leicsmac

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd9pzp50npeo Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune has split with the Trump administration over its creation of a $1.7bn (£1.3bn) fund aimed at compensating individuals "unfairly" investigated by previous administrations. Speaking to reporters, Thune said he was "not a big fan" of the fund, adding that he did not see "a purpose" for it. He is the most high-profile member of Trump's own party to criticise the plan. Democrats have condemned it as a "slush fund" for Trump's political allies, including some charged or convicted over the 2021 US Capitol riot. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the move on Capitol Hill, saying the compensation was non-partisan and available to anyone. And now the insurrectionists, as well as getting pardons, will be rewarded financially for their loyalty to the Dear Leader, with taxpayer money.

And you are right to make that point. As such, you absolutely should not visit https://archive.ph/ and you definitely should not just copy and paste the article link address into the search bar there to read it.

And now, for something so unbelievably inaccurate it joins Flat Earth et al as actually being hilarious:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/14/us/chud-the-builder-shooting-tennessee-dalton-eatherly.html This internet blowhard, and anyone who contributes to his Kickstarter too.

Meanwhile... https://phys.org/news/2026-05-sea-areas-due-subsidence.html https://phys.org/news/2026-05-droughts-tropical-forests-dangerous-threshold.html https://phys.org/news/2026-05-climate-rural-bhutan.html https://phys.org/news/2026-05-sea-swallowing-mid-atlantic-farmland.html https://phys.org/news/2026-05-worse-western-wildfires.html Plenty of "extreme" to go round, it appears. And that's just this month and looking a little ahead.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8pz1k4r2lo Channel 4 with a pretty massive failure in duty of care there.

In other news, Vance reminds me more and more of Kendrick from A Few Good Men every day.

Right. Does anyone really think that such things would stop where the people with "legitimate concerns" think it should stop? Of course it won't.

Yeah, @ramboacdc has it spot on above IMO.

If that were true, the jury vote would align more their televote than it has in the last three years. Shenanigans have rather clearly happened, the Israelis practically admitted it and the EBU tried to change the system this year for that exact reason. Didn't work all that well, evidently.

Didn't think they'd get enough jury votes for outright victory, but I'm certainly happy with the 6/4.

.....6/4 to get top 3, was buying money.

No disagreement there, see below. Yeah, a pox on both their houses. The real irritant is when anyone claims one or the other is somehow morally pure.

I think he's tried, but ABC aren't having any. Either way, they're functionally inaccessible.

That's a shame. Silver remains one of the best political pundits out there and his work should have been preserved.

Wouldn't read too much into that - they'll smear anyone who isn't from the Trump school of ideology.

Perhaps such benefits also vary from nation to nation depending on that nations worker protection laws. Which leads to the conclusion that if it was a company like Amazon running the show without such government oversight, the nation with the least amount of worker protection at the present time would be the model wherever such oversight didn't exist. Same goes for any other big company - once more, when your emphasis is the bottom line, human beings are simply a resource like any other and (therefore) expendable.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8p61v7l68o On the topic of Taiwan, it seems like the ambiguous status quo is holding for the time being.

Perhaps at the start of Covid when everyone was scrambling for solutions to ensure their medical care systems didn't collapse... but yes, we are living in rather unprecedented times. How very fortunate we all are.

Can't say I'm convinced given both the nature and the number of the complaints, but fair enough.

Well, that tells its own story. They want Burnham available ASAP, so that must mean that they're looking to give him the best possible chance.

... so the horror stories regarding worker protections are almost all myths, then? Interesting. Putting that as true for a moment, a governing body beholden to the bottom line is, at some point, going to view human beings, and other life, as the proper position of a spreadsheet cell and act accordingly. That won't be great for all the life deemed "too expensive". Now, one might make the argument that government itself is bound by the same rules, but I'm pretty sure it's rather less freewheeling than the libertarian attitude shown towards life displayed by the mega corps.

There's a few layers to this IMO. The US probably would only offer material aid to Taiwan (at the moment) rather than any "boots on the ground" or escalation. However, they likely feel they have to act differently so as to dissuade the Chinese from going for an invasion (they're certainly not going to risk Armageddon, the same way as the Americans hopefully wouldn't). Additionally, there may also be a school of thought that wants China to call their "bluff" and get involved in a Ukraine style boondoggle which would hurt them economically and geopolitically. "Probably" is doing a lot of hard work in that sentence - not sure Amazon etc is any more benevolent or competent a master at governance (eg. maintaining quality of life across the board) than any government that exists.

Just telling other people how to buy money, mate

Get money on Israel each way. If they don't win they'll finish top three or four minimum if they're as successful regarding influencing the public vote last year as this year. And there's little reason to suspect otherwise.