Sounds about right. #THFC #COYS

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” Soren Kierkegaard #COYS

It’s a variation on what Boaventura de Souza Santos called #epistemicide.

“Pluviôse is the month of rain” #rain

Cochrane to Frank:

Frank to Cochrane:

Archive February 6, 2026 Wordle 1,693 2/6* 🟩🟨🟨⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Interesting to see this discussion on #culture and #security at @britishlibrary.bsky.social, chaired by Kirsty Lang: events.bl.uk/events/cultu...

Anyone on insta who wants to thank Mathys Tel for his support of Spurs women’s team yesterday, you’ve got three hours to reply to his story…

It’s noon on a Monday, so it’s time for a wholesome moment. This was #sebastientellier on stage last night at Rough Trade East doing a micro-gig and signing. FIVE HEARTS.

Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus by @ashleyblewer.com Incredible!

Reading this book in my downtime this week - excellent so far, and lots of references I’ll definitely follow up. #africa #china #siliconelsewhere

I’ve followed #mediacoops in the UK & Europe for >10 years, from Dave Boyle’s Good News report, through the start of @thebristolcable.bsky.social & @theferret.scot, @mcrmeteor.bsky.social etc. There’s a rich history, research, lots of learnings (I’ve long tracked some @mediacoops.bsky.social) 1/n

We did a segment on it for BBC comedy The Naked Week in March last year - looping in stories by @petergeoghegan.bsky.social on Global Counsel's Qatar work - and it was all very much 'nothing to see here'. Lots of journos have been being gaslit for a very long time www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

Again, we all did. It was in the public domain.

It was great to chat to @philtinline.bsky.social for the writing of this excellent report, which gets to grips with why it is so hard for the state to actually do stuff, and features a cameo from my old team, the Open Innovation Team. Many insights in here apply to foreign policy too:

We need a UK Digital Sovereignty Strategy! Our over-reliance on foreign tech giants is a huge risk to our security and resilience when faced with Donald Trump’s ever increasing belligerence. Companies like Palantir have no place in our critical digital infrastructure.

Is Might Right? Philosophical cage-fighting with Plato, Rousseau, Kant, Hobbes, & Schmitt. (Aka excellent 1-hour discussion between @leaypi.bsky.social, Hugo Drochon, Margaret Macmillan & Angie Hobbs): www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... #philosophy #politics #power

I am heartbroken to see that the journal First Monday is shutting down. I'm all the more grateful I got to check one off the bucket list and publish there last year. But it will be missed. firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...

I gave a talk related to this sort of thing in the UK at #RemixSummit #London last week. #epistemicsecurity #arts #culture #cities

Substack / Beehiiv / Ghost / Wordpress: new opt-in feature idea - the #Orwell jar. Every time a writer or creator mentions or quotes #GeorgeOrwell, a portion of both Substack’s and the writer’s revenue goes into an independent fund to support #journalism.

so a month ago I was reading @markpackuk.bsky.social’s speech on Twitter in the lords and there were obviously fake stats the government used to justify Twitter’s UK reach and its continued importance to British audiences Rob has now found the source of the data was… Twitter

"Across Europe, news media companies increasingly depend on cloud services run by a handful of powerful tech actors. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google provide the digital infrastructure that underpins the functioning of newsrooms" By @ccs.bsky.social for @article19.bsky.social

Nor great to be crowing over an Orban tactic: “It adds that Holden’s organisation had received funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, which “complicates the conflict of interest and represents a significant leverage point.””

Interested in working in think tanks? Join @instituteforgovernment.org.uk and a group of other think tanks for an event about what working in the sector is like: www.resolutionfoundation.org/events/worki...

1/4 - The BBC's Charter is up for renewal - this is the consultation document where you can respond directly to the government's questions on different aspects of the BBC - journalism, culture, creative industries, technology, education, etc. www.gov.uk/government/c...

Just played by Pam on NTS, Peggy Seeger’s Englewood Mine: peggyseeger.bandcamp.com/track/englew... #music

Sorry for the Spurs post, but intrigued that BBC Sport is doing tapping up of our player for Bayern now: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

On the sleight of hand that uses free speech as a diversion from questions of who controls the digital infrastructure of democracy and to what purpose. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It’s lunchtime, so pie and mash is on the menu: www.theguardian.com/food/2026/fe...

"A new report from the Public Service Alliance finds state privacy laws offer public servants few ways to protect their private data, even as threats against them are on the rise."

Every journalist whose theat model includes this administration/the federal government needs to be aware of this. Signal for desktop + touch ID + they have a warrant = the feds can read any of your signal messages that haven't disappeared.

Lawyers can't reach clients in ICE detention. I've heard it anecdotally, but scale of issue is horrifying. Bloomberg Law is a legal trade pub so many may miss this. Screenshot from their CA newsletter summarizes "bleak" situation for justice and rule of law. news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/l...

I’ve found it fascinating to watch over the past few years, as all humanities + social science disciplines have been forced to grapple with the politics of technology, so many are reinventing arguments media studies and STS have been making for decades :)

Consumer website @resolveruk.bsky.social is looking for stories of experiences or customer service stories related to AI Customer Service... (cc: @davidgerard.co.uk) www.resolver.co.uk/resolver_sto...

Amazing - I was affected by a similar problem with #eurostar to this person in @theguardian.com and have the same complaint - I hope that the same outcome (full reimbursement as promised) will happen soon. www.theguardian.com/money/2026/j... #consumerrights

“Once it has gone out, there’s no reclaiming your dignity, your identity. Even if the perpetrator comes to say, ‘Oh, that was a deepfake,’ you cannot tell the amount of people that have seen it. The reputational damage is unrecoverable.” www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

“The rest of the advice,” the senior security official said, “was warning middle-aged men that if an attractive young Chinese woman appeared interested in you, she probably wasn’t”. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I am heartened but not surprised that #Tricky is a fan of #AldousHarding and #ThisIsTheKit: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... #music

"[Contractors] have formally handed back the site - now known as The Standard in honour of its former use by the local #newspaper - & its first residents have started moving in." That heritage would be better honoured by including community #newsrooms (cf @greatergovanhill.com) in such developments.

NEW: Our investigation for @thenerve_news reveals not only that Peter Thiel’s Palantir is completely enmeshed in our critical national infrastructure. It’s also the ‘cloud support’ for our nuclear weapons system 🤯 1/ www.thenerve.news/p/palantir-t...

🏘️ Discover community-led urbanism in this newly available issue of the Urban Design journal, with examples from department stores, former icons of the high street, repurposed as community hubs, as told by @jesscraig.bsky.social. Read the issue here: buff.ly/kFbE2Sn

Hello, I have a new book out in the spring with Picador and I would love it if you could help me spread the word. IF WE TOLERATE THIS draws on years of work, to help readers understand why British politics is hurtling rightwards and what to do about it. Pre-orders: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/if-w...

You’ve got to admire the chutzpah of whoever programmed a repeat of In The Chair during the Charter Renewal process - ”Charles, this is the BBC! We’re *always* facing a crisis, except when we’re facing a *grave* crisis…”: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

🚨 Last chance to register! Tomorrow, we'll be hosting a webinar to mark the launch of our UK Poverty 2026 report. A panel of frontline practitioners and our analysts will discuss the findings and opportunities for action. Not to be missed! Sign up now: https://bit.ly/459R16V

🏦⚠️ NEW BLOG | The Bank Run That Wasn’t In our latest blog, Elizabeth Seger breaks down new Demos research on how the next national information crisis could unfold and how to prevent it, using a hypothetical - yet highly plausible - scenario: a bank run that spirals into economic collapse.

We know how AI is affecting the wider information & news ecosystem - here's James Cracknell in the @enfielddispatch.bsky.social ("written by real, local people, who care about where they live") on a fake local website in North #London. enfielddispatch.co.uk/how-ai-is-po... #pinkslime #localnews