I wish people would stop covering Last Christmas because usually they retain too much of the original, but not as good. The only exception I will make is Carly Rae Jepsen, who made it sound like a CRJ song is a great way.

At first I felt a little corny writing my newsletter this week, but if the Mamdani campaign showed us anything, it's that there's actually nothing corny about want to build a better future, online or off www.leahreich.com/the-big-moon...

Installed @canonicalltd.bsky.social's Ubuntu 25.10 on @frame.work Laptop 13 and it's working nicely so far.

The most horrific thing about this whole discussion is the doublespeak version of "affordable" — in the housing sense, that means "80% of current market value." If a property is £500k, that means an 'affordable' version is £400k; super, super 'affordable' 🙄

Watched 'I Saw The TV Glow' last night and was entranced. It's slow in a good way, letting you into the characters' world before closing with a devastating final 20 minutes.

An incredibly miserable tale of how a company as grossly VC sounding as "Growth Kitchen" is encouraging restaurants to rent their kitchen capacity to 'brands' to cook meals for Deliveroo. Other than giving a bit more range, Deliveroo has seemingly made everything just more expensive and worse.

Don’t get fooled by apples and oranges. When you see headlines about changes in something scary like crime or disease, make sure it’s an apples-to-apples comparison. Otherwise, you might get fooled by faulty #statistics. Keep reading here: thosenerdygirls.substack.com/p/dont-get-f...

The NHS taking out ads to counter a claim that, until last week, was never in doubt. It's almost like when a powerful head of state makes clearly false statements, it causes a lot of actual, real world harm.

This is not a romance. Nobody is "in love" with apps. There are no A.I. boyfriends. You cannot "date" a chatbot. Accepting this framing and treating it as real is tech-industry propaganda. slate.com/technology/2...

Do not believe the snake oil salesman who makes the dramatic claim. Do not believe anyone who says they have the answer. Pay attention to the scientists and doctors who do huge careful studies to produce the highest levels of evidence. They question, debate, test, repeat. Listen to them.

An incredibly powerful piece.

Always enjoy @davidgerard.co.uk's Pivot to AI stories, but this intro is probably the best, most concise description of nearly all AI discourse I've ever seen. pivot-to-ai.com/2025/09/18/o...

Roadworks will tear us apart, again

Demand an end to the freelance rip off. Have your say in the UK government's consultation on late payments and poor practices. All freelance journalists are welcome to use the NUJ's resources to help shape your response. Let's stop the freelance rip-off! www.nuj.org.uk/resource/dem...

Other than occasional episodes of Voyager, I’ve never watched Star Wars. Caught the first 15mins of the 2009 reboot and it’s like all the male pov comedies of the 2000s, and doesn’t seem to respect its female characters. I know judging years on is a bit unfair but…

Just a Minute is one of the best shows ever made. I’m so glad it’s back on.

Why do all the AI tools have such unserious names? ChatGPT, Nano Banana, Copilot, Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Perplexity. Hard to think of these as professional orgs and tools, especially Nano Banana? Some of them are like a kid's version of what sci-fi tech would be called.

🧑‍🎤New edition of Music Box, out now. In which I remember Numa Numa man, pretend I know the Charli xcx apple dance, and fan-out over the new Amy Lee/Poppy/Courtney LePlante track. www.jamesfrew.me/when-did-we-...

🧑‍🎤New edition of Music Box, out now. In which I remember Numa Numa man, pretend I know the Charli xcx apple dance, and fan-out over the new Amy Lee/Poppy/Courtney LePlante track. www.jamesfrew.me/when-did-we-...

One Conservative commentator says it's time we stopped "sanctifying" "working-class credentials" 😐 It's one of those moments when you realise some middle class people's idea of what being working class involves doesn't have much to do with reality. thebeemagazine.com/are-working-...

Really interesting post that reminded me of why I got interested in decentralisation in the first place.

Before you pre-order a new Apple device, consider repairing your current one. You can make it feel like new, save money, and keep another device from becoming e-waste. #AppleEvent #RighttoRepair

So I just found out that Brand New have reformed and are touring again. I guess we’re all just pretending that Lacey wasn’t accused of abusing underage fans, which caused the band to abruptly end?

🔔 "It's been a long time coming, but, you and me, that's my whole world, jamesfrew.me and the newsletter post," I sang to myself as I published my first edition of The Music Box. As much as I love tech, music is what I spend every waking moment thinking about, so I'll wanted to write about it, too.

Just in case it wasn't clear, that first bit is a Taylor Swift reference. 😱

🔔 "It's been a long time coming, but, you and me, that's my whole world, jamesfrew.me and the newsletter post," I sang to myself as I published my first edition of The Music Box. As much as I love tech, music is what I spend every waking moment thinking about, so I'll wanted to write about it, too.

My story on the safeguards OpenAI plans to add for teens and other users who appear to be in distress. It includes parental controls which its developer community has been requesting since Jan 2024 and routing "sensitive" prompts to GPT-5 thinking. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/t...

Sadly, most of these are not accessible (upstairs or downstairs) and unless I say otherwise, I've only been to standing gigs. This thread describes some of my favourites, but of course you aren't going to chose a gig based on the venue - it's the artists you want to see and hear. (3/25)

What it means to be a humanist ⬇️

Always love the @drownedinsound.org newsletter. Reading it is like listening to knowledgable friends talk about music (the recommendations are always so good!), and I would happily devour many more words from @drownedinsound.bsky.social and @emmabwilkes.bsky.social.

A Rascal sister site has launched: @roguesite.bsky.social Former-Polygon writers have gotten together to launch a worker-owned video game journalism outlet (with a little rascally help). If you mourned the loss of one site, celebrate the birth of another, and support the people making it happen.

One reason we believe the UK needs more working-class people writing and publishing is that stories and perspectives like this must be heard. We are proud to publish it. thebeemagazine.com/im-a-leaseho...

Oh no! 😲 My Oura account no longer exists. Wonder who did that.

I'm impressed that Oura, the company behind a health tracking smart ring, thinks people will be okay with its partnership with the US Department of Defence and Palantir, a company literally named after a tool used for evil in Lord of the Rings.

I'm impressed at the creativity on display here. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

all the best windows software in history is called something like "joe's thing doer". it does the thing and nothing else and is available on a html website in plain text and takes up under a megabyte of space and uses default windows ui elements and will work until the heat death of the universe

some personal news

The Guardian has today printed the names, and where possible, images, of all the media workers killed in Gaza, as part of an international day of action involving more than 150 media organisations. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

This thread is exactly how I feel about genAI. Completely turned off by it on all artistic, intellectual and moral levels. I have no interest in anything it can say or generate. It is anti-human.

It's interesting that the Beano and South Park are at the fore of political satire these days.

The woke brigade have come for the fruit pastilles chewy sweets.

Right, so ~10% of arrests. Or, another way, 90% of arrests during Notting Hill Carnival *did not* come from the use of live facial recognition — the expensive, privacy-invading, third-party tool. Gee, I do wonder whether it's better value to have actual officers or these cameras?

Even if I don't always agree with The Guardian's direction, I can at least understand why it's happening. But not this article. This strange ChatGPT prompt in story form. In a newspaper. I don't even know what we're meant to get from this?

Nice decision. Maybe they'll open on Sundays now?

New from 404 Media: ICE added a random person to group chat, exposed highly sensitive details about an active manhunt in real-time. The person says they were added weeks ago, thought they were scam texts until start seeing data lookups etc. Incredible security failure www.404media.co/ice-adds-ran...

For the love of god can we stop airing articles about "X tech bro says this is gonna happen in X years clearly just in service of a publicity stunt". No. It's not going to happen. Obviously. Why are we indulging this?

I don't know how you could do a list like this (and for the tenth anniversary of Emotion!) and *not include* Let's Get Lost!?