don't see this reversing the wave of artists taking their music off Spotify. by Ek's own admission he's still at the helm just changed titles, but it provides a good spin opp www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Cool so TikTok passes from dangerously authoritarian china to authoritarians renowned for phone spyware www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Elon Musk and Neuralink get most of the attention re brain implants, but they're building on decades of work by academic research labs like @caltech.edu's – and some experts question the "move fast break things" approach. My latest for @rollingstone.com www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

This is the brown part of Valhalla where we drink lime soda and feast on samosas

Elon Musk and Neuralink get most of the attention re brain implants, but they're building on decades of work by academic research labs like @caltech.edu's – and some experts question the "move fast break things" approach. My latest for @rollingstone.com www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Therapeutic retreat or deadly cult? Fascinating deep dive by @samshepedwards.bsky.social from last month into a company offering ayahuasca sessions around the globe www.theguardian.com/news/2025/ju...

Thames Water has paid £7bn to shareholders since privatisation. Customers can’t switch companies cos it’s a monopoly. Nationalise it www.bbc.com/news/article...

ISIS, Al-Qaeda… and a group that spray painted planes Dunno why we still pretend our politics is polarised when the there’s an authoritarian consensus on so many issues across

@darrenloucaides.bsky.social finds some troubling bedfellows. observer.co.uk/news/busines...

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov and Elon Musk are set to launch a $300m partnership via Grok that caps off a long tech bromance. My piece for the @observeruk.bsky.social on Sunday observer.co.uk/news/busines... Additional reporting @gabrielthierry

Sets a worrying precedent. If the default is now to state the suspect is white to defuse misinformation, what will happen when their race cant be identified or they’re not white? Troublemakers will be able to fan flames even easier

A must-read feature (with heart-stopping design) from the @wired.com team: Elon Musk’s loyalists at DOGE have infiltrated dozens of federal agencies, pushed out thousands of workers, and siphoned millions of people’s most sensitive data. What's next? Unleash the AI. www.wired.com/story/elon-m...

Erm guess what the reply was

i just started a new band 😅

I just keep thinking about the air quotes around his own name

There's literally no plan to stop this other than promoting Labour deportations with a sky-blue colour scheme

Good morning to this man, and this man only #bbcqt

RFK Jr has just been confirmed as health secretary. Here’s my piece about him from earlier this week

I had been reporting on Querdenken and similar movements for years, without knowing that @williamcallison.bsky.social and @quinnslobodian.com had coined the term diagonalism, popularised by @naomiklein.bsky.social in her excellent Doppelganger. Def read their work to know more!

RFK Jr epitomises the dangerous new “diagonalism” at the heart of Trump’s coalition Me for @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Very busy week; I missed this @darrenloucaides.bsky.social feature on Pavel Durov. Interesting nugget: a WIRED analysis found that Telegram was very likely to have more than 45 million users in the bloc. That's the threshold for a Very Large Online Platform under the Digital Services Act.

Last August, Telegram's boss Pavel Durov was arrested in France for alleged complicity in crimes that could land him in prison for 10 years. Ever since, I've been digging into how this all came about and the roots go back years. My latest feature for @wired.com www.wired.com/story/pavel-...

Last August, Telegram's boss Pavel Durov was arrested in France for alleged complicity in crimes that could land him in prison for 10 years. Ever since, I've been digging into how this all came about and the roots go back years. My latest feature for @wired.com www.wired.com/story/pavel-...

it happened - Reform ahead of Labour in YouGov poll

yes, this @glichfield.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/futurepo...

make it stop

ha! i've been doing this! ask me in a year if it led to 80k words of incoherent nonsense

DeepSeek feels a prime example of how stupidly fast the tech-news cycle is now Day 1 - tech stocks crash cos no one expected China to do AI cos US banned a few chips Day 2 - uh, but it censors anything CCP likes and sends them all our data Day 3 - everyone forgets about DeepSeek?

“We just clean out the whole thing” For those who think Trump means peace for Gaza, this is what he just said should happen

In 2023 i pitched a bunch of editors a longform on Farage as the most important figure in Brit politics since Blair. The gen response was we’re tired of Farage, who cares, old news. Soon his party will top opinion polls

Even trolls are like ughh give it a rest

kinda rate the level of shamelessness here

Mornings are for overcoming the existential dread of the night before

He knew exactly what he was doing with the salute. Musk's mother's family were members of the Nazi Party in Canada and fiercely pro-apartheid. This flows through his veins @paologerbaudo.bsky.social

can’t someone just sort out myspace

Mood

Reading how for reelection Obama's team learned from web gurus like Larry Page how to build a new kind of campaign for the mobile-digital era. And how Obama's style fit so well on platforms, phones. And, like, historians are going to see Trump as the obv next step in that aren't they...

Interesting but proportional representation would be no panacea for American politics. Israel has one of the most extreme versions of PR. In most recent Austria, Netherlands, Sweden elections the far-right came first or second www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The original story from Bloomberg has no byline and the byline for this Guardian pick-up is Reuters 🤔 www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Why what’s happening is happening www.ft.com/content/917c...

Just a reminder that the last time that Meta deliberately decided to stick its head in the sand and ignore false content for fear of angering conservatives---back in spring 2016---it triggered a multi-year crisis at the company. www.wired.com/story/inside...

See also: Nick Clegg's departure

Make no mistake, there is a huge shift underway. Now Zuck sacks fact-checkers to be more like X (after Musk disbanded trust-and-safety to be more like Telegram)

A reminder that Musk started posting about grooming gangs in August amid the UK riots. Now it's the no.1 news story roiling the entire media-political landscape. Why does he care about Britain?

One of our favourite guest essays of last year

My favourite books of 2024

Discuss: the internet and AI are humanity’s terrifying (strangely beautiful?) id unleashed