Lùcas M retweeted
A group of hackers published classified data on Russian soldiers killed in the war, from Russia's statistics agency Rosstat. In late August, the total was 450,100 (around 100k per year). It is in line with other independent estimates. There is also a regional breakdown.
Lùcas M retweeted
Someone at BSG: the UK GDP could be lower still.
We are pleased to announce that the Rt. Hon. @JustinTrudeau has joined Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government as a Distinguished Fellow and member of the World Leaders Circle.
ow.ly/j4uK51047Z3
Lùcas M retweeted
Tis (almost) the season 🎄…
If you are looking for some Christmas cards this year, then my wife is selling some of her designs to raise money for Warrington foodbank (@WarringtonFB).
Please consider supporting by buying something beautiful.
jessicalouiserock.com/store/…
Lùcas M retweeted
This is indeed a great piece.
Among the many powerful elements it contains is, I think, a powerful indictment of the egregiously socially suboptimal misalignment in the UK’s higher education system.
Everyone should have the opportunity to study at university. It isn’t a zero sum question of taking away opportunities in one area to create in another.
But the combination of supply-side and politically driven decline in institutional diversity (e.g. applied institutes and technical colleges), the erosion of demand-side elements for vocational skills pipelines (e.g. around apprenticeship policies), and the fee-based incentives for university sector is what drives much of what drives the situation in both towns such as Rotherham (no locally aligned nor anchored applied or basic research and training facilities) and the outflow of young people to London (expansion of extractive, dare I say predatory elements of the university sector) [which risks undermining the international standing of the sector that justifies its prominence in the UK’s STI landscape in the first place].
Superb piece by @Will___lloyd on youth despair and despondency in Rotherham.
ft.com/content/f83803da-8c43…
Lùcas M retweeted
Emergency officials say death toll from this (massive) Russian bombing of a school/aid distribution point in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya region is up to 37. Russia obliterated the site, dropping at least 9 (!) bombs, including glide bombs, per officials.
t.me/dsns_telegram/79619
Death toll from this Russian bombing (which included glide bombs) is now 31, per Ukrainian officials, 50 people still missing.
t.me/weukrainetv/154433
Lùcas M retweeted
A male Siberian tiger being released onto a nature reserve in Kazakhstan to join a female in hope that the species can flourish in the country after 70 years of extinction
Lùcas M retweeted
Me mandaron ayer esta foto desde la redacción del periódico 'Novaya Gazeta', cerrado por el gobierno ruso. El despacho de Politkovskaya, intacto desde su asesinato en 2006, ya está metido en cajas: "Ahora mismo estamos viviendo un naufragio. Nos mudamos con urgencia, embalamos las cosas que nos importan, sacamos el gabinete-museo de Politkovskaya y la biblioteca. Todavía no hemos tenido mucho tiempo para pensar en ello porque todo está ocurriendo muy deprisa. La próxima semana hablaremos en detalle sobre el último número. Después, cuando nos hayamos mudado y hayamos cerrado, pensaremos cómo salvar al equipo y cómo seguir viviendo", me cuenta una persona que lleva media vida trabajando allí.
t.me/javierovichOK/1531
Moscú, 2026.
Lùcas M retweeted
FC Augsburg believes it's quite terrible to have 17 other Bundesliga clubs sitting on a bunch of the league's limited supply of points.
Lùcas M retweeted
It’s a really a neurosis. Even if it were true—which it isn’t no matter how often you grunt and point at firm ranked by market cap—why do Americans care? Why is much of American discourse obsessed with asserting triumphalism by comparison?
There are venture capital fascists in Silicon Valley, MAGA finance bros in Dallas and accountants in Virginia who have opinions about knife crime in London, French immigration stats and EU AI regulations. It’s not just that these opinions are bogus—these people know even less about the world outside American than the average American but are persuaded that they know everything—but that they hold them so strongly, repeat them excessively and make them a key part of their worldview.
Why this insane insecurity and jingoism and the tendency to face outwards? It’s always a sign of internal decay. It’s never changed. And it is part and parcel of the same ideological metastasis that drives the dumb and dying ogre into disastrous wars and to amp up its subjugation in its own hemisphere. The Panslavism and foreign policy adventurism in late Tsarist Russia come to mind, but there are many other examples.
Lùcas M retweeted
Des voyageurs attendant leur train de banlieue à #Dnipro, deux jeunes filles de 15 ans à #Tchernihiv… voilà ceux que les drones russes visent et tuent. Cynisme et crimes de guerre.
Lùcas M retweeted
"They killed us."
Russia's renowned newspaper Novaya Gazeta says it is formally shutting down, a day after it was evicted from its longtime Moscow editorial offices. (the paper had pretty much stopped publishing after the invasion of Ukraine)
t.me/novaya_pishet/60821
Lùcas M retweeted
Few thoughts on regional productivity issues in the UK as a precursor for some later thinking on implications for the devolution (and science/innovation/technology) agenda(s).
Data from OECD STAN and where necessary ONS.
First:
Over past decade(ish - various vintages at play here due to lags with ONS and OECD), growth in 'lagging' regions in terms of GVA per worker has been pretty strong, but from a very low bar; leading regions lead, lagging regions lag, even if they're getting better.
Lùcas M retweeted
Re-reading the late, great Loren Graham’s ‘Lonely Ideas’, his history of Russian science and technology.
Am struck by how much this passage anticipated and speaks to something I have been thinking about recently: how the incompatibility of the political economy of technology in Russia with private sector led innovation in the space sector as seen in the US (and increasingly Europe) is creating a structural moat (technological but related my financial) may erode one of the few remaining domains (the other perhaps being nuclear) where the country could claim some geopolitically important leadership.
Lùcas M retweeted
Alternatively, we shouldn’t be looking to periodic ‘fiscal events’ to address long run structural issues in the U.K. economy, and the political incentives embedded into these cycles makes addressing those issues almost impossible.
Lùcas M retweeted
“It was that they could not get a real, live human being to speak to them. Ever. About anything.”
This is why we have to think about whether technology is making us more or less human, not just more or less efficient.
This is such a bleak story about what it's like to try to land a job right now. nytimes.com/interactive/2026…
Lùcas M retweeted
The GRU hacked into Jared Kushner's iPhone. Dutch military intelligence (MIVD) then recruited a GRU spy who gave them access to the hacked phone. What MIVD discovered was that Kushner had access to two bank accounts --one Azerbaijani, the other Israeli --where Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Emirati ruler Mohammed bin Zayed deposited money. It sounds like a slightly far-fetched episode of "Slow Horses," but it's real. And it proves just how eye-poppingly corrupt this administration was and continues to be as its "special envoy" decides the fate of tens of millions in Europe in the Middle East. Simply incredible reporting by Matthew Cole, drawn from his new book on Kushner. vanityfair.com/story/jared-k…
Lùcas M retweeted
NEW: Rosneft deep dive by Bloomberg News
+ Officials at Russia’s largest oil producer are concerned that even a few more months of the war with Ukraine could leave lasting damage across the business.
+ One of Rosneft’s biggest refineries, Ryazan, has been shut for more than half the time since it was first hit by Ukraine in May and has run well below full capacity when operating, according to damage assessments seen by Bloomberg.
+ Another, Syzran, has spent much of the past six months either completely shut or operating at less than a third of capacity, according to data reviewed by Bloomberg. The Tuapse refinery has been offline since April.
+ Ukraine is conducting repeat strikes on the refineries as soon as repairs are completed or nearing completion. The need to repeatedly repair damaged equipment is straining operations and causing costs to pile up to levels that Rosneft officials have privately warned cannot be sustained long-term.
+ Some plants have deliberately slowed repairs as a result, stretching work that should take days into weeks, according to people familiar with the matter.
+ Efforts to protect the facilities with shipping containers, nets and steel cables have proved ineffective against swarms of drones, company plans show.
+ The damage is particularly difficult to repair when strikes hit complex secondary units, whose parts would previously have been sourced from the West. It means relying on Russian-made copies and Chinese imports that can take months to obtain and are not always compatible with existing machinery.
+ It’s put Rosneft into financial trouble. Even before the ramping up of Ukraine’s drone campaign, the company saw a “perfect storm” for its finances. Since then, its profits are down and debt is rising despite what should have been a big windfall from the Iran war.
+ Moscow Credit Bank, which is linked to Rosneft, is showing signs of distress with $8 billion of problem loans. It highlights how both Russia’s energy and banking sectors are coming under strain at the same time, a dynamic causing concern to Russian finance officials.
All this and much more in the full story here: bloomberg.com/news/features/…
Lùcas M retweeted
A horrific Russian strike in the Kharkiv region. A “shahed” struck people directly – in a park near an ordinary café. Pure atrocity. Six people were killed, including children. A little girl was killed in a stroller – her name was Angelina, she was just over a year old, born in August 2025… Her mother’s name was Inna. She died in the hospital… Another girl who was killed was 11 years old. My condolences to their families and loved ones. Another 14 people were injured, including six more children.
I am grateful to everyone who supports Ukraine under these circumstances and helps us shoot down “shaheds,” shoot down missiles, and stop Russian assaults. These are horrific photos, but behind them are shattered lives and the truth about this war. Lives must be protected. Ukraine needs air defense. You can't think about making money with Russia as long as it continues its asinine war. We ask that sanctions on Russia stay in place as long as the killings continue. We ask America to be strong, and we ask it to apply the Lindsey Graham law. We ask Europe to continue its support. We ask that everything possible be done to bring peace and guarantee security. Ukraine wants peace. It is Russia that has insisted on continuing the killing all this time. The world has enough strength to stop the war. That strength must finally be used – against the murderers.
