With their profile and vile words, these malign provocateurs are tearing down decency’s guardrails

It lacks the elegance of “greed is good”, but as a distillation of the spirit of the age, it’s right up there. “I feel liberated,” a top banker told the Financial Times shortly after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 US presidential election. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled … it’s a new dawn.”

So that’s what they meant by “vibe shift”. Though, as the Epstein files reveal daily, the top 0.01% were hardly primly biting their tongues before Trump’s win, at least not in private. Those with telephone-number fortunes and great power felt able to speak, and write, to each other about women in language so vicious, so filled with hate – women discussed as body parts, as “less than human”, in Gordon Brown’s apt phrase – that they didn’t need the encouragement of a “grab ’em by the pussy” president to cast off their inhibitions.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Launch of ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot to the International Space Station (ISS) on Crew-12. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, no earlier than Friday 13 February 2026 at 10:15 GMT/11:15 CET (5:15 local time). Sophie flies as Mission Specialist 1 on the Dragon spacecraft. The other Crew-12 members are NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, respectively commander and pilot of the mission, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, Mission Specialist 2. The French ESA astronaut is the first of her class, the Hoppers, to fly. Only two years and ten months separate the start of her astronaut training from the launch of her first long-duration mission – a record! Sophie has chosen the name εpsilon for her mission, which may last up to nine months. On board the Station, she will conduct a wide range of tasks, including European-led scientific experiments and medical research, support Earth observation activities, and contribute to operations and maintenance on the Station.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Launch of ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot to the International Space Station (ISS) on Crew-12. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, no earlier than Friday 13 February 2026 at 10:15 GMT/11:15 CET (5:15 local time). Sophie flies as Mission Specialist 1 on the Dragon spacecraft. The other Crew-12 members are NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, respectively commander and pilot of the mission, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, Mission Specialist 2. The French ESA astronaut is the first of her class, the Hoppers, to fly. Only two years and ten months separate the start of her astronaut training from the launch of her first long-duration mission – a record! Sophie has chosen the name εpsilon for her mission, which may last up to nine months. On board the Station, she will conduct a wide range of tasks, including European-led scientific experiments and medical research, support Earth observation activities, and contribute to operations and maintenance on the Station.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Launch of ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot to the International Space Station (ISS) on Crew-12. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, no earlier than Friday 13 February 2026 at 10:15 GMT/11:15 CET (5:15 local time). Sophie flies as Mission Specialist 1 on the Dragon spacecraft. The other Crew-12 members are NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, respectively commander and pilot of the mission, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, Mission Specialist 2. The French ESA astronaut is the first of her class, the Hoppers, to fly. Only two years and ten months separate the start of her astronaut training from the launch of her first long-duration mission – a record! Sophie has chosen the name εpsilon for her mission, which may last up to nine months. On board the Station, she will conduct a wide range of tasks, including European-led scientific experiments and medical research, support Earth observation activities, and contribute to operations and maintenance on the Station.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Launch of ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot to the International Space Station (ISS) on Crew-12. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, no earlier than Friday 13 February 2026 at 10:15 GMT/11:15 CET (5:15 local time). Sophie flies as Mission Specialist 1 on the Dragon spacecraft. The other Crew-12 members are NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, respectively commander and pilot of the mission, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, Mission Specialist 2. The French ESA astronaut is the first of her class, the Hoppers, to fly. Only two years and ten months separate the start of her astronaut training from the launch of her first long-duration mission – a record! Sophie has chosen the name εpsilon for her mission, which may last up to nine months. On board the Station, she will conduct a wide range of tasks, including European-led scientific experiments and medical research, support Earth observation activities, and contribute to operations and maintenance on the Station.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Launch of ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot to the International Space Station (ISS) on Crew-12. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, no earlier than Friday 13 February 2026 at 10:15 GMT/11:15 CET (5:15 local time). Sophie flies as Mission Specialist 1 on the Dragon spacecraft. The other Crew-12 members are NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, respectively commander and pilot of the mission, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, Mission Specialist 2. The French ESA astronaut is the first of her class, the Hoppers, to fly. Only two years and ten months separate the start of her astronaut training from the launch of her first long-duration mission – a record! Sophie has chosen the name εpsilon for her mission, which may last up to nine months. On board the Station, she will conduct a wide range of tasks, including European-led scientific experiments and medical research, support Earth observation activities, and contribute to operations and maintenance on the Station.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

Hieu Chau compares his dense, dynamic compositions to his always active mind. Playing with scale and proportion, the Vietnamese artist renders surreal scenes in which flora and fauna converge and figures interact with the outside world as if in a dream. Chau, who was trained as a painter, now works digitally, although his pieces capture the grainy textures and gestures of a physical medium.

The artist recently published a book collecting his projects from the last decade, and you can find explore an archive of these pieces on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Surreal Dreams Reign in Hieu Chau’s Digital Illustrations appeared first on Colossal.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Het oordeel van de Hoge Raad vorige maand dat de rente voor belastingschulden van bedrijven niet verhoogd mag worden, kost de schatkist dit jaar 264 miljoen euro. Dat schrijft demissionair staatssecretaris Eugène Heijnen (Fiscaliteit) vrijdag aan de Tweede Kamer.

Dit jaar worden de bezwaarmakers gecompenseerd. Dat kost 119 miljoen euro. De uitspraak betekent volgens de bewindsman structureel een tegenvaller van naar schatting 145 miljoen euro per jaar voor Financiën.

Ondernemers hadden de afgelopen jaren bezwaar gemaakt tegen de hogere rente. Het gaat om rente die bedrijven moeten voldoen als ze te laat de vennootschapsbelasting betalen. Sinds 2022 moeten ondernemers een hoger percentage betalen, terwijl dat niet geldt voor andere belastingen. Volgens de Hoge Raad is het hogere rentepercentage in strijd met het gelijkheidsbeginsel.

De opsporingsdienst heeft 28 januari een grote partij illegale sigaretten in beslag genomen in de Botlek, Rotterdam. De sigaretten zaten verstopt in een container die geladen was met plastic bakken.

De politie heeft donderdagavond rond 19:00 uur een man aangehouden aan de Prinses Beatrixstraat in Ridderkerk. De 40-jarige Ridderkerker kreeg door een fout van de politie onbedoeld toegang tot vertrouwelijke politiedocumenten.