Me too. The lack of support for writers and creative people more generally in relation to AI has been incredibly dispiriting. Our creative industries need to be supported and protected.

Heads up, Yorkshire based screenwriters and playwrights. The Kay Mellor Fellowship award is now open for submissions. Working alongside Leeds Playhouse and Rollem films you’ll develop scripts for stage/screen. Closing date: 10th August. Bursary: £10,000. www.leedsplayhouse.org.uk/job/the-kay-...

Really hope this is true. Starmer’s Labour - Kyle, Kendall et al - siding with tech cos. over creatives, for example, was beyond disappointing.

Great thread 👇

2. One idea mentioned in OP's thread is possibly the need for "more stories about working class people." I tend to talk about this as "regular people figuring out how to look out for one another" because the more you see that in a fictional context on screen, the more the IDEA becomes normalized

Come with me and you'll be / in a world of abject exploitation

Trans rights are human rights always and forever.

🚨 Google continues to lobby the UK government to hand the work of the country's creatives to big tech companies for free. 🧵 1/3

We're suing Ofcom for its continued failure to stop hate and misinformation. Namely, in TalkTV's transphobic broadcasts. Will you help us? 👇

I just cancelled a free trial before the automatic payments kicked in and the adrenaline flowing through me right now feels like I narrowly escaped a shark attack.

upon news that Michael is the highest grossing biopic of all time, leaving this here: www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/20...

6b. Nobody allowed to call anywhere outside London "the regions".

Older lady peeped the rainbow flag on my bike, asked in a thick Russian accent “It’s your Pride?” She told me her youngest grandchild is “not she berry or he berry but no berry.” I said “Nonbinary?” She got so excited. Yes! Yes! And “Is a secret, but they are my“ *looks around, whispers* “favorite.”

"Eggers & his wife, the writer Vendela Vida, are part of two class action lawsuits against Anthropic over the AI firm’s unauthorised use of their books to train large language learning systems. “I guarantee you they didn’t even think they were stealing anything because it’s just ‘content’ to them."

Extraordinary credit to Sadiq Khan for pushing through this deeply controversial policy. This is what can happen when politicians are prepared to stick to their principles.

This reminds me of a great bit in Tootsie, which I have definitely taken on board. Jeff asks Michael how he deals with Ron, and he says: "He told me what he wanted, I didn't agree with him. I didn't say anything, I did it the way I wanted to, he bawled me out, I apologised to him, that was that."

I made Pete an igloo. Made holes in a cardboard box. Put ice packs on top and covered them with a towel.

*Watching One Foot In The Grave* wow this didn't age well (shot of a couple living comfortably in a beautiful semi detached Greater London house on a retired security guard's pension)

are we sure

LEAVE HER ALONE

To be fair, Spielberg made a movie about his parents' divorce pretty early on. He was 36, and it's E.T.

DISCLOSURE DAY ratings on Letterboxd

To be fair, JD Vance kept coming round her house

This is an element that most people who weren't the direct target of this coverage don't understand is that we've now had a decade of the largest paper of record in the US "just asking questions" about the validity of a class of a people. How can that lead to anything other than discrimination?

OK so Larry David's new show sounds amazing. Am already laughing just reading the episode premises... www.rogerebert.com/reviews/life...

Even the pope wants you to finish that screenplay

Lynda Barry did not squeeze your heart and simultaneously explain the point of all art with the barest of line drawings so you could tell me that AI is "inevitable."

Buster Keaton didn't stand still while a two-ton housefront collapsed on top of him with a window cut out to barely clear his shoulders on each side so you could tell me that AI is "inevitable."

This. Also Phillipson's quote once again conflates trans people with violence, with trans women being a threat to cis women. This starting point (which then becomes the starting point for transphobia, and policies!) needs to be regularly called out and rejected for the bullshit it is.

I have to say, it's making me feel a little insane hearing commentators say Ed Miliband shouldn't be chancellor because of his "ideological zeal" for Net Zero, in a week where temperatures are so extreme that my kids are being sent home early every day and it's regularly 30 degrees inside my house

Treat. Platforms. As. Publishers.

The first year I’ve really struggled to get women on board. One final plea. I’ll gladly give up my own speaking slot because I’d really love more women and people from racially minoritised communities.

Djed Spence, the first Muslim man to play football for England, refused to shake hands with alleged rapist Thomas Partey last night. Nigel Farage, self-appointed saviour of ‘Judeo-Christian values’, described alleged rapist Andrew Tate as ‘an important voice’ for men young men a couple of years ago.

Okay. Ai can go bankrupt then. This is not our problem, this sounds like a rich tech billionaire problem.

Absolutely terrific magazine piece by @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social. You can read it here, or in the FT Mag in the @ftweekend.com on Saturday:

This is indeed a key test. The proposals are morally indefensible, legally questionable, economically self-destructive, and politically delusional. No-one with "legitimate concerns" about migration will vote Labour for pledging to deport care workers. inews.co.uk/news/politic...

Hey London/E&W folks! I don’t know about you, but the heat yesterday seemed pretty brutal to me. Today is going to be unequivocally hotter. The Met Office has a Red Warning in place: “take action now to keep yourself and others safe... It is very likely that there will be a risk to life”.

Earlier this year I wrote a thing about "The Collective Power Of Human Troubleshooting", aka people getting solid help on reddit in this age of AI search results, and I think I just found an even better example...

💥 NEW Best for Britain Report out: 💰UK membership of the EU alone would deliver at least six times more growth (£92bn) than every post Brexit trade deal combined 📈 Most benefits felt OUTSIDE of London (hello Andy!) 🇪🇺 EU gets growth too 📉 Refuk plan to diverge brings GDP hit of as much as £35bn.

I posted this one, muted it and logged off for the day and came back to find y’all have found their employers, reported it, and also reported it to the agents and whilst I don’t condone doxxing, I do believe in FAFO and not letting Nazis exist in public so round of applause to y’all

Westminster is a postcode whose currency is power – and power is shifting, and like the shift key, it's next to control, and this restart will need a control, shift and a delete, but you can't simply delete Burnham, he will undo and open a new document, not a paper document but a contract made of

This is a really great piece on the fall of Starmer. Would add that as well as immigrants and queers, the Starmer government has been needlessly and performatively horrible to disabled folks, and we have friends and family too.

It seems that several commentators have set themselves a challenge: to write a thread or article expressing disbelief as to why Starmer was so loathed without mentioning his stances on AI, Black Lives Matter, Gaza, trans rights, and then dismiss that loathing as the hysteria of out-of-touch elites.

SPECIAL EPISODE: From Brexit 🇪🇺 to Burnham 🌹 What Brexit unleashed & what comes next. On a BIG day in politics, Naomi & Alex chat to @mrjamesob.bsky.social about Starmer's departure & the 10th anniversary of that referendum. 🎧 open.spotify.com/episode/54YY... 🍏 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/q...

Why does my cat look like she's just heard terrible news about her investment portfolio

I shouldn't respond to a Simon Jenkins column, I know, but this is the second broadsheet hack I've seen turn "buses" into a sneer, and it pisses me off. Buses in Manchester are a big deal! We're simple people - we sing, we dance, we use public transport... no, that wasn't it...