Instrument of Destabilisation is my new band name / t-shirt slogan

It me when the word 'consent' is used in and around digital public services

New -- I wrote about ChatGPT's April 2025 cross-chat memory update, which many people whose lives were upended by ChatGPT obsessions point to as an inflection point. It “takes people into cul-de-sacs... [my wife] is like a Waymo driving around in a circle endlessly.” futurism.com/artificial-i...

And this tale is now due to be told on a big consumer show in a few weeks Huge hugs to the adult children of the affected human who've been telling their tale while chasing banks, holding down jobs, and looking after their ill parent Hopefully bank and regulators involved will be listening 🤞🤞

The Chinese government will assign unique digital IDs to humanoid-shaped robots. The IDs will be assigned through a new website named the Humanoid Full Lifecycle Management Service Platform. The IDs will be used to track robots from production to sale and recycling www.scmp.com/tech/policy/...

Thank you to pastPeter for actually correctly storing log-in details for a hosted website so currentPeter didn't need to go around resetting all the passwords for once in his goddam life

An irregular reminder that multiple governments have put money/other stuff into getting train/track companies and mobile networks to improve this issue Perhaps someone should check whether that money was spent 'well' and if not, why not....

Mum: "so, what's been happening this week?" Me: _make up some understandable stuff to talk about_ Mum: "no, not you. What's your little dog been doing!" Me: _opens up camera roll to show dog pics again_

Tthe V&A has a new exhibition on Lost Music Venues that currently includes a picture of my wife in her old days looking cool at indie gigs at Kentish Town's Bull and Gate V cool! www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/...

Earlier today, I heard the term "chafing dish" for the first ever time in my umpteen years of life, on some telly show Ciara was watching, and learnt it was a dish for keeping food warm This evening, it appeared in a book I'm reading (Len Deighton, Spy Hook, vg) *hears Twilight Zone theme in head*

I'm worried that at the end of this train platform there is a particularly angry Decepticon

Among other things, this tool is a stark illustration of how out of step the UK has become on public data infrastructure. The vast majority of Europe now has addresses as #opendata, but in the UK authoritative address data is only available on commercial terms #geospatial #openaddresses #techpolicy

Had time for another play with building a European-wide postal address validator Astonishing what you can pull together pretty quickly/cheaply though a mix of human me, AI coding tools & APIs/bulk datasets that so many countries publish as a public service! european-address-verify.replit.app

omg

Given the recent burst of activity around enterprise pricing and contracts, I think April 2026 was the month when both OpenAI and Anthropic found product-market fit simonwillison.net/2026/May/27/...

We are a long way past "it doesn't work" - it's dizzying. Lots of individual AI products don't work, or are evil. But LLMs can do some crazy stuff these days.

"In the terms of a Google search, though, we are mapping a new interface into the place that an old one used to be....A search interface that returns an LLM answer breaks the understanding most people have." buttondown.com/artefacts/ar...

Rupert Lowe's Restore are campaigning heavily in Makerfield, and it's obvious that's now pushing Reform further right in their messaging. It's the first time they've talked about "mass deportations" in paid ads.

AI coding tool: "Click the approve/reject button for the plan and I will start building it" Me: "Where's the button?" Tool: "I have put the button back into this chat" Me uploading screenshot as evidence: "There is no button" Tool: "You are correct there is no button. Try switching to build mode?"

That is the right diagnosis when the technocratic consensus based politics of the 2000s is long gone. The challenge for the essay is that it doesn’t have a project that remotely fits the time and place we are living in. Saying ‘AI’ is not the same as having a plan for Britain.

Got a marketing email from OpenAI so asked chatGPT a question

Old: National Data Library New: Turning documents already held by your National Library into data www.blocksandfiles.com/flash/2026/0...

1. Ban all current adults, eg anyone aged 21+ in the year 2026 gets blocked 2. Encourage the younger generation to have another crack at using internet/web to do useful and fun stuff without the current adults in the way Simples www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

If you / anyone you know is a person who will try to take advantage of someone remotely selling their parent's house to appear to sneakily grab extra lawn for yr house next door then be aware that I will curse you, give Paddington Bear stares, and passive aggressively post about you on social media

UK Government releases a further £102.6 million for reform of NI public services www.gov.uk/government/n... Reminder: the postcode list for Northern Ireland *still* isn't #opendata, 16 years after equivalent data for GB was unlocked to maximise re-use #publicservices #digitalisation #datapolicy

My eyes rolled out of the back of my head right about here.

BREAK: The Dutch government blocks the acquisition of a vital Dutch supplier to a widely used online identification tool, which was set to be acquired by a U.S.-based company. open.overheid.nl/details/ec64...

<Thom Yorke voice> you do it to yourself, you do you and no one else

One obvious thing over the last few weeks is that Farage, who didn't feel any threat from the right, and was therefore able to nod and wink most of the time, is now having to say stuff that sounds like Lowe/Restore to not be seen as "weak". It's really obvious in his digital ads and social posts.

Who By Fire www.youtube.com/watch?v=piqK...

I can report, via my wife who is travelling back to Newcastle from London, that very very long bus replacement queue at York due to planned track maintenance, & which is even longer because of earlier signal failures a bit south of York, is now experiencing queue jumping as well as extreme heat

“Technology in & of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate & use it.” Sounds like the Pope’s been reading Mumford, Ellul etc

Alt: Senior executive resigns as investigation into financial irregularities continues

I’ve just finished running a full pass over the Post Office Inquiry evidence, for the first time since January, and uploaded everything new to postofficeinquiry.dracos.co.uk It found >4,000 new documents; for the sort of thing it’s being used for, see e.g. www.postofficescandal.uk/post/project...

Tempting to write off the Restore polling as sample bias etc. But my feeling is its real Even in Bristol we're encountering them on the doorstep. People coming back from Makerfield think 7% may be a underestimate. They're all over Facebook in particular and showing up in national polls Its real.

I'd missed the silly Peter Kyle quotes in here. This govt really needs to remember that building in-house, sometimes with smaller suppliers, is an option & doing that openly can be great way to help businesses scale faster by providing cheaper foundational stuff www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Excellent news that the new building at Locomotion - the part of the National Railway Museum at Shildon nr Durham/Darlo - has won a regional RIBA design award It's a really really lovely space www.riba.org/explore/awar...

Not a fan of reality TV - shock, horror... - but I can 100% endorse Race Across The World, ❤️❤️ this season's winners, and 🤜 to the production crew for both selecting great contestants and building the trust needed for some of the conversations & topics that come up

Can someone write something wise and funny about the similarities between USA graduation speeches and LinkedIn posts? Thank you in advance

Oh brave new world it is where you are offered a choice of antisemites at your local by-election. WTF has happened to UK politics?!

So the EHRC guidance has been updated from "Fuck trans people's rights" to "I'm terribly sorry but fuck trans people's rights", and it remains glaringly obvious that the government's response to the Supreme Court judgement should have been to fix the law rather than cower in fear of bigots.

Here's the FTC press release: www.ftc.gov/news-events/... "this service did not, in fact, listen in on consumers’ conversations or use voice data at all [...] Instead, the service the companies provided consisted of reselling—at a significant markup—email lists obtained from other data brokers."

Morning: why & how to measure trust Lunchtime: UX patterns for agents and data management Afternoon: EU AI act and financial services Now:

"The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac)...withheld approval, saying Scotland Yard had seriously engaged with only one potential supplier" <- quite right, anyone who says Palantir is "unique" and only supplier who can do this kind of stuff is a fool www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

this is a masterpiece

Theory: one of the main causes of the UK's lack of productivity & growth (in a social as well as economic sense) is the utter daftness published by so many papers, think tanks and academics www.cityam.com/a-state-of-t...

Alt: Eternal Flame has decided its time to grow www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...

+1 I know of a councillor who, ~16 years ago, got selected/elected while under a banning order from multiple local schools 'cos he was harassing ex-partner/kids Local press told me it couldn't be disclosed, 'cos it was a family court order, and fella tried to get me sacked for ringing press/party