Photos of newly arrived immigrants at Ellis Island. Augustus Sherman took the photos between 1902 and 1920 when he worked as the Chief Registry Clerk. Striking to me how the outfits all look good because they have a discernible silhouette (shape and drape).

Pretty stark illustration of the economic advantages of solar power

Surprised to learn that this assumption was used in a methodology for estimating cost savings from automation: Productivity gains are calculated using the assumption that 100% of routine tasks and 10% of non-routine tasks can be automated.

Incredible! Scientists receive a rare standing ovation after announcing that a new treatment can double the survival time for pancreatic cancer, the deadliest cancer which was once considered “undruggable.” When we fund and support science, we can achieve anything! (Video: Dr. Wish Dhillon)

God, reading about UK politics is depressing. There is a massive, coordinated media attack on Net Zero, led by the RW press (& accelerated by Musk's X). It is *wildly* out of sync with public opinion, but it is slowly working, convincing even labour MPs that the public is more right than it is.

Mark O'Connell: This, and worse, is happening to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody

In light of the ongoing situation with Ebola in the DRC, I'm sorry to have to remind you that evolutionary biology makes it abundantly clear that ignoring a catastrophic disease outbreak because it's there, not here, is a terrible, terrible idea.

Long article but worth the read! How the institutional immune system defends the status quo, how external “edge” innovative actors bear the burden of translation, how to work to dampen the immune reaction

We can't do good in the economy without a new economic theory of what good is. Everything else follows from this. In the old economics, doing good is a correction. In an economics of the common good, it is an objective we design and work on together.

Thrilled that @policycamp.bsky.social, a one-day unconference for policy practitioners, is happening! - Thursday 23 July, 1000-1630 - University College London Apply for tickets now: policycamp.org.uk A massive thank you to everyone who helped shape our thinking. Please share widely!

Thanks for coming to visit us at GDS again Jen Pahlka! So great to have friends across the world working together on the tag team of applying the culture, processes, business models and technologies of the internet-era to respond to people’s raised expectations!

I had missed this series of posts .. well worth a read!

Lean Agile Scotland returns to Edinburgh in October. Programme: leanagile.scot/programme-2026 Keynotes: Dave Farley, Cat Swetel + Dan Vacanti - leanagile.scot/keynotes Tickets: leanagile.scot/tickets (discounted for freelancers). Sponsorship: leanagile.scot/sponsors

Today marks Nakba Day, an annual day of remembrance to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel and the year that followed.   Inea is a New Yorker and a Nakba survivor. She shared her story with us.

There's lots of important messaging in this new guidance from GDS / DSIT on AI, open code and vulnerability risk. In particular: "Private repositories can create a false sense of security" and "Openness can surface issues earlier" www.gov.uk/guidance/ai-...

Are you a software engineer, are you working in a UK Gov Dept. Come and join the cross government software engineering community. www.uk-x-gov-software-community.org.uk

Yes! It’s time to party! The OWASP Foundation is celebrating 25 incredible years of open source security. That’s why OWASP Cornucopia is launching its 25th anniversary edition. #appsec #security #owasp #cornucopia #llm #agentic_ai #devops #cloud #frontend #threatmodeling

THANK YOU!! That's how we continue!! + there's exciting stuff in the works (--> amazing training series w/guest teachers who'll blow yr minds! ) but we need the community ♥️ because we're not at the Substack Nazi bar! The $ of one fancy drink a month! Join us! 🌱

A wall of crypto money is powering Nigel Farage, both politically and personally. And much of the British media just shrugs app.prospectmagazine.co.uk/story/73421/...

NASA just dropped more than 12,000 photos from the Artemis II mission. It'll take me a few days to go through them all, but so far it's one stunner after another. Link: eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos... Credit: NASA/Artemis II Crew (h/t @jonostrower.com)

King Charles III told the US Congress that the same resolve shown after NATO invoked Article 5 following 9/11 is now needed to defend Ukraine and its people, linking today’s fight to a century of UK-US joint action in major wars and security crises. #Ukraine

The UK govt is Palantir’s 2nd biggest customer. Why? Or, more to the point, how? Our latest @thenerve_news investigation reveals a web of cronyism into the highest levels of govt. But Palantir also has a spin machine that uses political journalists to launder its PR 1/

There’s a familiar Libertarian story about Europe: Too much bureaucracy. Too much regulation. Too many worker protections. Too much privacy law. That’s why Europe doesn’t produce as many tech giants. It’s a neat argument. I’m just not sure it survives contact with detail.

If the UK were a US state, how would it rank? It depends entirely on what you measure! Fascinating table showing a startlingly different picture depending on the choice of metric. Source: www.linkedin.com/posts/diogo-...

A mere week after Hungary's election, people are drawn to the winner: 66% of voters who have a party say they'd vote for Tisza, only 25% wd support Fidesz, according to Median, the pollster that predicted the election result almost completely precisely. Reminder: this was 55.3 - 36.7 on April 12.

A linkedin post and pdf noting the launch of the new UK government Systems Insight Team (SIT)  stream.syscoi.com/2026/04/14/a...

This paper represents a small but deeply impressive and genuinely important achievement by the much maligned British state in what is probably the most important global issue of our era. Hear me out ( 🧵) 1/ www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/our-eva...

MoH exhibitions crew assembled yesterday to continue with the making of our next exhibition Criminal: an untold history of homelessness, resistance and survival. Workshop by Surfing Sofas and the Raft Up Crew Opens 21st May Stick it in ur diaries now

New study finds the "canary in the coal mine" for the #AMOC: a consistent decline of the western overturning circulation, down from 20 to 15 Sv during 2004-2023 at 26° N. 🌊 AMOC "could be at or near a critical tipping point, potentially leading to its collapse". www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I made a whole BBC TV series (2020) about the remarkable resilience of the people of Iran and their culture over centuries of threat and callous rule. You can watch it right here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

‘Amazing’: how to grow a meadow in the sea - www.theguardian.com/environment/... "Vibrant seagrass meadows once flourished around the UK but most have been destroyed. Now, communities and scientists are working to restore them" hopeful stuff

Humanity needs photographs like these. Maybe at least someone here, looking at them, will be reminded once more of how petty our conflicts are on this tiny blue marble in the abyss -- and how criminal are those who launch rockets not into space, but into apartment buildings full of people.

Ukraine marks four years since its forces expelled Russian troops from Kyiv region on April 2, 2022, after weeks of intense fighting. The liberation of Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel exposed evidence of atrocities and war crimes. Hundreds of civilians and POWs were mass murdered. #Ukraine

✍️ Digital ID, payments, and data exchange should be treated as public infrastructure, not siloed IT projects. @eaves.ca, @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social, and Beatriz Vasconcellos argue governments must build shared digital foundations to avoid fragmentation. 🔗 Read their new article: buff.ly/bo9FpiL

So good! A wonderful metaphor for what's going on in AI coding today. www.dbreunig.com/2026/03/26/w...

The Cornucopia of Gamified Threat Modeling At the OWASP Cornucopia project, we are done with updating the cards and help pages for the Website App Edition v3.0! dev.to/owasp/the-co... #appsec #cybersecurity #gamedev #security

As someone who has lived in London for 20 years and continues to spend a lot of time here, the change in air quality since the introduction of ULEZ is very noticeable. A great improvement for millions of people www.theguardian.com/environment/...

As a proposed oil & gas project looks set to drill directly through a chalk aquifer beneath the Yorkshire Wolds supplying drinking water to 900,000 people, @sonofedd.bsky.social asks: Who is protecting our water sources? yorkshirebylines.co.uk/region/who-i...

DSIT Women in Tech taskforce call for evidence on "the impact of emerging technologies on women’s participation, progression and leadership in tech" - www.gov.uk/government/c...

This very straight news piece buried deep within the FT never uses words like corruption or insider dealing but every detail is quietly devastating. Why is the FT virtually alone in the UK media in covering this important story?

New paper from team @aial.ie! aial.ie/research/gpa... EU's AI Act Article 53(1)(d) is an obligation for GPAI model providers to publicly provide a 'summary' on their model’s training data. The team assessed published summaries along 6 dimensions & found that all big providers failed on all 6. 1/

💥 It took 37 hours to register the fourth thousand accounts on @eurosky.social 🎉 The first thousand (a slow, cautious launch) took a couple of weeks, the second 72 hours, the third 31.

Eurosky — EU-hosted AT Protocol infrastructure run by the Modal Foundation, a Dutch public interest non-profit. Independent moderation, relays, PDS hosting, governed in the public interest rather than by VCs. Read more openfuture.eu/blog/eurosky-d...

BTW: EU-Haul is not restricted to migrating your account to @eurosky.social - you can use it to migrate FROM any hoster TO any hoster. E.g. to @blackskyweb.xyz or even back to @bsky.app

Teams can feel busy but still slow. Team Topologies, 2nd Edition helps rethink flow: cut hand-offs, clarify responsibilities, let support teams help, and use small feedback loops. Explore how flow could change the way your teams work ➡️ https://www.teamtopologies.com/book

It happened again

Opaque shell companies in British Overseas Territories used for $8bn trade to bust sanctions against Russia. BVI, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar are key nodes, as in illicit financial flows. Banks, accountants, lawyers involved. UK govts pretend not to know.