“[With WhatsApp] gold is in the ingredients, but Signal is the gold standard. Privacy is our sole focus. We do one thing and we do it very, very well, which is provide the world’s largest actually private communications platform” Join Signal and persuade just one of your friends to do the same

About what is this bloke* on? * Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy youtu.be/_MLRcf3diso?...

I’d missed this. Don’t you. @marshfamilysongs.bsky.social youtu.be/YY_8WzcHqMQ

In some ways, an oddly upbeat vibe, for a musical rundown of the backsliding #freespeech situation developing in the US ... but this is our 🎵 parody "Freedom of Speech" to the tune of #Disney's "Under the Sea" - with some familiar faces cut in. 😎 youtu.be/DyoYRN8cc-g #Kimmel #Colbert

Children were 36% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and 56% more likely to develop autism if their mother had gestational diabetes.

Donald Trump is gambling that he can consolidate authority before the public turns too sharply against him, argues @davidfrum.bsky.social:

Here's a parody adaptation of the classic song "Walking in Memphis" by the soulful Marc Cohn, in which we address Donald Trump's arrival in the UK for his exciting historic second state visit. It's called "Put Up Some Fences" 🎹🎶 youtu.be/1Iag4yaozis?...

Here’s a poem called ‘English Roundabouts’.

Elon Musk spoke by video to Tommy Robinson's anti-immigrant rally in the UK today. "You're in a fundamental situation here where, whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you," said Musk. "You either fight back or you die."

Excellent (20 minute) podcast by Ezra Klein starkly summarising of the current state of US politics and the opportunity that the impending budget vote offers the moribund Democrat party open.spotify.com/episode/5kpn...

A quick #intro for the lovely people here on Bluesky... nice to meet you! listen here: pod.link/1810797958 (easy listening) read here: nonzerosum.games (more posts, pics and sims)

Well, that hit me like a tonne of bricks.

Bill obviously didn’t get the memo

I’m getting much from The Economist’s posts on Bluesky. A few times a week I’ll read an article that I wouldn’t otherwise come across. I see they are not getting many likes, I hope they don’t stop posting because of that

“We might find bureaucracy annoying; its absence, though, is deadly” - prescient stuff from Tim Snyder from before Trump’s election

Here’s a thing worth reading @davidallengreen.bsky.social davidallengreen.com/2025/08/ever...

"it seems that many platforms are using the Online Safety Act as an excuse to conduct a data grab on a massive scale"

Absolutely mind-boggling that the UK Govt has *still* not reviewed its use of X

New YouGov polling. A monumental failure of our political class to educate, a monumental failure of our media to report fairly, for a generation

Starmer says that this pilot will “deliver real results” It may, but how can he possibly know? In complexity it’s critical to proceed through a collection of small safe-to-fail experiments to learn what might work #complexity www.bbc.com/news/article...

Using (and if able paying for) services that protect our privacy - even if they are not quite as good - is important

Time to move to duckduckgo.com

"experts say free versions of VPN apps or services may carry security and privacy risks" Well fuck my old boots... as we used to say in the Army www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

ChatGPT thinks that Biden is president

I love that you tried, at least. Spent 10 years banging my head against a PDF wall until we learned to 'live with the enemy' and have both flavours; HTML for accessibility and PDF to keep managers (and some users) happy. Example below www.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/w/safeguardi...

Can somebody also please commission a five year, 1,000 page review into why we’re still publishing public documents as PDF in 2025? www.gov.uk/government/p...

I’ve been tracking authoritarian-like actions of the Trump administration since Jan 2025. In Feb, I introduced 5 broad domains of authoritarianism for the logged actions - then only 79. As the number of actions has grown, I wanted to create a website that lets people explore them easily. 2/14

“If the Epstein scandal teaches us anything, it is that America needs a dedicated and decently funded group of people whose job is not just to ask questions, but to find answers,” @helenlewis.bsky.social writes. “Let’s call them journalists.”

"Mr. Jones does not even pretend to know what's happening in America right now, and neither does anyone else ... the only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic" -- Hunter S Thompson (again) - 2003

“the new plan, Just in from Washington is to keep weirdos, foreigners, and other dangerous bad apples out of all National Forests in the nation” — Hunter S Thompson’s autobiography - Kingdom of Fear - 2003 There is nothing new under the sun

Your actions to support a free press that acts in support of reality and democracy: -follow @adamzyglis.bsky.social + share his work (w/credit) -send a message to the @buffalonews.com in support of Adam and their joint free press editorial freedoms #PressFreedom h/t👇 @anntelnaes.bsky.social 4/4

“Digital Government at the Crossroads”—in this article for the Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art I explore why ‘digital government’ needs a rethink and reset to help democracies learn smarter, react faster, and adapt better to the growing challenges they face

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter — it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning” — Mark Twain

An interaction between two proteins points to a molecular basis for memory. But how do memories last when the molecules that form them turn over within days, weeks, or months? www.wired.com/story/the-mo...

“The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yard” Hunter S Thompson - 2003 Prescient chap that Hunter S Thompson

There is relentless emphasis on shielding youngsters from the consequences of big tech social media rather than the central problems… - the business model/algorithms of the companies that run it - well-known people complaining about it rather than abandoning it www.bbc.com/sport/tennis...

Articulate and awful

“Even after NPfIT, we do not believe the lessons of adaptive change have been fully learnt, and this may well be the greatest threat to the current efforts to digitise the NHS” @bobwachter.bsky.social in his wise 2016 report www.gov.uk/government/p... UK govt approach has changed little in a decade

Ann Telnaes resigned from The Washington Post after they refused to publish one of her cartoons depicting some tech bros kneeling before Trump. She now works on her own…

Good summary youtu.be/pXQQNUeb4Sw

This, I guess? www.gov.uk/government/n...

“I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least” - Musk Well, who would have thought it www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

My latest post on @OReillyMedia. Many Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs even seem to view putting people out of work as a massive opportunity. That idea is anathema to me. It’s also wrong, both morally and practically. www.oreilly.com/radar/ai-fir...

Excellent talk about how the dominant means of control has come full circle: from the ownership of land (feudalism) to the ownership of the means of production (capitalism) to the ownership of digital infrastructure (techno-feudalism) We should be concerned @yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social #htlgi2025

Good visual showing the churn of UK voters since last year’s General Election.

At a session on Misinformation asked three journalists the question: “Do you use Meta/X products and if so are you part of the problem?” All said Yes to the first part and equivocated on the second I’m not saying it will be easy to change but blithe learned helplessness is not the way forward

Good on Signal! https://signal.org/blog/signal-doesnt-recall/ Not only are they doing the right thing, they’re publishing a clear, forceful, and occasionally amusing write-up on how and why: For Example: <quote>“Take a screenshot every few seconds” legitimately sounds like a suggestion from a […]

"This reads that government policy is that processed foods are inherently unhealthy, not something we agree with or believe the scientific evidence supports” - Food & Drink Federation Well… www.theguardian.com/society/ng-i...

Of course there is no clear plan. There can't be. Healthcare is a complex system. There should be ambition to reform. And perhaps this involves beginning by beginning to replace NHS England. But proceeding by experiment: because that’s how change happens in complexity www.bbc.com/news/article...

“Society is a complex system, and complex systems can never be sensibly and benevolently controlled from the centre” Of course. And society has been made urgently more complex by tech connecting everyone together. Unless we can grow participatory democracy am thinking we are mostly buggered