A quick summary of why #SriLankaProtests are happening and what caused them to happen.

Wild that the two richest individuals in history are both Africans.

South Korean fans weren’t allowed to take their bottle of tequila beyond the first checkpoint going into the stadium, so they necked the lot of it alongside Mexicans who were there to watch the game. That’s the World Cup spirit we all know and love. 😂❤️

#RadioMoskva The post pax Americana interregnum has started Every empire dies, usually after 100 years. Yesterday, I did a deep dive into the end of the pax Americana that has ruled the world since 1945. It has lasted a little bit less than the previous empires of Portugal, Holland and Britain – 80 years -- but the signs of the US decline are clear, not least America’s failure to win the Iran war. What follows is an interregnum that should last a few decades, and will be marked by increased isolationism, protectionism, the breakdown of international organisations, slower growth and more wars. Two new wars have already started with US President Donald Trump in charge. More could happen. And this end-of-empire moment is not just affecting the US. The pax Americana also includes European dominance in the global set up as Global North partner. The US provides the security umbrella (which is now snapping shut after Trump released the National Security Strategy (NSS) in December) but the shared values with Europe meant a financial and trade dominance that is also breaking down. Flick down our list of top stories today and it’s obvious that the EU is also falling to pieces. The EU’s role in supporting Ukraine has been reduced to the E3, one of which is not even an EU member, from 27 members during the Biden administration. The E3 leaders did finally call for a meeting with the Kremlin yesterday, but, as I predicted, that meeting in Moscow lasted as long as it takes to drink a cup of tea. The three ambassadors from the UK, France and Germany didn’t say much as they came out of the iconic Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs building on Smolenskaya Square, but it seems clear they read out their five-point list of demands and were told to get knotted. The Kremlin’s position on Europe trying to negotiate is that it is an active participant in the war in Ukraine, supplying Kyiv with long-range missiles for use against Russian targets for example, and so disqualified from playing a mediation role. It’s not entirely clear what Europe’s position is. It keeps telling the Kremlin what it “has to do” to end the war, but has no leverage over the Kremlin at all. Brussels’ strategy is little more than to send as much money and weapons as it can to Kyiv and keep piling halfhearted sanctions on Russia in the hope that this will somehow “force” Russian President Vladimir Putin into making concessions. That hasn’t worked so far. Until the EU actually cuts off all imports from Russia – last year Europe imported €60bn worth of goods, about a third of the pre-war levels – the sanctions won’t work. Trouble is without the Russian imports – especially gas – Europe doesn’t work either. The mounting economic pressure on Europe and its failure to make any progress in ending the Ukraine war are leading to bigger and more visible cracks in the EU. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni complained about being excluded from the E3 talks and are proposing an E5 summit in the coming weeks. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas is also under attack after France and Germany floated the idea of a deep reform and stripping her of control over the External Action Service (EEAS), the EU’s diplomatic service. As IntelliNews reported, Kallas is becoming a liabilitythanks to her incompetence and idee fixe focus on trying to destroy Russia at any cost. Stepping back, all this is part and parcel of a classic inter-empire interregnum. As the old order breaks up, the world becomes more multipolar, national interests supersede shared values, politics drifts towards popular nationalism, trade gets disrupted as supply chains breakdown and economic growth slows as the end-of-empire system gets bloated by a combination of corruption and increasingly public spending as the old regime attempts to cling to power. All of that is going on very clearly in the Global North. As for the up-and-coming powers, inter alia the emerging BRICS bloc, they are doing the right thing: keeping their heads down and getting on with the business of building up their economies. Part of the changeover is the rising powers will draw geopolitical red lines and push back at the hegemons on certain issues. That just happened when Chinese President Xi Jinping opened his summit with Trump, drawing a bright red line under Taiwan. His “Thucydides Trap" comment was an explicit threat, a promise that China was prepared to go to war with the US if it interferes in Taiwan. But of course, Beijing is playing a long game with Taiwan and working towards some sort of political reunification that eventually probably rests on a referendum. The reserve currency also usually changes in an interregnum. The pound sterling was the currency of choice during pink globe days of the pax Britannia and made London the financial capital it still is today. De-dollarisation is already well underway as a new interregnum gets going, but it will take a long time for a new global currency to emerge. One of the features of the end-of-empires is that the use of its currency can long outlast the empire itself. Rome's gold aureus coins became the dominant currency throughout the Mediterranean world and its dominant role in trade persisted for centuries after the Roman empire itself disappeared. In the modern era there is a good chance the process will go much faster as the successor currency is likely to be digital – a gold-backed stable coin? Certainly, Global South governments are anticipating something like this and all putting digital versions of their currencies in place. Is the end of the pax Americana a bad thing? It doesn’t really matter. This is history in action and there is little we can do about it. While most of the commentary at the moment concerns the two big wars, there are actually three revolutions going on in parallel which get a lot less attention: the Climate Crisis, Demographic Crisis, and the Technology Revolution. All three are going to have monumental impacts on global societies. We have written about the Climate Crisis extensively, so I won’t go into it here, but the main features are the impact it will have on food security and the mass migrations it will force as large parts of the world become uninhabitable for humans due to wet-bulb effects. The Demographic Crisis is getting a lot less attention but is equally monumental. As IntelliNews reported, the global population has passed a baby-bust peak and every major region in the world, except Africa and Central Asia, is now in population decline. Moreover, we have just passed a tipping point where there are now physically not enough mothers – women of childbearing age – to keep populations stable, even if governments fixed their natal policies to boost fertility rates. More positively, the AI/robot revolution could help with some of these problems. AI could be the equivalent of the invention of stone tools for humanity and the advent of quantum computing, due in the next 5-10 years, should take things to the level of Ian M. Bank’s “Culture” where “Minds” run the world. Equally important, in my book, will be the mass deployment of robotswhich is already happening. This solves the manpower problem caused by the Demographic Crisis and will have who-knows-what impact on human societies. Issac Asimov would be lovin’ this. With the size of these changes already on the doorstep, it kind of makes sense that an empire built on the foundations of the world in the 1940s should fade away to be replaced by something else. This article originally appeared in Editor’s Picks, a free daily email digest of bne IntelliNews’ best stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up for free here. to989.infusionsoft.com/app/f… open.substack.com/pub/bneedi…

Smoking at the bar, £1.50 beer, the Gossip on the stereo. It’s still 2007 in Bosnia.

The World Cup might mark an all time record chasm between (negative) global views of the US and its power realities. Cooking AI gods in SF. Meanwhile ICE thugs and arbitrary entry refusals at the borders, absurd prices, and the glories of America's mass transit systems.

Robert Capa: "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."

Anyone in the uk who’s a German beer fan have a look in a big Sainsbury’s, they’ve got some of the best lagers from Germany

To remind: - Uk has just eased sanctions on russian oil afraid of supply short fall I autumn - Eu & esp France is buying every drop of russian lng it can ditto - hungry & Slovakia just turned russian imports of oil & gas back on after Magyar victory & “return to EU fold” - US has eased oil sanctions on russian oil ditto - none of BRICS are on board with sanctions on Russia which has switched its exports to Asia successfully. - europe is slipping into recession due to energy & commodity prices up x2

I’ve just run the ENTIRE Arsenal trophy parade route so you don’t have to guess where the best spots are 😂🔴⚪️ And first things first - it’s definitely closer to 10km than 9km. strava.com/activities/186952… (#ukrunchat) The whole area is already buzzing. Genuinely one of the most joyful vibes I’ve ever experienced around the Emirates. A thread on parade tips 🧵

well yeah that's the universal human need to go "cows!" when you drive by

They got me. They blocked me from doing too many posts and quote tweets per day without being verified- So it was stopping me from promoting. Only allowing me to retweet. So now I'm temporarily verified. I Love Boosters is in theaters now!

Boots Riley promoting I Love Boosters actually feels like the old Twitter in the sense of artists/celebrities connecting directly with the audience before y’all bullied them off this app with stan twitter nonsense and parasocial attitudes

Fire at Ibis Hotel in Malaga. It took the local firemen ages (more than a day) to bring it under control. The fire kept re-igniting and to my totally untrained eyes, there just weren’t enough fire-engines on the scene.

NEW: 🇮🇱🇱🇧 Hezbollah releases videos of a huge quantity of Israeli equipment destroyed in just 3 days with FPV drones

The movies that are doing better than I Love Boosters this weekend have anywhere from 40% to 250% more screens than we have. That's not ALL it is- we still have awareness to build thru word of mouth & it's HAPPENING- thank u everyone 4 doing that! Drive 2 a screen if u have to!

(Amanda) I want to ask you a favour today - if you live in the UK would you please sign this? It's called a 'petition' and even though I don't understand what it is, I know it's important. Maybe you could tell other humans about it and ask them to sign it too. I'll tell you more about the special August thing tomorrow. Here's the petition - petition.parliament.uk/petit…

Boots Riley believes his new movie, ‘I Love Boosters,’ in theaters today, is his best work yet. Each of his previous projects, ‘Sorry to Bother You’ and ‘I'm a Virgo,’ chronicles a character’s awakening to their exploitation by powerful global forces — and the freedom they find through collective struggle. ‘I Love Boosters,’ about a crew of Bay Area retail thieves subsisting on the margins of the fashion industry, capitalism, and at times reality itself, fits squarely within that tradition. But it’s also because Riley spent more than three decades sharpening his artistic and political point of view before going pro as a filmmaker. In the early 1980s, he was a teenage communist organizing farmworkers in California’s Central Valley and he rose to prominence in the 1990s as part of the left-wing rap group the Coup. In spite of these heady inputs, Riley’s work rarely feels didactic, in part because it is as rich with eye-popping visuals and off-kilter jokes as it is with politics. “No matter how didactic they say my stuff is, let them accuse it of not being fun,” Riley says. Read Zak Cheney-Rice’s full interview with Riley: nymag.visitlink.me/WiZwWg

"How Boots Riley and Don Cheadle Stole Blockbuster Season" In GQ I Love Boosters is in theaters this Friday, May 22nd.

It’s the official Botswana govt Twitter account. The power of the English Premier League (and Arsenal) to affect entire countries is quite something to see in action.

今日はイアン・カーティスの命日かつブルーマンデーなのでJoy DivisionとNew Orderを聴く江戸庶民