The answer is no. There is no way that smartphones are responsible for a 40% decline in worldwide fertility rate. This is what the graph looks like from 1970 to the present (from @ourworldindata.org).

The vampire hunt is ON! Do you have a beat up VHS, film print etc of the 1922 Nosferatu? Alexandre O Philippe and our team are making a doc about our global treasure hunt called IN SEARCH OF NOSFERATU. More info here, or email us at albingraufilms at gmail dot com deadline.com/2026/05/in-s...

Rape, domestic abuse, and stalking victims may no longer have to surrender their phones to Police. New tech by UK company Kulpa enables victims to send digital material – messages, photos, emails – to Police in England in a format that can be used in court. www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/954069a...

Thought this was a model response from @celiarichardson.bsky.social to a pretty harsh article in the Spectator about the National Trust

The tale of every single last Reform-led council so far is them discovering that there is no secret Net Zero Department for Pronouns that accounts for 45% of council budgets, panicking, ordering an entire budget surplus worth of flags, and then falling apart in acrimony.

Me, too!

Literally one of the few things that make me feel patriotic.

My mat leave cover just became an MSP. She is going to be bloody brilliant.

I do think it's worth understanding that the immigration reforms she's proposing poll pretty badly, particularly amongst Labour voters, in part because they are so extreme people can't quite believe they're real. This is why Labour are at 17% in the polls and only retain 42% of their 2024 voters.

The University of Sussex's victory over the Office for Students lays bare the extent to which the university regulator was only ever going to reach one outcome in this case. The OfS wasn't promoting free speech, it was seeking to force unis to align with it's agenda: share.google/LDAc0al5tGq6...

Just came on here to check that others had noticed that Morgan McSweeney and Ross Greer are the same person. At least 5 people have.

Zhang Shan won the gold medal for the mixed skeet shooting event in the 1992 Olympics. The International Shooting Union *immediately* banned women from competing against men.

The first documented discovery of an axolotl in the wild in the UK and she probably saved its life ❤️ www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Everyone is talking about Palantir’s controversial manifesto. Last year, Mark Wilding from Liberty investigated how the UK government handed our data to Peter Thiel’s company

Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/so... preprint w/ Richard Rogers

Palantir must be destroyed. My interview with @cydhayes.bsky.social of the @sf.gazetteer.co sf.gazetteer.co/reading-pala...

Fascinating and important thread.

OMFG

Well this is awful news. So sorry to all those who knew him. What a loss.

France is switching from Microsoft to Linux "We must become less reliant on American tools and regain control of our digital destiny. We can no longer accept that our data, our infrastructure, our strategic decisions depend on solutions whose rules, pricing, evolution, and risks we do not control."

Indeed, EU law *literally* protected Magyar from prosecution by Orbán, who wanted to prosecute him - but Magyar is an MEP, and the European Parliament refused to waive his immunity balkaninsight.com/2025/10/10/m...

A lot of Orbán's American fans are saying that this election proved he was never an authoritarian in the first place. This is completely wrong — and, in fact, betrays a complete misunderstanding of both Hungarian politics and modern authoritarianism. Here's why.

You'd think politicians perpetrating a misinformation campaign against a charity would have led to some kind of sanction from their party, from society. But no. Our political class continues to cover themselves in excrement and we shrug about what to do. www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Novelist Lionel Shriver defends her Ulster Freedom Fighters mug by asserting it forms part of a collection of paramilitary mugs "that is perfectly balanced in terms of sectarian preferences", which would somehow be much better (if true)

Ant Middleton - a Reform supporter + ally of Tommy Robinson who now plans to run as an Independent for London Mayor - says that "rules will be changed once we take control of parliament" to prevent somebody like Shabana Mahmood being a government minister or MP "

This post would make more sense – by which I mean any sense – only if Labour wasn't hurtling towards electoral oblivion. But since it is, it doesn't remotely stand up even under its own 'logic'.

The push for sex verification tests is rooted in racism and they're explicit about it. Not a surprise they want to eliminate the 3 Black women in this photo.

You accuse me of being a crack head, I'd like to call my crack dealer as an expert witness to refute this claim.

He tries to use AI to debunk his use of AI! It's like calling your crack dealer as an expert witness to prove you're not a crack head.

This is incredible. The claim that AI is used by everyone. I can say with absolute authority that AI is NEVER used in Amnesty research. I can say this as Head of Policy and Research for Amnesty UK; I have NEVER used AI (genuinely, I have no idea HOW to). I'm not saying I never will, I never have.

Lying about your own country in return for money from a foreign power. There should be a word for that.

'Young people are now clearly social-first rather than online-first when it comes to news.' Handy blog from @reutersinstitute.bsky.social on how young people are taking in news - a big shift towards social, and individual news creators reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/understandin...

It is striking how little media appetite or interest there has been for the Covid inquiry's conclusions

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Great to see the Scottish government citing our research with @homelessnessimpact.bsky.social in the announcement about its new Care Leaver Payment – one-off payments of £2k made to all young care leavers. 📊 Our trial suggests it could have significant benefits ➡️ www.gov.scot/news/helping...

Badenoch & 4 family members spent 6 days at a residence owned by Neil Record, who chairs Net Zero Watch, is life vice-president of the Institute of Economic Affairs, and sits on the advisory board of the Prosperity Institute, a think tank founded by the Legatum Group, the firm that co-owns GB News.

🚨What you won't read in the British media: on X, journalist @twelves.bsky.social has looked at Matt Goodwin's new book, Suicide of a Nation, and found that is packed full of fake quotes and material that appears to have been made up by AI.

Important news for your TL (to counter all the depressing news out there)

Good to see the headline reflecting the pressure over these awful proposals. But if ministers are insisting exemptions from new rules won’t even cover everyone already in the country (let alone addressing longer term unfairness beyond that) it’s clearly inadequate www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Blue Labour in a panicked retreat. Let’s keep the pressure up until this iniquitous policy is buried five miles underground.

Remember when people used to argue that Elon Musk was a genius?

Afghan who fought for US forces dies in ICE custody as Trump on track for grim record www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Every mother; OH YEAH YOU FUCKING THINK? I've NEVER been more lied to by any other person than a zero year old.

CONAN: “For the first time since 2012 no British people are nominated for Best actor or best Actress… a British spokesperson commented, ‘Yeah, well, at least we arrest our pedophiles.’" #Oscars

One thing I keep thinking about with the manosphere doc; has anyone done a class analysis of this shit? Because upper class men don't do the hyper masculine thing because they already have power (see all of history and society, or Made in Chelsea if that's your speed). Working class men do this as..

Here's why the thing you love is shit moment. Look forward to this being the highest ranking show after the Guardian getting it wrong AGAIN. (NB They didn't like The Traitors at the start)

For every person who calls themselves a feminist and believes that excluding trans people is a goal, I'd like to introduce you to the inevitability of your actions. You were fucking told.

Amnesty is backing this campaign ✊

thought the name rang a bell and though he's poshified himself - once upon a time he was "Craig Dillon" - I interviewed this guy back in 2019 as he was doing social media for MPs in a vaguely interesting way - crucially, he seemed entirely normal back then! yet another radicalisation case