Fascinating chart with one outlier: Warren Buffett. At the low end, giving 0.06% of one's wealth is equivalent to: Net worth -> Lifetime Giving 50K->$30 100K->$60 500K->$300 $1M->$600 Most folks give far more by % in a *single year*. www.forbes.com/sites/forbes...

Have you ever once seen the New York Times quote Trump like this?

Might end up eating crow but I really doubt Labour will pass an under-16 social media ban. None of the most prominent teen mental health organisations want a ban, and these are the key groups Government is consulting with. Starmer also probably doesn't want to piss off US tech if he can avoid it.

Writing is thinking. It's not some marginal boring task you can skip. It's the heart of it.

Starmer is laying out potential government actions to tackle online harms today. They include: - Minimum age limit for social media. - Disallowing infinite scrolling. - Requiring safeguards around sharing of underage nudes online. - Disallowing kids from using VPNs to skirt safety protections.

You heard it here first, folks. It’s not a politician’s job to persuade you to change your mind about anything. They are just mere vessels through which public opinion must flow. Indeed, no successful politician in human history has ever convinced anyone of anything.

The default assumption should be that they’re lying

This is comically evil.

Some thoughts on Sky's new bundle with Disney+, HBO Max and Netflix: - Bundling has become a necessity as subscriptions have plateaued and more users are open to churning. - The bundle including ad tiers will push more users to accept ads on streaming. uk.themedialeader.com/skys-new-bun...

News: The Bari Weiss-led CBS News is set to slash its staff by at least 15% in the coming months, according to people briefed on the network's layoff plans. More details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/cbs-news-l...

The Dow is back under $50,000. @cnbc.com

Lisa Nandy has intervened in the Daily Mail's proposed acquisition of the Telegraph, on grounds of public interest and competition. Ofcom and the CMA will now be tasked with examining both issues by 10 June. It's the sale that never ends. Reporting per Reuters: www.reuters.com/business/fin...

NEW: “CBS Evening News” producer Alicia Hastey sends a bombshell farewell note: Stories are “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.”

CNN: "Another photograph - these are notes AG Bondi brought to the hearing today. This shows a list of Rep. Jayapal's search history. Lawmakers are allowed to go to a DOJ facility to search unredacted files. We learned from this photo that the searches are apparently being tracked & read by the DOJ"

This is some genuinely psycho shit...

TikTok following the social platform playbook to a T, tracking you across the web even if you don't use TikTok. www.bbc.com/future/artic...

NEGUSE: AG Bondi, that man works for you now, right? The man in that video from J6 yelling 'kill them!' at cops. His name is Jared Wise. BONDI: He does work for us, yes. I believe he was pardoned NEGUSE: And you expect hard-working police officers to believe you take law enforcement seriously?

The way I look at this is whether or not the hype winds up bearing out—or even a fraction of it—we need to prepare for a long future in which bosses + management are incentivized at every level to proceed as if it's true; cutting labor costs, automating tasks, killing jobs.

Epstein survivors raise their hands to signal they've been ignored by Trump's DOJ as AG Pam Bondi refuses to look at them (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty)

Former OpenAI researcher says in NYT today she has “deep reservations” about the company’s ad model. “The company is building an economic engine that creates strong incentives to override its own rules.” Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/o...

Exclusive: OpenAI fired executive Ryan Beiermeister in January, citing sexual discrimination, after she opposed the planned AI erotica feature in ChatGPT, sources said.

Tough jobs figures out of UK advertising agencies. - Total employment at agencies declined 6.8%, driven by a 14.3% fall in employees at creative agencies. - Just 11.8% of employees are now under-25s, down from 17.4% in 2022. - Open vacancies were down 40.8% uk.themedialeader.com/agency-emplo...

New: Sky is bringing together Disney+ (with ads), HBO Max (with ads), Netflix, and Hayu into a single Sky TV subscription. The Sky Ultimate TV subscription will cost £24/month, beginning 1 April.

"The prospect of a paper that flatters its readers by regurgitating what they already click is familiar and depressing. It puts me in mind of Bezos’s other marquee product, another service that dealt a disastrous blow to books." www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

The problem with media in a nutshell: media tracking firm Meltwater concluded after the Super Bowl that Dunkin's widely panned ad "generated more engagement than any other celebrity spot". Success! You won the attention economy. Doesn't matter that everyone hated it. www.wsj.com/articles/ai-...

"These companies built machines designed to addict the brains of children, and they did it on purpose." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

New: Channel 4 is cutting and outsourcing dozens of sales operations roles. Details: uk.themedialeader.com/channel-4-to...

This is literally what CURRENT LAW requires. It’s in the Constitution! www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

U.K. might lose a prime minister because a guy who worked for him knew another guy who hung out with Epstein. Meanwhile the U.S. opposition party is telling our President, who was Epstein's best friend, that his secret police should get better training so their public street murders look less messy.

So uh Ring just up and said they've got a huge centralized private surveillance network they can leverage all at once huh

what a shot

No Kings includes Draft Kings

According to the Financial Times, it was the Super Bowl photos.

The drones at the Winter Olympics are giving Nier Automata.

Grok users prompted the AI chatbot to identify victims from redacted Epstein Files images. Of 31 requests reviewed, Grok generated images for 27, spanning 18 images and one video. X did not respond to requests for comment on Grok's behaviour by time of publication. www.youtube.com/shorts/dhD8O...

How to ruin a decade of good will in a single post. How the hell is this allowed? Where is Adam Silver? The NBA is a joke to let this happen. Kalshi and Polymarket are peak late capitalist dystopia and I can’t believe they aren’t being regulated.

'Melania' earned a paltry £57,608 box office gross in the UK and Ireland in its first week. UK cinemas will also be dramatically reducing the number of showings available for the title going forward. “It’s not going to get to £100k." uk.themedialeader.com/january-box-...

NEW: NewsGuard, a company that rates the credibility of online news sites and tracks misinformation, just filed a federal First Amendment lawsuit against Trump's FTC, alleging that the agency is strangling its business because it disagrees with the low ratings of right-wing outlets. wapo.st/4a28gdd

“It’s higher than we would like it to be,”... Great wrap of this LEAD panel from @jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social - well worth a read.

Just 55% of Meta’s 2024 ad revenue derived from verified advertisers. Meta claims that figure increased to 70% in 2025 and hopes to further increase that to 90% in 2026. But it's a remarkable admission from a company with such a mature advertising model. uk.themedialeader.com/meta-admits-...

"It's like somebody making a documentary in which Eva Braun feels sad about war whilst Hitler invades Poland."

This year's Super Bowl ad theme seems to be: AI is here, now what? What I find interesting is that big actors from Chris Hemsworth to Matthew Broderick are starring in AI commercials, while their union, the Screen Actor's Guild went on strike in 2023 in large part to put in guardrails on AI use.

@ruthmarcus.bsky.social: Jeff Bezos' fortune is such that WaPo could lose $100m/year and he could still afford to keep it funded on his own dime for 2,000+ years. A great and terribly depressing read: www.newyorker.com/news/annals-...

At today’s LEAD conference in Westminster, Meta was asked to respond to @justinhorowitz.bsky.social’s reporting in November than Meta internally estimated about 10% of its overall annual revenue in 2024 (equivalent to $16bn) from running ads for scams and banned goods. I live blogged the response:

Here's who the Washington Post just laid off.

There are already too many Substacks relative to the amount of subscriptions people are willing to pay for. Especially when it’s mostly commentary. Substack will either need to start offering bundles for its own writers or writers will need to coalesce around new and distinct publishing brands.

A staggering statement from former Washington Post editor Marty Baron: "This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations."

A lot of people cannot just start a paid newsletter or become freelancers to sustain their careers. The sports, metro, and international desks did work that requires *team* resources, like legal checks, documents, access to archives, and long-term beat experience.

Respect to the media reporters for the sass. (Not that WaPo needs to be profitable, given Bezos is happy to throw around millions for Melania, etc, but not actual journalism.)

NEW: NEW: HHS is working on an AI tool to analyze VAERS—a database of vaccine injury claims to which anyone can make submissions—and "generate hypotheses." This is from @emilymullin.bsky.social: