Dead Pool 2026

[viper37]

Robert Mueller died, age 81.

Trump posting online, his shocking no one:
"Robert Mueller just died. Good, I'm glad he's dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!"

It really is stretching the definition of "innocent".

[Savonarola]

RIP Afrika Bambaataa

I saw him perform once at the Movement Electronic Music Festival about 20 years ago.  Even then he was one of the few acts there who still used turntables; everyone else was rocking their Mac computer.

[Sheilbh]

Slightly surprised that there's no obituary in the Times or Guardian - but RIP Lord Robert Skidelsky. His parents were of Russian heritage (Jewish and Christian), which he said informed his later viewpoints as all sides of his family would have suffered under the totalitarianisms of the 20th century. I think he said that shaped his interest in Keynes (I also think it might explain some of his fairly pro-Russian views on foreign policy, spheres of influence etc).

He was an economic historian who wrote a (surprisingly sympathetic) biography of Oswald Mosley, which prompted him to be commissioned to write a biography of Keynes. This ended up being three volumes and, from what I understand (I haven't read it - but will), it's considered up here with Caro on Moses and LBJ or Deutscher on Trotsky. It's a massive intellectual achievement and on the list of masterpieces in biography as a genre.

Interesting political journey too given that he ended up in the House of Lords. He started in Labour and then moved to the SDP (backing David Owen - can sort of see a bit of a Mosley crossover there) and staying in the Owenite continuity SDP, moving to the Tories under John Major before leaving all the partes. I think he entered the Lords as a crossbencher, then sat with the Tories before returning to the crossbenches - but was in the last ten years actually a pretty strong backer of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour, or at least very sympathetic to it.

Anyway RIP Lord Skidelsky (a prompt to probably start reading the Keynes books ).