Raising the Flag Follow my work and writing on Substack: nickanderson.substack.com

I know we like to joke about how every faction in the Labour Party will eventually adopt every position. I wasn't expecting them to manage it in one leadership contest

If you'd like to see a whole Flickr stream of originals compared with plagiarisms, scroll through these. www.flickr.com/photos/decon...

If you'd like to know more about Russ Heath, a far more talented artist whom Lichtenstein made millions aping, this biographical comic is a good start.

"F&ck the planet" by the New York Times

Middlesbrough's culinary contribution to the world: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmo

I still love the theory a Year 6 child proposed to me that David Attenborough is actually God and he got fed up with people not noticing the amazing things he'd created, so he made documentaries to show off.

W.H. Auden, it turns out, truly hated internal combustion engine cars.

I learned that the Human League's Being Boiled and Visage's Fade to Grey share the same bassline, and now I hear them both all the time.

Google's AI answers remain as reliable as ever.

Holy shit (reposting with Alt Text)

paging @greatdismal.bsky.social

good use case for AI www.reddit.com/r/Entreprene...

it’s worth reading every word of this brilliant, excoriating column by Fraser Nelson

Pseudocreobotra wahlbergi - or Praying Mantis there are 2,400 species This is the African Spiny Flower mantis

Rogue 💖👐 #rogue #marvelrivels

"No one could stop the US raiding modern shipping, but it doesn't because it knows it benefits far more from unmolested maritime trade than any potential piracy spoils", used to be my go-to example illustrating how international law works. Will need to update with a "fucking idiot" caveat.

Starting to think that you can reliably tell that a technology is a dead end when Meta bets big on it

A picture is worth a thousand words

Never have 4 people more wished they were still in the deepest, darkest recesses of outer space.

ding ding ding I also think it’s relevant that this is in particular a coding tool, and there was likely an effort to give it a masculine name as a result🫠

A billion dollars is the socio-economic equivalent of a loose nuke, and we should work to prevent the acquisition of the former with the same urgency and ruthlessness we use to prevent the acquisition of the latter.

...and that was the end of the franchise.

You ever see a personal website that makes you instantly want to redesign your own? Yeah. www.tombradley.dev

exercises to bear in mind. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

by my tally we are now spending ~$2B to companies to NOT build more energy infrastructure. in the middle of an energy crisis

This is fascinating at a philosophical level. The system was designed to move people from the peripheries to the center, so now the center is finding new reasons to exist.

It should be at least OK for every hed of every article about data centers in space to say, forthrightly, that space experts say it won’t work.

it sure would suck to have an economy propped up on a bubble of bullshit that could come crashing down when everyone realizes they're pouring a ton of money into something that's not actually worth much at all en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_bubble

Appreciate this detail from CBS News reporter Jennifer Jacobs. It's an important part of the story that seems to be missing from a lot of comments & coverage.

SNL UK mistakes being shouty for being funny.

"Political violence," says O'Donnell, "has touched so many in that room." In which O'Donnell, also in the room, defines "political violence" as only that which happens to political elites, not that which they do to Venezuela, Iran, Gaza, the victims of ICE...

'but now it was happening to me' -- there's a journalist who has never reported from a war zone. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

The amount of misinformation we’re getting about an incident that just occurred in front of 1,500 news reporters is truly the metaphor of our generation.

this is what all the social media in the Purge movies looks like

on how the United States sees itself. youtu.be/x5baPn6SAQA?

Love this mural on Govan Road in Glasgow. Created by the street artist Smug and painted in 2022, it was inspired by Govan-born Peter Barr, who was also known as the daffodil King. #glasgow #streetart #mural #govan #daffodils

Gaia has changed our impression of the Milky Way.  It showed us that our galaxy has more than two spiral arms and that its central bar is more inclined with respect to the Sun. Below is the best Milky Way animation we currently have, thanks to Gaia data 👇 🔭

@mjhibbett.bsky.social huge if true. youtu.be/LR09_utgjXc?

Exactly one year ago today:

naming your biology plagiarism machine after the most famous case of biology plagiarism is a very funny bit I must admit

We call ourselves "intelligent," yet the humblest fungus can decompose waste and build soil, a tree can harness solar energy, and a wetland can purify water—all without toxic byproducts. True intelligence is learning from these systems, not bulldozing them.

@gruber.foo Globalstar: it's had three decades of non-global coverage, and it's not a Walker star geometry; it's a Ballard rosette. www.globalstar.com/en-us/covera...

I fast forward through Saturday Night Live UK to skip the boring bits. Doesn't take long.

Oh, yeah, that was the Obama Iran deal.