Likes = bookmarks, RT not necessarily endorsement, views my own. Do some cycling. Involved in cloud/hosting/infrastructure/telecoms
North West, England
Joined February 2010
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James Smith retweeted
Well said. If this fails to resonate with the voting population in 2029 the country is beyond saving. You need the majority of people to understand this otherwise you are going to the third world.
If 2029 is about radically reducing the tax burden and setting up the country for entrepreneurs and investment, I’m out.
😂
Zelensky responded with a smile when a Sky News journalist asked whether Trump was trying to make him a “scapegoat” for his own problems, including low ratings, high diesel prices and the course of the war in the Middle East. The Ukrainian president initially remained silent, then smiled and replied: “That is my answer.” #Ukraine
James Smith retweeted
NEW: How the push to ban data centre construction in Britain is based on sloppy research.
One paper widely cited in the media and by the Green Party contains multiple howlers:
- It claims that a single data centre will be responsible for 8% of the East of England's water shortfall. This is wrong by a factor of almost 100.
- It suggests data centres are to blame for England's predicted 5bn litre daily water shortfall. Yet under the most water-hungry assumptions, new data centres would account for less than 3% of it. Under more realistic assumptions, it's just 0.5%.
- It compares global AI water withdrawals with British household water consumption. But these are completely different things. Most withdrawn water is returned to its source. The comparison exaggerates AI's water footprint by around ten times.
- It repeatedly uses worst-case estimates of data centre water consumption, ignoring that many data centres use little or no water for cooling. One of its sources is literally titled Overestimating AI's water footprint.
The real cause of Britain's water shortages isn't data centres. It's our failure to build reservoirs.
samdumitriu.com/p/will-data-…
James Smith retweeted
Reuters reports that "The person close to the Kremlin said putin will only return to the table when 'he gets the remaining 11% of Donbas, which he can present domestically as victory.'"
Hahahahah.
So putin gets as the gift the territory he couldn't conquer in almost 13 years, only to return to the negotiating table and announce that Ukraine has violated something, something, and russia that desperately wants peace is therefore forced to continue the war.
Fox News will immediately report that Ukraine killed another million russian children overnight.
These talks are nonsense. The negotiators understand neither peace negotiations nor international relations. And in almost two years, the US has done nothing — NOTHING — to strengthen Ukraine and put real pressure on russia.
Flattering putin isn't bringing peace any closer.
Unless, of course, we're now calling beautiful business and real estate deals "peace."
And our skepticism is only reinforced by the Budapest Memorandum. Thirty years ago, the US helped russia pressure Ukraine into giving up its nuclear weapons. Today, America apparently feels no obligation to protect the sovereignty it promised to respect. Instead, it applies coercion towards Ukraine, directly violating that Memorandum. But who cares, right?
And now they're trying to make us surrender Donbas, only to blame Ukraine once again when russia inevitably violates the deal.
We've seen this movie before. No thanks.
James Smith retweeted
Ex-Ukraine's FM Kuleba: Europe’s political culture is built around win-win deals. Putin’s is not.
For him, the world is win-lose: someone has to win and someone has to lose. Europe keeps looking at him through its own lens as if he thinks the same way. 1/
Car dilemma…
Keep my Golf R Estate: 10 years old in December, owned from new, fully paid for, still brilliant to drive but ~£2.6k/yr in fuel, tax, servicing & MOT, no warranty and increasing repair risk.
OR sell it for ~£10.6k (webuyanycar latest) and lease a new Tesla Model 3 LR AWD (faster 0-60 than Golf):
£329/month
9 months upfront
24 months
~£350/yr running costs
Keep the Golf or get the Tesla? 👇
James Smith retweeted
So this deal is largely Potemkin, but the damage is obvious: the US will give something for nothing to get realignment with Russia and of course — in the long run — to line the pockets of Trump’s friends and family. Let’s assume, based on initial reporting, that Ukraine continues deep strikes with European assistance and even escalates now. Russian refineries burn. Moscow says they can’t satisfy the demands of the deal (which they couldn’t do anyway) because of those deep strikes. Whom do you think Trump will blame when his Potemkin bargain is shown to be just that? The hucksters in Moscow and Miami who sold it to him, or the country he’s sold out? Even in the deal’s inevitable implosion, Russia snags a big strategic victory. I’m guessing they factored that into their design.
There shouldn't be any government grant (i.e. taxpayers money) for any EV. Let the market decide and manufactures compete for the business. Btw, I am pro EV...
James Smith retweeted
I do not have the honour of being a Jew
But I am a Zionist.
After what the Green Party have done, I just wanted to be very clear.
James Smith retweeted
You: Britain doesn’t build enough infrastructure because our politics is too short-termist.
*appoints professional Long-Term Thinker*
Long-Term Thinker: Don’t build roads because they’ll destroy the planet.
'No jobs on a dead planet' - former commissioner defends helping scrap M4 relief road bbc.in/4jl7Kfx
James Smith retweeted
The loathsome Carlson knows precisely what he is doing here. He is attempting to delegitimise the entire post-war settlement and, with it, the historical foundations of the liberal international order and the strategic cohesion of the West. He is playing with fire and advancing a deeply dangerous form of historical revisionism. All this does is to serve the interests of China and Russia.
Not since the Cold War have those who believe in the moral legitimacy of the West faced such challenges from within and without. The Far Left, Far Right, Islamists and the green movement are all, in very different ways, seeking to deconstruct the sources of Western power.
Neoconservative psychopath and self described Catholic Jacob Rees-Mogg tries to justify incinerating Japanese women and children with nuclear bombs by invoking St. Thomas Aquinas’s just war theory.
Hey @Jacob_Rees_Mogg, what do you think @Pontifex would say about that?
James Smith retweeted
Putin is not a Russian anomaly. His regime is rooted in deeper structures of Russian imperialism, authoritarianism, political culture and state-society relations.
The sooner the West recognizes this, the better positioned we will be to counter the Russian threat.
James Smith retweeted
Tucker Carlson worked aggressively behind the scenes during the transition to sow discord and undermine confidence in my dad, Keith Kellogg, as the lead envoy to end the war. It is abundantly clear watching his interview with Jacob Rees-Moggs (who crushed Carlson) why he did so.
In this one hour interview Carlson repeatedly pushes one overarching proposition: that defending other sovereign states against aggression is itself irrational, dangerous, and contrary to the national interest.
Carlson argues that resisting Hitler ultimately wasn’t worth Britain’s sacrifice, and if that’s the bar then virtually no contemporary European security threat could ever clear the threshold.
So he isn’t simply lowering the threshold for non-intervention. He’s raising the threshold for resistance beyond reach.
These are his core arguments:
1. America’s allies aren’t worth defending.
2. Ukraine isn’t really sovereign.
3. NATO creates rather than deters wars.
4. Military strength causes escalation.
5. Western governments are a greater threat than hostile foreign powers.
Resistance merely gets ordinary people killed.
6. The wars we thought were morally unambiguous weren’t worth fighting.
Carlson wants the West dumb, defenseless, and deterred. This is death of civilization stuff.
