Oliver Rivers

@maxrothbarth.bsky.social

1001 Followers 719 Following

COO at OCCRP. Usual disclaimers about whose these opinions are (mine) apply in the usual (obvious) way. Aspiring cat owner. Corruption, investigative journalism, art, classical music, not necessarily in that order.

Markets 24/7 For all its promises, blockchain technology creates risks for the global financial system. As more processes become more automated, operational problems can arise. European Central Bank officials have said that programming assets and automatically executing actions "may increase the possibility of events spreading across platforms and increasing systemic risk". For example, automating margin calls, when investors need to stump up extra money to back their trades, can pose issues.
Tim Nice But Dim
NYTimes Spelling Bee thinks “gimp” is unacceptable. Boo.
Lucian Freud lies on a plinth in his studio adopting the shape of one of Henry Moore’s reclining forms. Both his legs are off the ground, it can’t have been an easy pose to hold.
David Sacks is the worst person you know but he just made a great point.
Poster image for Murder on the Orient Express.
michaeldsellers.substack.com In a nutshell, the new reporting is that a major reshuffle may be underway inside the Russian security establishment: longtime FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov would move to run the Security Council; his first deputy, Sergei Korolev, would take over the FSB; Sergei Shoigu would be removed and possibly arrested; and Vladimir Putin would be pushed into retirement as power shifts toward a group associated with former Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev.
A group of people standing on a roadside, watching the funeral procession. A grief-struck woman looks straight at the picture-taker, and therefore at the viewer.
One relates to a £1m donation made to Britain Means Business, a fundraising organisation for Reform UK, before the last general election. Half of the £1m was then transferred by Tice, as director of the company, to Reform UK. Renamed from Leave Means Leave, Britain Means Business is a company that is used to help fund Reform. The E1m seemingly came from the aristocrat and Reform UK donor Fiona Cottrell. In this instance, the Guardian understands bank staff were not satisfied that the funds had ultimately come from her. The NCA has sought help from a foreign partner agency to trace the original source of the funds.
Post on Marginal Revolution from 2.37pm on 4 July: Why we love this country by Tyler Cowen July 4, 2026 at 2:37 pm in Current Affairs, History A Free Press feature for the 250th, here is my entry: Iyler Cowen can't decide, so he picks about 20 things instead. My favorite thing about America is that I do not have a single favorite thing. We have the NBA (with a Toronto team too), the world's best AI models, Alexander Calder sculptures, a few wonderful R.E.M. albums, southern Utah, the world's best Constitution, lots of air-conditioning, sausage in southwest Louisiana, the infield fly rule in baseball, Winslow Homer, Sioux Plains drawings and Navajo blankets, the music of Chuck Berry and Brian Wilson, cheeseburgers, deep capital markets, the world's best universities, the Museum of Modern Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee, lots of big airports, the north rim of the Grand Canyon, red cardinals and blue jays, about two dozen cities and towns named Paris, self-driving vehicles, not just one but two Dakotas, three branches of government (I hope not four), and the best set of immigrants in the world. And that is just scratching the surface. The other contributors are notable as expected.
The arm wrestling meme: NIGEL FARAGE arm wrestling JOSH SIMONS Text “why does The Times hate me?”
In Fellatio, Masochism, Politics and Love (2000), for example, he argued that masochistic impulses in world leaders influenced political decision-making, and suggested that the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown was partly based on repressed homosexual attraction. His younger brother Dannie Abse (I923-2014) was a renowned poet.
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FINANCIAL TIMES SpaceX was among the worst performers in the high-grade bond market on Friday, MarketAxess data shows. The sell-off means the company's bonds are trading at levels closer to those of junk-rated borrowers, despite the group's investment-grade status from major rating agencies. SpaceX paid a higher borrowing cost than similarly rated companies during its bond sale on Tuesday.
Hot guy with ripped shirt has something to do with Parsifal, apparently.
Your Results 72% Woke 28% Chud 50% 50% Neo- Techbro Luddite 63% 37% Hopepilled Doomer 81% Davos 19% Dubai YOUR CLOSEST MATCH: Pope Leo XIV
Highlighted extract from story: Andjoua became Director General of Competition, Consumer Affairs, and Fraud Control under the transitional government - but was reportedly dismissed in September 2025 following public criticism that he was trying to manage the department remotely from Dubai.
It was a beautiful back. The skin was a very light uniform café au lait with the sheen of dull satin. The gentle curve of the backbone was deeply indented, suggesting more powerful muscles than is usual in a woman, and the behind was almost as firm and rounded as a boy's. The legs were straight and beautiful and no pinkness showed under the slightly lifted left heel. She was not a coloured girl.
Excellent pun: “Back then, the radio comedian Fred Allen joked, television was called 'a medium because anything well done is rare'.”
David Hockney’s painting “We Two Boys Together Clinging”.
Your closest counterpart The Maskil c. 1770–1800 · Berlin & Königsberg · reason and enlightenment Mendelssohn, the Jerusalem You live in two worlds at once—the tradition you were raised in and the age of reason around it—and you mean to bring them together. Faith and philosophy needn’t quarrel. The old learning can open to science and the wider world, the law can be sifted by reason, and a person can be a citizen and a Jew at once—whatever the rabbis or the gentiles say. Representative figures Moses Mendelssohn, Naftali Herz Wessely, Salomon Maimon
These priorities are, rightly, ambitious. Against a backdrop of rapid evolutions in online services and behaviour, these priorities will be backed by our commitment to continue iterating, innovating, and building on what works and fixing what doesn't. We will retain a relentless focus on these priorities, and we expect the same from Ofcom and the online services industry. As well as asking the regulator to look at these strategic priorities, we remain committed to implementing the foundational protections of the Act. This includes pursuing a reduction in illegal activity online. The Act requires online platforms to proactively identify and remove illegal content, including content related to terrorism, foreign interference, fraud, illegal abuse and threats, and stirring up hatred offences. Through the approaches in this statement, we will see a reduction in users' exposure to this content, whilst ensuring users' rights to privacy and freedom of expression are protected. We will also work to reduce instances of online users being exploited by fraudsters.
A shaggy-haired young Brad Pitt.
Kendall pointed to a report last year from parliament's science, innovation and technology committee, which called for Ofcom to implement "crisis response protocols" that would hold platforms responsible for misinformation. The media regulator has consulted on the issue, with more details expected to be announced this month.
DHSC said that Jones complied with all civil service rules. "The Permanent Secretary has appropriately declared all interests [...] She resigned from all her private sector posts before taking on the Permanent Secretary role at the department," it said. A person close to G Square Capital and Keys said there had been "no inappropriate conduct".
The problem: Whether it was possible to ring a peal of Stedman Triples using only bobs (no singles). The question had been open since well before 1995, and was settled that year with Colin Wyld's compositions and the independent Johnson/Saddleton peal. Ringingworld The solution: The first bobs-only peal was rung by a Cambridge University Guild band at St John's, Waterloo Road on 22nd January 1995. The composition by Philip Saddleton and Andrew Johnson had 579 bobs in one part. Colin Wyld's compositions - composed first but only published after the Waterloo Road peal was rung - had 705 and 597 bobs respectively. Ajohnson1 So Wyld actually got there first analytically, but held back publication, and was pipped to the post for the first rung peal. The problem was solved independently by Colin Wyld, and by Andrew Johnson and Philip Saddleton; the Johnson-Saddleton composition was successfully rung early in 1995 by a Cambridge University Guild band. Gresham College The mathematical difficulty is staggering: for a peal of Stedman Triples there are 840 places where a bob could be called, giving 2840 possibilities - a 253-digit number that dwarts the number of atoms in the universe - so exhaustive search is completely out of the question. Ajohnson1
What matters most is not occupying positions of power or defending cultural strongholds, but initiating good processes and enabling them to mature. In this way, the truth of the Gospel is not imposed from above, but grows over time within the concrete interweaving of lives, communities and cultures. This is not a truth that fears diversity, but instead welcomes and guides it. It does not eliminate conflicts, but transforms them, reuniting that which history tends to scatter. This concept can also be illustrated by the image of a multifaceted polyhedron, [19] in which the one truth of the Gospel is reflected from different angles.
Yet taken in small doses, The Man without Qualities is a pure intellectual tonic. Musil seems to acknowledge this when he writes: I ask to be read twice, in parts and as a whole.' As far as I can tell, most people are happy to meet the first part of this request. But I've only ever met one person who has read the whole of the published text (up to page rizo in this hardback edition), and I know no one who has also read the posthumous material (drafts, sketches, notes and revisions - not included in the paperback edition). This is a book about which most readers are knowing, not knowledgeable. They are familiar with the beginning, the first three or four hundred pages, where the book has a vigorous forward impetus and Musil's satirical virtuosity is breathtaking. Beyond that point, the impulse that started the ball rolling grows weaker, but only by infinite degrees, since the ball is rolling in a world with almost no friction. Following Musil's movement from the focused satire of the first book, through the second, to the increasingly mystical and abstruse exploration of love in the third, and then on into the posthumous material, is like walking from the source of a great river towards the sea: at the outset, it flows powerfully between firm banks, but as each new tributary adds its waters, the main stream grows muddy and more slow-moving, and then the banks start to break up and allow side streams and backwaters to develop, until, arriving at the estuary, the river that was once so fast and unified has broadened out into a vast expanse of water, scarcely moving, reflecting the clouds and the infinite sky, with nothing beyond but the ocean. Feeling defeated by The Man without Qualities, feeling bogged down in it and exhausted by it, is surely the authentic response to it. A book about the omnipotence of mind and the impotence of the body, about history as a dream without a dreamer, should leave us feeling lost and at a standstill. Musil himself was defeated by it. H…
MoMA positioned itself at the centre of this new world. In July 1952, Nelson Rockefeller, the museum's chairman, established an International Program to promote American modern art abroad. Rockefeller, who moved effortlessly through the revolving doors of culture, politics and finance, and would later become governor of New York, was the son of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, one of the three "adamantine ladies" who had founded the museum in 1929. Both New York men of wealth and appetite, Rockefeller and President Donald Trump could not be more different in their cultural instincts: Rockefeller believed art conferred legitimacy on power; Trump believes power confers legitimacy on everything, art included. Rockefeller conceived the initiative as both a cultural undertaking and an instrument shaped by cold war politics. For its champions and critics, the International Program was a "Marshall Plan in the field of ideas".
= ChatGPT transcript ... I need to pluck up courage to understand the pi^2/6 result It's worth doing. The result looks mysterious at first, but the underlying ideas are surprisingly concrete once you go through them slowly. The important thing is not to think: "How could anyone possibly know this equals 7/6?" Instead think: "What kinds of objects naturally contain both integers and i?" That is the real mystery being resolved. The astonishing bridge is that the series is fundamentally connected to the zeros of sin x, because those zeros occur exactly at integer multiples of T:
Extract from Guardian article about Aria: These companies include the CIC Venture Cafe Global Institute, a US business that hosts events for entrepreneurs and has received £5.4m to run "venture cafes" across the UK; and the US firm Fifty Years, which will run a 14-week course that teaches scientists how to start companies. It will earn £7m to run the course six times for 50 students.
Whittakerand Robby are in love • Just colleagues, or something else? It might be wishful thinking but entire swathes of the internet are devoted to spotting sexy vibe between Dr Michael "Robby" Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) and Dr Dennis "Huckleberry" Whitaker (Gerran Howell). The dream duo even have their own hashtag, #Hucklerobby. The logic goes that the mentor-and-mentee colleagues are a classic pairing of "troubled moral saviour" and "damsel in distress". Bonded by trauma, they're often locking eyes over a blood-spattered gurney. "I get sent a lot of fan art of Gerran and me," says Wyle. "Sometimes we're cowboys. Sometimes we're camping together or taking a nap in a hammock." "I get shown it," adds Howell. "Sometimes against my will.”
Peter Mandelson is far from the scheming and manipulative politician of popular caricature. I defer to no one in my respect for his ability as a minister. He was admired and even loved by civil servants: clever, direct, hard-working and fun to work for. As European Commissioner he has proved himself a tireless negotiator and a fine advocate of free and fair markets. The Doha trade liberalisation talks failed despite his efforts, not because of them.
Mandelson was still listed as a non-executive director of Sistema in 2016 in the House of Lords register of interests. He continued to hold a shareholding in the Russian group until at least 2020, the Lords register shows. The due diligence also noted that Mandelson's lobbying firm Global Counsel included Chinese clients TikTok and Shein and said that he was "seen as an advocate for closer UK-China relations".
18:41 千心区 ar in th iddle Eas Updates Photos Scale of War Rescue of U.S. Air 4 Pinned Aaron Boxerman, Greg Jaffe, Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger 凸 Here's the latest. President Trump on Sunday escalated his threats to bomb Iranian power plants within the next two days and taunted the country's leaders in an expletive-laden social media post. Mr. Trump, seemingly emboldened by the successful U.S. rescue of an American airman in Iran over the weekend, issued a new ultimatum to Iran to end its chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz, a major Persian Gulf waterway for the transport of oil and gas, by Monday. If Iran's government did not, he said, U.S. forces would target the country's energy infrastructure, which supplies power for millions of civilians. Mr. Trump made the point in a crudely worded social media post. "Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!" Mr. Trump said. "Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH." "Praise be to Allah," he added, using the Muslim name for God. In response to Mr. Trump, Mizan, an outlet affiliated with Iran's judiciary, said that "Iran's steadfastness and resistance have driven Trump to
Text from Christie’s auction of Islamic art and artefacts: A LARGE KUFIC QURAN FOLIO 1 LATE UMAYYAD OR EARLY ABBASID PROVENANCE Private collection formed in the late 1980s sold Sotheby's, London, 12 October 2000, lot 2