Across half the USA and also everywhere else:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/candida-auris-drug-resistant-infectious-spread-b2891915.html

Some would say that when the USA is bombing the country, sinking its boats, killing its fishermen and stealing its oil tankers, war is already here.

The big question is whether they really mean that, and then whether they really notice what’s happening. They may just assume the old false myth that the Republicans are better at managing the economy and double down on their support. Or they may just not want to admit that they don’t care about the economy so long as the government is hurting LGBTQ+ and brown people.

I think the network of connections is still significant even if there’s no evidence he was raping kids. Epstein to Bannon to Farage and Tommy Robinson: there’s money from all over the world concentrated through these people into undermining the UK and other democracies.

This bit is interesting too (from a tweet quoted in the article):

Epstein emails Steve Bannon saying “Tommy Robinson!! Good Work” after Robinson travelled to the US to meet with Bannon in 2017.

It is interesting that Epstein has this to say to Bannon only months after meeting with Tommy when you also consider that Tommy is close friends with Andrew Tate, has attacked and lied about Tate’s alleged victims and helped Tate spread propaganda about his human trafficking cases.

What did Bannon discuss with Tommy Robinson that pleased Jeffrey Epstein so much?

Legally, no. Physically, yes.

He usually has sensible takes, but this one feels like he’s lost in wishful thinking.

Trump also uses an autopen. He just claims that when he does it, it doesn’t matter.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-admits-he-uses-autopen-unimportant-papers-joe-biden-pardons-2046252

So much winning.

I haven’t heard that bit before, but it seems pretty important. Do you have a source for that figure?

He’s very weak.

Life in Europe tastes better than in the USA.

I suspect the Republicans are deliberately causing as many deaths as they can among the many groups of people that in their view don’t deserve to live. It’s all part of the fascist purification of society, where only the strongest members of the master race survive and get to create future generations. (And as with the OG Nazis, when you look at their leaders none of them fit the template but they give themselves a pass.)

Many of the US Government’s actions make little sense unless they’re coming from the Nazi position that many kinds of people don’t deserve to live, so the government should do everything it can to make them die.

The USA has always handled deals more by bullying than by reciprocation, but Trump has made this worse because at least you’d get a stable arrangement out of it in the past. It’s clear to other countries now that if you give him anything he’ll just rip up the deal next week and demand more.

In a regulatory filing today, L&F revealed that the contract’s value has been written down to just $7,386.

No, that is not a typo. $2.9 billion to roughly $7,400.

That’s quite dramatic.

the Texas Department of Public Safety has amassed a list of 110 people who tried to update their gender between August 2024 and August 2025. Employees with driver’s license offices across the state, from El Paso to Paris to Plano, reported the names and license numbers of these people to a special agency email account.

…

While it’s unclear how the state plans to enforce the bathroom bill, transgender activist Ry Vazquez told KUT News she was asked to show her ID before using a restroom in the state Capitol earlier this month. Vazquez said she and three other people were then cited with criminal trespassing and banned from the building for a year.

These innovations are brought to you by the party of “small government and freedom.”

I really think it’s capitalism, consumerism, individualism and decades of exploitation and propaganda more than the lead. Lead will make a person slightly dumber, angrier and more impulsive, but not as dumb as American politics today. Don’t give the fascists lead as an excuse.

We’re heading for a time when you can’t practically own and control a general-purpose computer. Open-source software is more important than ever, but we need hardware to run it on, and that’s going away. So don’t throw away your old computers. One day we’re going to need them.

Even today there’s still a strong social tendency to favour confident, loudmouthed, middle-aged white men in suits.