Fondly remembering when Tottenham Court Road was filled with electronics shops and you could just pop in with a mysteriously broken or cable-less thing and walk out again with the right spare part. These days of Random Internet Roulette are much less efficient and more boring

I was reading something the other day about how AI slop is affecting architecture the other day and this seems like the perfect example

Interesting that, among other things, Anthropic are pushing an image as the Sensible Enterprise Guys giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

unique take on the shoplifting crisis in the Telegraph

Good morning from this amazing story giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Surprisingly, this does not appear to be an elaborate hoax. (Also, huge lols.)

Everything continues to be totally normal giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

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.

"The British Olympic Association... is understood to be relaxed that Kenworthy has given a personal opinion on a subject that sits outside the Games." www.thetimes.com/sport/winter...

At first glance I thought 99k students were trapped underneath balloons, then that students were tapped under 99k balloons or ballooning students

Does anyone have recs for improving signal from a 4G router? Is it worth getting a repeater? (Also, very much here for repeater recs.)

I’m sorry, the nexus of money and power is too much for *Davos*, now??

For people who care about that sort of thing, the membership of the National Data Library Expert Advisory Group has been published today - including me www.gov.uk/government/g...

This ad! The semiotics! (I can only assume their ad agency has done its audience research)

The best and most enjoyable piece of commentary I have seen on this whole sorry affair. (Related, my OH is a folk musician who said quite genuinely last night, "Who is Morgan McSweeney?" and would that we were all so innocent.)

Good summary of the paper on AI and productivity going round, and OH BOY I'd watch that rise in productivity in Information services like a hawk. What use is more information if it's probably subtly wrong. (Also amirite that some of those labels are missing?) giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

I'd quite like to be in a band called Vegetable Situation

I’m wary of this position because a lot of creepy business and corruption was hiding in plain sight for decades, and they just kept getting away with it until it was no longer tenable. None of these guys has been cut off in the prime of their career.

Considering how allegedly “disruptive” and “innovative” the tech industry is, it’s fascinating to me how much these (mostly) dudes like a fancy dinner, and how quickly many of them assimilate into Standard Rich Person Stuff www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I'm guessing explaining Moltbook and the new religion there is going to be my new focus for a bit...

Worth reading alongside the open letter from Indiana High School students I just shared. "using power can help build power. At the very least, power holds no value unless it is exercised, wch alone is a valid reason to exercise it. If you are powerful but never use your power, you are not powerful."

This really is astonishingly good. But then, America was founded by people many of whom were the age of present high school students.

I never want to hear from Bill Gates again, and I hope they dissolve the Foundation.

Just on this, I think worth saying that current Silicon Valley models of AI development are highly extractive. If you want to make money out of it, that needs to come with a de facto interest in extraction

As the librarian of the town's college, I'd love for some of that 'help' to involve the teaching of critical thinking skills.

Also I am assuming this terrible typo was my phone slipping into voice-to-text transcription while I was feeding the cat so that's all amazing

"In the latest move in Labour’s drive to inject AI into Britain’s bloodstream, the government has announced three US tech companies ... have agreed to help as the council pushes to apply AI to local schools, hospitals, GPs and businesses in Barnsley" www.theguardian.com/business/202...

From what I can tell, Sam thinks they are building God (laudatory) and Dario thinks they are building God (derogatory) but they definitely both think they are building God.

Well doesn't everyone want to get back from work and stand in the dark on top of a slippery compost bin rattling a bag of cat biscuits to encourage a kitten to jump off the neighbours' roof, only to do it all again 5 minutes later when the kitten makes a run for it a second time

On the one hand, some respect for this position, but on the other: how about you don't make the creepy killing machine if you don't want your products to be used for spying and killing? Very much not rocket science.

As opposed to books to read once you're dead?

Another day, another Ipsos survey that uses gender as a lens on public attitudes to science without taking into consideration that 1 in 8 British men think they could win a tennis point against Serena Williams www.britishscienceassociation.org/News/public-...

Reading this thing about David Milliband meeting Zohran Mamdani in the supermarket and wondering if Mamdani would have any idea who David Milliband is, or if he would have had to introduce himself and explain what he does?

I've had a bunch of replies like this to my original post which makes it clear that some of the people the current system works for are just ... quite rude? Genuinely a bit perplexed by this and similar replies.

As a woman, I have been groped multiple times while trying to get served at a bar when you're all squished together in a way that likely wouldn't happen in a queue where it's more visible. For that reason alone I'm pro queue.

The common 🧵 in every single election, from Susan Crawford in Wisconsin to Zohran Mamdani in NYC to Taylor Rehmet in Texas, is that a clear majority of voters don't like evil, hate, incompetence, & far right authoritarianism. The policy details are election-specific, but that's the hummable tune.

A lot of people (men) across my social media feeds (even LinkedIn) are disproportionately annoyed about that article in the Guardian about people standing in single-file queues at bars saying THIS WILL NOT STAND, but um.... it seems quite good?

Because I'm a hackneyed old progressive who likes to give the genius narrative (often closely aligned in Silicon Valley-seque circles with a taste for eugenics) the side eye, I think what's interesting here is actually access to opportunity.

There's a chatbot called Trevor on the Argos webiste, who has a very "Toy Story, but set it in 1980s Basildon" vibe

My take on Moltbook that it's very notable that a certain kind of developer thinks that (a) Reddit is the optimum form of communication and (b) is constantly trying to make things that replace their own skills/ interests/what they find fun

If you're Mandelson this isn't even that much money. It's £50k. In the unlikely event he really, really needed £50k he could have got it so many other ways - maybe a cheeky remortgage could have done the job, few speaking gigs. But no. It was worth stooping this low

"Would George Costanza think this was a good way to impress a woman?" is an excellent test of a bad idea

*motivational post* if you too are a disorganised person, there is still time to send in your tax return! I say, finger still hot from the submission button. Also, paying tax is literally among the coolest and sexiest things it's possible for a person to do, even at the last minute!

Quite a day when this is what's leading the paper that covers the markets and economics

Last day for #CampDigital early bird tickets. An amazing lineup, including: @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social @himal.bsky.social @laurayarrow.bsky.social @dasbarrett.bsky.social @lisariemers.bsky.social and of course @sharonodea.com returns with lightning talks www.nexerdigital.com/camp-digital...

"I cannot tell you how haunting butterscotch becomes when you associate it with a 550lb (250kg) bear living under your floor." www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Going to add several successive UK govts to this list. Post-Brexit, the UK's reliance on US regulatory stability creates massive ongoing vulnerabilities.

Hang on, I had missed the fact that the AI Skills Hub cost £4m. mahadk.com/posts/ai-ski... If this wasn't tax payers' money it would be quite funny. Also, can only assume PWC spent some time rolling around in gold because they did NOT spend it on building this

Sometimes the problem with getting a seasonal veg box is, broadly, all the seasonal veg *cries in cauliflower*