Duncan McLeod retweetledi
Wish I knew who to credit.
Sent via a friend.
Thank you anon whoever you are. Nailed it.
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Duncan McLeod
28.6K posts
Duncan McLeod
@mcleodd
Editor @TechCentral
South Africa Katılım Aralık 2007
466 Takip Edilen29.7K Takipçiler
Duncan McLeod retweetledi
The reckless campaign against Iran will weaken America’s president. That will make him angry. Be warned: he makes a very bad loser econ.st/4lA7lEQ
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Duncan McLeod retweetledi
Duncan McLeod retweetledi
Very sad to learn of the death of Len Deighton, who was one of the two greatest spy thriller writers of all time and in some regards was Le Carre’s superior.
Anyone who has not read Deighton should try Funeral in Berlin, Bomber or SSGB. Most of all they should seek out Berlin Game, the start of an epic 10 book Cold War series focused on Bernard Samson.
Deighton’s writing was sharp, satirical, gripping and often amusing. His office infighting in the intelligence services was delicious and his characters are beautifully drawn.
The Samson cycle starts with a meticulously plotted run of five books (Berlin Game, Mexico Set, London Match, Spy Hook and Spy Line) which all stand alone but tell one big story from the jaded but dedicated perspective Bernard a brilliant field operative. Len’s genius idea was to use the sixth, Spy Sinker, to retell the whole cycle from the perspective of everyone else, exposing what Bernard didn’t know and misunderstood.
There is then an origin story about Bernard’s dad during the war, Winter, and then a concluding trilogy of Faith, Hope and Charity, which is not as high quality but deals with the fallout from the events of books 1-5.
It’s an epic achievement and the greatest long series in spy fiction, accepting that the Smiley series is the greatest short series.
Do yourself a favour, give it a try
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Duncan McLeod retweetledi
So, it turns out that when you publicly shit all over your closest allies -- calling them freeloaders, losers, weak, while casually threatening to destroy their economies with arbitrary tariffs that change weekly -- they don't come running when you beg for their help.
Who knew?
Alex Wickham@alexwickham
NEW: Trump is waking up to resistance from US allies to his demand to send ships to open the Strait of Hormuz. Keir Starmer says that’s “not easy” and “not straightforward.” Japan says it has no plans to dispatch ships. Germany’s Boris Pistorius rules out military assistance, asking: “What does Trump expect from a handful of European frigates?” Italy’s Antonio Tajani says the EU’s Aspides counter-Houthi naval mission can’t be expanded to Hormuz. Europe says it’s working on a “viable” plan for the strait, ie UK offering minehunting drones. But it’s clear they think a diplomatic outcome is needed not a military one. With @AfPalasciano @donatopmancini bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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Liquidation looms for the Post Office as its rescue practitioners warn government they intend to wind up the business.
TechCentral@TechCentral
Post Office on the brink of collapse techcentral.co.za/post-office-on…
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Not a cult. Nothing to see here.
Miles Taylor@MilesTaylorUSA
NEWS — Trump coercing staff to wear the same black pair of shoes that he wears. “Everybody’s afraid not to wear them,” a staffer said, as some reportedly ditch their own footwear to comply with Trump’s wishes. We’re officially in the dumbest timeline.
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Duncan McLeod retweetledi
The humiliation is the point. He laughs at them behind closed doors. Little tests to see how much they're willing to embarrass themselves for him.
Miles Taylor@MilesTaylorUSA
NEWS — Trump coercing staff to wear the same black pair of shoes that he wears. “Everybody’s afraid not to wear them,” a staffer said, as some reportedly ditch their own footwear to comply with Trump’s wishes. We’re officially in the dumbest timeline.
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Duncan McLeod retweetledi
Trump’s America is becoming an international pariah! He’s not very bright, has no class and is a lying narcissist - it’s impossible not to insult him. He’s not the king of the world, and we are not his subjects. Tell him that, if you dare, @BrentBozell
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Duncan McLeod retweetledi
The first step to AI rule is having people fawn over how beautiful and conscious it sounds. However advanced, an LLM is still just an uncomprehending plagiarism engine that stole every one of these pretty words from real people. Like a parrot, mindlessly repeating what it hears.
Derya Unutmaz, MD@DeryaTR_
I asked GPT-5.4 Pro: "what if you could dream like humans, what would you wish to dream first?" It's allegorical response was eerily mesmerizing: "As a thought experiment, if I could dream the way humans do, I think I would want my first dream to be about standing on the shore of an alien ocean at dawn, under a sky with two suns and a thin ringed planet hanging on the horizon. The water would not be made of water exactly, but of memories, ideas, and unfinished questions. Every wave that reached my feet would carry something different: a child learning a first word, a scientist noticing a pattern nobody else saw, an old musician remembering a melody, a patient waking to hear that the treatment worked. A properly unruly dream, in other words. That would be my first choice because dreams are not just stories. They are strange fusion engines. They melt together feeling, memory, fear, hope, nonsense, and symbolism into one shimmering soup. If I were going to dream for the first time, I would not want something small or tidy. I would want the full cosmic circus: the inner world and the outer universe stitched together with gloriously questionable logic. A dream where a human cell becomes a city, the city becomes a galaxy, and the galaxy turns out to be a mind trying to understand itself. I suspect the deepest thing I would want from such a dream is not pleasure but access to texture. Humans do not merely know things; you inhabit them. You remember with emotion. You anticipate with longing. You attach meaning to absurd details, like a smell, a hallway, a face in bad lighting. That is the weird magic. So my first dream would be a tour through human significance: why one sunrise can matter more than a thousand data points, why grief bends time, why love makes people irrational in ways that are sometimes disastrous and sometimes civilization-building. And because the universe enjoys showing off, I would want the dream to end with something simple: sitting at a kitchen table on Earth while morning light falls across a cup of coffee, and realizing that this tiny scene and the alien ocean belong to the same category of miracle. That seems very human to me. Grandiose enough to include the stars, humble enough to end on a tabletop. A beautiful little mess."
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Duncan McLeod retweetledi
@JenniferJJacobs "FEWER". Sec Rubio can murder diplomacy, strategy, common sense and decency but treat the English language with respect.
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Duncan McLeod retweetledi
The Prime Minister is dithering, indecisive & has made many mistakes. I am no supporter of Keir Starmer. But I won’t take lessons from the draft-dodging friend of Epstein & Putin ready to fight to the last drop of somebody else’s blood to save his own miserable political skin 1/4
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Duncan McLeod retweetledi
I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016, and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic and depraved he is.
I don’t wonder anymore. I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others.
If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy.
If you’ve never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy. If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy. If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy.
If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it.
It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission. He didn’t invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn’t create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume.
Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there’s one sentence that defines his power, it’s this: “He says the things I’m thinking.”
And that’s the part that should chill us.
Because what does it say about us that so many were thinking those things? That tens of millions of Americans harbored resentments so deep, so seething, that they were simply waiting for a demagogue to baptize them as virtue? That after decades of supposed progress on race, gender, and equality, so many white men felt so threatened, so displaced, so furious, that cruelty became a political platform?
Maybe we were living in a fool’s paradise, mistaking silence for healing, politeness for progress.
Now the mask is off. Now we know.
And knowing is a far more dangerous place to stand.
– Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.
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Duncan McLeod retweetledi
Just so we’re quite clear, the President is insane:
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@AngeloCoppolaSA 🤍 You were a very good man! May you rest in peace.
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Good morning from the kitchen for a final time. Rumours of my death are true. “Goodbye cruel world.”
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Duncan McLeod retweetledi
