I mean, I also remember ‘the news’ telling the truth. The question isn’t ‘Does the news always tell the truth?’ (No), but ‘What are the actual facts in this case?’

I could just as easily say it makes most sense that it came from bats which we know carried the virus and were sold at the market. But the criteria here isn’t which of us can put together a sentence that sounds plausible and coherent, but what the people who actually study this stuff say, and they mostly believe that it’s unlikely it came from the lab (different source this time, just to be clear!).

I like a lot of Brazilian music, so I’d pick something Portuguese. ‘Tropicalia’, by Caetano Veloso, ‘Parabolicamara’ by Gilberto Gil, or ‘Tudo Que Voce Podia Ser’, by Milton Nascimento are all fantastic.

No.

This is almost definitely correct.

I do think it leaked from a lab in Wuhan, but not that it was on purpose.

This, however, is possible, but probably false. The consensus among virologists is that the virus crossed to humans at the Wuhan animal market, not the lab. As I say, it’s possible and scientists are still looking into it. We don’t know the exact mechanism by which the virus first infected humans, but the market is more likely.

There’d be a shit ton of heatwaves called Donald. Actually, we should do that: Donald, Donald Jr., Donald III…

Whoa.

Yeah, I still think of it as a spread, mainly, but it has loads of applications.

I don’t have it on me right now, I’m afraid, but it’s in Melissa Thompson’s book Motherland, and possibly online somewhere!

I do this Jamaican-style peanut butter stew, which sounds mad but is delicious.

Agreed. As I said, I’m not defending the police.

what the actual fuck were these officers thinking?

This is a fair question, but it does have an answer: people often lie to the police about being injured in order to try and get out of restraints. It was too dark for the police to see the chest wound. Novak had a visible, but not serious, facial wound, though, and the police seem to have assumed this was the injury he was referring to.

Additionally, in this case, the actual perpetrator’s brother was the one who’d called the police. It is very unusual for a murderer or an accomplice to call the police (my understanding is we still don’t actually know why the killer’s brother did this). The police believed they were attending a one-sided assault. When they arrived, two ‘witnesses’, including the person who’d called the police, pointed out Novak as the ‘perpetrator’, corroborating one another’s stories. The police didn’t realise they were lying until too late.

I am not excusing any of the above. The police routinely treat suspects poorly and that’s what happened here. However, they did have good reason to believe Novak had committed a crime, and that belief had nothing to do with anyone’s race.

I hope she smashes them.

Yeah. Unfortunately it is a long time when you’re bleeding to death. It’s possible he’d have died even with immediate first aid because you really don’t have that long once you’re bleeding from a major artery.

I think this shows the police need to change their practice when it comes to how they treat suspects, though, especially those under restraint.

How long did it take them to realise that he was injured?

He was handcuffed for about one minute before the police began CPR, according to the judge.

A long time

From the sentencing remarks as quoted in the FT:

[Novak] was handcuffed for about a minute before his condition further deteriorated and the arresting officer began CPR.

I wouldn’t jump to assume race is the first thing the police go to.

This is correct: it wasn’t the false racist slur that made the police ignore Novak, it was the fact that the murderer had a witness to back up his line that he was attacked.

Unfortunately, people who are handcuffed often fake injury or distress in order to get the police to free them so that they can then either escape or attack somebody. Tragically, the officers here wrongly believed that’s what Novak was doing. He had a visible minor injury and they assumed that’s what he was referring to, and that such a minor injury wasn’t something for them to worry about. Possibly the police should change their procedures in order to properly medically assess detainees who claim to be injured.

Well, I actually agree with you, but actually the first quote was from The Times and the second quote was from Labour MP David Taylor.

I just thought it was fair to extrapolate that the reasons the government banned him were the same as those who publicly called for the ban, not separate reasons that no one who actually supports the decision has cited.

Isn’t it nicer when we all get along?

I actually agree with Novara that Piker shouldn’t be barred from entering the UK but this headline is very misleading.

The UK government has said the ban is because of his use of ‘“antisemitic tropes, such as the claim that Israel controls America” and comments about grooming gangs he made on Piers Morgan’s YouTube show’ and because of his support of a ‘proscribed terror group’ (i.e., Hamas). Nothing to do with his support of Palestine (I don’t think that Hamas represents Palestinians any more than I think that Putin’s party represents Russians).

Sheep rustling is such an old-school crime. It’s like being a train robber or a highwayman.