Influencers and OnlyFans models dominate US ‘extraordinary’ artist visas “‘Likes’ and subscriber figures are easy metrics to quantify compared with the often murky process of proving ‘exceptional ability’”

EU statement

This person went on a buying spree over the past 24 hours. Fresh wallet. Only existed since Dec 27th and has only bet on Venezuela-related markets. polymarket.com/@0x31a56e9E6...

Trump isn’t predictable or consistent, but this particular action *would* be consistent with the emergence of a G2+1 order where Washington and Beijing, with Moscow as a junior partner, give each other free rein in their purported spheres of influence.

FIFA must be feeling pretty silly right now.

I return to my earlier point about regime change by force and what Moscow and Beijing will be making of all this …

WTF?! “Donald Trump has confirmed that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been captured and flown out of the country along with his wife.”

Charlotte Nichols MP (Labour, Warrington North) says AI-generated sexual harassment must be the final straw for the UK government using X A growing number of Labour MPs thought this needed a proper review last year: next week may see this cut through Misogyny is an official priority of this gvt

There is, to my mind, no justification for the continued use by the UK Government of X as a platform for official comms. There hasn't been for some time, in fact, but if the latest developments around AI-generated image abuse and CSAM don't change the policy I really don't know what will.

Uber rewrites contracts with drivers to avoid paying UK’s new ‘taxi tax’. Hailing app will now act as agent rather than supplier outside London, avoiding VAT requirement, although change is not permitted in London. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Ex-Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has Lunch with the FT and in one of those instances so rare that you know he didn't sign an NDA, says exactly why as.ft.com/r/e503690d-8...

I’m in front of the TV with a NYE choice between a dire Hootenanny lineup and Ronan Keating’s new year party. 2026 can only be better.

Just watched Zootropolis 2 (AKA Zootopia 2). Surprised it’s not raised a right-wing strop given its political themes.

This is true and I was the only one on set excited about it (and playing the song on my phone to blank stares)

Gang please don't use ChatGPT to write your acquisition announcement manus.im/blog/manus-j...

This is essentially the plot of The Sound of Music.

Everyone is justifiably upset about this but it happened in July

Here in our exhibit on the 2026 Information Wars we can see the results of poisoning the web by making it economically ruinous to publish real information

Just pure incoherence from a product Google is shipping to billions of people. Also already being hacked by SEO games

unironically a good idea

❤️❤️❤️HUGE CONGRATS!!!❤️❤️❤️

Great point. The ‘online harms’ of social media can be terrible on the over 40s. It’s not just that they vote, they also run the media industry.

Just watched the Pluribus season finale. I have no idea why people dislike Carol or find the pacing slow. If you’ve watched Gilligan’s other stuff there’s a similar rhythm and the pace suits the story. Why do you have like Carol anyway? She’s an interesting person with messy motivations. It works!

I was watching it earlier and almost none of would fly 22 years later. It was supposed to be about the universality of love and ended up dating worse than a 1950s romance flick

And Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, was present at the end of the universe, having witnessed every black hole evaporate and every proton decay. Even so, Death would not come.

A Christmas Carol, but Scrooge is Elon Musk and after the ghosts visit, he: - spends all Christmas Day posting about how ghosts are woke - sues the ghosts - buys the afterlife so only he can haunt people

Plans advancing for ads in ChatGPT. “A Sephora-sponsored beauty product ad could appear when a user is searching for mascara recommendations.“ This sounds like a perfect way to make the people who trust AI chatbots as an all-powerful authority to realise they’re definitely not.

Rather than pre-record it and send a preview to the media, I think the king should have to do his Christmas address live and just wing it without a script after a couple of sherries.

It used to be that the United States would use Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to transmit truth across the borders of repressive regimes. Now the work of American reporters, having been censored, is being smuggled across the border to reach Americans.

My favourite Apple Photos feature is how it automatically recognises you were at a particular gig, puts together a slideshow of your photos and videos, names it after the artist, and sets it to music by that artist. Low-key impressive.

I'm going to crack an egg in my bath tonight as a tribute.

There is a tremendous opportunity for a brand new generation of media outlets to rise up right now because many news outlets that spent decades painstakingly building their credibility are seeing it torched by bootlickers with incredible speed.

When it came out and I was told that Oppenheimer was almost three hours long and was largely just made up of quickfire conversation scenes skipping backwards and forwards in time, I figured it was absolutely not for me. But it’s actually good.

A new problem with the UK’s libel laws in the digital age is that a fact can become widely known before it is publishable, it’s terrible for trust and accountability. And also ironically allows misinformation to flow freely.

ProTEct truSTed LocAL nEWS This isn't even designed to wind people up and hope they share it. It's just an exploitation of Birmingham Live's privileged position on Google Discover/Apple News. The whole point is to deceive people into clicking. An industry built on total contempt for its audience.

X is gamifying pile-ons

Ah that's crazy, it's almost like Threads picked up the decentralization messaging when they launched so they could neutralize the Atmosphere sources.news/p/whats-next...

Just reaped another Brexit benefit: having to fill in a customs form to send Christmas gifts to family in Northern Ireland. 🙄

"Whistleblowers have told ITV News that One Login is failing to meet the mandatory, minimum government cybersecurity standards"

When you build an AI therapist chatbot, realise it can never be safe enough, close it down, and build an AI safety startup instead. I enjoyed this interview.

When I was 19 at university (in 1998!) I made a documentary about the aspiration for Leeds to get trams. I could make almost the same doc almost 30 years on.

🙌🙌🙌

Another new job for George Osborne

This story is WILD

I wrote about social class in UK tech.

Michael Prescott’s report edits Trump’s quote *at least* as badly as Panorama did (I’d argue worse). And that misleading edit is now very obviously at the core of a $5 billion lawsuit against the corporation. The Panorama had been online, without complaint, for a year before that dossier.

Why not 12 squillion dollarbucks?

President currently feuding with a beloved American comedy icon who was murdered 24 hours ago.