Ian Perkins 💙

British Robe à la française, c. 1760 Silk taffeta @metmuseum #FashionHistory

Last night, Russia struck Odesa with attack drones. Residential buildings, a kindergarten, and a district power substation have been damaged. Thousands of families have been left without electricity. Repair crews have been working since the night to restore power supply. As of now, tragically, three people have been reported killed in this attack, including a child – just two years old. My sincere condolences to the families and loved ones. Sixteen people have been wounded. Eleven of them have been hospitalized by our medics, including a pregnant woman and two children. The youngest is not even a year old. Two people have also been injured in the Kharkiv region. Energy infrastructure was struck in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Dnipro regions. I thank our emergency services helping on the ground. In total, overnight, the Russians launched more than 140 attack drones against Ukraine, nearly 80 of them “shaheds.” In some regions, strikes are still ongoing. And this is only part of what our people endure every day. During the past week, over 2,800 attack drones were used, along with nearly 1,350 guided aerial bombs, and more than 40 missiles of various types. Right now, all partners need to strengthen air defense together so that the interception rate of drones and missiles continues to increase. This is a daily effort for everyone, not just Ukraine, because through supplies, support for us, and joint work, our partners are helping themselves as well. Russia has no intention of stopping. I thank everyone who understands this and contributes to our shared defense.

A Facebook post falsely claims Katie Hopkins confronted Muslim MPs during a speech in the House of Commons. There’s no record of this in Hansard and images supposedly showing the scene are AI-generated. fullfact.org/politics/katie…

UK banks can nudge customers to invest in shares. They will get commissions, accept no responsibility for losses. Only new shares provide money for new investment. Secondary shares is just churn. Another example of the state supporting finance industry archive.ph/F9XNU

BREAKING: CHINA DESTROYS TRUMP Trump: We need $2 billion a day to reopen the Strait of Hormuz China's FM Senator: But the Strait of Hormuz was already open before the war? The root cause of this disruption is your illegal military operations against Iran. You have created a Global Crisis OUT OF NOTHING”

Japanese football fans have been praised online after staying behind to clean up Wembley Stadium following their team’s 1–0 victory over England. After the historic win, Japanese supporters remained in the stands to tidy the stadium before leaving.

⚡️ Moldova's parliament approves exit from Russia-led CIS. The move is a "natural and inevitable step towards European integration," the Moldovan parliament said. kyivindependent.com/moldovas-parli…

Check out Global Justice Now's video! #TikTok vm.tiktok.com/ZNRCTQSQy/

Check out portal.of.humanity's video! #TikTok vm.tiktok.com/ZNRCT96MP/

Which MP received more than £220,000 in donations from people+organisations with links to the private health sector? 🚨🚨🚨

EXCLUSIVE: Reform's Housing Spokesperson Simon Dudley (formerly of Homes England) says post-Grenfell safety regs have gone too far and "everyone dies" @Grenfellnextkin have condemned the comments My write-up of @insidehousing's exclusive interview inews.co.uk/news/grenfell-…

The Israeli government is well able to fund the Iron Dome system, which has proven critical to keep innocent civilians safe from rocket attacks and bombardment. Consistent with my voting record to date, I will not support Congress sending more taxpayer dollars and military aid to a government that consistently ignores international law and U.S. law. Netanyahu’s allies in the Knesset just approved a $45 billion defense budget, and the Prime Minister himself also asserted his interest in withdrawing from the MOU with the United States in January. It is fully within their ability to fund Iron Dome and other defensive systems. Our allies who need our military aid must understand that we will provide it consistent with the Leahy amendment and the foreign assistance act.

Wes Streeting is changing the GP referral system from VOLUNTARY Advice & Guidance service to MANDATORY Single Point of Access for routine referrals, but what does this mean in reality? ▶️ A&G is support TO HELP your GP decide ▶️ Single point of access DECIDES FOR your GP 👇

Blackrock. Palantir. JP Morgan. The NHS is being sold off to the highest bidder and privatised by stealth. Billions for private investment schemes. But somehow not enough to pay frontline staff properly. The government will always prioritise big business over NHS workers.

REP. GREG LANDSMAN: Trump waived sanctions on two Russian oil companies that have directly funded and facilitated the abduction and indoctrination of Ukrainian children. These companies are helping to steal children, and Trump is helping them make billions of dollars.

Thames Water ‘close to deal that would spare it Ofwat fines until 2030’. Anything given to TW can't be denied to others. No pressure points to end sewage dumping, cash extraction, customer fleecing. One law for us, another for corporations and capital. theguardian.com/business/2026/…

We lost a vanity war in the Persian Gulf and created a huge new problem for our allies. And now we say that it is their fault and that they must solve the problem we created.

A sign of how unwell contemporary science has become: The well-respected physicist commentator Sabine Hossenfelder @skdh has lost her academic affiliation because she dared to criticise a physicist's research. She delivers a damning condemnation: "A lot of research and the foundations of Physics is now pseudo-science. It hasn't followed the scientific method for decades." youtu.be/ZO5u3V6LJuM?si… She recounts a recent incident where a physicist contacted her, upset that she had judged their research as "100% bullshit", demanded she remove the relevant video, and then complained to people he believed were her supervisors when she refused. As a result of complaints (including from members of the community upset about her criticism of their research and academic conduct in general), her former academic institution—the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy— has discontinued her affiliation. Sabine is financially independent thanks to her audience support, so she is unbothered by the loss of affiliation or attempts to pressure her; however, she is concerned that many physicists fail to recognize the fundamental problems with their field. The broader issue in theoretical high-energy physics and foundations of physics is not new: critics like David Lindley ("the end of physics") and John Horgan ("the end of science") have pointed it out, yet the production of low-value "garbage" papers continues daily, gets published, funded, and hyped in the media. Many experts acknowledge the problems privately but stay silent publicly to protect their reputations and funding; an exception is physicist Will Kinney, who publicly criticized inflation model-building as mostly useless mathematical exercises with no realistic expectation of correctness. She strongly endorses Jesper Grimstrup's book "The Ant Mill," which describes the crisis in theoretical high-energy physics: no major breakthroughs in ~50 years, a lack of genuinely new ideas, and strong social pressures toward tribalism and groupthink that discourage independent thinking. She says intelligent people are wasting their time and taxpayer money on unproductive work due to ingrained groupthink; physicists are often shocked by external criticism and refuse to accept responsibility, blaming the critic instead. Hallmarks of pseudoscience in this area include: it looks like science from the inside (with courses, conferences, and jargon), but involves inventing mathematical "stories" or fictions about non-existent laws, new particles, forces, gravities, the beginning of the universe, multiverses, or extra dimensions—with what she says is zero empirical evidence. She compares this to naturopathy or other 'pseudoscientific' fields for brainwashing, rejection of challenging views, and overconfidence in one's intelligence; the main difference is that quack medical claims can directly harm people, while quack physics papers mainly waste money and resources. She highlights the core scientific failure: Science progresses by learning from mistakes and refining what counts as a "worthy" hypothesis. Post-1970s theoretical physics has not done this; instead, it continues guessing "nice" mathematics without basis, producing thousands of falsifiable but ultimately falsified predictions. Pre-1970s physics successfully solved real problems and made correct predictions (e.g., neutrino masses, Higgs boson); since then, the method of generating hypotheses via mathematical beauty or speculation has failed to yield confirmed breakthroughs, yet the community refuses to update its standards. The scientific method is misunderstood: it is not just "make a hypothesis and test it." Disciplines learn quality standards from past failures (e.g., random doomsday predictions are dismissed as unscientific because we know they waste time). Theoretical physics has stopped learning in this way for foundational questions. Many subfields (e.g., high-temperature superconductors, quantum information) are doing "normal science" productively, but the problem is concentrated in areas that invent superfluous, evidence-free hypotheses with no pressing data or consistency issues to solve. Example with dark matter: Solid evidence exists for it, and simple models suffice, but researchers unnecessarily complicate it with new "dark sectors," fifth forces, etc., that add extra assumptions and soon get ruled out—violating principles of parsimony. She compares it to the replication crisis in psychology (p-value hacking and irreproducible results), noting that psychology at least attempted reforms, while physics has doubled down on piling up unfruitful guesses (extra dimensions, multiverses, etc.). She proposes a solution: Journals and reviewers should adopt stricter guidelines—e.g., only publish papers where hypotheses use the minimal necessary assumptions and actually solve a real consistency or explanatory problem, rather than mathematical fiction. This could eliminate ~99% of the issue quickly, though journals resist due to incentives around publication volume and citations. The field has turned into a self-perpetuating system of producing and rewarding mathematical fiction instead of evidence-driven progress. Public exposure and pressure for reform are needed, even if it makes people uncomfortable. This is quite an important and challenging vent from Ms Hossenfelder. Good luck to her in her new independent role. @EricRWeinstein

🚨KEIR STARMER IS SPEARHEADING ONE OF THE MOST SHOCKING ATTACKS ON CIVIL LIBERTIES IN MODERN TIMES The government has absolutely no mandate to do this. Labour never mentioned in its manifesto that it planned to undermine and restrict a fundamental cornerstone of our democracy - the right to trial by jury - a move which will place us on a path toward authoritarian justice. But it’s not too late for the government to listen to the thousands of voices of victims, judges, barristers, other legal professionals and academics who oppose this blatant act of constitutional vandalism. CONTACT YOUR MP NOW and ask them to step up and protect this cherished and precious cornerstone of our democracy

Israel dropped bombs on UN peacekeepers in Marjayoun, South Lebanon. Two Indonesian UNIFIL soldiers were killed. Their bodies were retrieved today. Blue helmets. UN uniforms. Peacekeepers. Killed anyway. Kick Israel out of the UN.