Convenience Big Store: Let’s not forget how dangerous Trump could be

6 October, 2023

In the headlines

Keir Starmer says Labour "blew the doors off" with its landslide win in yesterday's Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election. Scottish Labour candidate Michael Shanks took 58.5% to the SNP's 27.6%, a 20.4% swing since 2019. "Whisper it," says Politico, "but some are now wondering aloud if Labour can regain the primacy over the SNP it lost so disastrously in 2015." Taylor Swift's forthcoming movie has become a blockbuster a week before anyone has even seen it. Taylor Swift: Eras Tour, which will be released next Friday, has racked up $100m in advance ticket sales, meaning it is already the most profitable concert film in history. A giant albino rat and a baby otter (below) sparked panic on board a flight from Bangkok to Taiwan after escaping from a passenger's hand luggage in mid-air. When the plane landed in Taipei, officials found "28 star turtles, one marmot, two otters and two other as-yet-unidentified rodents".

Comment

Farage posing for a selfie at the Tory conference. Oli Scarff/Getty

Nigel Farage: haunting the Tories once again

This year's Conservative Party conference has been "widely described as a wake", says Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman. It was certainly "full of ghosts". Theresa May was there, decrying the watering down of the ambitious net zero targets that her government passed into law. Liz Truss led a rally in support of the tax cuts and pro-growth reforms she tried to implement during her short stint as PM. But one figure from the recent political past appeared "resurrected and stronger than ever": Nigel Farage.

Once again, the former Ukip leader seems to be the most influential person shaping Britain's conservative politics, "above even the Prime Minister". He was at the conference in his capacity as a GB News presenter, not a politician – he hasn't been affiliated with the Conservative Party for more than 30 years. Yet he was one of the "star attractions" – and not just when he was singing and dancing to Can't Take My Eyes Off You with Priti Patel. You can see why. When Farage first reported on the migration crisis from the English Channel in 2021, he was "widely ridiculed"; today, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have "vowed to take action". And it was Farage who last year demanded the rethink on net zero that Sunak is now enacting. He has hinted that he could become more involved in the Conservative Party, and I've even heard it "wistfully suggested he should be the next Tory leader". If that proves too outlandish, he will certainly play a crucial role in deciding Sunak's successor. Never king, perhaps, but without doubt the kingmaker.

Photography

The Melting Giants is a sombre collection charting the short life of icebergs. These "magnificent creatures" are born in Greenland, says photographer Cole Thompson in Peta Pixel, then spend a year "wandering the seas". Eventually, on the coast of Newfoundland, they "run aground, rock in the surf, and melt on the shore as 30,000-year-old ice cubes". See the rest here.

Noted

Merriam-Webster has added a bumper crop of 690 new words and terms to its dictionary this year, including "thirst trap" (an attempt to gain attention online by posting sexy pics); "doomscrolling" (spending excessive time trawling gloomy news sites); "jorts" (jean shorts); "rizz" (charisma); and "zhuzh" (a "small improvement" that completes the overall taste or look of something). If done right, the "zhuzh" might even warrant that well-known gesture of "satisfaction or approval" which has also made its way into this year's edition: "chef's kiss".

Enjoying The Knowledge? Click below to share

Share on Whatsapp

Share via email

Gone viral

The new Netflix documentary about David Beckham is enjoying rave reviews, but one moment in particular has been picked up online. Describing the early days of their romance, Victoria Beckham explains that part of the attraction was that she and David were both "very working class". At which point David pops his head through the door and asks her repeatedly what car her father drove her to school in, not stopping until he gets his answer (above). Watch the full clip here.

Comment

Let's not forget how dangerous Trump could be

Here are a few of the things Donald Trump has said in the past few days, says Brian Klaas on Substack. He pledged to get tough on crime by shooting people for minor offences like shoplifting. He joked about the vicious hammer attack last year on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul. He suggested that Mark Milley, the outgoing head of America's military, deserved to be executed for calling China to reassure them after the January 6 insurrection. This, remember, is a former president of the US, and in all likelihood its next president too. Yet such is America's numbness to Trump's authoritarian urges, the media response to all three stories was, effectively, "crickets".

Many on the left argue this is a good thing. "Don't amplify him!" they say. "You're just spreading his message!" But that approach is self-defeating. Most Americans – and in particular the swing voters who'll decide next year's election – don't think about politics at all in their daily lives. They see Trump as a "rough-around-the-edges" guy, but they've largely forgotten all that "horrible stuff" he said and did back when the newspapers still bothered reporting on it. In contrast, all they ever see about Joe Biden is how old and senile he is. "We've lost all sense of scale and perspective." Trump's authoritarian rhetoric places him "far outside the bounds of acceptable democratic politics". The least the media could do is tell people about it.

Inside politics

After Osama bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seals in 2011, says The Washington Post, millions of people saw the famous photo of President Obama and his aides tensely watching the raid. He was much more relaxed once the job was done. A recently filed freedom of information request has uncovered another picture, taken a day later, showing the president laughing at a printed-out meme of himself. Referring to the conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya, the meme reads: "Sorry it took so long to get you a copy of my birth certificate. I was too busy killing Osama bin Laden."

Nature

Mooooooooooo. Milan Zygmunt/Getty

The elusive African dwarf crocodile has a surprising way of communicating, says New Scientist: mooing. Boffins from a Polish university recorded 97 sounds from a pair of the "big-eyed", "tiny-bodied" reptiles at Bristol Zoo. As well as "drums", "rumbles" and "gusts" – sounds unlike anything produced by other members of the crocodile family – the creatures were recorded making a noise "uncannily reminiscent of a cow".

Snapshot

Snapshot answer

It's a sticker – an emoji-like cartoon – of Karl Marx with large breasts, as imagined by Facebook Messenger's new inbuilt AI. Other user-created examples of the feature, where you can type whatever you want to create your own sticker, include a pregnant Shrek, Donald Trump smooching Vladimir Putin, and a nude Justin Trudeau. As one user on X (formerly Twitter) put it: "We really do live in the stupidest future imaginable."

Quoted

"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."