Amid all these attacks, it may go unnoticed that Kyiv hosted a literary festival with 27,000 visitors. But it speaks volumes about us. I wrote about what I took from it in my new members’ letter: patreon.com/posts/159802715

Russia is now threatening other nearby countries far more openly than before. Every neighbor of Russia heard what was said about Armenia, whose people are the only ones who have the right to decide and will choose the future of their country. What Russia says about Armenia is, in truth, not about Armenia alone. No one can be left without support – Europe has no right to lose any of its peoples, to leave any country behind. Armenia must be supported. Moldova must be supported. The Baltic states. Azerbaijan must be supported. We must find ways to support the people of Georgia as well – and this is a shared European task. No one can be lost.

Our CEO Becky Wood hosted a #UKREiiF session on the #Infrastructure Pipeline and how it's providing more certainty and clarity to aid sector planning - thanks to @BuildUK's Suzannah Nichol, GPA CEO Mark Bourgeois and @CabinetofficeUK Mark Chivers for their valuable perspectives

This is WILD! MIT just solved one of the hardest unsolved problems in robotics (Save this). For decades, the fundamental problem with soft robots and wearable exoskeletons has not been compute or AI, it has been actuation. The moment you try to give a soft robot meaningful strength, you run into the same wall every engineer has hit since the field began, fluid-driven systems require external pumps, hydraulic reservoirs, and heavy infrastructure that makes the entire thing impractical to wear or embed into fabric. MIT's new Electrofluidic Fiber Muscles solve that problem by eliminating external infrastructure entirely. The key insight is electrohydrodynamic pumping using electric fields to generate pressure directly from electricity, with no moving parts, no motors, and no external fluid reservoir. The fibers are less than 2 millimeters thick, can be woven into fabric like ordinary textile, and operate in complete silence because nothing physically moves inside them, it is just ions propelling fluid through a closed circuit. The performance numbers published in Science Robotics are not conceptual, they are empirical results from actual hardware. These fibers achieve a power density of 50 watts per kilogram, matching skeletal muscle, with a contraction strain of 20% and a response time of 0.3 seconds. A single bundled configuration lifted 4 kilograms, 200 times its own weight while a separate configuration drove a robotic arm through a 40-degree bend compliant enough to safely complete a human handshake. Another configuration launched objects in under 100 milliseconds, which is faster than a human flinch reflex. The design mirrors biological muscle architecture in a way that prior artificial muscle approaches never achieved. The fibers are organized into antagonistic pairs, one contracts while the other extends, exactly like biceps and triceps and because the system runs in a closed loop, the relaxing fiber serves as the fluid reservoir for the contracting one, which is what allows the whole system to operate untethered with no external tank. The applications are not hypothetical but rather are the exact use cases the industry has been waiting years for the hardware to catch up to. Exoskeletons for physical labor, prosthetic limbs that move with the natural compliance of biological tissue, assistive garments for patients with motor disorders, and soft robots capable of safe physical contact with humans are all immediately unlocked by a muscle technology that is silent, lightweight, and weavable into clothing. The deeper significance is what this technology does when it meets the AI robotics wave that is already underway. Every major humanoid robot program, Figure, 1X, Boston Dynamics, Tesla Optimus is currently bottlenecked by the same hardware limitations these fibers address, actuators that are too rigid, too loud, too heavy, or too dependent on infrastructure to operate naturally alongside humans. Electrofluidic fiber muscles do not just solve a materials science problem but rather they remove one of the last physical barriers between robots that live in labs and robots that live in the world.

🚨MAJOR BREAKING: Donald Trump has arrived in China to find that President XI did NOT greet him at the airport. MAGA is in spin mode heralding the “red carpet treatment,” but the visit is already at a rocky start. Instead of a presidential welcome, Trump was greeted by US Ambassador to China David Perdue; Xi’s vice president, Han Zheng; China’s Ambassador to Washington Xie Feng; and Executive Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Ma Zhaoxu. I’m sure Trump would hate if you shared this and rubbed it in all day long.

APPLEBAUM: Russia's war in Ukraine is sometimes described, including recently by American Vice President, as if it were nothing more than territorial dispute, kind of scuffle over lines on map. But when Russia denies that Ukraine is a real nation, builds concentration camps on Ukrainian territory, bans Ukrainian language and systematically arrests mayors, teachers, journalists, and priests, then Russia is also attacking Europe that was built after 1945, Europe whose borders are not supposed to be changed by force. Russia invaded Ukraine not only to destroy Ukraine but also to prove that treaties are meaningless, alliances are weak, and brute force still decides fate of nations. By waging imperial war of conquest, Russia seeks to undermine Europe's post-imperial order.

Webinar for your diaries: 28 May, Digital Planning Directory Online Show and Tell - How digital tools and data can support local authorities and practitioners to meet this challenge in practice. bit.ly/4uFJpDs

Most people know what a cyberattack is. But what about EMP? An electromagnetic pulse can disrupt electronics, communications, and critical infrastructure in ways most organizations are not prepared to imagine. That is exactly why we are hosting our upcoming webinar "EMP: An Evolving Threat to Critical Infrastructure" We will break down what EMP is, why it matters, and what practical resilience tools can help leaders prepare, including a live EMP event simulation through the Ginom multi-sector crisis management platform. Free webinar | Wednesday, May 20 |11:00 AM EST Register below!

The British media is doing everything it can to make this mendacious, corrupt, incompetent, lazy, security risk the PM. Ask yourselves why? Why do they want that so badly, who benefits? It's not going to be the British people. Follow the money, always follow the money.

Aston University secures £5.7m of funding to transform construction with carbon-storing, self-monitoring concrete aston.ac.uk/latest-news/asto…

Hypothetical question: If a President of the USA is a secret Russian asset, what would he do to help Russia? ChatGPT: Interesting thought experiment—and a useful way to think about incentives and power. If someone in that position were secretly acting in another country’s interest, the key wouldn’t be dramatic, obvious betrayals. It would be subtle, deniable, and cumulative. First, they’d likely undermine alliances quietly. The United States’ biggest strategic advantage is its network—especially NATO. So instead of openly pulling out, they might question its value, delay commitments, create distrust among members, or signal unreliability. Even small cracks weaken collective defense. Second, they could shift foreign policy in ways that benefit Russia without looking extreme. That might mean softening sanctions, slowing military aid to countries Russia opposes (like Ukraine), or reframing conflicts to reduce U.S. involvement. None of that needs to look like “helping Russia”—just “putting America first.” Third, damage internal cohesion. A divided country is less effective abroad. Amplifying polarization, discrediting institutions (courts, elections, intelligence agencies), or constantly creating internal crises reduces the ability of the U.S. to act strategically. That’s something adversaries historically benefit from. Fourth, reshape leadership and bureaucracy. Appointing people who are inexperienced, loyal over competent, or sympathetic to certain narratives can gradually shift how decisions are made. Over time, that changes policy outcomes without needing explicit orders. Fifth, control the narrative. Public opinion matters in democracies. Repeating talking points that align with Russian interests—questioning support for allies, portraying adversaries of Russia as corrupt or unworthy—can steer public sentiment in a favorable direction. Finally, they’d avoid anything blatantly illegal or provable. The whole strategy would depend on plausible deniability. If it’s obvious, it fails. The big picture: influence at that level isn’t about one shocking act—it’s about slowly tilting the system so that, over time, outcomes consistently benefit the other side.

He painted her for three months — stopping every time the sirens came, starting again every time the sky cleared. Artist Oleksandr Korban created the mural "Вільна" ("Free") on a wall in Kyiv's DVRZ district. No projector. No tracing. Straight onto the surface, freehand. Dozens of air alert interruptions. The girl has no name — she is, the artist says, every Ukrainian woman who waits, hopes, and believes. That's not just paint on a wall. That's what staying looks like.

Government opens Structures Fund to improve ageing infrastructure acenet.co.uk/news/infrastruc… E-news 22 April 2026

JD Vance is lecturing the Pope on Catholicism and Pierre Poilievre is lecturing Mark Carney on economics and RFK Jr is lecturing scientists about vaccines and Donald Trump is lecturing the world on tariffs and Pete Hegseth is quoting Pulp Fiction and thinking it’s the Bible

The Artemis crew with President Biden, whose administration planned the mission. In case the felon tries to take credit.

🇺🇦 Bravo! Zelensky just dropped a cold warning straight to the American people: “I want American people to understand: we are your allies in Europe. World has no distance anymore — when drones already strike thousands of kilometers. One, two, three years — drones will strike ten, twenty thousand kilometers. With reactive engines, they will be very cheap. There will be swarms of these drones. You can’t defend that by yourself. The world has to help countries defend themselves and push the aggressor back. That’s why, i think, Americans need us, and we need the United States.” Who’s listening?

An @DAFNIfacility webinar for your diary. Professor Richard Kingston introduces the NERC Digital Solutions Hub platform and demonstrates how emerging tools can help link environmental, infrastructure, and socio-economic datasets. bit.ly/41kbQdC

Trump’s Iran adventure was never just about Iran. Obviously. Anyone with half a functioning brain stem and access to a newspaper could see there was a larger game being played. Every bumbling escalation, every petulant exclusion of allies, every three-AM tweet that made foreign ministries across Europe spill their morning coffee, all of it was feeding something bigger. The systematic dismantling of the alliance Russia has wanted gone since 1949. And the truly staggering part is that people were surprised. Here is what any serious observer has understood for years: Trump was never pursuing American interests. He was pursuing an agenda that happens to align, with almost comedic consistency, with whatever Vladimir Putin needed that particular week. Whether by design, devotion, or sheer breathtaking incompetence, the result was identical. Every crisis became an opportunity. Every moment of international tension became a fresh occasion to sideline NATO allies, undermine collective defence, and remind Moscow that its most valuable asset was still very much on the job. Europe, to its considerable credit, worked this out early. Embarrassingly early, actually, for Washington. Defence procurement orders worth hundreds of billions, the kind of contracts that American military industry considered theirs by divine right, are being quietly redirected. To European manufacturers. To domestic supply chains. To partners who will answer the phone next year regardless of who won which primary. And here is the part that should really sting: in several critical areas, Europe is not catching up. Europe is ahead. Air defence integration, drone warfare capacity, artillery production, battlefield intelligence systems. There are domains where the assumption that American hardware is automatically the best option is no longer just questionable. It is laughable. Trump is running out of time. The clock is visible to everyone except apparently him. But the damage is structural now, and structural damage does not wait for election cycles. Russia never needed to destroy NATO. It just needed one man, one term, and enough Americans willing to look the other way. The rest of us have moved on. Quite profitably, as it happens. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

The Digital Task Force for Planning has launched the first Digital Planning Education and Training Listing, a major new resource on the Digital Planning Directory ukcric.com/news/first-nation…