bookworm

The Iranians are telling people that they will never give up their nuclear material for American security guarantees because Trump is not honoring the security guarantees that America made to Ukraine when Ukraine gave up their nukes.

At 82 years old, I still work in the vegetable garden by myself, while my son always finds an excuse not to drop by. Six months ago, I made a decision that my family will never forgive: I left everything to my neighbor. I live in a small village in Umbria (Italy). My husband, Gino, and I built the house I live in over fifty years ago. Every wall, every window, every roof beam passed through our hands. We were young and had no money, but we kept going, working from dawn until dusk. When our son, Roberto, got married, I gave him the apartment we owned in the city. We didn’t think twice about it. It just seemed right. He needed space for his family, while Gino and I wanted to stay in the village. Eight years ago, Gino died in his sleep. One evening he was beside me; the next morning, he was gone. After the funeral, Roberto promised me he wouldn’t leave me alone. He said he would visit often, that he would call, and that he would help me with the house. The last time I saw him was two years ago, at Christmas. In his place, he sent my grandson, Luca, with some bags of groceries and holiday wishes. He stayed for twenty minutes and then left. Meanwhile, there was always something here that needed fixing. The roof leaked. The fence was falling apart. The chimney needed cleaning. The garden was overrunning with weeds. Every time I called Roberto, I heard the same words: "I can't right now," "I'll call you back," "We'll see later on." But he wasn't the one who actually showed up. Matteo, the neighbor next door, is twenty-eight and works in construction. One day, he saw me on a ladder trying to repair a gutter and asked if I needed help. Since then, he has never stopped stopping by. He fixed the roof, rebuilt the fence, and pruned the trees. When I broke my ankle, he was the one who brought me my medicine and checked in every week to see if I needed anything. **And from that point on, everything changed.** On Saturdays, he would stop for a coffee. He talked to me about the weather, work, and the dogs roaming the village. Once, I tried to pay him. He smiled and said, "You’re like my grandmother." That same day, my grandson hadn't even called me. Six months ago, I went to the notary. The house built with Gino, the land, and my savings—I left them all to Matteo. To my son, nothing. To my grandson, nothing. When Luca found out, he called me immediately. He told me I couldn't do such a thing, that they were my family. I gave him a simple answer: “Family is the person who stays. Not the person who only remembers you when there is something to take." Matteo still knows nothing about the will. I haven't told him because I don't want anything to change between us. He continues to come over just as he always has. Last Saturday, he fixed the barn door and stayed to drink coffee in the kitchen. I finally understand one thing now. The house I built with my husband should go to the person who acted like family—not to those who were just waiting for an inheritance. (Source: Life Stories)

THEIR BABY DIED. THE NHS CALLED THEM COMPO SEEKERS Dr Jack Hawkins (@jackhawkski) and Sarah Hawkins (@Sajhawkins1) were NHS employees at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (@nottmhospitals). Consultants. Colleagues. People who trusted the institution they worked for to deliver their baby safely. Their daughter Harriet was stillborn in 2016. Not because of fate. Because of a catalogue of errors by midwives and doctors that stretched across a six-day labour and 13 separate contacts with the trust. Thirteen. The trust initially told them it was just one of those things. It was not one of those things. What followed was nine years of cover-ups, gaslighting, a bereavement midwife calling to say it was time to move on, and eventually @NHS staff briefing that grieving families were only in the review because they had been groomed by Jack and Sarah. Compo seekers, they were called. While pushing for accountability over the largest maternity scandal in NHS history. The Nottingham maternity inquiry now covers over 2,500 cases of death or serious harm. It is the biggest of its kind ever conducted in the UK. The trust agreed a £2.8 million payout in 2021. The report deadline has already been extended to June 2026 after 300 new cases were discovered by a coroner. Nobody has been prosecuted. Many of the staff Jack and Sarah blew the whistle to seven years ago are still in post. By December 2025 Jack and Sarah were publicly warning that the same cover-up culture they had experienced was almost certainly operating in maternity units across England, invisible and undetected. Missing classrooms of children, Jack called it. Whole cohorts of lives that never happened. The institution did not protect them when they were employees. It did not protect Harriet. It did not protect 2,500 other families. It called them scammers for noticing. This is what institutional failure looks like when it has enough time to get comfortable. Sources: @ITV @Channel4 @BBCNews @guardian

Why Can’t the USA Bring Iran to Its Knees? Let’s be honest about what’s happening here. The most expensive military in human history has been dropping very expensive bombs on a country with a medieval theocracy running it, and the theocracy is still standing. That’s a very loud way of achieving nothing. Bombing from 35,000 feet looks magnificent on television. It really does. The footage is extraordinary. The problem is that footage doesn’t topple regimes. Regimes fall when their people stop believing in them, when their economy collapses so completely that the ruling class can no longer buy loyalty. You don’t get that from a B-2 Spirit at altitude. You get craters. Expensive craters. The Iranian regime will not lose face. Full stop. These are men who have spent forty years telling their population that America is the Great Satan. Being bombed by America isn’t embarrassing to them. It’s their entire argument, handed to them on a silver platter, gift-wrapped with a bow. Meanwhile, Trump is on Truth Social describing a campaign of absolute dominance, while the reality on the ground is quietly, comprehensively different. The allies Washington relied on across the Middle East were not protected. The allies in Europe looked at the situation, then looked at each other, and told Washington exactly where to go. Politely at first. Then rather less politely. They are not coming back. You can empty every American base on the continent and they still won’t come back. That bridge isn’t burned. It’s a smoking hole in the ground. Then there’s the Strait of Hormuz. A narrow waterway. Roughly 33 kilometres at its tightest point. And Iran sits on one side of it with the ability to make the global energy market absolutely hysterical at a moment’s notice. That is the regime’s ace card and everyone knows it. Blocking that strait doesn’t require a sophisticated military operation. It requires a decision. And the moment oil prices go vertical, the political cost to America becomes almost impossible to absorb. The blockade itself is bleeding the United States dry. Maintaining that kind of sustained pressure across that kind of distance, in that kind of maritime environment, costs an extraordinary amount of money and an extraordinary amount of political capital. Every week that passes without a decisive outcome is a week in which the bill gets larger and the story gets worse. And that’s the real damage. Not the bombs that didn’t work. Not the allies who walked away. The real damage is the image. For decades, American power was assumed to be unchallengeable. You didn’t have to fight it. The mere suggestion of it was usually enough. Iran has now demonstrated, in front of the entire world, that you can absorb American military pressure and remain standing. That lesson will not be forgotten in Tehran. It will not be forgotten in Beijing. It will not be forgotten anywhere. The superpower that couldn’t finish the job. That is what the world is watching. No amount of Truth Social posts changes that. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

"Russia started this war, Russia continues this war, and Russia can end this war today by withdrawing its forces and respecting Ukraine's sovereignty. The responsibility lies fully with the aggressor." - Kaja Kallas - EU diplomat Absolutely correct, I couldn't agree more...

Maybe if @NATO asks nicely #Ukraine will let them join her.

Let’s be honest about what we’re watching here. 🇺🇸 330 million people, the country that put men on the moon, defeated the Nazis is now sitting on its sofa watching its president post crayon drawings of Venezuela with an American flag on it. At least the Russians who oppose Putin have a reasonable excuse not to speak up. Siberia is cold and windows are tall. At least North Koreans can point to the very real possibility of their entire extended family being relocated to a concrete box with no heating. These are legitimate barriers to civic engagement. What’s America’s excuse? You can vote. You can protest. You can run for office. Nobody is sending you to a gulag. The worst thing that happens is someone calls you a name on Truth Social. And yet, there you all sit, 330 million of you, watching a man who cannot spell “Venezuela” claim it as American territory, while nodding along like this is a completely normal thing for a head of state to do. No dictator in modern history has done more damage to the prestige of a country’s highest office than this man, and he’s done it entirely voluntarily, with access to the full resources of the American government, and a communications team that apparently just lets him post whatever falls out of his head before breakfast. Kim Jong-un, for all his considerable faults, has never once posted a map with a flag on it and called it foreign policy. Think about that. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

The ancient Romans, Greek, and Chinese ate these plants for centuries. Modern Americans call them "weeds" and spray them with chemicals. After looking around I found 8 common garden weeds that contain more nutrients than kale, spinach, and broccoli: 1. Dandelion Greens

Campaigners are racing to save the mother tree of the Bramley apple – a 220-year-old tree in Nottinghamshire that traces every Bramley apple in the world back to a single pip. Planted in the 19th century, it’s still fruiting today, but now faces an uncertain future as its cottage goes up for sale. Supporters want to buy the site and turn it into a heritage centre, preserving a living piece of Britain’s culinary history for the nation. #Apple #Heritage #Trees #Environment #FoodHistory #Conservation theguardian.com/culture/2026/m…

Our contacts with the American side regarding guarantees for the implementation of the arrangements reached recently and announced by the President of the United States are ongoing. The prisoner exchange – 1,000 for 1,000 – is being prepared and must take place. The Americans assumed responsibility for these guarantees. Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters has handed over the lists for one thousand POWs to the Russian side. There was American mediation in reaching this arrangement on the exchange, and accordingly, we expect the American side to play an active role in ensuring it’s fulfilled.

@Saganismm @readerbythesea Or as Oscar Wilde said: “Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less…”

On one side of the Atlantic, you have a 79-year-old former game show host who believes windmills cause cancer, personally ended a war that hasn’t ended, and that crowd sizes at his inauguration defied the known laws of mathematics. On the other side, you have a 72-year-old ex-KGB man who has just accused Finland of secretly plotting to invade Russia. Finland. Famous for saunas, reindeer, and minding their own business since approximately the Bronze Age. Putin’s reasoning, delivered with the solemn authority of a man who hasn’t slept since 2003, was this: Finland joined NATO because they were waiting. Biding their time. Lurking. Ready to swoop in and grab Russian territory the moment Russia collapsed. “Swoop in and grab what they could,” he said. This is a man who sent 200,000 troops across an internationally recognised border, seized territory by force, and has spent four years reducing Ukrainian cities to rubble. Describing someone else as the type who swoops in and grabs what they can. The psychological term is projection. The clinical term is considerably less polite. Meanwhile, across the ocean, the other one is imposing tariffs on islands inhabited exclusively by penguins and receiving world leaders at a golf club in Florida as though the White House is simply too far to drive. Two old men. Two fantasy worlds. Zero connection to observable reality. The Cold War at least had the decency to be frightening. This is just embarrassing. When your entire worldview runs on paranoia, grievance, and whatever the Kremlin version of Fox News feeds you at 3am, a fence looks like an invasion. A neighbour looks like a threat. And five million Finns quietly getting on with their lives looks like a geopolitical conspiracy. x.com/nexta_tv/statu…

NHS DESTROYED THE WOMAN WHO CAUGHT ITS DOCTORS STEALING FROM IT Sharmila Chowdhury @sharmilaxx gave 30 years of spotless service to the @NHS. Not one disciplinary mark. Not one complaint. She was the budget holder for radiology at Ealing Hospital NHS Trust, which means she could see exactly where the money was going. What she saw was two consultant radiologists billing the NHS for shifts they were spending at a private hospital down the road. The Trust lost £250,000 of public money through those arrangements. She reported it to her line manager. Her medical director. HR. Counter Fraud. The Department of Health. The Treasury. Number 10. She had a paper trail so airtight that @ITV undercover surveillance later caught the same consultants still absent during paid hours, and caught Miranda Harvie and Akkib Rafique taking direct cash payments from patients for private ultrasounds inside the NHS building, money going straight into their own account. So what did the Trust do with this documented, camera-confirmed, publicly broadcast fraud? They sacked her. On fabricated counter-allegations from a subordinate she had herself reported for breaching patient safety. The man who filed those allegations later sent an email signed off with "0800-F***-YOU-B****." He received a Top Mentor award from the Trust that same year. Sharmila won the Interim Relief Hearing. She won the internal appeal. The judge asked the Trust to reinstate her. The Trust said no and refused to let her return. She was blacklisted. Job offers were withdrawn the moment employers discovered who she was. She settled out of court in 2012 with two years pay, out of which she had to pay £77,500 in legal fees alone. 38 Degrees38 Degrees In July 2013, she was diagnosed with breast and lung cancer. Multiple consultants believe this is a direct result of the sustained stress of her treatment as a whistleblower. The consultants she reported kept their jobs. George Osborne said he could not get involved. Andrew Lansley said he could not get involved. David Cameron said he could not get involved. Every single official body, every single minister, every single department looked at a proven, camera-documented NHS fraud case and decided it was an employment matter. Read Sharmila's full case: sharmilachowdhury com Sources: Health Select Committee written evidence | @DailyMail | @Independent | @BBCNews | @Channel4 | @guardian | @thetimes | @DailyMirror | @Channel4News | @ITV

Mariupol Half a million people used to live there. They had jobs, schools, restaurants, arguments about football, bad haircuts, mortgages, annoying neighbours, birthday parties, and all the magnificent, boring, irreplaceable machinery of a normal life. Then Russia arrived. Now Mariupol is a photograph that makes you look away. Apartment blocks reduced to their skeletons. Streets that go nowhere because the buildings at the end of them no longer exist. A port city on the Azov Sea that has been methodically turned into a lesson about what happens when nobody stops a man with tanks and no conscience. Five hundred thousand people. Gone, dead, or scattered across a continent. And JD Vance is proud of that. Not quietly conflicted. Not reluctantly neutral for strategic reasons a diplomat might one day explain. Proud. Visibly, performatively, almost joyfully proud that America withheld the weapons, blocked the aid, and let the rubble pile higher while his boss complimented the man doing the demolition. The Trump administration’s Christian base has found, at last, the hill they are willing to die on. Not their hill, obviously. Someone else’s. They have decided that their defining moral achievement, the thing they will tell their grandchildren about, is that they did not help. In a just world, that would be embarrassing. In this one, they’re giving speeches about it. Mariupol had half a million people. That number is apparently not the problem. The problem, according to Washington’s proudest Christians, was being asked to care. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

"The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. In the early nineteenth century, fifteen hours was the ordinary day's work for a man; children sometimes did as much, and very commonly did twelve hours a day. When meddlesome busybodies suggested that perhaps these hours were rather long, they were told that work kept adults from drink and children from mischief. When I was a child, shortly after urban working men had acquired the vote, certain public holidays were established by law, to the great indignation of the upper classes. I remember hearing an old Duchess say: 'What do the poor want with holidays? They ought to work.' People nowadays are less frank, but the sentiment persists, and is the source of much of our economic confusion." — Bertrand Russell

It’s insane. Putin has refused the 1,000-for-1,000 prisoner exchange. This prisoner exchange was a condition for the ceasefire—and, consequently, for Ukraine’s agreement not to attack the parade in Moscow. Trump, too, announced on Truth Social: a ceasefire plus an exchange of 1,000 prisoners on each side. Putin—that piece of shit in human form—has once again lied to the entire world.

Zelenskyy was a successful comedian for decades, but this may well be his funniest ever joke:

OK, fellas — I have a question for you! So far, I’ve seen suggestions in your replies that Ukraine should hit Putin’s little ‘Victory Day’ parade with flamingos, drop leaflets, or send drones with blue and yellow paint. What else can Ukraine do to rain on Putin’s parade?

@NatalkaKyiv Blue and yellow balloons with smiley faces whilst you bomb everywhere they've removed air defences from.

A lesson on social democracy that is not from a lying billionaire.