Democracy, eh?

That's from Parliament's petition page.

Laughter, lies and the War

1. Economists should try to make us laugh ...

2. ... after all, "Laughter is the ultimate psychosomatic symptom", says an interesting article here.

3. Why Trump's people lie.

4. Why do we keep mentioning the War? In summary: in England we love to talk about "the War", i.e. that entertaining/depressing/glorious construct we see in war films, 'Allo 'Allo, Fawlty Towers and so on. It's an endlessly charming little topic, full of dastardly Nazis (aka "Germans"), plucky "Brits" and a host of other entertaining characters who go by names such as "French", "Americans" and so on. Unfortunately, we use a set of very similar words to describe a real historical event and real people who live in real countries. That means that sometimes people get confused about whether we're talking about the sort of "German" who might say "vor you, Tommy, ze vor is ofer" or the real sort of German who might say "we would welcome a constructive negotiation about economic policy". You can see how people might get offended. Probably best to be more careful.

5. Don't let's forget the real War either. E.g., Eichmann, very interestingly discussed here (which includes this: "when a Nazi named “Baron von Killinger” is horrified by your brutality, it’s time to take a step back and evaluate whether you may have crossed a line").

That Brexit case (2)

The Court's own summary of the judgment is here. I told you so here.

My "probably" was a good indication that it would not be all one way, although I should confess that I only correctly guessed one of the dissenters.

A new Trump reader

1. Why a philosopher voted for Trump.

2. Resistance to Trump? Or just opposition? Why Trump is in great shape for 2020 (a tweetstorm) and advice for the Loyal Opposition to Trump.

3. Trump might be right; you might be wrong.

4. The media cannot think properly about Trump, but FiveThirtyEight might be able to.

5. What the King of Hawaii can teach us about Trump.

Why villains are British

... explained (to some extent) here, also telling us that Americans like a Brummie accent.

When Britain hacked the US election

It was in 1940. It seems to have been successful. Extraordinary and fascinating story.

Streep v Trump: the Spectator weighs in

Charles Moore here. Perhaps Trump wasn't being as mean as Streep thought.