Royal Mail app: here’s a notification in the app, you weren’t in, we haven’t left a card, just tell us when you need it and we’ll deliver again. Also Royal Mail app: if you don’t tell us which of three possible types of card we left we won’t be able to redeliver.

“At the moment they do not know the long-term consequences of this pollution on the make-up of Earth's atmosphere, but it is unlikely to be good.” If only we had some kind of precautionary principle for these sorts of issues. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

once again, we need to get off US tech and platforms as quickly as possible — and governments need to seriously fund the development of alternatives

OKAY BIG ONE FOR YA NEW report out today: I dig deep into how big tech has been muddling tech types and overstating evidence to claim "AI" will make global emissions drop like a stone.... Not only will it not, it seems to be verifiably doing the opposite!! ketanjoshi.co/2026/02/17/b... + 📼+🧵>

do u think during the industrial revolution people thought the factory was their boyfriend

The key thing about this story isn’t actually what the PR firm did - awful as it is - it’s that the journalists they smeared *were investigating the undeclared funding that brought Starmer to power* That’s why Josh Simons commissioned them To stop reporting on Labour Together breaking election law

Quite apart from the panelists’ un evidenced views that AI controlled cars will reduce congestion and support growth by “reducing the burden of employment red tape”. Small nod to the impact on cabbies’ and private hire drivers’ jobs and a simplistic expectation that driverless cars are safer. 😬

Politics London discussing driverless taxis casually referring to “jaywalking pedestrians”. Jaywalking is not a thing in UK law. Transport for London and Government had better not be asleep at the wheel on this.

The grim tragedy of inclusive communities of WI women disbanded due to the destructive power of transphobia promoted so widely and unquestioningly by broadcast and print media. Organisations like the WI have been undermined and attacked under a banner of divisive hate directed at trans people.

I will continue to beat this drum: this is not about what happens on Election Day, but afterwards. The key tell is her articulation of the core MAGA belief that the legitimacy of elections is entirely determined by the results: if they win, it’s legitimate; if they lose, it’s not.

One of the terrible things about the ICE occupation of Minneapolis is that they’ve been doing stuff that is so crazy that people assume it’s some kind of exaggeration, despite being widely documented on video. Following observers home! Lurking outside elementary schools! Black-bagging citizens!

Only right that the road outside City Hall is modernised with decent cycle lanes. Pity my main way of experiencing them is to see them out of the window on the cycle shuttle, but I can’t have everything!

If RideLondon is paused, what do they do when the Tour de France Femmes turns up in london in 2027? (I’m guessing nothing is a reasonable guess, but how do you justify the money hosting will cost without a participation event?)

1974: Albert Bridge should be shut to motor traffic. It had deteriorated further even after they threw £4.4m (allowing for inflation) at it earlier that decade. Many of the arguments sound oddly familiar. Apparently there is no other way to get to Battersea Park.

This is the key point that is lost in so much Westminster bubble talk on net zero. It is popular. It’s hugely popular with Labour’s base and with the progressive voters it needs to vote tactically to defeat Reform. And it’s even popular with Tories who Labour needs not to switch to Reform.

It really embodies the very specific ways that some people in politics are a) bad at their jobs and b) too online that you can be supportive of 'the Labour government 2024 to 2026, and McSweeney's role in it' and use these words *at all*, not least in many ways: that's what they're doing!

The Home Office now describes asylum seekers as "illegal immigrants [living in hotels]" with no reference to the reason that these people are in government-funded accommodation is that this government has taken & will process the asylum claim from them in 98-99% of cases of unauthorised entry.

Omnigov was the agency that helped to bail out a lot of corporate local news outlets during the pandemic with a special series of wraparound ads, but declined to offer the same to independents.

It’s like people have been “raptured” to hell: “Leon sends a "chase" car to check out where these abandoned vehicles are located and arranges discreet drop-offs. Since late December, he estimated they have dropped off 250 cars. The drop-offs are often emotional for the families and Leon's crew.”

I swing between sharing this with anger, sorrow and determination. It’s a bit of all three to be honest. And as Ned rightly says, the miracle of cycling itself is one to remember.

I do want to shout-out my fellow sociologists, who have collectively created a discipline so woke that not a single one of our introductory textbooks can make it past Florida's censors. Great work everyone.

Metry and her husband of 4 years go to DHS to get their I-130 in motion. "Good news" a DHS employee told them, the form to start her naturalization was approved. DHS employee asks the husband to follow him through a secure door. When it locks behind him, ICE detains his wife to deport her.

On Wednesday Roger Geffen gave evidence at the Undercover Policing Inquiry. I’ve known him since I got into cycle campaigning a decade ago, but he was mostly giving evidence on the 90s when spy cops disrupted Reclaim The Streets. His witness statement is fascinating. www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/u...

to me this is one of the craziest things in these texts. Epstein set up meetings with board members of Open Society Foundation, the Soros group, dangling his money but using the meetings as intelligence gathering opportunities. He would then pass on strategy tips to Bannon, to help him destroy OSF.

Interesting read out from the car club round table meeting on Thursday (following up on Zipcar’s exit) making things sound more positive than I’d dared hope. I’ve lost count of the conversations I’ve had with former Zipcar users desperately wondering whether any service will replace it.

Out of the lot of them, aside from maybe Musk, there's a case to be made that Bezos has gone the *most* oligarch — the vanity Melania doc, bending his influential newspaper to placate the president, changing company policy after a phone call. Stiff competition though

With Jeff Bezos's dismantling of the Washington Post and Amazon's extensive ICE and DoD profiteering, it's imperative to understand precisely how both have openly become instruments of authoritarianism

Thank you to everyone who attended the Vigil for Irene Leardini this evening. Good to see members of the press, Lewisham Council and our local MP attend. We'll be writing to TfL to try to engage in some sort of dialogue about the A2. Hopefully we won't have to do this again.

Very moving vigil for Irene Leardini by side of A2 in New Cross Gate tonight. She was cycling here two weeks ago. RIP. Sad we are still gathering at the side of busy roads asking why nothing has been done to make them safe. Thanks to all at @lewishamcyclists.bsky.social for organising the vigil.

Once again, it turns out “fully autonomous” means “a guy in the Philippines.”

While reporting this, I had something happen that's never happened. A comms rep for one of the co's disputed my reporting and said what I was telling them was untrue because it was not in Grok, xAI's chatbot. I was looking directly at the files. And this person was using AI to challenge the truth.

This is like a scene out of Monty Python. ICE agents get a name back from face recognition and multiple agents start calling out "Maria! Maria!" to see if a woman in custody reacts. (Presumably if she does that's a match???) It didn't work, so they ran the app again and got another name.

It’s 2028 and all pedestrians are mandated by law to wear hi vis clothes at all times. Black north face jackets are illegal. Black mascara has been outlawed and replaced with neon. Drivers are still watching tiktok and saying didn’t see you there pal.

Irene was one of two people killed on London's roads while cycling in January 2026. Not a good start to the year. This Friday, 6 Feb, our local group @lewishamcyclists.bsky.social will hold a short vigil to mark her passing on what is a horrible stretch of roads that need improvement, urgently...

Going back to my past lives at Platts and as an oil & gas analyst at an investment bank (2014-18ish) - two things always taken as true on EVs: 1) Will be broadly limited to a middle class European rich country trend 2) Will be a small passenger vehicles only trend Doubly wrong.

It's odd that "No Kings" is a blandly acceptable slogan - almost all Americans agree that government should be run by the people (or representatives we elect) - but "No Kings" applied to businesses is almost unthinkable to many, as if some law of physics says that each company must have a CEO king.

It seems an odd time to make “well, a rich person offered to pay my husband’s tuition fees” the story, too.

Being able to cross the road where you need to is fundamental to making high streets and buses operate too.

Will the Fair Work Agency soon be doing similar work on this in the UK?

Hugo eligibility post! “The Cuddled Little Vice,” my book-length essay on the poison legacy of Sandman, is eligible for Best Related Work.

Yet another report calls for a national urban/village default speed limit of 20mph. This time its from the Faculty of Public Health, Transport and Health Science Group and the Royal Society for Public Health. See action No. 5 www.fph.org.uk/media/tr2bnu...

Anyone else wound up unable to access TfL pages this week? You’d expect an accidental block to time out after a few hours or days, surely.

I am so tired of all the things that we said would happen, and were routinely ignored or dismissed by tech bros and neoliberals for saying would happen, continuing to happen, in exactly the way that we said they would happen.

Been saying this for ages. If it's not harmful to the economy to tax basic rate taxpayers at 37% why wouldn't we do it for everyone and have a gold plated NHS? And if it is harmful, why are we doing it for some people?

It’s a Moondog’s London Saxophonic album Sax Pax for a Sax kind of an evening. (So glad I hunted down a CD of this last year to upgrade my old emusic mp3s) moondog.bandcamp.com/album/sax-pa...

The Abundance argument about how to deal with climate change: ignore temperature targets, get rid of environmental regulations, and weaken community power to block fossil fuels. Make ALL energy cheap. Is it surprising this argument is being made here by a former member of Trump’s transition team?

I think I might take one of these "under 20 minutes" AI skills courses the UK Govt. seems very keen on everyone doing and live-post it here... Maybe we can all learn something together! The press release sends me to aiskillshub.org.uk/aiskillsboost/ - let's go and see!

When it rains, it now rains more. For those experiencing the flooding in south-west England, it is worth remembering that rainfall in winter has increased by about 25% overall. And, the rainfall has also become more intense: when it rains, it now rains more, increasing the risk of flooding.

I am. But there are three things at play here regarding ICE collecting private data. Quick rundown on the issue, why you should be paying attention, and what I'm doing about it: