Rewild Wales www.countytimes.co.uk/news/2583259...

BREAKING: UK govt auction secures 4.9GW new solar at £65/MWh and 1.3GW new onshore wind at £72/MWh, 13% and 21% below the price cap respectively. All due online by 2029.

Morgan McSweeney has now resigned as Keir Starmer's Chief of Staff

British values

This is the man whose company Peter Mandelson's lobbying firm represents. Keir Starmer visited its HQ last year, at the request of Mandelson, shortly before it was handed a £240m Government contract

Former Washington Post journalists have launched a GoFundMe to help repatriate fired staff members who are effectively stranded in foreign countries. One of the richest men in the world fired them from the paper and didn’t even pay to ensure they got home. Abolish the billionaire class:

Do we need a pot of £800K or a pension of £40k? henrytapper.com/2026/02/05/d... If you are unlucky enough to have no pension from DB plans and all you get as income is from DC plans, then the conversion of pots of money into income becomes the critical calculation.

Shockingly (to no one who has been following local government finances), councils are not rife with waste and fraud ... In Kent, Reform's DOGE "had not found any significant waste to cut"

Attention Firefox users! Starting with the next rollout, Firefox is adding a "disable all generative AI features" button. www.findarticles.com/firefox-will...

1777: Wet, wet, rain with wind.

⚒️🧪Fiery Mud Volcano Eruption! The Daşmərdan (Dashmardan) mud volcano in Azerbaijan erupted ~16:50 on the 30th Jan 2026. The eruption lasted ~15 mins and was accompanied by a pillar of flame several hundred meters high. Daşmərdan had previous documented eruptions in 1866, 1954, 1976, 1986 and 2011.

"the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women"--Noam Chomsky

Introduced in 1815, the Corn Laws imposed tariffs on imported grain to protect British landowners by keeping food prices high. While they safeguarded rural interests, they were bitterly resented in industrial areas, where expensive bread weighed heavily on working-class 1/5

Half of all rail journeys that Great British Railways will ultimately be responsible for will be on services run by publicly owned operators from Sunday, as London Northwestern Railway and West Midlands Railway services join the fast-growing family of operators "owned by the public for the public."

They told us our music was worth nothing. Now they say it's worth 13 trillion. Class action? www.nme.com/news/music/s...

UK murders are at their lowest level in half a century.

Minneapolis is a place that means a lot to me, so I wrote a short Substack about the city, its people, and what we all owe them. benansell.substack.com/p/my-minneap...

🧪 💉 #PublicHealth #failure #UK www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Arguably more significant than defections, internal party politics and the Beckhams… In 2024 there were around 3,600 suspected cases of measles. We need to challenge the nonsense spread by anti vaxxers and ensure children are protected. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... news.sky.com/story/uk-los...

France announced today it’s phasing out Teams, Zoom, etc. to be replaced with a French/European solution called Visio. The data is hosted on Outscale. Transcripts and subtitles are also handled by French providers. The target is set on 2027 for government agencies.

Stand With The Sinister Minnesotans Against ICE https://store.theonion.com/products/sinister-minnesotans-t-shirt?variant=44569654984773

Täällä on aika kattavat listat Eurooppalaisista vaihtoehdoista digipalveluille.

Behold: the first-ever list of news outlets that have banned generative AI in their reporting. As of today, this is literally information that you cannot find on Google. My goal is to fill the starter pack, so please send over suggestions with supporting evidence! go.bsky.app/8cn1XfT

We are looking for a part-time Information Advisers to join our teams at Malham and Grassington Visitor Centres, on a permanent basis. More 👇 https://www.yorkshiredales.org.uk/park-authority/vacancies/

Board of Peace - Season 1

For an act of resistance to the tyranny of algorithms, try the Marginalian newsletter—undistracted notes on the search for meaning, free, ad-free, AI-free, fully human since 2006: themarginalian.org/newsletter

Very grim. www.ft.com/content/c894...

Steve Reed says 29 councils will be allowed to cancel local elections planned for May because of reorganisation - www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Men At Work's Colin Hay denounces use of "Down Under" at anti-immigrant March For Australia events

SWEDEN PENSION PROVIDER ALECTA HAS DIVESTED MOST OF ITS US TREASURIES (~$8B) –BUSINESS DAILY DI

Love this. Also love Eleanor's earlier video on AI which is just *chef's kiss* perfection: www.youtube.com/shorts/hL9pl...

We Have AI Now www.youtube.com/shorts/8-lgJ...

Just 2 days to go until the #BigGardenBirdwatch kicks off! Bold Blue Tits ranked 2nd in last year's results... could they take the top spot this time? 💙 Get involved: www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happen... 📷 Peter Christian

We need to eradicate inequality for children in schools. Zarach in Leeds is one fantastic charity working to eradicate child bed poverty, but we must take steps to poverty-proof schools so that children are not in this position to begin with. Full clip: https://loom.ly/WXb_3gk

Videos that appear to show doctors, including some from Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, using patches to lose significant amounts of weight aren’t real. They were made with AI. The trust said these videos are “completely fraudulent”.

So, if you ever wondered why people who understand surveillance are salty about video cameras on doorbells... It's only a matter of time before they get co-opted into mass surveillance. And if the regime you live under changes that's you spying on your neighbours.

There was this blog post as well, which is a good explainer of the practical realities of getting off US stuff. disconnect.blog/getting-off-...

Just had the “try our updated app” email from Trainline. If it wasn’t so depressing it’d be hilarious. What’s the ONE thing you want with travel information…?

Thanks to @garethdennis.uk for both radicalising me on the Treasury, as well as the line about being 2 years old when the first mass transit proposal was made. It is true of me too, but it was a line I borrowed from him

"And we now have María on the line who would like to swap a Nobel Peace Prize for the presidency of Venezuela..."

In April 2024, Spotify implemented a new scheme: songs with less than 1k streams per year would no longer receive royalties. The data for 2025 was just released via Luminate, and 88% of songs have been demonetized. Read it again: 88% of songs on Spotify have been demonetized.

Bandcamp has banned AI music. The company has released a statement which includes the following: "Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp." stereogum.com/2485199/band...

I suppose we should get this annually reheated story out of the way as early in the year as possible

We could have paid teachers at any time. We could have simply offered a dignified wage to do any of the work we need done at any time. San Fransisco could be clean right now. It was always a matter of political will.

“So, no longer speak about “aiding” Ukraine. The Ukrainians are aiding Europeans and Americans by fighting for their survival. We owe them our gratitude, not the other way around.” By @phillipspobrien.bsky.social phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-up...