Cannot stop laughing at the news that the quite peaceful and lovely canalside park in Ancoats, where we take my friend's dog for walkies and watch the ducks, is where Burnham intends to build his northern No 10 on a patch of brownfield space. I am always, always ten steps ahead of everyone else. 🐕‍🦺 🦆

Also, here's a data broker discount code, because reasons. incogni.cello.so/uDIEW5c65kp

Here's a Proton discount code, because reasons pr.tn/ref/PWSST557

Does anyone know of a good explanation of that this, from the announcement, means when it says “scrapes”? It says one of the brokers “scrapes users' locations from commercial advertising technology systems that target online ads at individual users, known as ‘adtech.’”

"The address was hosted by Uncensored America, an American student organisation founded by the former secretary for a far-right campus club whose co-founders now run a neo-Nazi press that prints Adolf Hitler’s speeches"

Never a dull moment when it comes to the EU-US data transfers. Yesterday, the SCOTUS pretty much gave a green flight to Trump to fire FTC members on his own will. Now @noyb.eu confirms that lawsuit is coming from their side. noyb.eu/en/us-suprem...

Popup on the site of the analytics tool preferred by the Trump administration:

100% this is part of the problem - age verification and surveillance technology vendors are showing up to standards development processes, because the entry and travel costs are pocket change to them. Digital rights and civil society groups are oblivious and hopeless on this (as usual).

If you use Gmail, you need to read this. Google’s AI, Gemini, can read your emails, attachments, bank statements, etc. For many, this feature was switched on without consent. Here's how to turn it off 🧵 1/

1/2 Indulge me in a Monday morning moan. Last week Ofcom mandated two additions to the illegal content codes of practice for the OSA. For those in scope, this is the table that tells you which other OSA documents have been accordingly updated. www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/r...

New Blog Post:- Garbage for Humans - 5 paragraphs of the most impactful writing I've read in a long time. www.rhyswynne.co.uk/garbage-for-...

This would make her throw cutlery at me, but: happy 100th birthday to Mel Brooks

Spotted on a wander: this arrangement of metal poles and balls is the grave of Hedy Lamarr, who invented the frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication method which led to today’s Bluetooth, GPS, and WLAN. It’s a visual representation of that, and also of her face. She also did other things.

Jared Holt used AI to spot patterns in posts about the Reflecting Pool by right-wing accounts on right-wing social-media platforms. The tool broke down more than 2,500 posts into three buckets: "Phase 1: Triumph and Restoration Phase 2: Defending the Project Phase 3: Sabotage and Culture War"

“I have done all of the things that one is supposed to do to earn a tenure-track position. And I have done approximately 85% of them by typing prompts into a large language model and then moderately editing the output.” 🤣🤣🤣 brilliant 👌🏽 open.substack.com/pub/inprepar...

Further detail on allegations about the behaviour of the UK's Information Commissioner, John Edwards, who recently resigned following the outcome of a workplace investigation: Data watchdog boss 'made jokes about paedophiles and sex with Smurfs' www.thetimes.com/article/0f7e... (£)

Meanwhile in America: “Prosecutors convinced a jury that the fact that the eight defendants present at the protest wore all black and used the Signal encrypted messaging app supported their material support of terrorism charges.”

NEW: As resistance to data centers grows, I noticed some interesting convos happening online.... electricians are debating whether wiring data centers is morally neutral, or if it makes you a sell-out. To learn more, I spoke with electricians engaged in this debate: www.wired.com/story/data-c...

As I wrote this week at @thenerve.news www.thenerve.news/p/under-16-s...

The Manchester coup is here and I am 100% loving it

The attacks in Edinburgh, in which an armed bare-chested white man terrorised Muslims, leaving five people injured, don't feature on a single newspaper front page this morning. Two tier journalism

Apropos of nothing, that article I wrote this week is the first article I’ve been given a payment for writing since before the pandemic. The first.

As I wrote this week at @thenerve.news www.thenerve.news/p/under-16-s...

Just saying @meredithmeredith.bsky.social.

Did DoD just admit in a court filing that it used xAI's Grok Gov Model to hit the girls' school on the first day of the Iran war? Based on some passages flagged by @rgoodlaw.bsky.social in DoD's recent filing in NAACP's case against X, it looks like it did 1/

Effortless home run from Heather here. Gleeful universal data collection for misanthropic, fascistic entities by the government to fuel their technological illiteracy on an unachievable bullshit goal. Endless disruption of normal people’s daily life

Tech secretary Liz Kendall has now also blogged on socials about the resignation of the UK's Information Commissioner, John Edwards www.linkedin.com/posts/liz-ke... #FOI #dataprotection #govcomms

This man is cooking. Hold his negroni.

"I also struggle with the persistent focus on privacy as the purported barrier to solving these issues, when we have most of the Epstein list walking around without consequences."

The bit 30 minutes in about what X’s director of global policy said about not taking down the violent imagery that inspired the Southport murderer left me lost for words.

I’m sorry, no. This is not the guy who did the reflecting pool. No. Come on. We’re just putting a hat on a hat here. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/u...

Overnight, Andy Burnham won and John Edwards (the ICO) resigned, and that’s a pretty efficient few hours in my book.

I know how stuffy the building is so can I kindly ask: can someone on the Lords side please open a ventilation window for Floella, thanks

bla bla bla, bla bla bla bla bla

The traditional dance of my people

I've said this before, but there's a reason so much of the UK moral panic and ensuing legislative pushes about young people online has been driven by the Tatler, Times, and Telegraph class. These are people for whom objectifying their children into infantalised possessions, for life, is normal.

Keir Starmer’s under-16 social media ban can only work if everyone proves who they are, so it’s a natural move for a government selling surveillance as safety By tech policy expert and digital rights advocate @heatherburnstech.bsky.social www.thenerve.news/p/under-16-s...

Can we just add this to the spec

I look 40% more intimidating with impressive quotes

When both your entire policy strategy and your “leadership” of the civil society organisation meant to fight for it has fallen arse over tit, it’s important to reflect on everything you’ve done wrong and then choose to double down on it. 🙄 www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/the-soc...

Also on this: a good editor is worth their weight in gold, never so much so when you're trying to write an article on a deadline during an emergency home repair. Find ye a good editor, praise and exalt thy editor.

the NERVE of this woman. Me, @thenerve.news www.thenerve.news/p/under-16-s...

The Guardian, which once reported courageously on Snowden's revelations of US government's global internet surveillance, is now yapping happily for Starmer's risibly stupid age verification and ID data haul for Big Tech. Technologically illiterate and politically naive How the mighty have fallen.

PERSON OF THE DAY. 16 June 2016. Labour MP Helen Joanne (“Jo”) Cox (aged 41), was murdered by a far right extremist in Birstall, West Yorkshire. She was 1st sitting UK MP to be assassinated since the Conservative Party’s Ian Gow, who was killed by an IRA car bomb on 30 July 1990.

Can I just say that my brain is so wired for visual cognition that I keep thinking the Keir Starmer law textbook cover is a Roxy Music album cover.

this is a *super short post* in which i urge us to reclaim 'free speech' in its broader public-interest, democracy-supportive meanings, rejecting the populist/maga right's bad faith cooptation. thx to the amazing team @knightcolumbia.org! i conclude with this:

One aspect not mentioned by anyone at all in yesterday’s happy-clapping about the ban ban ban: young people who need to document urgent journalistic content in the public interest, which is the world we live in, will now be banned for their “safety” (!) heatherburns.tech/2026/01/16/t...

The front page headline on my town's weekly newspaper is about the "alarming" increase in online scams targeting the elderly, so by today's logic we'll be immediately banning all elderly people from all access to the apps where they get scammed. Right? Right?

Kids have been banned from Facebook to stop them seeing harmful content. In totally unrelated news, my 60 year old neighbour on Facebook has just AI'ed a video of himself throwing a woman in a burqa into the back of a bin lorry.