Now spinning: "Satantic Rites of the Wildhearts", on Ritual Red Vinyl. Typical ferocious brilliance from Ginger ... and the current bunch o' lads.

Now spinning: "This Consequence", the latest from Killswitch Engage, here on "Corrupt Blood Infusion" coloured vinyl.

Now spinning: "Tattoo You" by The Rolling Stones. I've come rather late to an appreciation of the Stones, being more of a Fab Four fan in my youth. Still, better late than never!

Now spinning: "Songs for the Deaf" by Queens of the Stone Age. After I saw the then-current line up perform at Download some years ago, I was impressed enough to stretch my musical boundaries and buy many of their albums. I admit they were initially outside my comfort zone, but now I love them.

Be careful what you ask of your favourite AI chatbot. Behind your back, the sycophantic creep is possibly sharing your conversations with the Police! futurism.com/openai-scann...

Now spinning: another from the "to listen" pile - "Roar Like Thunder" by BUCKCHERRY, here on green/purple merge vinyl. The opening title track is absolutely fabulous!

Now spinning: kicking off tonight with one that's been sitting in my "to listen to" pile for a few weeks - this S/T debut from NUNS OF THE TUNDRA, here on blue vinyl. First impression is promising, reminding me in places of Black Spiders, and in others of Foo Fighters.

Now spinning: "Surfers' Choice" by Dick Dale and his Del-Tones. I love Surf Rock almost as much as Quentin Tarantino does. It's something about the sound of those Stratocasters with reverb. And Dick Dale was the absolute master.

"Invisible airwaves crackle with life". Now playing: "Permanent Waves" by RUSH. This is the 40th Anniversary remaster, and worth every penny!

Now spinning: 1980's Peter Gabriel 3 (a.k.a. "Melt"). Speaking of the 1980s, opening track "Intruder" is where Phil Collins and engineer Hugh Padgham accidentally created 'gated reverb', the defining drum sound of the decade!

Now spinning: Pat Benatar hits us with her "Best Shots", a 1987 platinum-certified compilation album that went top ten in the UK charts. Yeah... we're having a very 80s sorta evening!

Now spinning: Looks like we're back on the chain gang tonight - with "Learning to Crawl" by the Pretenders. Released in 1984, after the tragic deaths of two original band members, this album saw Chrissie and the band bounce back, creatively and commercially.

Now spinning: 1995's "Different Class" by Pulp. Released at the high watermark of the so-called 'Britpop' era, it entered the charts at No.1, won the Mercury Prize, and eclipsed most if not all contemporaries. And still sounds brilliant.

Now spinning: Genesis with 1978's "And Then There Were Three", marking the transition of the überprog band into Collins, Banks, and Rutherford. The sound is not that markedly different to earlier albums yet, the evolution into the pop-rock titans of the 80s was yet to come (gated reverb and all!).

Now spinning: the second of the two excellently preserved Johnny Cash albums I recently picked up in a secondhand book store in Morecambe for £5 for the pair. This time it's "John R Cash" from 1975.

Now spinning: the first of two excellently preserved Johnny Cash albums I recently picked up in a secondhand book store in Morecambe for £5 for the pair. This is "Orange Blossom Special" from 1965.

Another problem with AI/LLMs - lack of context is leading users astray: for example; mistaking wargames and RPGs for Satanism (again), woo-woo BS for evidence-based medicine, and collaborative science fiction for evidence of aliens and the paranormal!

Those not familiar with ChatGPT and how quickly it has become ubiquitous in young people’s lives might be shocked at this. I’m not, but I do find it worrying, especially as I’ve seen the limitations, the sycophancy (‘glazing’), and the hallucinations up close. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

And now, as they say, for something completely different! "Arrival" by ABBA. I always appreciate the craftsmanship of songwriters Benny and Bjorn, and this is pretty much pop perfection ("Dancing Queen", "Money, Money, Money").

Now spinning: the rarest LP in my collection - only a handful of copies exist (when copies very rarely come up on eBay, they can go for £2,000). This 1968 s/t album by Tinkerbell's Fairydust is a perfect piece of late 60s English psychedelic pop. Produced - I believe - by Vic Smith (Black Sabbath).

Now spinning: "Blizzard of Ozz" by Ozzy Osbourne. Pictured is my original 1980 vinyl copy.

"What is this that stands before me?" Now spinning: "Black Sabbath" by Black Sabbath. This black & purple swirl vinyl version is from the "Ten Year War" boxset.

In the ruins of Chernobyl, scientists found a fungus that feeds on radiation. When a sample was sent to the ISS, it thrived, blocking up to 84% of cosmic radiation, suggesting it could be used as a natural radiation shield for astronauts on deep-space missions! tinyurl.com/2av76mar

A new method for revealing the genealogy of humanity by analyzing modern DNA found that our family tree branched in two 1.5M yrs ago, but reunited about 1M yrs later, reversing a dominant theory in human evolution. The same pattern also seems to apply to other species. bigthink.com/strange-maps...

Sometimes, the plot hooks just write themselves... www.popsci.com/science/ship...

Much as I love both Judge Dredd and Waititi, I can’t shake the feeling that this is an utter disaster waiting to happen. www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ju...

Now spinning: "We Are The Angels" by Leeds-based hard rock/alt metal outfit, ALL I LIVE FOR. I've had a CD of their debut since original release in 2021. Very pleased with grabbing this recent reissue on vinyl. A bittersweet mixture of heartfelt emotions, soaring melodies, and brutal breakdowns.

Now spinning: "Everything", the latest from the fantastic Eureka Machines. The LP is on gold vinyl, and the sleeve is signed by the band.

Holy crap indeed!

Now spinning: "Looking For Trouble" by The Dead Daisies. A fine album of blues covers, paying tribute to all the icons who have recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Horrifying evidence that self-driving Teslas kill people, and that Musk’s company appears to cover this up. These vehicles are a threat to us all, not just the Elon fanboys that drive them! www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

If you liked 28 Days Later, but were disappointed by 28 Weeks Later, good news! 28 Years Later sees the return of original creative team Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, who deliver a quality folk horror, like The Wicker Man meets Night of the Living Dead, at least until until a bizarre epilogue!

UK BlueSkyers: If you receive an unexpected text, don't be tempted to click on links or follow instructions to log into any accounts, even if it says you owe a fine. Links can contain malware that could infect your device and lead to scammers doing further damage. www.which.co.uk/news/article...

Is all this illogical, frustrating delay and obfuscation deliberate? Yes, yes it is. Having worked in Finance for decades, I came across several examples of “Delay, Deny, Defend”. The first time, it was shocking, but sadly got less and less so. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Had a video meeting where the CEO attended? Are you sure it wasn’t an AI ‘digital twin’? As usual, companies are concentrating on the technical issues instead of the ethical ones.

Scarily, 7% of people have a personality known as The Dark Triad: Narcissism (egotistical admiration of oneself), Machiavellianism (duplicity and disregard for morality), and Psychopathy (absence of empathy and remorse). Fortunately, there’s also a Light Triad. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

An extremely disturbing story about how a secretive body set up by a local council was able to gain a “police. uk” web address, uniforms and warrant cards, in order to illegally pass themselves off as police officers and deceive the public.

Approx 100M US citizens are infected with a parasite that interferes with how the brain communicates and causes a variety of issues, including schizophrenia. The parasite is thought to lurk in packaged food, helped by the US’s relatively lax food safety standards. www.unilad.com/news/health/...

80 years ago, George Zipf reported an observation that the frequency of a word is a power law function of its frequency rank. The most common word in a language is used twice as often as the next most common word, and three times as often as the next, and so on. www.iflscience.com/almost-all-l...

Did Lead Poisoning Create a Generation of Serial Killers? Bundy, Manson, and many other notorious figures lived in and around Tacoma in the sixties. The New Yorker reviews Caroline Fraser’s new book, “Murderland”, which argues that there was something in the water. www.newyorker.com/books/under-...

Research from MIT shows truly shocking levels of cognitive debt amongst regular users of ChatGPT. time.com/7295195/ai-c...

ChatGPT Gets 'Absolutely Wrecked' in Chess Match With 1978 Atari - The chatbot 'made enough blunders to get laughed out of a third-grade chess club,' according to the developer who set up the contest. uk.pcmag.com/ai/158596/ch...

Academics + technologists wonder if the explosion in AI models has created contamination. AI models are being trained with synthetic data created by AI models. Subsequent generations may therefore become less and less reliable, a state known as AI model collapse. www.theregister.com/2025/06/15/a...

AI products’ flaws are currently readily detected and corrected. But as people become more and more accustomed to AI in their life they may cease to notice. As chatbots creep into every digital crevice, they may continue to catastrophically degrade the web. www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Reform UK Councils Are Facing Protests After Cancelling Climate Change Preparations Nigel Farage’s party is culling anything to do with tackling climate change, including local planning for rising sea levels bylinetimes.com/2025/06/17/r...

Exposed: Reform UK doesn’t know how government spending works eastangliabylines.co.uk/politics/loc...

Watched The Accountant 2, now streaming on Prime. A big plus is a significant role for Jon Bernthal as Braxton. A serviceable action flick, but it sadly lacks the originality and mystery of the first movie, and ends up resembling standard action fare. The depiction of neurodiversity is problematic.