The Renaissance Girl 🇬🇧

BREAKING🚨 Trump spent all week bragging that he got Stephen Colbert “fired.” Less than 24 hours later, Colbert was back on TV with Jack White, Eminem, Steve Buscemi, and Jeff Daniels — flipping him the bird from a tiny public access studio in Michigan. Thursday night, after 11 years, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert ended on CBS. Trump immediately took a victory lap, posting an AI video of himself grabbing Colbert and throwing him into a dumpster, then dancing on the lid. He ranted that Colbert was “talentless,” celebrated that he was “finally finished,” and basically declared himself the man who got a critic taken off network TV. The party lasted about 23 hours. Friday at 11:30 p.m., Colbert popped back up — not on a major network, but on Monroe Community Media 1 in Monroe, Michigan, hosting the local public‑access show “Only in Monroe.” He read goofy local news, roasted his former bosses at CBS, and welcomed surprise guests Jack White and Jeff Daniels. Then came cameos from Steve Buscemi and hometown legend Eminem, who wandered onto the set just to show they were in on the joke. All that star power, crowding into a community‑access studio, just to send one message: you can’t cancel someone who won’t shut up. “It’s been an excruciating 23 hours without being on TV,” Colbert deadpanned, before thanking Monroe Community Media for having him “before they get acquired by Paramount.” That’s the whole story in one line: Trump can lean on billionaires and corporate bosses. He can post his little AI cartoons. But he cannot actually make a voice disappear if that person is determined to keep talking — even if it’s from the most bare‑bones cable channel in Michigan. This is what authoritarian types never understand. Censoring a critic doesn’t kill the criticism. It amplifies it. By gloating over Colbert’s finale and literally sharing a fantasy of throwing him in the trash, Trump turned a late‑night host into a free‑speech folk hero. Instead of quietly exiting the stage, Colbert got a new, bigger story: the comic who went from CBS to public access overnight just to prove that comedy doesn’t belong to corporations or presidents. Now the clip that’s going viral isn’t Trump’s AI dumpster video. It’s Colbert sitting in a cramped local studio with Jack White and Eminem, laughing about how fast he bounced back. Everyone’s talking about the comedian Trump tried to erase — and how small, petty, and thin‑skinned the president looks in comparison. Whatever Colbert does next, he’s going to be living rent‑free in Trump’s head the entire time. And the more Trump tries to silence him, the louder that little public‑access studio in Monroe is going to sound.

Too on point not to share. This is great, but too bad the Orange Felon’s enablers won’t let him see it. This Australian's reply to #Trump's rant about “NATO not being there for America” is perfect. "Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage. You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail. Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates. Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you. And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again. And you're calling Greenland poorly run? Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no. 'NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years. And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess. So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your f----- mouth." - Tony Locke

In honor of the true heroes on this Memorial Day, I fixed it.

BREAKING: Pope Leo XIV enrages MAGA by formally apologizing for the Church's role in legitimizing slavery and for failing to condemn it for centuries, calling it a "wound in Christian memory." This is truly historic and Republicans are furious... “It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord. For this, in the name of the church, I sincerely ask for pardon," Leo wrote in “Magnifica Humanitas,” his much-anticipated first encyclical. While previous popes have apologized for the Christian involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, none has ever delivered such a direct apology for the broader role that the Church played in the survival of that deeply evil institution. The Vatican at times gave European monarchs express permission to colonize and enslave foreign peoples, slathering their brutal crimes against humanity in a veneer of Christian piety. In the 15th century, Pope Nicholas V went so far as to give the Portugese throne authority to subjugate and rob “Saracens, and pagans, and other infidels, and enemies of the name of Christ” as well as "reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.” Leo took that history on head-first— "Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to the requests of sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, including the enslavement of ‘infidels,'" he wrote. "In the development of her doctrine, the Church has gradually come to a deeper awareness of the gravity of these issues," Leo stated. "It is true that past events cannot be judged anachronistically, as though the moral criteria that matured over time had always been available. Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery." He added that it "took eighteen centuries" for the Church to "explicitly" recognize its "full incompatibility with slavery." “This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached,” Leo added. The pronouncement has already been met with outrage from many members of the online right, who believe that the Western world should never apologize for anything it's done, not even slavery. Social media is aflurry with MAGA accusations that Leo has succumbed to "suicidal empathy" and "white guilt." These are the same people who believe that the Civil War was fought for "states' rights" and that the Confederacy was an admirable endeavor. “For descendants of enslaved persons, this is once again a much needed apology from the pope,” said Anthea Butler, senior fellow at Oxford University's Koch History Center. She added that the apology empowers Leo to “speak to the current issues of technological enslavement.” The Pope's slavery apology was part of a much lengthier document whose title translates to "Magnificent Humanity." It's largely focused on humanity's roles and responsibilities as artificial intelligence reshapes the world around us. Leo connected the topic to slavery by warning that these emergent technologies are leading to new forms of human exploitation and debasement, as neocolonialist labor practices are implemented to provide the rare minerals necessary to build AI chips. The situation in the Congo is particularly dire, with untold masses of men, women, and children being paid next to nothing — and in some cases nothing at all — to work in inhumane, unhealthy conditions mining cobalt. While so many of our world leaders are failing to confront the challenges and evils of the modern world, Pope Leo is boldly leading the way. Please ❤️ and share if you're a big fan of Pope Leo!

When he resigned he said it was because he was being prevented from making the changes needed to bring down immigration. He is now claiming that he made the changes that brought down immigration. Both can’t be true.

Claude Mellan's Face of Christ, also known as The Sudarium of Saint Veronica (1649), is one of the most technically extraordinary works in art history... The entire portrait is rendered using a single, continuous spiralling line that begins at the tip of Christ's nose and expands outward to the edges of the cloth. Mellan achieved the illusion of depth, shadow, and facial features without any cross-hatching or traditional shading. Instead, he precisely varied the thickness and pressure of the burin (his engraving tool) as he rotated the copper plate, creating "swelling" lines that darken the image where needed. The spiralling line is estimated to be approximately 150m (about 500ft) long if it were stretched out.

It's a complete mystery why people with deeply unpleasant views like these are attracted to political parties led by @Nigel_Farage

BREAKING: Politics and security fears are starting to hit the 2026 FIFA World Cup. FIFA expected a global stampede for U.S. matches. Instead: • thousands of seats remain unsold • hotel bookings are lagging badly • resale prices are falling • and some host cities are quietly slashing expectations The problem is becoming impossible to ignore: Fans are being asked to pay Super Bowl-level prices… inside a high-cost security-heavy environment increasingly associated with: • visa delays • aggressive immigration enforcement • ICE concerns • geopolitical instability • expensive flights • and growing fears around travel friction in the U.S. That combination is creating a brutal mismatch between FIFA’s hype machine and real-world buyer behavior. Even some marquee matches still have massive blocks of available seats while hotels in host cities report booking levels closer to a normal summer than a once-in-a-generation global event. And there’s a deeper political problem underneath all of this: The World Cup depends heavily on international fans. Especially Latin American supporters. But when the atmosphere around the tournament starts feeling expensive, hostile, unpredictable, or over-policed, “latent demand” stops converting into actual travel. FIFA built pricing around a fantasy version of infinite demand. Reality showed up with inflation, border anxiety, security concerns, and a maxed-out credit card. Now organizers appear stuck waiting for last-minute buyers and emergency price cuts to save optics before kickoff.

70% of FIFA hotel bookings in Boston, Dallas, LA, Philly & Seattle are CANCELED. 80% of hoteliers say bookings are below forecasts. NYC may LOSE money on the World Cup. Trump's visa chaos & immigration threats are killing the US economy.

The annual Pentecost tradition (today!) at Rome's Pantheon is a moment of extraordinary beauty. It occurs every year on the seventh Sunday after Easter. At noon, after the Holy Mass, thousands of rose petals are dropped through the oculus of the mighty dome. As the petals fall, a choir sings "Veni Sancte Spiritus," known as the Golden Sequence, a masterpiece of sacred Latin poetry. This is to celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Virgin Mary and the Apostles. The rose petal ritual likely dates back to 607 AD when the pagan temple became a Christian church.

@SkySportsF1 Guys, please sort out your sound issues, this is really amateurish! #F1 #CanadianGP

@Parody_PM This is the way forward for Reform to show everybody was a useless lot of muppets their Candidates were.

New Reform councillors off to a great start by refusing to vote on anything because they haven't a clue what anything means, how anything works or what the fuck they are doing. Vote Reform, get lazy, incompetent, ignorant morons.

Love this. Amazing

This is one of the most psychologically revealing things he’s ever said. Consider that we’re supposed to be his “friends.” “I don't like friends that become very successful. I like people that are just OK. Even if they're terrible, I like that, too. I hate like when I have lunch with somebody that's really, really successful. I hate it. Because he or she is bragging about how great they are. And I hate that when they do that. Because they stopped me from talking about the fact that I became president.”

Curse of Private Equity Morrisons to close 100 stores. Blames govt, silent on PE looting. PE loaded company with £6.6bn debt, cut staff, sold-off petrol stations, indulged in sale and leaseback of assets, extracted returns. PE devouring high street. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Here's how the corruption works: Thursday: RJ Reynolds donates $5M to Trump Saturday: Trump invites RJR execs to Mar a Lago; execs ask to loosen regs on flavored vapes; Trump calls up RFK Jr. and tells him to change it Friday: FDA changes the policy #donation-big-tobacco-vaping" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">nytimes.com/live/2026/05/2…

In Vinnytsia, Ukraine, a female stork was widowed when her mate died. She is incubating her eggs and is unable to feed herself. Local residents have started feeding her.

this was so sweet. Stephen Colbert just ended his final episode of The Late Show while singing "Hello, Goodbye" with Paul McCartney. his family and the show's crew then joined them on stage before Paul turned off the lights to the Ed Sullivan Theater

Farage, with a very different accent, explaining how to exploit and profit from the very same system that he claimed to rail against. Including using one’s wife to account for financial irregularities. Well, it apparently works when trying to explain away house purchases, eh?