Best Of

One coming down the track - Trump reportedly having databases recording war crimes in Ukraine, including that related to thousands of children abducted to Russia, deleted, as he withdraws funding to the project.

https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-press-marco-rubio-over-deleted-russian-war-crimes-data-2047047

The detail is not absolutely clear yet, and Trump / Musk will obfuscate. I hope Yale University had their data backed up in a safe jurisdiction.

I'd say it's exactly the sort of promise he may have quietly made to Putin, given that he launched his assault on the ICC on day one.

That story has malicious compliance, obfuscation and lies written all over it. How can cutting funding for something 'result' in the deletion of data? Did the data even exist in the first place?

An unidentified source familiar with the tracking program told Reuters that DOGE's cutting funding for the program has resulted in the deletion of $26 million of war crimes evidence protecting Putin. They said, "They took $26 million of U.S. taxpayers money used for war crimes data and threw it into the woodchipper, including the dossiers on all the children. If you wanted to protect President Putin from prosecution, you nuke that thing. And they did it. It's the final court-admissible version with all the metadata."

"How can cutting funding for something 'result' in the deletion of data?"

Quite easy really: you don't archive it. Data from a ceased project is either properly archived, left in place on an active server, or deleted as no longer required or destroyed when ordered or the computer it is on/cloud it is in overwrites it. There were cases in the Global War On Terror when servers/drives/whatever were flown back with gigabytes of data and never inspected nor stored properly. In my previous incarnation I once scraped unstructured data off a server header and reimposed a schema to resurrect it before the 28-day rolling-archive limit was reached, thereby rescuing deleted data that would otherwise be lost.

The question is not whether Trump and Musk's Jahr Null approach deletes data, the question is why you would be surprised by it.

Failing to maintain something is not the same as actively deleting it: "Oh, we're no longer getting $26m from the government. I guess we'll just have to delete the database!"

The story is a hoax and casts doubt on whether the funding was being used appropriately in the first place.

Fuck off William, I have it on good authority from somebody inside the FCO that the data has been deleted.

Your shilling for Trump used to be amusing in parts but now that he is facilitating the death of Ukrainians your spin is shameful as it is disgusting.

One coming down the track - Trump reportedly having databases recording war crimes in Ukraine, including that related to thousands of children abducted to Russia, deleted, as he withdraws funding to the project.

https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-press-marco-rubio-over-deleted-russian-war-crimes-data-2047047

The detail is not absolutely clear yet, and Trump / Musk will obfuscate. I hope Yale University had their data backed up in a safe jurisdiction.

I'd say it's exactly the sort of promise he may have quietly made to Putin, given that he launched his assault on the ICC on day one.

That story has malicious compliance, obfuscation and lies written all over it. How can cutting funding for something 'result' in the deletion of data? Did the data even exist in the first place?

An unidentified source familiar with the tracking program told Reuters that DOGE's cutting funding for the program has resulted in the deletion of $26 million of war crimes evidence protecting Putin. They said, "They took $26 million of U.S. taxpayers money used for war crimes data and threw it into the woodchipper, including the dossiers on all the children. If you wanted to protect President Putin from prosecution, you nuke that thing. And they did it. It's the final court-admissible version with all the metadata."

There has been regular reporting of the destruction of records by DOGE, in numerous instances. As I'm sure you're well aware.
Malice and obfuscation are rather more likely from that source.

How could DOGE have access to Yale University's data in order to delete it? It's not a credible story on any level.

Threats and intimidation. "Get rid of this data or you are fired / your department's funding goes." Or get someone within Yale who agrees with DOGE's objectives.

You seem to be under the curious misconception that DOGE is just a harmless attempt to reduce 'waste'. It isn't. It's ideological. In fact, it's far mor ideological than either DEI or woke. And far, far worse.

I don't want to puncture this immigration theory of everything, but those differential unemployment rates are probably related to age more than anything else, as London has a younger population and young people, lacking marketable experience, are much more likely to be unemployed (unemployment rate of 18-24yos is 13%, compared to 3% for over 50yos).

But a younger population should also have a higher employment rate and London's is below average.

You're right that people without marketable experience, and skills, will have higher unemployment but how many of London's current unemployed will ever gain those ?

As opposed to becoming unemployable for life as they subsist on welfare while being replaced by the next wave of immigrants.

London's employment rate is 74%, versus 75% UK average. That's exceptionally high if you consider the number of students in London. You misinterpreted the figures and now you're digging a big hole.

What's remarkable about the UK is we have high employment rates, and low unemployment, despite the enormous levels of net migration over the last few years.

As Stodge says there are huge differences across London.

And confirmed by the levels of unemployment by constituency:

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8748/CBP-8748.pdf

Do you really think the over 9k unemployed in Tottenham or the more than 8k unemployed in both East Ham and West Ham is explainable by students at UCL or the LSE ?

What we have in parts of London, and likewise in inner city Birmingham and Bradford, are high levels of structural unemployment.

Although I did live in both Tottenham and East Ham whilst at LSE.

I lived in Dalston (Hackney), Whitechapel (Tower Hamlets) and Kennington (Lambeth) while studying at the LSE and so would have been counted as economically inactive, in areas with high minority populations.
It's important not to fall into the trap of using statistics as a drunk uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination.

It was interesting last year, at the hieght of the 'economically inactive' hyping, to see the actual catagories which counted towards the headline 9 million number. Some of them clearly, to my mind, should not be included.

27% of them are students - which, since the headline number is 16-64 includes all those aged 16-18 who, by law, now have to be in some form of education.

18% of them are housewives/househusbands.

11% of them are retired

11% of them are other - including those who do not need to work due to independent wealth.

So the claim of 9 million economically inactive -implying as it does those who should be in work but are not - is misleading in the extreme.

DogeDesigner

@cb_doge
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6h
🚨 ELON MUSK: "I sleep for about 6 hours on average and I work almost every waking hour.

I don't have social dinners really. I literally just will have lunch and dinner during meetings and continue the meeting."

===

The problem in a nutshell.

Does he work almost every waking hour though? Ok, multitasking, but he clearly spends a lot of time scrolling through online content every day.

I don't doubt he spends more time focusing on achieving his various goals than most people, but it does feel played up a bit, like when my brother used to insist he worked 100 hours a week.

A colleague of mine once sent to work for a while with a large company in South Korea. The place was apparently like its own city, and he spent the entire long trip within it - he even had to hand over his passport when he entered, and inly got it back when he left.

The South Koreans had a reputation in the industry of being incredibly hard workers; going into work very early and working exceptionally late. He debunked that, claiming that they turn up early, and stay very late, as everything they need is on site. But they have a very long lunch break, and other breaks during the day, the amount of time they actually work is about the same. (*)

IME those who spend very long hours at work are not much more productive than those who do not - especially for jobs which require mental concentration.

(*) I do wonder if this 'live at work' philosophy is a part of South Korea's demographic problem.

IME those who consistently get distracted by the likes of PB because they get bored are every bit as productive as those who don't. This is a vigorous scientific study with a sample size of 1 and I think its pretty conclusive.

https://x.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1902440135746318561

This week I ran a focus group in Grimsby for @channel4news.

The mood amongst voters was nothing short of apocalyptic. On migration, welfare, and the future of Britain.

No party leader was seen as truly capable of leading Britain out of a mess they felt was caused above all by mass immigration.

Rich in anger and conspiracy theories, it was also the most American of the English focus groups I’ve ever conducted.

This could have been written any time in the last 10 years.

No, I think there's been a marked shift in the last 12 months. There's now much more elite acceptance that Britain is in decline and that mass migration is not working and at the same time large parts of the public have become more radical.

Paradoxically the election of Labour broke the liberal consensus that had prevailed since Blair.

Social media is destroying our democracy.

That focus group seems to be stuff full of conspiracy theories and is "the most america" the guy has seen.

Can't think where these voters are getting all their information from.