‘Tesla Takedown’ protesters gather outside showrooms to rally against Elon Musk’s role with DOGE: Musk lost $52 billion due to the plummeting price of Tesla stock last month.

Never Forgive Them: A long and eviscerating read from Ed Zitron on how and why the tech industry is making our lives substantially worse than they need to be - basically their incentives are no longer aligned with us, their users.

Elon Musk’s Big Government Grift: An article from 2020 on Musk’s mission ‘to get unimaginably rich by maximally gaming the government’s largesse…taking advantage of programs meant to help people who earn in a lifetime what he earns every minute.’

Elon Musk’s growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies: Old news, but let’s remember Musk’s success is at least partly down to government largesse.

More Than 800K Have Lost $2B on Trump’s Meme Coin: He, of course, profited vociferously.

The Guardian view on development’s paradox: the rich benefit more than the poor: ‘Developing countries struggle to break out of a trading and financial system skewed against them because the global north’s economic growth still depends on extracting their resources and labour’

Revealed: 1.5m children in England studying in unfit school buildings: Years of insufficient budgets mean that buildings used for services like education, health and justice in the UK are literally crumbling.

£100m spent in England on failed efforts to block children’s Send support: Only 1.2% of council’s decisions to refuse to provide special educational funding for children are supported by courts when appealed.

Welcome to Britain’s Victorian Christmas, where volunteers in Santa hats fulfil the basic functions of the state: A decent country would not rely on the whims of charitable donations to meet the basic human needs of its population.

Starmer urged to change donation rules amid talk of Musk bankrolling Reform: Yep, it’s probably not a great idea to allow foreign billionaires to make huge donations to UK political parties by having their companies do it.

Vatican ‘on the brink of Bankruptcy’ due to dramatic decline in global donations under Pope Francis' Leadership: Even the Pope isn’t immune to worldly financial crises.

Retrospective, financial: ‘We long for the security that money brings, but to get it we must sacrifice what’s worth securing: our health, our relationships, our creativity.’

This is My Most Expensive Habit: Anxiety.

AI’s Walking Dog: ‘AI itself has much to offer, but it has not lived up to its potential to serve the public good, and the context of AI’s development explains why’

One million elderly people skipping meals as costs bite: Neither eating or heating is affordable for some.

More than one in three children in poverty as UK deprivation hits record high: Along with a quarter of adults.

To turn Britain around, we need a proper understanding of life for poorer workers: Plagued by ill health and the cost of living crisis.