Genial Jim

In the Senior service. GIS and Information management in the day time. Geek culture, cooking, the wild and politics all the time. Sadly Nyarlathotep is winning

[Chris D. Jackson @ChrisDJackson]

Trump fell asleep again during a live televised meeting. If Joe Biden had done that, the media would have treated it like a national emergency and run wall-to-wall panic coverage for a week.

But when Trump does it, they look the other way because the clown show keeps their ratings up and their pockets full.

The hypocrisy is disgraceful. The media failed the country, and they know it.

[Vatnik Soup @P_Kallioniemi]

Once again reminding everyone

[Dan O'Brien @danobrien20]

This analysis finds that Ireland's population crash (from the Great Famine) to 1961 was the second largest in human history anywhere in the world over the past 2,000 years.
Post-Columbian contact Peru to 1600 was slightly larger.

[Genial Jim @Genialjim]

@shashj Genius BZ

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

There is a video circulating on the internet that is difficult to watch. A woman sits on a pavement in Louisville, Kentucky. She is wearing a hospital gown. It is 36 degrees outside. Her belongings, everything she apparently owns, are in a plastic bag on the concrete beside her. Behind her, through the glass doors she has just been escorted through, the hospital hums along as normal. The security guards who brought her here have already gone back inside.

She couldn’t afford her bill.

This is not a scene from a developing nation or a history book. This is the United States of America.
The country in which it happens has spent decades telling the rest of the world that it has the highest GDP on earth. Which is a bit like a restaurant proudly displaying its bill on the wall. Enormous number. Terrible meal. The lobster was frozen, the wine came from a box.

Europe, by comparison, has spent the better part of a century building something rather different. The food, for a start, is extraordinary. Not in a showy way, but in the way that a simple lunch in Lyon or a glass of wine on a terrace in Lisbon reminds you that eating is one of the genuinely good things about being alive. The wine is the wine that the rest of the world has spent generations attempting to replicate, mostly without success.

Roughly 35 percent of Europeans live with a chronic illness. In America, that number is 76 percent. The difference is not genetic. It is architectural. It is the slow accumulation of decent food, walkable cities, actual holidays, and a healthcare system that does not require you to crowdfund your own appendix.

Europeans work fewer hours. They have more purchasing power on a smaller salary once you subtract the cost of health insurance, medical debt, and the private school their child needs because the local public one has a metal detector at the entrance. They live, on average, about ten years longer. Not ten years of decline and doctor visits, but ten years of being a person in the world.

In the first quarter of 2025, the number of Americans leaving the United States doubled compared to the previous quarter.  Europe was their top destination. Not for a sabbatical or a gap year. Permanently. These are not people who failed. These are people who did the maths.

There is a man somewhere in America right now who has worked fifty-hour weeks for forty years, taken one week off when his employer permitted it, and will, statistically, be dead before he sees seventy. And there is another man, not very far away on a map but an entire civilisation removed in practice, sitting on a terrace in the afternoon sun with a glass of something cold and no particular place to be. He has had six weeks off every summer since 1987. He knows his neighbours by name.

The first man’s country has the higher GDP.

The first man’s country tops the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) index. The second man tops the Quality of Life Index (QLI). The better health. The longer life. The afternoon.

MAGA America calls that losing.

Ask anyone.
Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Paddy Mcdonnell 🌐 @paddythedagger]

In all fairness he’s not the first Orangeman to not like the pope

#donaldtrump #pope #orangeman

[Paul Johnson @paul__johnson]

He thought he was riding the wave. On a winner cosying up to Trump, Vance, Orban and Le Pen

It doesn’t look so clever now. It’s a problem for him. And for Reform

[Genial Jim @Genialjim]

@francesafetytra “You can’t beat a brown ale army” to quote Danny Glover

[Genial Jim @Genialjim]

@maddenifico As a cunt

[Genial Jim @Genialjim]

@David_Hambling

[Daniel ／ 妥仁得 @KaihatsuYT]

New favourite clip from Japanese news just dropped

[French Forces in Estonia @FrForcesEstonia]

On this day in 1904, France and the United Kingdom forged a lasting partnership. 🇫🇷🇬🇧
Happy Entente Cordiale Day.

#StrongerTogether

[dominic dyer @domdyer70]

Rotherham, England replaced 8 miles of mowed grass with wildflowers.

They saved £25,000 in mowing costs a year and bees, butterflies, and birds showed up almost immediately.

You don’t need to wait for your city to act. Start small in your own patch:

🏡 Let your front verge or sidewalk strip go wild this spring

🌻 Toss a few native wildflower seed balls into neglected spots

🌱 Stop mowing one strip and see what shows up

📧 Contact your city government. One email from one person has started initiatives like this before

One person. One small patch. Real habitat.

Your street could be next.

[Todd Jones 🦊 @toddrjones]

Here are some ways in which the world has gotten better.

[Genial Jim @Genialjim]

@DaveThroup We don’t have a spring any more we have a wet and dry season with a couple of weeks of transition

[David Hambling @David_Hambling]

Mind boggling

[Leeder_Safeguarding #FBPE🇪🇺🙋🏼‍♂️ @LSafeguarding]

Please retweet

Make this go viral!

Rejoin EU
🇬🇧🇪🇺🇬🇧🇪🇺

[Lou D🌹 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @louderry]

Ex army general on @lbc, asked if UK is ready for war.

'We haven't been since Cameron cut the defence budget by a 1/3 in 2010, people still don't understand what austerity actually mean't'.

[Chuck Schumer @SenSchumer]

I can promise this: The Senate will not vote to leave NATO and abandon our allies just because Trump is upset they wouldn’t go along with his reckless war of choice.

Thank you to @SecRubio for sponsoring the bill in 2023 requiring a two thirds vote of the Senate to make sure clueless presidents couldn’t act on a whim.

[Don Winslow @donwinslow]

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