Again: May 2024 is the announcement of the general election, which means it was the point where the public started paying attention to what the Labour Party had become, who was in charge, what their policies were and how they behave. You could ski down that line at breakneck speed.

you know how if you try and make LLMs more racist, they also end up more sexist and pro-genocide? this is the human example of that. evil isn't a single thing, if you start down one path you keep ending up at the same destination.

Buy the supply: my heart bleeds profusely for distressed landlords in this @theguardian.com letter: www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Is Tesla preparing to pull the plug on domestic production in Germany? For months, we have been reporting on the demand issues Tesla is facing in Europe. Now, the situation has deteriorated to a point where the existence of Gigafactory Berlin itself seems to be in question. /1

1471

Study Day Report: Piano Music of the 20th Century: Interrogating Performance and Research https://www.rma.ac.uk/2026/01/09/study-day-report-piano-music-of-the-20th-century-interrogating-performance-and-research/

"We can excuse free child pornography, but we draw the line at charging for it" is both the most this government way to handle this, and absolutely barking.

If you see this, post a vampire that isn't Dracula

Hmmm...

BBC News yesterday: "Despite the ceasefire Israel's bombardment of Gaza continues, with almost daily strikes" At what point do mainstream journalists start reporting that actually there isn't a ceasefire, instead of uttering absurdities like this.

?????

Trumpier than Trump

Ah here. The 10 o’clock news on BBV Radio 4 is leading with ‘JD Vance has described a woman shot dead by an ICE officer in Minnesota as a deranged leftist carrying out a terrorist attack’ This is not public service broadcasting

Search: "Rector University of Ghent Sutter ChatGPT" DuckDuckGo: U Ghent Rector caught using ChatGPT hallucinated quotes Google, All and News tabs: Brave new U Ghent Rector overcomes resistance to introduce students to the AI future...

I’m just an armchair critic but if I was a human rights lawyer, the former DPP and the current PM, I’d probably decide immediately that the only option on the table for a website that openly allows the creation and sharing of CSAM is to shut it down and jail the ringleaders.

This is a picture the official ‘UK Prime Minister’ account has posted on Facebook. How are these people so bad at this? That poor child…

It is only fascism if it comes from the Provincia di Forlì-Cesena…

I call on my party and my government to remove themselves entirely from X and communicate with the public where they actually participate online and can be protected from such illegality.

Why is Starmer's Number 10 refusing to rule out British bases being used in a US attack on Greenland? What a disgrace

The defining moment of the first congressional forum in San Francisco for the CA-11 seat currently held by Nancy Pelosi: “Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?” Saikat Chakrabarti - YES Connie Chan - YES Scott Wiener - no response This will be a key part of every write-up tomorrow.

The board of directors behind one of Australia's biggest literary events, Adelaide Writers Week, has announced their decision to remove prominent Palestinian author Randa Abdel-Fattah from their 2026 festival programme, citing ‘cultural sensitivity’ concerns in the wake of the Bondi Beach massacre:

EU officials say they keep posting to Musk's white supremacist pet project, X, to meet people where they are. But that doesn't hold much water. Von der Leyen and Kallas etc have huge convening power. News consumers will go to Bluesky or another if that's where EU officials go.

Just one of the most excruciatingly awful people

EU officials met with reps of Philip Morris International at least six times from September 2022 through 2024, documents show. The tobacco giant’s agenda? Enlist their help in lifting restrictions on its products. 🔗 politi.co/44I4nan

Worth noting that E1 is so disastrous and blatant that the EU was threatening to sanction the Israelis for this over a decade ago, and internal communiqués revealed that the British *under the Conservatives* were prepared to recognize Palestine in response.

Israel’s illegal E1 settlement is designed to “bury the idea of a Palestinian state.” World powers cannot continue solely condemning Israel’s violent expansion— they must take action against Israel.

First concert of 2026

There is, unsurprisingly, not a single report in western mainstream media about Israel's raid of Birzeit university yesterday. Also not a peep from universities. www.newarab.com/news/israeli...

‘Predator’

You're not ready for the name of the energy transition specialist at Heat Pump Association UK

What? A ludicrous, clearly vexatious media campaign of inflammatory drivel and bullshit? ?ooked up by crank MPs and poisonous newspapers working together at escalating hysteria? For months? Now given a damning, devastating endorsement by community groups that are packed with wingnut crackpots?

This image is from Birzeit University in the West Bank which was raided by Israel today using live ammunition and tear gas. Over 40 people were injured, mostly students. More than 8,000 students are trapped inside. But it’s controversial to talk about scholasticide.

I’m not sure what will be left of their allegedly hallowed ‘Western civilisation’ now that Plato is ‘cancelled’ for being ‘woke’. Maybe they thought it was ‘NATO’?

In any other area, these 5 people declaring themselves Friends of Israel or taking money from Israel, would be ineligible to be on this committee, but these Rules nor the Nolan Principles seem to apply in politics

This is good by @sarahoconnorft.ft.com on wrongly ascribing 'empathy' to bots. Part of the problem is that, decades prior to LLMs, cognitive psychologists were deriving their theories of mind from computation, so there's a vicious circle at work www.ft.com/content/ef77...

Not the only deficit you are running, Nazi boy.

Anyone else remember when Curtis Yarvin was advertised as a Big Name at the UK’s preeminent public philosophy conference, How the Lights Get In, and I was the sole person SCREAMING about the normalisation of Yarvin by UK centrists and public philosophers?

Seems an opportune moment to ask those British amplifiers of Yarvin, from Truss to various Spectator people, if they approve of his…err…physiognomic analysis here.

Pope Leo on Feast of Epiphany, and Closing of Jubilee Year: “A distorted economy tries to profit from everything. We see how the marketplace can turn human yearnings of seeking, traveling and beginning again into a mere business.” www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

If we are to have armed forces - I know I am in a minority in believing we should not - they should be sent to defend Greenland now. If they are not, we clearly should not. Fin.

So mild you can’t donate blood but we have no screening or testing going on and studies showing the virus can reside in bone marrow.

Snowing here in London…

What a surprise to see Ruth Smeeth (for that is who The Artist Suddenly Reinvented as 'Baroness Anderson' turns out to be) telling barefaced lies in order to boost a fascist project.

Starmer has said that what has been allowed to happen at X is "outrageous" and that those responsible should face the "full force of the law," calling their tactics "pathetic" no wait sorry, I got confused, that was him describing Just Stop Oil protesters who put some cornflour on Stonehenge.

Opera is looking up in Paris, as Semyon Bychkov is named next Music Director of the Opéra national de Paris.

Alex was posting on Twitter yesterday