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In the minds of the British commentariat, the UK government is an utterly dysfunctional and hapless apparatus that they want to go and sort out the problems of other countries. Like if you spent years complaining that this government is an utter mess, the last thing you want them to do is take that incompetence elsewhere

Every city has at least one building that is so ugly that everyone loves it. Which is yours? Don't make me Google, photo/name please

How do we go in the space of a few years, a few months rather, from 'the future is urban' to 'the death of the city'? A thread on what I think we're getting right and wrong about the current moment For the last 20 years, thinking about planning and cities has been dominated by 'The Urban Agenda' (see lse.ac.uk/cities/publica… ) but in the aftermath of Covid there have been foreboding pronouncements about the end of the city like the article above politico.eu/article/the-de…

What's oregano in Arabic? Well that nearly started a war

Counterpoint: with everything we know about air travel, space travel will be ten times as annoying. Let's construct the scenario:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1290056061253165057

The journey itself: you're on a journey to Mars, of course you're going to get the middle seat, stuck between a chatty person and a person who keeps falling asleep and leaning on you, for 7 months! Add a few screaming babies around.

Religions make a big deal of the afterlife but have you ever wondered what the food would be like? Surprisingly there's very little written about it.

Catering in the afterlife, a thread. First of all, let's figure out the numbers. It is estimated that 80 billion people have lived throughout history which means there's at least 70 billion people in the afterlife.
They're definitely not doing sit-down meals, it has to be a buffet.

Everybody assumes that time travel would be easy: you press a button and you're immediately transported to another time. But why, given everything we know about the travel industry?
Time travel, a thread: Let's say you want to travel to 1452 but it's expensive on a legacy carrier. It's 20% of the price on Easy Time Travel but they'll take you to 1449 and you have to make your way from there.

Ottoman Zoom call "I want to circle back to my original point.."

Can we have some Asian and African civil servants come up with a partition plan?

https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1261198260850634752

That should do it

The Syrian oil that Trump 'kept' is worth minus hundreds of millions of dollars now The US will now organise a military campaign to return oil to the Middle East

Thread:

A thread on the historic roots of why it's difficult for the UK and the EU to agree a deal. European culture is notoriously averse to compromise, largely because of the legacy of the warring tribes that historically dominated this region of the world. In European languages, the word 'compromise' comes from the Old French compromis from, the Latin compromissum literally 'to break one's vase'. Linguists attribute this to a sense of dishonour associated with compromise

An organic, leaderless protest movement with no clear ideology has emerged in France. I've been waiting for this since 2011. Let me explain the French Spring to you. Firstly, why the colour yellow? In traditional French culture, yellow represents the Mediterranean regions of France which always felt oppressed by Paris. These protests represent ancient regional grievances.