Ferrari Luce VS Nissan Leaf

Low IQ Missiles

North Korea tests AI-guided missiles for the first time

State media said that Kim was satisfied with the tests, with the North Korean leader saying the weapons "suit the proper conditions of ⁠modern warfare".

Kim Jong Un supervised the launches, and it is claimed he was satisfied with the results.

Blimey, the North Korean regime is remarkably keen on presenting itself as bang up to date with military hardware.

Imagine a spoof story about the latest, most destructive missile warheads being composed of explosive blancmange.

Extremely unlikely of course, but suppose the spoof goes global and a few months later we see official photos of Kim Jong Un inspecting the a new North Korean missile equipped with the very latest blancmange warhead.

The background noise of public life

Keir Starmer defends policy choices in rebuttal of Blair’s criticism

Keir Starmer has dismissed Tony’s Blair’s argument that his government is on the wrong track, saying he is implementing the policies needed for today, not the very different situation faced by the former prime minister in 1997.

“You won’t be surprised to know that I don’t agree with much that Tony says about what the government is doing,” Starmer said during a visit to an apprentice training centre in west London.

It came as Andy Burnham, who was also criticised by Blair, responded by saying the ex-PM’s analysis was undermined by the “gaping omission” of acknowledging the impact of falling living standards.


Meanwhile -

One million lives.

Nearly one million young people aged 16 to 24 in the United Kingdom are not in education, employment or training. One in 8 young people. And rising. Behind the statistics lie individual lives: aspirations thwarted, opportunities lost, futures placed on hold.

Numbers on that scale should command national attention in their own right. Too often they haven’t. The NEET rate has barely crept below 10% in 25 years. What should have been treated as an urgent national crisis has been absorbed into the background noise of public life.

That tolerance is no longer acceptable...

Time and again the system from education through health to welfare fails to enable labour market participation. Instead, all too often it ends up putting young people on a path to a life on benefits. These faultlines are limiting the opportunities for too many young people to learn or earn.

A sense of urgency

Green candidate in Makerfield by-election wants farming to be 'decolonised' with 'inclusive spaces'

Zack Polanski’s party unveiled 38-year-old Sarah Wakefield as its candidate for the key by-election on Tuesday.

Ms Wakefield, a mother of two, serves as executive director of environmental charity Eating Better...

Last year, the charity shared a report by American activist Caroline J Sumlin discussing “white supremacy culture” within farming and outlining ways to challenge “colonial power and legacies” in the food industry.

The report cited “defensiveness”, “perfectionism” and “a sense of urgency” as examples of so-called white supremacy culture.


A chap is bound to wonder if Ms Wakefield intends to campaign with a sense of urgency, or will she just wander round Makerfield chatting to anyone she meets? 

That would be after the election of course. Campaigning before the election would surely display a distressingly inappropriate sense of urgency.

Come to think of it, she should also avoid defending Green policies or the leadership of Zack Polanski - that would violate the rule against defensiveness.

The Greens may be okay with avoiding perfectionism as there isn't much they get right. They could be in some danger of being perfectly wrong though. 

Strewth - I feel an urgent need for coffee and dark chocolate.

They are all mad.

Ignorance of the disgraceful sort

  

SOCRATES: I suppose that we begin to act when we think that we know what we are doing?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: But when people think that they do not know, they entrust their business to others?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And so there is a class of ignorant persons who do not make mistakes in life, because they trust others about things of which they are ignorant?

ALCIBIADES: True.

SOCRATES: Who, then, are the persons who make mistakes? They cannot, of course, be those who know?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: But if neither those who know, nor those who know that they do not know, make mistakes, there remain those only who do not know and think that they know.

ALCIBIADES: Yes, only those.

SOCRATES: Then this is ignorance of the disgraceful sort which is mischievous?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.


Ascribed to Plato - Alcibiades I (Possibly 390s BC)

I don't need any figures

"I don't need any figures" – Klingbeil defends billion-dollar course for renewable energies

In Berlin, Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil defended the government's course on renewable energies in the Bundestag on May 20, 2026. The trigger was a question from AfD MP Rainer Kraft in the government questioning. Kraft demanded a concrete effect of 100 billion euros of taxpayers' money on the global temperature rise. Klingbeil first referred to studies on individual instruments in the Climate and Transformation Fund. But then he said, "I don't need numbers to know it's right." This brought budget control, energy costs and the burden on taxpayers into focus.

It is pretty obvious that this is Ed Miliband's attitude - "I don't need numbers to know it's right." More generally, it is likely to be a widespread attitude among the governing classes, many of whom don't seem keen on numbers anyway. 

There is a certain nervousness wittering its way through the Net Zero nonsense though, a sense that some numbers could mean something, even something important.

"Do those scruffy sceptics know something we don't? Surely not."

Fast Pseuds

The Ferrari Luce Isn’t For You, And That’s Okay

The $640,000Ferrari Luce isn’t for me, either. The greatest automotive experience of my life came at the wheel of a sixty-year-old Ferrari 250 GT. But I think I understand where Ferrari is coming from. Or rather, what the pens of Sir Jony Ive and Marc Newson of design agency LoveFrom have set out to achieve...

Revealed earlier this year, the interior is a celebration of tactility, from its solid metal switchgear and analogue dials, to its simplistic, almost retro steering wheel and plush leather upholstery bathed in ambient lighting. This is a car interior for the newly wealthy who recognize the damage caused by a decade of scrolling. There’s no ghastly passenger touchscreen, no dimwitted haptic touchpads and no infuriating AI assistant. Instead there are beautiful materials that are sure to bring joy with every interaction. They’ll remind the driver of their Leica camera, their Linn turntable and their Rimowa suitcase.