Fascinating money-laundering piece by John Lanchester: "‘it typically takes three nail salons to launder the money from a brothel." www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4... Always do wonder how much cash digital platforms launder...

Discrimination based on gender identity or expression is illegal in New York City. Trans New Yorkers are protected by law. Our City will protect your rights, defend your humanity and stand beside you without hesitation.

Always fun coming up with new leaders for ZEPHON. This time it was a right-wing astronaut trapped on the ISS with a Russian chess grandmaster… and a pacifist scientist just desperate to find a god worthy of worship…

New DLC for Zephon landed last week!!! Download it for two tales of toying with fascism and tugging at the threads that bridge humanity, machines, and the divine.

I think I've finally arrived :)

"I'd never be unfaithful to my wife for the simple reason that I love my house very much." "Real happiness is when you marry a girl for love and find out later she has money." "A miniature village in Bournemouth caught fire and the flames could be seen nearly three feet away."

There's so much to love in here. but at the end of "the give love, give love" section at 1:16, when it's clearly working well, Brian May looks back at Lennox singing and gives a look of sheer joy at what's happening. Hell of a thing, music.

No water in Kent because of 'incredibly high demand'. South West Water couldn't predict we'd need more water when it gets hot? They also can't predict that their storage get full when it rains, forcing them to dump sewage into the sea. Maybe, just maybe... they're not very good at this?

JOB: Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature Salary: £45,031 King’s College London is a world-renowned public research university. #HigherEd #eduSky www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/147465-...

Everyone is (rightly) clowning on the Book of Life guy for getting in bed with the AI crowd, but there's a danger that the dopamine hit of outrage overwhelms good news. Like, I've seen dozens of posts about Gutierrez and only one or two about this. We need to be as loud about the good as the bad.

Perils of a colourblind cook. Does this broccoli look normal? It looks weirdly bright to me, which makes me worry it’s not actually green…

“Please have 2+ years of experience with an engine we announced on Friday” really sums up the state of the games industry.

What if taxing the rich works?

"we're going in a new direction"

Yes!!! Not just the few should benefit!!! This is a *woke pope*

Hard to argue with this part!!!

“the dignity of the worker” 😭

PARAGRAPH 85, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

The cure to male loneliness is NOT BEING A CUNT.

40 years ago, US Gold perpetrated one of the great video game scams of all time, purchasing Artic's crappy two-year-old World Cup Football and repackaging it as the more expensive (and official) World Cup Carnival. An absolutely brazen and cynical theft of kids' pocket money.

I think we all pretty much get that the Pope believes things we do not believe but it’s still nice when he raises the salience of the things we believe that he also believes

Thank you troops

Genuinely, this concern about AI is one of the reasons why I think having friction in video games is good and why it's increasingly important to have games that simply exist instead of catering to our expectations. Reposting this message from Kojima about "pre-digested" art:

when you first start being a parent, you wisely will realize that you should never judge any other parent ever again for whatever it takes to get through the day. It will pass, after a decade, at which point you will develop the finely honed skills of knowing who is just really fucking it up.

THE POPE IS QUOTING GANDALF!!!

Today’s Dystopia: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202... - you can be uniquely identified using normal WiFi.

There's one pic of a slightly plumper model in a truly hideous ASOS dress and the other 19 are very young, very tall and very slim models wearing the kind of dress that only suits the very young, very tall and very slim. Not exactly "perfect for any body shape" or "every bride".

We should make it illegal for MPs to use public toilets and changing rooms, and if you see someone you think might be an MP using one you can confront them, and they have to carry their Westminster pass and show it to you, and then you can kick them out. But, like, in a respectful supportive way.

This fascist magic school LARP for teenagers sounds absolutely WILD. mssv.net/2026/05/22/e...

Sex is great, but what about the inescapable allure of the inclined elevator.

One of my spiciest opinions is that reality TV with voting off is dystopian. All you have to do is change a few of the words to sci-fi words to see it. Poor people compete in humiliating challenges on vidscreens to win dollarcreds. Sometimes enough to purchase a real home!

And just like that, our Crowdfunder is LIVE! 🥳 We need to raise £5,000 to continue broadening the reach of ethics through talks, concerts and events, welcoming over 100,000 people each year. It starts with ethics. It starts with you. Donate to our Crowdfunder today: https://bit.ly/4uUvUzM

Wanted to draw cartoons. (Volunteered to draw them for a university newspaper. Ended up editing it. Ended up running the political society the newspaper was for. Ended up dating a former president. After uni, newspaper got me work experience at Future and The Times. 1/2

(I don’t think that AI use is some special category that trumps every other energy use, or every other product that is made on the back of workers who were not able to give their work freely and to be adequately compensated for it. I mean, I'm typing on an iPhone.)

I really enjoyed this analysis of what we know so far about the recent (horrifying) diving tragedy in the Maldives. share.google/b5wLrnKW4P7Y...

It sounds to me like she is being playful and engaged with an interesting technology. I absolutely don't think anyone, particularly any writer, HAS to engage with it, but I equally think that purity culture doesn't tend to make for good art. Great artists take what they need.

Just had a stress dream where I was telling people about all the stress dreams I keep having. :-/

My favourite response to the Guardian novels list, highlighting the inherent bias in only polling writers who are alive.

I think the best way to enjoy this list, which contains lots of predictable choices (made as it was by committee), is to find a book you like, click to see who voted for it, and then look at the voters' other top 10 choices. You might find something else you like that you haven't read.

Today on the website, for those who’ve read Children of Strife - bonus content. A whole extra chapter that didn’t quite make it into the finished book, essentially a self-contained short story. adriantchaikovsky.com

I think this maybe the most niché bit of trivia I’ve ever heard.

What's gutting about this is that Juniper seems to have had a family who supported and loved her, she was in a community that has been explicitly welcoming to trans people, and a man still murdered her. She was living the life so many trans people can only dream of, and it simply didn't matter.

still not quite over the fact that i watched 15 year olds get sued for millions of dollars for downloading twelve songs and now we all have to accept AI slop because every tech company in the known universe decided that IP laws don't exist now that they're inconvenient for them

Well... Been out for a matter of minutes and damn 🔥 Huge congratulations @subnautica.bsky.social / @unknownworlds.bsky.social store.steampowered.com/app/1962700/...

I covered that march. Here's the first paragraph of the story I wrote about it: www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-t...

"but people should pay the correct tax 🤓☝️" there is a massive, massive difference between stashing your shit in offshore accounts and shell companies, and not paying tax nobody even knew you owed, including HMRC, because of ambiguous rules.

Mixtape is a solid 8 for me so far, although I always am exhausted by the deluge of US-written "a-coming-of-age story in the United States, wow, 10/10" articles in a world where a coming-of-age-story in Palestine is OPENLY shadowbanned from promoting their crowdfunding with no coverage whatsoever.