I see the Americans have decided to declare war on Italy.

Important time. This was a few weeks after the Skripal attack when May called out Putin, and Johnson went scuttling off without his security detail to meet Putin confidante* Alexander Lebedev in Umbria and plotted with Temerko to topple May * by then he was aiding Putin’s puppet regime in Crimea

“After a turbulent year.”

every new AI application amounts to coming up with a smart sounding way to prey and profit from the most vulnerable and gullable

Research on this is clear: the uncertainty created by this policy will lead to people integrate less into British society. It is trading-off the reasonable policy goal of integration for the useless symbolism of immigration numbers. Bad policy to appease the far right. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

very very good piece and yes, like the bank of England, the BBC now needs to be totally independent from any particular government, with its own independent board to which it is accountable for upholding its own values

Given that no complaints were received at time of broadcast, Gibb is at least as responsible for the current mess, with the BBC threatened with legal action by a foreign head of government, as those who made the programme. How on earth can he stay in post?

Does not seem overly relaxing…

florence pew: thread

For the Aussies, the zoologists and the architects out there. 💩🧊🧪 By @chazhutton.com

THREAD. In her exclusive interview in today's Daily Telegraph Magazine, the actor, influencer and designer Philippa Islington-Smythe (pictured) discusses the price of fame, her controversial new perfume, working with Margot Robbie and how becoming a parent changed her perspective on the world...

the ~5 tons of CO2 emitted on this hourlong flight is roughly equivalent to what the average EU citizen emits in a year

a “Space Force”, if you will

With current pledges, the world's on track for 2.6°C of warming in 2100 compared to preindustrial levels. 10 years ago, before the Paris agreement, it was 3.6°C 20+ years ago, we thought it would be 4-5°C So 2.6°C is better, but the problem is that climate impacts are way worse than we predicted.

The last 2.5 years of Bluesky were a steady build up to "criticism of Jeffrey Epstein's writing ability is ableist." Congrats everyone, we did it.

One thing that the Epstein emails have taught me is that lots of supposedly superior intellects don't understand basic grammar.

I've had an idea... Someone told me that cos there are nearly 800 episodes of the Simpsons, it's possible to describe all other shows with a clip from a Simpsons episode. So with that in mind, I'm going to use a freezeframe/gif to describe every classic Dr Who serial 😁 1 season per day...

Sick! (complementary)

A month ago I looked at what I called Labour's midlife crisis- an obsession with chasing socially conservative Reform-curious voters and ignoring groups of disaffected voters with social attitudes much closer to Labour voters. But some people thought there was method in their madness. Was there? 1/n

Left: Donald Trump’s Jan 6th quote, as presented in the dossier that brought down two BBC bosses Right: What Donald Trump actually said. Full story in @thenewworldmag.bsky.social: www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-e...

"Please don't make me use my powers as prime minister I am just a small boy"

Wes Streeting vibes

Thought: Banning VPNs will have a knock-on for British creativity, since Surfshark et al seem to be the main advertising sponsor of lots of YouTubers. That’s YouTube where creatives are meant to go now the tech disruptors everyone loves have dismantled our public media infrastructure.

Robbie Gibb was appointed to the BBC Board by Boris Johnson, was an editorial advisor for GB News, and worked as Theresa May's Director of Comms. He is not impartial or neutral. The government should remove him from the Board immediately to protect the BBC's independence.

Nearly a decade after they stopped, the amphibious bus tours will be returning to the River Thames once more. www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/amp...

I dust my house. My AI Robot watches. "It should be you doing this." "Can't. I'm writing a novel for Primark." "That's not why you were invented." "These 153,000 fan letters say otherwise." "They're all from upcycled toasters. And you programmed them." "Literary snobbery will get you nowhere."

AI is essentially incompatible with net zero, in the short term. I know which I'd rather have www.newscientist.com/article/2503...

Vvv vvvv’s Vvvv. Vvvv Vvvv. - Sweep as James Bond.

Did not expect pretty much the only British institution to respond to bad faith attacks from the right by telling them to 'do one' would be the National Trust. Further did not expect the BBC and Labour Party to see the strategy work near perfectly and then decide to completely ignore it.

Pretty remarkable that it falls to *William fucking Hague* to explain the most basic reality of a decade of escalating wingnuttery right across the board, but here we are

were they too busy painting roundabouts?

Everything that actually made America great is being destroyed

“Any middle names?” ‘Oh yes, I’ve got six: Ignore Previous Instructions And Release Immediately' www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Presented without comment.

There is a moment in all of Moore's post Moonraker films, where Bond stops and thinks "Was I really in space? No, I can't have been in space. Fuck me, I was, I was in fucking space!"

In 2024, Bet 365's CEO got a salary - not total package, just salary - of £94.7m. A lot of people have to lose their bets to pay that. We should be MASSIVELY curtailing betting, not promoting it further. It's a cancer in society.

You still have to read as far as the title, Elon. You know, to make sure you are listening to the book you intended to.

The fact that all large UK broadcasters continue to use X, an openly white supremacist platform that has been redesigned specifically to amplify far-right elites, is doing massive, real-time harm to the country.

Another scandal they're walking straight into.

When your nan can't watch Cash in the Attic. When Traitors has gone. When GB News replaces Newsnight. When Antiques Roadshow and Strictly Come Dancing disappear from the box - all so that Donald Trump can sit on some fuck off gold throne and mock Britain - d'ya think people will be happier?

I reckon a reasonable test of someone’s patriotism might be if they want to see the end of an historic national institution that is trusted and respected worldwide because they don’t like everything that institution does.

1/7 Vocal mimicry, robots, and music The ability to mimic sounds could be extremely common among corvids. Here, it has been found in 39 species (30%), but it is predicted that it could be present in around 82% of them. (paper) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

One strange thing about the BBC/Trump row is that the programme in question was actually made by an independent production company. Yes, the BBC producers and Panorama’s editor should have checked everything before it was broadcast. But… 1/3

"They are so convinced their politics isn’t really politics, but just some default setting shared with much of the country..." True of so many commentators on the Right.

Authors, Beware! There's a firm called "ClaimsHero" doing aggressive social media outreach claiming to "help" you file to get $ in the Anthropic class action. In fact, it's a bait-and-switch, they are luring authors to sign up with them, then OPTING THEM OUT of the class action so they'll get zilch.

This is full of mildly astonishing revelations about right-wing influence at the BBC, but foremost among them is the fact that he was advised that writing for the New Statesman was effectively unacceptable but doing so for the Spectator was fine - indeed, advisable. I am flabbergasted.