Stephen Holland #FBPE #Rejoin #FBPA

New post: Probably the most important political trend of the year has been Farage's growing unpopularity, which has dropped Reform to third place in the polls. How did it all go so wrong for him? Is he now the main block on the radical right in the UK? samf.substack.com/p/the-fall…

American singer-songwriter and pianist Laura Nyro (1947–1997) was a pioneering 1960s and 1970s artist who wrote deeply poetic, genre-blending music combining soul, jazz, gospel, and pop.... By 1969, America was singing Laura Nyro's songs without necessarily knowing her name. The 5th Dimension had a hit with “Wedding Bell Blues.” Three Dog Night took “Eli's Coming” into the Top 10. Blood, Sweat & Tears made “And When I Die” a smash. Nyro had written that last song at 17, an astonishingly assured meditation on mortality from a teenager. Her own records were another matter. The public recognized the melodies, not the composer. Raised in the Bronx, Nyro grew up listening to jazz, doo-wop, gospel and soul. She loved poetry, and she wrote as though the boundaries between those forms had never existed. Her songs changed tempo unexpectedly, climbed into gospel-like crescendos, then fell into startling intimacy. Record companies could sell a polished version of her music. Selling Nyro herself was harder. In June 1967, she performed at the Monterey Pop Festival, where Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were becoming legends. Nyro brought a sophisticated soul revue to a crowd steeped in psychedelic rock. The experience devastated her. She believed she had been booed offstage. That became part of her legend, but surviving film tells a different story. No boos are audible. There are even shouts of approval. Her performance may have been a mismatch for the festival, yet the supposed public humiliation was never as clear-cut as the retellings suggested. Nyro kept writing. Barbra Streisand recorded “Stoney End.” The 5th Dimension returned to her songs again and again. But her own recordings attracted a devoted audience rather than mainstream chart success. Nyro did not make the music simpler to court those listeners. Her 1969 album “New York Tendaberry” explored a darker, more intimate sound, with the piano and her astonishing voice often carrying the emotional weight alone. At 24, she withdrew from the music business, moving to Massachusetts. She later returned, releasing records that remained unmistakably hers. Elton John and Todd Rundgren were among the musicians who acknowledged her influence. Nyro died of ovarian cancer in 1997, at 49. She was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. Her voice had never become a radio staple. Her songwriting had been on the radio for decades. #archaeohistories

Remembering television pioneer Norman Green (1939–2026) 📺 From his early career at EMI Research Laboratories to becoming a founding member of the @RTS_media London Centre, his immense contributions shaped the British broadcasting landscape. rts.org.uk/article/obituary-…

Having a clearout. An email with a link to a magazine's latest issue will never replace the anticipatory excitement I felt as a new copy thudded onto my door mat. Nor the feel of the paper, the layouts, the accompanying wine, or the falling asleep with it on my lap #analogue4ever

A letter from Jacqueline Kennedy to Nikita Khrushchev was among the last she’d send from the White House. The letter remains a masterclass in informal diplomacy and a poignant testament to the fragile peace of the Cold War era.... On December 1, 1963, nine days after her husband's assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy sat in the White House residence on one of her last nights in the building and wrote a letter by hand on small White House stationery to Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier and Cold War adversary her husband had faced during the Cuban Missile Crisis. She thanked him for sending Anastas Mikoyan to Kennedy's funeral, writing that Mikoyan "looked so upset when he came through the line" and that she "was very moved". She explained that she had tried to deliver a message through Mikoyan that day but, as she put it, "it was such a terrible day for me, I do not know if my words came out as I meant them to". The handwritten letter, which the Soviet ambassador in Washington noted was considered a sign of particular respect, was transmitted through McGeorge Bundy and Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson, with only President Johnson informed of its existence, not its contents . In the letter, Jackie told Khrushchev that Kennedy had often quoted his words in speeches: "In the next war the survivors will envy the dead". She wrote that the two leaders "were adversaries, but you were allied in a determination that the world should not be blown up". She described the danger her husband had feared: that war "might be started not so much by the big men as by the little ones," since big men understand self-control while little men are sometimes moved more by fear and pride. She closed by asking Khrushchev to thank his wife for the tears in her eyes when she signed the book of mourning at the American embassy in Moscow. 📷 : Jacqueline Kennedy seated next to Nikita Khrushchev during their diplomatic visit in Vienna in June 1961. #archaeohistories

🇷🇺 The Trojan Horse in the Oval Office For a decade Trump has insisted that every link between him and Moscow was a hoax, a witch hunt cooked up by sore losers. CNN now reports that fourteen Russian spy satellites swept over Prince Sultan Air Base two days before Iran struck it on March 27, wounding twelve Americans and destroying an AWACS aircraft that had been moved and was found anyway. American officials say Russian data very likely fed that strike and several others, including one on a CIA facility in Riyadh, in a war that has by the Pentagon's own count killed at least eleven American service members. This is where the hoax collides with the body count. Putin helps Tehran put missiles onto American bases, and the president answers with a warm phone call about trade, according to the Kremlin, and a plan to strip a third of America's forces out of Europe, which happens to be precisely what Moscow has wanted since 1949. Whether it is design or vanity hardly matters any more, because America has wheeled a Trojan horse into the Oval Office and the damage is being done from the inside. This is, after all, a man who barks at allies and goes weak at the knees for anyone with a scowl and a secret police, and one suspects that had bin Laden only paid him a compliment, he too would have been a very, very smart guy who had been treated very unfairly. The remarkable thing is that the whole world can see it. Europe sees it, Canada sees it and is taking notes, and Moscow and Tehran saw it first and acted accordingly. Only one nation on earth still hasn't worked it out, and it is the one paying in aircraft, bases, allies and lives. History will struggle to explain how a superpower allowed itself to be so thoroughly outmanoeuvred by a man it had been warned about for ten years. Stay connected, follow Gandalv @Microinteracti1

Happy Thursday, everyone! My thoughts this morning after realizing how angry I am. I thought it better to channel my anger. I am an American and a patriot. I believe in the philosophical pillars on which this country stands: democracy, checks and balances, the rule of law, and fundamental freedoms. But lurking in the shadows was always the possibility of a faction emerging that would threaten those foundations. James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10: “To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.” It is the danger of such a faction that I believe we face today. A true patriot wants her country to be better; she can criticize it, question it, accept where it is weak, and recognize when it is deviating from the essence of what made it great. We are deviating now. We have admitted a petty demagogue as president who is undermining every institution of this country, who is pulling our society apart rather than healing its rifts, who is undermining the rule of law with his own criminal conduct, and who lacks even basic decency. As a country, we have let misguided ideas from charlatans overwhelm good sense, we have let corruption corrode the gears of government, we have allowed one of our parties to turn into a cancer that is rotting away our democracy, with the party itself cheering on that decay. Worse, we have elected a government born of our worst instincts and are abandoning ideals and freedoms that have made us one of the most prosperous countries on Earth. We need a project for change. Statutory and constitutional changes are necessary to rebuild America. Trump and the Republicans have shown us what can go wrong, what the capture of a major party by a demagogue can do. But the transformation of the Republicans from a garden of traditional conservatism to this mess today was no accident. The seeds were planted years ago through our aging political system, created nearly 240 years ago, which we had naively thought would handle every modern contingency. We are simply seeing the weeds today. What happened to the Republicans can happen to any party given the right set of circumstances and is a lesson that should shape the discourse on what needs changing and also on what does not. This is a project that addresses the scaffolding but not policy. It is not a debate about tax policy or healthcare, but a question about the system that would allow that debate to be meaningful and actionable. It is a project about improving representation, aligning incentives, holding our leaders more accountable, increasing trust in our institutions, reducing concentration of power, and limiting the damage that one leader or one party can do. It is to ensure that, when there is a political outcome, even those who did not support it will accept it because they believe the process that produced it was fair. Let me be clear. This project is existential. We will not see a sudden collapse of the nation without it, but we will see an inexorable decline. A Republic 2.0 is not optional.

🇺🇸 В колонке для The Washington Post бывший глава Google Эрик Шмидт, неоднократно бывавший в Украине и участвовавший в работе над военными технологиями, пишет, что после последней поездки впервые с начала полномасштабного вторжения уехал настолько встревоженным. По его оценке, Россия научилась воевать значительно эффективнее и постепенно переходит к стратегии тотальной войны, соединяя превосходство в людях и промышленном производстве с быстрым технологическим развитием. Главным преимуществом Украины долгое время была скорость инноваций: небольшие команды военных, инженеров и оборонных компаний могли за считаные недели разработать новую систему, испытать ее на фронте и усовершенствовать. Российская военная бюрократия за этим не успевала. Теперь, предупреждает Шмидт, это преимущество быстро исчезает. Россия не только массово производит оружие, но и сама научилась быстро адаптироваться: на украинские дроны-перехватчики она ответила более быстрыми реактивными "Шахедами", а теперь создает и собственную спутниковую группировку, способную конкурировать со Starlink. Поле боя при этом изменилось до неузнаваемости. Командиры находятся глубоко под землей, тысячи беспилотников ведут разведку, доставляют грузы и атакуют людей и технику. По данным, которые приводит Шмидт, около 80% украинских потерь происходит при перемещении военнослужащих между позициями. Но главной проблемой Украины становится уже не способность изобретать новое оружие, а возможность производить его в достаточном количестве. Один украинский командир рассказал Шмидту, что его подразделение перестало искать новые российские цели: обнаруженных уже больше, чем имеющихся дронов для их поражения. Как пишет Шмидт, отличный беспилотник, произведенный сотнями, — это интересно, но ход войны меняет хороший беспилотник, выпускаемый сотнями тысяч. Россия тем временем наращивает промышленные мощности для тотальной войны. Украина самостоятельно конкурировать с такими масштабами производства не может. Особенно опасной Шмидт считает предстоящую зиму: Россия уже использует нехватку у Украины средств защиты от баллистических ракет, нанося удары по электростанциям и подстанциям. Главный вывод Шмидта: Украине недостаточно отдельных партий западного оружия. Запад должен фактически включить украинский ВПК в собственную оборонную промышленность — совместно производить оружие, вкладываться в украинские предприятия и массово поставлять перехватчики, боеприпасы и дальнобойные системы. "Восхищение украинской стойкостью — не стратегия", — заключает Шмидт. За четыре года Украина выиграла для Запада время "кровью своих солдат и изобретательностью своих инженеров". Одного мужества недостаточно, чтобы защищать города и выиграть войну: Запад должен превратить это время в промышленное превосходство.

LONDON🇬🇧 is the next major city that shows how reducing car traffic delivers real, measurable public-health gains. AFTER #ULEZ zone: 📉 NO₂ down by 38% 🏥 Fewer hospital admissions ☠️ An estimated 40% fall in deaths linked to air pollution 🧒 Kids health shows recovery

Now it's Robin Morgan who has died. From Blake Morgan: "My mother Robin Morgan died peacefully in her sleep early this morning. Surely, she will be remembered for designing the iconic image of the women's movement (the fist in the circle of the women's symbol) and for her formative anthology, Sisterhood Is Powerful, for co-founding the Sisterhood is Global Institute with Simone de Beauvoir, for co-founding the Women's Media Center with Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, for a lifetime of fierce feminism and fierce friendship. But first and foremost, she was an artist. Her art fueled her politics, fueled her feminism, fueled the way she raised me. She taught me that how one does anything is how one does everything—that the personal is the political, and that as she once wrote, 'Hate generalizes, love specifies.' I'll have more to say and more songs to write about her, but for now, I'll express my love and gratitude that so many of you knew and loved her as both my mother, and as your friend." "In 1970, Robin created the first feminist anthology, Sisterhood Is Powerful, which gave voice to widely diverse women activists and writers when there was no national feminist forum. It was later cited by the New York Public Library as one of the 100 Most Influential Books of the 20th Century. She used funds from its immediate best-seller publishing success to provide grants to women's groups. Following with a second anthology, she assembled Sisterhood Is Global, to provide an opening for a global women’s movement which to this day amplifies women’s voices from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Asia. Together with her friend and colleague, Simone de Beauvoir, she then co-founded The Sisterhood Is Global Institute, still going strong today. She went twice into Gaza with UNRWA during the first and second Intifadas to work with and write about Palestinian women. In the midst of all this national and global organizing and activism, Robin wrote twenty widely read, translated, and course-taught books of political theory and reportage, as well as books of poetry and fiction. She was a former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine. She hosted and produced “Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan,” an award-winning podcast heard for 13 years in 112 countries. This was her influential, intelligent way of continuing a lifetime of activism, although she was in the second decade of living with Parkinson’s Disease."

🚨 WATCH: Nigel Farage says he "wasn't even listening" in the meeting about the alleged secret donations to Reform UK "I was just there to come and say hello"

Any elected official or candidate not doing something like this in 2026 is tbh professionally negligent and doing a disservice to their voters & constituents. This is smart comms strategy, makes for better governing, & necessary for reaching people who might otherwise tune out.