality of the Chinese government's massacre and crackdown that ended this moment of hope 37 years ago.

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Remembering the excitement of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement and the brutality of the Chinese government's massacre and crackdown that ended this moment of hope 37 years ago.

[CSIS Korea Chair @CSISKoreaChair]

#Breakingnews

Chinese authorities just announced Xi Jinping will make a state visit to North Korea on Monday, June 8.

His two-day visit will be Xi's first trip to Pyongyang in 7 years, his 3rd (including as VP) to the country and his 7th meeting with Kim Jong-un.

More to come

[Stephen Pollard @stephenpollard]

This is revolting.
Black men are twice as likely to develop prostate cancer as white men of the same age.
It's not about two tiers, it's about focusing on those most at risk.
There's an entirely legitimate argument that screening should be available to everyone, but given the money made available, to frame this as some sort of positive discrimination in favour of black people is foul.

[Gianl1974 @Gianl1974]

A message to all sane Republicans:

He pardoned 1,600 violent criminals.
You said nothing.

He bulldozed the East Wing.
You said nothing.

He interfered with the release of the Epstein files. You said nothing.

He took over the Kennedy Center and renamed it after himself. You said nothing.

He accepted a $400 million airplane as a personal gift. You said nothing.

He threatened Canada, Cuba, Denmark, Greenland, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil. You said nothing.

He tariffed just about everyone but Russia, causing inflation and instability worldwide. You said nothing.

He attacked a nation during mediated negotiations. You said nothing.

His ill-conceived war killed 175 children on day one. You said nothing.

He alienated and insulted our allies. You said nothing.

His ICE Army terrorized and murdered U.S. citizens. You said nothing.

He committed murder on the high seas. You said nothing.

He co-opted the Justice Department and directed it to prosecute his political enemies. You said nothing.

It’s time to start talking.

[Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot]

The biggest disclosure in the Mandelson files is that all the might of the British state could not get a lead time of less than 8-10 weeks for a *briefcase*.

@MarinaHyde here

https://t.co/M4BkyGVb4L

[Alex Prompter @alex_prompter]

Let me trace the timeline here because nobody's connecting it.

Step 1: Scrape the entire internet. Every book, every article, every conversation, every piece of art, every forum post. Do it without asking. Do it without paying.

Step 2: Train a model on all of it. Call it "artificial intelligence."

Step 3: Go to BlackRock's Infrastructure Summit and announce: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

Step 3 is where you sell people's own knowledge back to them. On a meter.

They took the collective output of human thought, compressed it into a model, and now they want to charge you by the token to access a version of what you and everyone you know already created.

One Reddit user put it perfectly: "They stole all this data from us, the people, our life's work, creativity, art, by devouring the internet and blowing through all copyright laws. Now they want to sell it back to us in the form of a utility."

Imagine if someone photocopied every book in the public library, burned the library down, and then opened a subscription service for the copies.

That's the metered intelligence business model.

And they're pitching it to infrastructure investors as though they invented water.

[Molly Ploofkins @Mollyploofkins]

Tourism plummets for first time in 20 years as visitors avoid Trump's America
https://t.co/jdaK2LLUcx

[Aidan Foster-Carter @fcaidan]

My perfect campaigner. As always.

So glad he's there.

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

Stewart has clearly had his Weetabix.

A passionate, inspiring, surgically brilliant breakdown of this morning's outburst by Tony Blair.

As Gordon Brown once said "Markets need morals", something desperately lacking from today's global corporate empires, a point poignantly absent from Blair's essay.

If you do anything today read this. 👇👇👇

[Financial Times @FT]

Samsung Electronics is expected to award 78,000 semiconductor workers as much as Won600mn each after reaching a landmark profit-sharing deal, drawing criticism from conservatives who fear it could encourage similar demands at other South Korean companies. https://t.co/7TNdMeJZPs

[Aidan Foster-Carter @fcaidan]

This is insane.

[Kevin → Plant Daddy @KevinEspiritu]

While everyone argues about data centers and water, California almonds quietly use up to 80x more, AND the whole industry only survives because of trucked-in "livestock"...

Every February, beekeepers transport nearly every commercial honeybee colony in the United States (around 2.8 million hives) to California to pollinate almonds.

It's the largest "managed-pollination" event on the planet. Almonds cover 1.4 million acres and need bees to pollinate so they set nuts.

So why do we need to truck them in? Well, almonds are grown in huge monoculture orchards, meaning the native bee species are all but eradicated...there's nothing for them to eat most of the year.

To fix the problem WE created, we ship in bees from across the country. I interviewed the creator of the 2019 documentary The Pollinators, which followed this migration and brought a lot of this story into public view.

First off, honeybees aren't native to North America. They were brought from Europe in the 1600s. The "bee crisis" you read about, with national colony losses around 55% last year and some commercial keepers losing 60 to 70% in a single season, is happening to a managed, introduced species.

It's a livestock collapse driven by long-haul transport, pesticide exposure at bloom, hives packed together spreading mites and viruses, and a monoculture diet.

Meanwhile, North America has roughly 4,000 native bee species. Most are solitary, don't make honey, don't sting, and quietly pollinate everything from squash to blueberries.

Research out of UC Davis and UC Berkeley has been direct about this: when blue orchard bees, bumble bees, and other natives forage alongside honeybees in almond orchards, fruit set goes UP, not down.

The presence of wild bees changes how honeybees move through the trees and makes the honeybees themselves more effective pollinators.

So the fix isn't more honeybee hives. It's hedgerows, wildflower strips, bare ground for ground-nesting bees, and uncut field edges, aka habitat for the natives who were doing this work long before we started trucking in livestock.

Honeybees are livestock. Native bees are the wildlife, and we should be planting to include them in our agriculture.

[Bienvenue en Corée du Sud @encoreedusud]

#SOUSMARINS
Le sous-marin sud-coréen Dosan Ahn Chang-ho est arrivé au Canada après une traversée historique de 14 000 km via Guam et Hawaï, 1ère mission transpacifique réalisée par un sous-marin sud-coréen, afin de participer à des exercices conjoints avec la marine canadienne.

[CentreCulturelCoréen @KoreaCenterFR]

💫 Le @‌museeguimet présente, pour la première fois en Europe, une exposition dédiée au royaume du Silla, période de l’histoire culturelle coréenne, en partenariat avec le Musée National de Gyeongju @‌gnmuseum_eng.

📍 Musée Guimet
📅 20 mai - 31 août

🔗https://t.co/sWpeecVNQA

[Aidan Foster-Carter @fcaidan]

Astonishing and deplorable that this even needs saying.

Some real ostrich f*ckwits out there, spewing bolox

[Prof. Katharine Hayhoe @KHayhoe]

This article says climate change is “believed to have played a role” in the UK's extreme heat this week.

As a climate scientist, let me fact-check that.

First, climate change is not a religion. No belief is required. It is about evidence.

And the evidence has been crystal clear for more than two decades: climate change is making heat waves hotter, longer, more frequent and more dangerous.

In fact, science has advanced far beyond saying climate change merely “played a role.” Today, we can quantify how much more likely and how much hotter climate change made a specific event.

Here's the bottom line:

Climate is changing. Humans are responsible. And we are experiencing the impacts now. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that solutions already exist, and the majority of people care - 89%, around the world!

But meaningful action depends on helping people understand not just what is happening: we need to know how it affects our lives (this heat wave being example A today) and what we can do about it.

That’s the opportunity this reporting missed.

https://t.co/vYfPDKcWWf

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

My word. This is incredible. A real-life version of that scene from The Life of Brian: "Stan, you haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!"

[Aidan Foster-Carter @fcaidan]

World's least likely lovefest powers on!

Rare joy in a troubled world.

(but purleez, don't let @Jaemyung_Lee anywhere near a drum kit this time okay?)

[PM's Office of Japan @JPN_PMO]

PM Takaichi: “I have arrived in South Korea. We will hold a summit meeting in Andong, the hometown of President Lee Jae Myung.”