Sunny Uplands

Cycling up hills slowly, recovering with excess beer and wine, music and film.

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

🚨 NEWS: Wisconsin election officials have found probable cause that Elon Musk violated the state's election bribery law and have referred complaints against him to the Brown County District Attorney.

The bipartisan commission voted 5-1 after concluding there's probable cause Musk unlawfully offered $1 million to induce voting in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Trump’s Hormuz toll lasted 24 hours. On Monday he was the “Guardian of the Strait,” charging the world 20% to sail past. By Tuesday it was gone, swapped for “MASSIVE” Gulf deals nobody can define, possibly the same ones he announced last year.

And this reversal did not happen in a vacuum. It happened while US strikes hit Iranian coastal defenses, while Iran attacked tankers and US allies in Bahrain and Jordan, while a naval blockade resumes at midnight and the interim ceasefire lies in tatters. That is the moment he chose to improvise a toll booth, then un-improvise it a day later.

Does the man know what he’s doing here? This is not comping casino deliveries. It’s the global economy for the next twenty years. Brent is above $87, traffic through the strait has collapsed, and a fifth of the world’s oil hangs on whether he can hold a position longer than a lunch break.

And what kind of person still believes in this? What do the people around him say when Monday’s policy evaporates by Tuesday? Are they embarrassed? Do they feel shame? Or was that removed as a condition of employment? A room full of advisers nodding at the toll booth, then nodding just as hard at its abolition, like weathervanes in suits.

This is a man raised by a father who measured love in dollars and never found him worth much, and now the entire planet runs its energy supply as his therapy session.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Ossoff: "The abuses of federal power, the misconduct is unprecedented. That's why Donald Trump so deeply fears his impending losses in these midterms, because he recognizes that when there's a change in the balance of power, there will be real accountability imposed"

[Acyn @Acyn]

Schiff: How is this even happening—that we’re contemplating the confirmation of this guy? The judge, in that decision on Monday, referred Blanche, basically, to the New York Bar Association because of his conduct.

How is it possible that, after being referred to the bar association for potential discipline on Monday, we’re contemplating this guy for attorney general on Wednesday?

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Why would the Pentagon be involved in domestic political activities? Unless, of course, this is all more bullshit to fund and enable Trump‘s personal federal shock troops, the equivalent of Putin’s Rosgvardiya, and crack down on elections and any domestic opposition.

[D.Radka, #NAFO 🇨🇿🤝🇺🇦 @DakdaR22]

- Olena Zelenska 🇺🇦:

"If Ukrainian soldiers, despite fierce resistance against the enemy and the loss of their comrades, haven't got tired of liberating Ukrainian land, and if Ukrainians, despite their grief and tears, haven't got tired of defending their children and their future, how can people somewhere in a safe country get tired of reading the news?"

"Please do not get used to this war, because if everyone gets used to it, this war will never end."

Please, don't stop supporting Ukraine, they need our help 🫂🇺🇦❤️

[Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien]

New @wapo story today, the Trump family has secured about $3.2 billion in Pentagon contracts for firms which they are involved in. This is the tip of the iceberg in the largest corruption saga in US history.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

And the world watches.

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

In light of the recent data breach of Ksenia Sobchak’s media empire, Ostorozhno Media, exposing her as working directly with Russian authorities, I want to remind everyone that this ✨️article ✨️ exists.

​The Kremlin keeps sending stool pigeons to the West, and Western media publishes every piece of Russian propaganda they are given and hungrily asks for more.

​Every person with knowledge of the region (or more than two living brain cells) told the NYT that they were platforming a propagandist at the time the article was released. Did they listen? Nope.

​Meanwhile, the interesting things we are finding out from the data breach include groveling to Kremlin censors, namely Sergey Novikov, head of the Kremlin’s Presidential Directorate for Social Projects; hard-core self-censorship on the fuel crisis in Russia; scolding her chief news editor for publishing bad remarks about Russian messenger Max, an FSB project to keep the Russian internet space under control; long talks with Margarita Simonyan; funding from the Moscow Mayor's office and state-backed corporations; and many, many more interesting things exposing Ksenia herself and her media as a complete and total Kremlin tool.

​Yet, does the Western media learn anything from this? Nope. The Economist article with Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko shows exactly how much nonsense they are ready to swallow if you wave a chance to write a ✨️sensation✨️ in front of their noses.

​Maybe it's time to stop and think about whether your sensationalism feeds your own citizens with foreign propaganda and helps an invading state wage a war and keep murdering civilians daily?

[Ed Davey @EdwardJDavey]

Tommy Robinson is a useful idiot for a hostile state.

What kind of so-called British patriot jets to Moscow to rub shoulders with Putin’s cronies, bankrolled by a US trillionaire?

We must protect our democracy from far-right thugs, shady tech bros and foreign interference.

[Mohamad Safa @mhdksafa]

This’s the face of the richest man on Earth who dismantled the organization that feeds the poorest children on earth, and the result is a silent massacres.

Elon Musk is the world's richest man who killed the world's poorest children.

Everyone in the world should see his face.

[Michael MacKay @mhmck]

More and more, Britons are realizing that Brexit is an act of war by fascist russia against Europe. Elite capture in the United Kingdom is real and Nigel Farage is a preeminent russian asset.

I've been warning about Brexit as a russian active measure since before the referendum.

[Vatnik Soup @P_Kallioniemi]

Elon Musk's foundation paid Tommy Robinson's trip to Russia.

This system of international far-right oligarchy should make more people angry.

[Gianl1974 @Gianl1974]

Europe has drawn a clear line: EU money must not help Moscow polish its image while Russian missiles keep striking Ukraine. The Commission is right to recommend ending the €2 million grant to the Venice Biennale after it reopened Russia’s national pavilion. Culture must remain free, but freedom is not neutrality towards aggression. Giving an authoritarian regime a prestigious stage is not dialogue: it is normalisation. European funding must defend European values, not finance Kremlin soft power.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Unfortunately, the winds of war are blowing once again in the Middle East, in Ukraine and in many other parts of the world, sowing violence, terror and death, and once again affecting many innocent people. Let us not allow these winds to extinguish the flame of hope and peace, even when it seems fragile and flickering.
I renew my hope that we will persevere on the path of dialogue, encounter and diplomacy. This is the only path capable of leading to a just and lasting peace, in which peoples can live in reconciliation, mutual security and respect for the dignity of every person.

[Jon Burke 🌍 @jonburkeUK]

Sunlight is free.

That’s why your X feed is full of anti-renewables posts by jobless social media grifters, ex-Covid ‘truthers’ who want to remain relevant, comment pieces by fake ‘energy consultants’, foreign bots, and fossil fuel lobbyists

[Prof. Peter Strachan @ProfStrachan]

Sir #DavidAttenborough

“Things are going to get worse."

"This is the new extinction."

"We are in terrible, terrible trouble and the longer we wait to do something about it, the worse it is going to get."

#ClimateCrisis
https://t.co/EfMrZh9RGB

[Rich Raho @RichRaho]

The Pope at lunch with poor: “We are truly building a different world—a world of hope, a world that shines as a light amidst the current world; so often, this reality—this world—is shattered by violence, hatred, and discrimination."

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

NEW: here’s *actual* evidence that Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party is accepting foreign donations via PayPal. Dollars, yuan, Swiss francs, roubles..you name it, they’ll take it. Laundered by PayPal into British £. This *cannot* be legal, surely?? Electoral Commission MUST investigate

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

Reported while female.

Didn’t work for a right-wing newspaper.

Dismissed & ridiculed by men who did.

Gaslit for a decade.

Sued through the courts.

But I’m not the loser here.

This decade of denial has caused Britain irreparable harm.