Cab driver asks why I'm not at home with my feet put up (Campaigns run amok, brick a window, run amok) #fallfriday youtu.be/DQiUZEjGZbA?...

Easter challenge for AI boosters: Put at least the same effort into caring about what people can do, could do and their rights to do it in safety and without material hardship as you do into caring about AI and its rights to do something about, erm, something.

I don't half miss poppers

I, being a child of the eighties and nineties, had always been bristlingly aware that the balance of power and nuclear deterrent rested upon a very delicate dance of rational actions and counter actions. I was not ready for one of the major players to Dunning Kruger us to the brink outside of satire

My April fools hot take is: The extent to which April Fools news stories worked depended on extent to which journalism and public discourse was understood not to be frivolous in general. It only works when it's a mischief day overturning of agreed and accepted roles.

a new form of teen fuck-up emerges

I think the goal of government in uncertain times includes very much the objective of making life happier for people who are currently poor. This objective needs to be set from the top

A really important read. Worth noting if you're encouraging story sharing through research, outreach, activism or charity, whether or not the media's involved. Continually shocks me how little consideration is made past getting people to share stories about what may happen to them as a consequence.

Everyone has the right to privacy regarding their medical issues except, it seems, if we are to listen to some politicians, for chronically ill and/or disabled people who are too ill to work. In this case, it's open season to intrude in the lives of vulnerable people and ask them to justify illness.

A modern trajectory: Leftish person arrives at a very right wing opinion. Leftish person tries to convince other Leftish people of opinion. Fails because it's very right wing. Notices lots of very right wing people very supportive. Starts playing to very right wing applause. Drops Leftish options

In the 70s and 80s there was a boom in books called things like 'How to Read the News' exploring how media worked. I've been wondering why that stopped with the web 2.0 beyond discussion of general media bias. Would love to see a book called 'How to Read a Shitpost'

Fascism is always a war on competence. All forms of political organisation can be incompetent, but fascism makes it a core asperation.

I kind of don't think that delusion is the correct way of describing what's happening to folks with chatbots. I think it's more like grooming, but the groomer doesn't have any sort of end goal beyond continuing to exploit the user. An amoral agent with no goal but to convince, reinforce and retain

I kind of don't think that delusion is the correct way of describing what's happening to folks with chatbots. I think it's more like grooming, but the groomer doesn't have any sort of end goal beyond continuing to exploit the user. An amoral agent with no goal but to convince, reinforce and retain

I keep being struck by the ways that the UK tends to be trying to live a 21st century life with a high Victorian infrastructure and then being really surprised when problems that Victorians had are still with us and then just going 'ah well, what can you do eh?'

Unfortunately I'm coming from a bad end And I'm destined for a bad end #fallfriday youtu.be/d_pPbqOU0ic?...

Painting created c.midC20th in the art therapy studio at Netherne hospital, Surrey, by an individual who was compelled to live there, whose identity is currently unknown to us. Image from art therapist Edward Adamson’s lecture slides. The original is presumed lost

Dur Dur, Dur Dur, Dur Dur, Dur Dur, Deenow Denow The road hadn't been fixed #fallfriday

I wrote about the findings from the inquiry about the impact of the pandemic on the NHS, and the mistakes of the first year. I hope it makes you angry - it should make us all angry. open.substack.com/pub/christin...

More than 13 million living in poverty, government figures show

AI War of the Worlds but all the Martian war machines have different numbers of legs from shot to shot

Four monthly newspapers off to print today.

Can't help but feel that the final form of a certain vein of cinema and television is just to be trailers. Finely honed, quantitatively researched, drawing on psychological tricks. Just trailers. That's all you need. Trailers. They're not extensions of the film, they're a film of their own.

Lucky enough to have grown up in a time and mileu where the idea that schools have houses just meant the lonely caretakers house plonked on the edge of the fields. A mysterious man, often with dog, never far from a bucket of sand.

Conspiracy thinking is seeking narrative satisfaction and the pleasure of imposing narratives that are more pleasurable and rewarding onto events in life and the world that are inconclusive, boring or just don't have that zing. It's a retreat into 'looking clever' from sincere feelings and responses

The amount of human productivity that has been stolen by shitty landlords. Think of all the novels left unwritten because every other landlord in the UK reckons deposits are free money and smoke alarms are largely decorative.

⚠️ Too often, people are not being kept safe in mental health hospitals. This can’t go on. Our new campaign is calling for safer care in mental health settings. If you agree, add your name today 👉 https://bit.ly/485YEwp Together, we can demand change that is desperately needed.

Good little thread this.

Feel like Trump is similar to one of those pick up artists mapping in their head their opening line, then what the person they are hassling is going to say, then what they'll say back, then what the person will say. Scripting far more vividly what the other will say, then screwed when they don't

One of the things I regret not saving when my dad cleared the house was my Mam's flour encrusted Be-ro cookbook filled with stuff copied off labels and cut out of magazines. As for eat only food your grandma recognised? Findus Crispy Pancakes, tinned potatoes and beans?

Have you read our partner @nsunnews.bsky.social report? #MentalHealth #LivedExperience #Media

It is very inconvenient to clear retrospection that the period between the beginning of the global financial crisis and EU referendum result/ the election of Trump is exactly the same period when social media, phone cameras and mobile Internet became part of every day life for a majority of people.

hello, i am paid to be a tv critic and today i will be asking: can *british* comedians make a sketch show? it has never been done before so i have my doubts!

I think it is just about numbers, and X still has 'the numbers'. Twitter used to be my first port of call if I came upon a lorry in flames locally, and I'd find instant info from a non journo. It was a place where anybody could just 'tweet', and that was good.

There's been a bit of the old discourse about Bluesky not being the news place that twitter once was. I think that's partly because it will never be 2007-2009 again, because everyone is so much older than they were then and because lots of the news people are now professionally busy newsy people

Reading this, and the list that's mentioned, has just made me actually angry.

I love how typos are so prevalent these days that I sometimes feel like I am trying to translate Future English.

Read Nicola’s reflections on the findings, and the lasting impact of the pandemic on our profession, in her latest blog ➡️ bit.ly/4lIu5T9

Paper local, drunken scandal Publish your address as well Locals surround where you dwell Old ladies confiscate your gate railings for government campaigns... Villagers are surrounding the house The locals have come for their due It's hard to live in the country #fallfriday youtu.be/WACm7qiWpzk?...

The law to remove the two-child limit has received Royal Assent! This is an important first step in driving down child poverty. It'll give millions of kids a better today & brighter tomorrow. Protecting kids from poverty is the right thing to do & lays the foundations for a stronger country.

We entered a pandemic led by a government unprepared to acknowledge what preparedness for a pandemic should look like. Pandemic minimisers say it wasn't a big thing. It was and the awful political environment means people still can't openly discuss the impact www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

1/3: Racism can harm mental health at every stage of life. It is built into systems and institutions and in the current hostile political climate, these pressures are intensifying, and the harm to racialised communities is growing.

Mental Health in Gateshead: Research funding grant (Up to £20,000) Open to those with an interest in making a difference for communities, specific focus on evidence gaps in: NHS ten-year plan suicide & self-harm inequalities reduce waiting lists Find out more: www.gateshead.gov.uk/article/3688...

What's your favourite ever low level urban panic? I think mine might be the 1990s bogus social workers Return Of The Bogus Social Workers - Fortean Times Magazine subscription share.google/l7h4nyGNF94m...

We should be making so many comedy shows that it doesn’t matter whether you think SNL UK is any good or not, cos there’d be another sketch show you do like. Like we do detective shows.

I kind of wish that the world wasn't divided into those of us who would be embarrassed to debase ourselves in public and those who really, really aren't. I feel like 20 years ago, even knowing a political figure recorded greetings for money would be enough to end their political aspirations

Is there a name for the way AI rendered images always make women look directly into the eyes of the viewer in the way actual real people seldom do? As if every image or video was some kind of POV film?

Exciting moves from Government for funding of local news. My thoughts following: Future of news is local, says Culture Secretary, as she launches the first action plan to back local news in a generation - GOV.UK share.google/xkuEK7PJmlIY...

I really like Len Deighton novels. I've always thought he was great at applying the analysis of manners to the emerging shiny of the 1960s onwards. Weaponised style. You never wonder what someone drinks or eats or sits on in Deighton book or what that means about their class, country, temperament.

Painting created c.1967, by Muriel Lewis, in the art therapy studio at Netherne hospital, where she was compelled to live. Her illustrative work features faceless figures & depicts life inside & outside the psychiatric system; including Surrey villages, romantic trysts & scenes from home & her past