What did Watson and Crick discover in 1953?” “Rosalind Franklin’s notes!” Now would be a good time to listen to my interview with the brilliant @matthewcobb.bsky.social about Franklin, Watson, Crick and the discovery of the double helix. geneticsunzipped.com/blog/2023/8/...

A mind-boggling tale of HS2-related NIMBYism and general whatthefuckery

Duncan woke up and chose violence

ICYMI: The maddening, exclusive story of how HS2 were forced to build a state-of-the-art road bridge for a track that was unsuitable for motor vehicles.

This is genuinely extraordinary

For the discerning evening reader: how a bureaucratic nightmare forced HS2 to build a 2-lane road bridge for a track that's not suitable for motor vehicles.

Blockbuster scoop - this is worse than the bat tunnel!

This is honestly like something from an episode of Yes Prime Minister.

Enjoy an absolutely mad HS2 story with your Monday lunch.

This is an extraordinary read which does make you want to bang your head against the millions of pounds of steel and concrete used to build this pointless bridge

Absolute marmalade-dropper, this. Well worth a read.

My latest: Move over bat tunnel, here’s the wild story of how HS2 were forced to build a multi-million pound bridge for a road that… doesn’t actually exist.

I have an actual proper exclusive story on the Substack tomorrow morning of bat tunnel proportions, which I’ll be covering with a multimedia extravaganza of post, pod and experimental YouTube video. So, er, get yourself subscribed to the ‘stack…

On an unrelated note will be watching keenly tonight to see if our theory about Celia Imrie holds up… (after that weird portrait wink in episode 1)

Tempted to write a 10,000 word Substack on what Kate Garraway's behaviour in #CelebrityTraitors tells us about the broken culture in mainstream TV news journalism.

1000%

The daftest part is… I don’t think it is? Every time we build something like the Dome or Crossrail or the Olympics or whatever there’s loud grumbling from the usual Cheems brigade then everyone likes it anyway and it has no effect on the next election.

Big fan of building new homes, no strong views on housebuilders, but... why is everyone so righteous about forcing housebuilders to pay for new GP surgeries and schools? They didn't magically create the patients and pupils. We pay for doctors and schools in tax. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

New episode of THE ABUNDANCE AGENDA! 🐄 @mjrobbins.com's disturbing 'cow experience' 🚚 Why cross-channel freight is broken (and how to fix it) 🚕 How London could be the robotaxi capital of the world Listen/subscribe: www.abundancepod.com/p/dont-have-...

I mean even just economically that’s insane, like what is your plan to sustain a functioning society with an ageing population and able-bodied people leaving the country? National service for octogenarians?!

Every other line of this is quotable, for those who bothered to read it.

I think my take here is that cute cat videos were always slop, they were just sort of ‘acceptable’ slop, whereas MrBeast (or reality TV more broadly) isn’t slop and an AI can’t replicate it because the whole point is that it’s long-form narrative about real people.

You will absolutely never guess what the context is for this rather ominous passage www.thenational.scot/news/2553640...

I hit two problems, one of which I rarely see discussed. The obvious one is that the app kept switching me back. Less obviously, I came to realise that I'd accidentally optimised who I followed for the algorithmic experience, and that didn't work when I tried to switch back.

If only they had some older, news-savvy people involved with the production, maybe even on stage, who might hear the material before it gets aired and intervene in some way.

Even by the recent standards of the BBC this is an absolute clanger, just multiple levels of illiteracy.

The press should be doorstepping the people who funded these repeated complaints and lawsuits. Make them explain themselves

One for the all-time list. Good to see this platform arrive at last.

"It’s a canopy. A f***ing canopy. That everyone thinks is a perfectly reasonable thing. And it’s taken five years, three planning applications, god knows how much expense, and now hundreds of pages of forms and three separate consultancies just to install something to stop the rain."

New blog post: You did no fact checking, and I must scream https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/10/i-have-no-facts-and-i-must-scream/ I'm neither a journalist nor a professional fact checker but, the thing is, it's has never been easier to check basic facts. Yeah, sure, there's a world of …

Great post. You should all read it. Especially if you thought the Patricia Routledge 'life thoughts' piece was cute. shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/10...

Just a monumental failure of basic fact-checking for a random conspiracy theory to go out on prime time BBC broadcasting. I’m lost as to how @hignfy.bsky.social let it happen.

I mean this is ChatGPT output, and you haven’t even bothered changing the formatting. It’s absolutely obvious.

The Guardian also appears to have got its facts wrong - claims the UK is 5th highest for its land size, but it's actually 5th in absolute terms (because it's a big country!) and ranks very low per capita (from the same study, www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decod...)

"Microsoft says its Agent Mode in Excel has an accuracy rate of 57.2 percent in SpreadsheetBench, a benchmark for evaluating an AI model’s ability to edit real world spreadsheets." 😩😩😩

Please bear in mind that all lives can be chaotic at times, and that your blasé "nothing-to-hide-nothing-to-fear" nonsense is a shabby b/w bitmap conversion of the very rich spectrum of reality

A sort of weird populist corollary of this is that Corbyn wanted to make PMCs like me several hundred pounds per month better off with e.g. free tuition and free broadband, which to this day remains head-scratching.

In The Abundance Agenda this week, @jamesomalley.co.uk and @mjrobbins.com had a hugely entertaining rant about a government paper on public engagement in the Great Grid Upgrade. But on this occasion I think they're wrong. Here's the paper. (1/5) www.gov.uk/government/p...

On the morning of Keir Starmer's conference speech here's a new post on an odd psychopathology in British politics - our main parties don't like the people who vote for them - the dreaded Professional Managerial Class. And so they are acting out like a divorced dad seeking cooler voters. 1/n

Some lunchtime listening!

A repeated feedback we get on the podcast is ‘wow, you guys have actually read the plans/document/whatever’ and we’re like, sure, a bit, between having day jobs and freelance careers, but honestly it’s more of a testament to the fact that most political journalists seem to read nothing ever.

Getting mighty tired of the meme on here of “oh, it is just so difficult for the government to set the agenda”. The government (which literally employs thousands of press officers) is setting the agenda - it’s just that it is setting it on toxic ground it can’t win.

Fully agree, there’s a lot of legacy ‘all bluesky data is open’ stuff that was less likely an issue when it was niche but is in no way compatible with being a major platform

Tylenol feels like a good preview of how the SEND debate could metastasise in the next few years.

Useful reminder from Peter Kellner on the problems we refuse to acknowledge are getting better, and the politics of hopelessness that this breeds open.substack.com/pub/kellnerp...

Every time I’m abroad I’m reminded that the rest of the world is ~80 years behind the United Kingdom when it comes to electrical plugs.

Honestly @mjrobbins.com's story about Bristol this week is absolutely mental and is a perfect case study in how Britain can't seem to do... anything.

Yeah this’ll do for a week.

The thing is, this is it. For all the ink spilled about why the govt is unpopular, it really is first and foremost the cost of living. Any analysis that ignores it is wrong. By far the biggest commonality across *all* groups of Labour defectors is a belief they aren't delivering on cost of living.