Proper "find the guy who did this" stuff from Jenrick.

Is it not totally mad that Nigel Farage was shooting Cameo videos at 10.39pm last night for 80 quid a pop?

Just found a guy on Facebook who decided his niche was "AI-generated cute baby fruit videos", but clearly decided they weren't doing enough numbers, so now it's "AI-generated political leaders as baby fruit". Unfortunately, they still aren't doing numbers.

So anyone with access to a parliamentary printer and an LLM can do the funniest thing?

Well, that's 191 years of the Tory party all done and dusted then.

Teaching my daughter the basics of inspirational leadership before her Cork schools under 11s Camogie blitz quarter final this morning. Went so-so.

Ultimately, we just have to shut the internet down. There's no workable alternative.

Mullen represents the "Human Dignity Party" in the Irish senate.

We're looking for someone to help with research and data classification of political advertisers. Ideal learning opportunity for politics (and similar) students, but all experience/backgrounds considered. Details here: whotargets.me/en/careers-a...

New: I found more than 20 deepfake videos re-enacting or re-imagining the final moments of Renée Good's life. These videos mocking a tragic death, which I'm calling "digital desecrations," are the most extreme version of a pervasive trend within generative AI of 'resurrecting' the dead.

Former BBC journalist, PR to the McCanns, ex-Freuds, ex-COI Clarence Mitchell defects from the Tories to Reform. Google spots the difference...

Calling a London doctor and the wait time for someone to pick up the phone is... an hour? Is that at all normal?

Does Zahawi defecting to Reform make it trickier for Labour? Hell no. It's a gift.

I think there's a weird outcome here where this basically just hobbles parties' ability to campaign. A £50k cap doesn't necessarily mean there will be more donors at that level, so you'll probably end up with more public funding (which would be good, though unpopular).

If you're considering a big digital policy swing (like a social media ban for under 16s), you surely want to do a proper assessment of costs and benefits, which could be quite large, due to 16 year olds tending to live quite a long time after?

Back when I wanted to run workshops in a shop, I looked into the practicalities and they seemed very hard to take a punt on (10yr lease, automatic rent increases, hard to break, rates, fit out, insurance etc etc).

It's a no brainer, and will be in there.

Are there any good podcasts? Ideally current affairs analysis, bigger picture, without being overly newsy, too online or plain stupid?

UK financial journalists absolutely *freaked out* when the OBR accidentally published the Budget 20 mins early. The Chief Executive quit because someone uploaded it with a guessable document filename.

So inspiring to see people on the streets, protesting to get rid of fundamentalist zealots. And in Iran too.

Reform needs to find about 5,000 credible, articulate, well-prepared candidates over the next 3-4 years yet struggles to find 5. www.instagram.com/reel/DTQhmw-...

I think just shut it all down, today.

This did not age well (they won the Ashes with one proper batter).

Never felt older than seeing my son viewed my LinkedIn profile.

Close friend in Minneapolis said it's been "pure One Battle After Another" in the city in recent days. Things in the city (and elsewhere) could get very serious from here.

Given how many "good" shows force you to live with characters for 70+ hours over multiple seasons, it's surprising how few leave you feeling really bereft at the loss of your relationship with them. Also, given the answers to this, that a melancholic ending is really the only truly "good" one.

As the largest US state, and given its enormous military significance, I'd say 6 Greenlandic senators would be appropriate.

Ok. I'll bite. Defend Greenland from what exactly?

This campaign could be run by any of four political parties in Wales, but is instead coming from a private company founded on Dec 23rd.

This does have real "explaining, losing" vibes to it, doesn't it?

The 10 year old heard a lot of words she really shouldn't have.

There still aren't any good FIFA Peace Prize jokes, despite a lot of tries.

If Lula wins this year's Brazilian election from Bolsonaro's son by only a handful of points, he'll likely be sleeping with his eyes open.

BBC radio doesn't appear to have much news coverage of Venezuela, but if you switch to Times Radio, you can hear Rod Liddle and Brendan O'Neil on it.

Musk: Reject the evidence of your eyes and ears...

Very much a "half our advertising works, we just don't know which half" type of strategy. www.theguardian.com/media/2026/j...

For my sins, I'm listening to Dom Cummings being "interviewed" by Gove (surprise, he's getting to reprise his standard pitch with no challenge). A big part of it is comparing how "good" Britain was at doing things in 1800 vs now. Quite apart from that judgement, it's just totally ahistorical.

Happy to lead this movement. Disliked dogs for 45 years. Disgusting, unpredictable and sometimes dangerous.

Heard rumour of this kind of "targeted scrubbing" of data a while back, plus intentional weaknesses in ad library searching. Very VW behaviour.

New year's wish is that govs go beyond quick wins on tech harms (fraud and kids) and really look hard at tech's role in social cohesion and informing public. Can't keep hoping this sorts itself out. Need to make some bets/moves.

If you look at France, Sarkozy seemed to create a general dislike of politicians that has had a very, very long hangover. It killed Hollande, for a start.

The framing here of "politicians and experts" seems like a good one, because the rest of the article seems to focus on politicians saying some things that are pretty anecdotal and some others that are just untrue. www.politicshome.com/news/article...

If I had a big enough hanky, I'd Margaret Thatcher the hell out of whatever this rebrand is trying to do.

Interesting that it's open, but a bit at the mercy of local election results and leadership. Might want to call it "interim" instead?

Train Dreams was a decent movie fwiw. If you're the last one up over Christmas and are feeling a bit meditative, give it a shot.

Maybe it really is time for some form of PR. Perhaps there's some clever legislation that could apply to the election after next, triggered only if a stable gov can't be formed under FPTP. Or is that too Byzantine?

"Go early to Posh Dunnes" he thought.

Maybe Brits should just stop talking about 60 Minutes, America's dull, staid, dated "news" show.

Frustrating that this test match will probably be decided on two Snicko technical errors. 100+ run swing on those. Would be very close without them.

London dead, economy in tatters, everyone miserable etc.