Ben Johnstone

Nudging sets, intersecting. Prefer edges to nodes.

[Tom @tpacker]

Argentina have repeatedly shown us everything football shouldn’t be.

Today France and England showed us what it should be.

No hate between players, no filthy fouls and trying to actually harm each other, no political statements, no favouritism, no disgusting behaviour from fans just the beautiful game.

[Aɴᴛ @AntSpeaks]

Hey Mark, you're worth around $35 million while continuing to land major Hollywood roles. You could donate $25-30 million tomorrow and still live an extremely comfortable life for the rest of your days.

At a conservative 4% safe withdrawal rate, even a remaining $5-10 million would generate roughly $200,000-$400,000 a year in passive income, several times what the average family earns. On top of that, you own multiple luxury properties, including a New York penthouse reportedly worth around $7 million, and you're still taking on film roles that pay millions.

Lecturing others while sitting on tens of millions yourself is peak Hollywood...

As for Elon, his charitable giving has far exceeded your entire net worth tenfold. And as for the idea that he can simply "solve world hunger" by writing one giant cheque only demonstrates your fundamental misunderstanding of how global hunger actually works. It's not a problem that disappears because one wealthy person transfers money into the system.

You need a basic economics lesson and a mirror, because your hypocrisy is matched only by your lack of self-awareness.

[DogeDesigner @cb_doge]

UK Taxpayers Lose £340 Million on Starlink Rival

British taxpayers are reportedly sitting on an estimated £340 million paper loss from the government-backed Eutelsat OneWeb project, built as a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink.

The UK’s combined £517 million investment is now worth only around £175 million, as per @outerspacetoday

British taxpayers are paying the price because the government would rather compete with Elon Musk than use the better product he already built.

They deserve the best technology, not an inferior government-backed alternative they are forced to subsidize.

[Katharine Birbalsingh @Miss_Snuffy]

Fathers and their children. 🥰

[Ben Johnstone @mrbenjohnstone]

@NimaZeighami @ChrisWillx 🤣

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

A timely reminder that Andy Burnham used to refer to Theresa May as an “unelected PM” after she was crowned leader.

We should refer to Andy as an unelected PM from next Monday.

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

The formerly great Guardian is no longer concerned with journalism, only with pandering to their eccentric leftist readers, in an attempt to postpone the date of their demise

[Ameer Kotecha @Ameer_Kotecha]

What’s most extraordinary about the whole interview for me is, issue after issue, how totally ignorant Campbell is. He is not even aware of the College of Policing and NPCC document warning officers that being “colour blind” was not enough - that document was all over media commentary for about a fortnight after Henry Nowak’s murder. Alastair thinks it’s fake news or something obscure that Konstantin has “found” to catch him out.

This man is the co-presenter of the biggest politics podcast in the country and he really doesn’t have a clue. It’s all just unoriginal vibes-based slop and “here’s something I wrote in my diary” back when I was important. A bit concerning really given the number of people who rely on the podcast to stay informed about contemporary issues

[Toby Young @toadmeister]

Earlier today a @Guardian journalist sent me this query:

Dear Toby Young,

I'm Aisha Down, a journalist at the Guardian. I'm getting in touch because we're planning to report that the US state department is considering a grant of $5m to Free Speech Union, your organisation, as part of a new grant-making scheme, and wanted to give you the chance to comment. We would appreciate receiving your comment by 14:30.

We are considering reporting the following:

- The grant to the FSU is part of a package to Maga aligned groups that former US officials have condemned as a misuse of public money to seek influence over foreign politics and interfere with democracy.

- It is rare for the US government to fund partisan political organisations in western countries.

- These grants are likely to pose a challenge to Andy Burnham, who has said he will be "very upfront" with Trump about any disagreements.

- These grants - including to your organisation - are "sole source" grants, meaning they are to be awarded without any competitive process. This is unusual for a highly regulated process which usually requires grantees to show they have a track record for handling funds and clear plans for the money.

- This lack of process has been criticised as "outrageous and absurd" by former US officials, and as "gross incompetence" and "horrible stewardship" of US taxpayer money.

- Your organisation does not appear to have a track record of handling grants of this amount.

- We describe your organisation as "a rallying point for “anti-woke” grievance" which "frequently allies itself with rightwing causes" and say that you, Toby Young, appeared on Rees-Mogg's GB news show earlier this month to warn about 'Soviet-style' censorship in the UK.

- The state department says that its grant to FSU will “support campaigns promoting free speech and countering digital overregulation across the UK, Europe and Australia”. The sole-source award is justified “due to FSU’s global network of free speech activists”.

We would like to fully and fairly reflect your point of view and look forward to your statement. Thank you,

--
Aisha Kehoe Down
Senior Tarbell Fellow,
Guardian News and Media

I replied as follows:

It sounds like a pretty garbled story.

Free Speech Union International, which is the umbrella group that FSU UK, FSU Australia, FSU New Zealand, FSU Canada, FSU South Africa and FSU Brazil sit within, has expressed interest in applying for grant funding from the US State Department. This would be to promote the right to freedom of expression in those countries, which, far from being a partisan cause, is a universal human right. But it hasn't submitted a formal application and, consequently, has been awarded no grant from the State Department or any other branch of the US Government.

You've mischaracterised the FSUs, all of which are non-partisan organisations that defend people who get into trouble for exercising their right to feee speech regardless of their political views. The FSU UK, for instance, is currently paying for the legal defence of a protestor who's being prosecuted for holding up a sign saying "I support Palestine Action", as well as a protestor for wearing a t-shirt at a Unite the Kingdom rally for saying "Fuck Islam Christ is King". Yes, we helped Lucy Connolly appeal her sentence -- we thought a prison sentence of over two-and-a-half years for a single tweet was excessive -- but we also tweeted yesterday, condemning the arrest of Heather Herbert and offering our support. Yes, we came to the defence of Nigel Farage when he was debanked, but we've also offered to help the Canary in its recent debanking case. So to describe the FSU UK as a "rallying point for anti-woke grievance" is misleading. We are a rallying point for those who want to defend the right to freedom of expression.

Best,

Toby

The @Guardian then ran this story:

https://t.co/1l4K0PABvM

You be the judge of whether you think this is good journalism.

[Freddie Sayers @freddiesayers]

I hope we will now hear from all the free speech activists who have campaigned in defence of Lucy Connolly condemning this overreach by British police.

As Ann Widdecombe herself said: "No one has the right to be protected from offence or hurt feelings".

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Keir Starmer — ever a man of his word til the end.
In June 2023 he explicitly ruled out ever indulging in a resignation honours list (BBC Radio 4 Today).
Today he’s marked his resignation with 21 peerages, overwhelmingly public-sector/legal jobsworths. Barely a single wealth creator among them.
Classic line up of the New Establishment which has run the country under Labour and Tory governments for the past three decades and is now firmly in control. Largely (if not entirely) with the following characteristics:
*Career almost entirely in public sector, often taking salaries from several sinecures at once as they work up the greasy taxpayer-funded pole.
*Associated with various ‘right-on’ causes.
*Largely middle class, London chattering class, Oxbridge well represented (of course).
*Fashionable left but not too left. Good mainstream Labour links.
Thus is the antediluvian House of Lords perpetuated by the Left as well as the Right as a comfortable state-funded retirement home for the well-connected ‘good and great’ past their sell-by date — when it should simply be abolished.

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

The England football team lost for the same reason the country is losing: the people in charge fear taking a risk and try to hold on to what they have instead of being ambitious about the future.

This attitude permeates everything and it needs to change.

[Bret Weinstein @BretWeinstein]

What we come to believe matters a great deal, and there is therefore a huge investment made to shape our perspective as it emerges

I see adults behaving like children—en masse—when it comes to processing events. This isn’t a team sport. Our future depends on us getting it right.

[Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill]

“In the wealthy, free world, we now have the means, time, and opportunity to be irritated by the opposite sex’s quirks as never before. Men have the freedom to fritter away time on video games, and women on Instagram—so that is what we do.

“This obscures the fundamental truth about men and women: that we are on the same side; that we need and love one another; that our similarities far outweigh our differences; and that no man remains unscathed when his mother, sister, or daughter is harmed, just as no woman remains unscathed when her father, brother, or son is harmed.

“Our goal should be to create a society for everyone—men and women alike—rather than trying to reshape people to fit society. Steve Stewart-Williams’s book is part of that project.”

[The Heartlands Tribune @HeartlandsTrib]

Westminster has built a country where we spend more money on the planning paperwork for a single road than it costs other nations to build an entire mountain tunnel.

This isn't a system accidentally strangled by red tape: it is a highly lucrative industry. A vast priesthood of consultants and lawyers is making a fortune they have no interest in the work being done.

It is corruption by bureaucracy, and working-class communities are footing the bill for projects that never even see a spade in the ground.

The absolute paralysis of modern Britain was laid bare in a recent parliamentary committee. A single witness gave them the truth with both barrels, exposing the administrative vampires sucking public money dry while the work goes undone. The details are an insult to every community waiting for homes, decent transport, and cheaper energy.

Take the Lower Thames Crossing. The planning application alone has swallowed more than a quarter of a billion pounds. For that exact same amount, Norway actually constructed the world’s longest road tunnel. We spent it on paper, and we have not even turned a sod of earth.

This is a permission state eating itself alive.

Look at HS2, the most expensive railway line on earth. Part of the reason it cost so much is that we are spending £121 million on a specific "bat tunnel" to protect a few hundred bats living in a nearby wood, a wood the line does not even pass through.

Look at Hinkley Point C, the most expensive nuclear power station in human history. For eight years, developers locked in a multi-million-pound wrangle with regulators over installing an underwater "fish disco", an acoustic deterrent to stop fish swimming into the pipes. 20 years ago, we built nuclear fleets at a fraction of the cost. Today, we sacrifice national infrastructure to the gods of endless compliance.

The final absurdity is the plan to reopen just 3.3 miles of an existing railway line between Bristol and Portishead, a route already built but closed during the Beeching cuts. The planning application is 80,000 pages long. Over one thousand of those pages are about bats.

We have created a system that trades in paper while the real economy rots. The working class pay the price for this institutional cowardice. They pay for it in soaring energy bills, missing homes, broken transport links, and a country that cannot build the future it keeps promising.

Protecting the environment is vital, but drowning ourselves in paper is not environmentalism. A system that takes 80,000 pages to clear three miles of existing track is broken. It is not governance: it is managed decline with a clipboard.

It's the bureaucratic vampires drinking the country's wealth...

[Bret Weinstein @BretWeinstein]

People who are immediately certain of the official account of the death of any person with powerful enemies, can be safely ignored. It’s unsafe not to ignore them.

Conspiracies include coverups. There is no basis to be immediately certain of anything you did not personally see.

[Jesper Bylund -- just/acc @JesperBylund]

The EU has blocked a chat control skeptics talk on YouTube.

But here’s the thing, the content is in Finnish, and Finnish law allows for this exact thing.

So the EU is currently illegally blocking free press in Finland.

[Eric Weinstein @ericweinstein]

Yeah…nah.

Here’s what I think is happening instead.

I haven’t wanted to say this, but there is a problem with organized Skepticism even more than conspiracy theories. My claim is that from hard evidence NOT ONE of the following is an extraordinary claim:

The CIA not only gathers intelligence but kills people, violates rights, gaslights and evades scrutiny and oversight.

The U.S. hides bioweapons programs.

The U.S. engages in regime change through charity and aid programs.

We in the U.S. medically experiment on our own citizens without consent.

We run drugs.

The DOJ and FBI are actively and flagrantly obstructing justice.

Putin easily kills people outside Russia.

We conspire and use academics for sheepskin washing our dirty work.

U.S. newspapers actively avoid reporting stories about which the U.S. population is desperate for information. They also carry extremely non neutral biases.

We actively conspired to hide open and obvious presidential dementia. And by extension, there are massive conspiracies at every level below that one. At a mind boggling level.

There are Special Access programs that are about real and/or fake NHI/UFOs

Etc.

————

The last thing we need is skeptics telling us the bar for such conspiracies and/or governmental accountability requires extraordinary evidence.

Somehow the skeptics have it totally wrong.

After Watergate, Iran-Contra, COVID, Church/Pike committees, etc. these are no longer extraordinary claims to raise. They are ordinary claims.

I have no idea whether Lindsay Graham died of natural causes. But I can tell you the difference between a skeptic and a scientist looking at the claim.

A skeptic’s first move is to lurch for the budding conspiracy and try to pull the idea of foul play off the table first and then to require a mountain of evidence to consider such a thing.

A scientist firmly grabs the skeptic’s hand and forces him to put the hypothesis back on the table and says “Uh, you’re not in charge here. There’s a history…and I’m going to need to see something other than reference to null hypotheses, William of Occam and Carl Sagan…because that’s not how science and investigation works.”

Time for extra scientific skepticism to die I think. Covert operations and conspiracies are difficult enough to document as it is.

We don’t need skeptics as self appointed referees.

[❣Heather❣ @heatherdws]

How bloody amazing is this ❤️🇳🇴

[Ben Johnstone @mrbenjohnstone]

@sashayanshin It's probably not blind is it... who'd got the ear of the promoters?