We’re watching a shift where AI simulates the cohesion and reinforcement that used to require an entire online community. A single person can now build a complete parallel reality with nothing more than a prompt window. Which seems bad.

Just published a deep look at where open social networks stand in 2025: Mastodon’s leadership change, Bluesky’s trajectory, AT Protocol, ActivityPub, cross-network tools, and more. For newsrooms and public service orgs, this moment really matters. werd.io/the-state-of...

Wonderful interview with @kwastell.bsky.social in @designweek.co.uk which nicely captures the pragmatism, messiness and sheer human graft required to create the organisational, conditions for customer centricity. www.designweek.co.uk/there-is-no-...

Omfg

That #r4today interview just now was as clear a demonstration of the social impacts of #cognitivedebt as you might ever want. smithery.com/methods/cogn...

When/why did hotel prices get so expensive? I'd like to go to Paros next year, but all the good places seem to be charging £1k+ a night. And not just in Paros, it's everywhere. Who can afford that and how on earth can it be justified? It stumps me.

Excited to share a new #interactive #dataviz, putting 50 years of #neuroscience research on the map: The State of Neuroscience 2025 stateofneuroscience.thetransmitter.org #StateOfNeuro

Paywalled but interesting. www.ft.com/content/f98a...

Excellent.

Lower Norwood, 1871 #pissarro #camillepissarro

Brilliant, via Recommendo. ideas.zudiay.me?utm_source=s...

Well put

Maybe the BBC should sue Trump for saying 'they changed the words coming out of my mouth'. They didn't do that. He clearly said the words, just not at the same time.

Make things open, it makes things better... etc.

We need to pay attention. www.theguardian.com/media/2025/n...

This DJT/BBC thing's an existential challenge. On one side, we've got fascist ideas of truth. On the other there's publicly funded, libertarian discourse. How it plays will be a highly important milestone. The question - and the task - is: How do you counter a hyperactive fight-like-hell mentality?

"On top of that, I’d wonder why such close editorial scrutiny should have been entrusted to three key people who themselves rejected journalism in order to enjoy lucrative careers in corporate and political communications." This is worth a read:

Nearly two years ago, I wrote about the extraordinary influence of former Tory spin doctor Sir Robbie Gibb on the BBC. It's still a helpful backgrounder for what's going on now. New readers start here: www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/...

Remember—if you gather an armed mob blocks from the seat of your government at a time it's closed to the public, a crime to trespass on, and accessible only by overwhelming cops, then tell them that unless they "fight like hell" at that building they'll lose their country, it's not inciting violence

This. I hope the Beeb has the spine to 'fight like hell' and rebut this ridiculous storm in a teeny tiny teacup.

Farage is the most expert of hypocrites. Sometimes you just have to step back in amazement at his nerve & utter contempt for the intelligence of the public.

Autumn.

Every time the Tories have a pop at this Government, remember this. For 14 years they bled us all dry. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

This is a still from a video my father took from inside Concorde in 1974 en route to Abu Dhabi going at twice the speed of sound. Can't quite get my head around it.

The Vaizey View is one of the best reads around and if it’s going to be hard adjusting to only a monthly publication. In the meantime this is a great read. www.arabnews.com/node/2615415

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n... Useful intervention. Global organisations need to lead the way now.

What began as immigration enforcement is mutating into something else entirely — a government learning to police through surveillance, not borders. Read in The Dispatch → dispatch.techoversight.org/big-tech-ta...

👁️ ICE is building its own social network — not to connect people, but to track them. Using social media to search for "crimes" has evolved into using Big Tech's infrastructure to scan for criticism.

Crafting is our most indispensable human capability. It always has been and it always will be. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

<Applause>>> www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...

This.

Well this is about time. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

When Trump said he would bring on a "New Golden Age," he was talking about his wallet.

Badenoch feebly clutching at pointless straws in the absence of any actual credible policies is extremely tedious.

NEW: We need to talk about Russia. So, yes, that's why we need to talk about Nigel Farage. My personal newsletter on the story behind the story. Brexit, Trump, Russia & now...Nathan Gill. open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

Trump craves global recognition but ironically he doesn’t himself realise the contradiction when he then rails against global institutions like the Nobel Prize and the UN. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... This award is right and just for the world. We increasingly need to come together. This is how.

This is very interesting. And points to an interesting and productive use of LLMs for certain forms of modeling social behavior.

A day in the Portland war zone The Portland War Zone isn't for everyone but at least the chaos is locally sourced.

Absolutely love this. Humans maybe aren’t that fucking clever.

One significant - & dangerous - thing to watch for is professional commentators objecting to words rather than examining the evidence. It's pearl-clutching & cowardly, obviously, but also a deliberate attempt to avoid confronting exactly what they themselves are facilitating and often cheering on.

A bubble so large you can see it from space and it's going to fuck all of us.

Harvest moon over Santorini.

The media are highly complicit in this and an increasingly disturbing liability to the quality of life for each and every one of us.

Metal’s never been my thing, but I read this and spat out my tea. So funny. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/o...

A brilliant read.

File under ‘deeply embarrassing political cringe’ and ‘the Tories have lost the plot’.

I wish there was a Choisic for books. Anyone know of one?

Still waiting for it to trickle down...

From @carolecadwalla.bsky.social and The Nerve. This graphic illustrates the shockingly naked profiteering that's going on at the expense of thousands of human lives. It's a crime against humanity. Shame on all involved.

Your daily reminder that people who are ignorant and arrogant are not to be believed nor trusted. Reform is a scam, a limited company scam run and owned by that grifter-in-charge Nigel Farage.