Honestly almost nobody criticising the use of the "passive voice" has any idea what it means. "The man died after an interaction with federal agents" is active voice. "The man was murdered by federal agents" is passive voice.

The death of multi-camera TV: a thread. I know most of you will know the technical parts of this (and may have read it in the other place) but bear with me. 1/ 🧵

"Politics in the second Trump era can be mostly defined as people Posting adversarially in public" - a quote that will one day make for a fantastic essay question

Striking finding from @timbale.bsky.social’s latest survey of Tory members: the average Tory member (60) is younger than the average Tory voter (62)

That’s actually in the data:

A... remarkable new @walesgovernance.bsky.social ITV Wales @yougov.co.uk poll of Welsh voting intentions for the next Senedd election (changes since May) - Plaid 30% (-) - Reform 29% (+4) - Labour 14% (-4) - Cons 11% (-2) - Lib Dems 6% (-1) - Green 6% (+1) - Other 4% (+2) #Senedd #devolution

Very interesting revelation in @kitty-donaldson.bsky.social's evening newsletter: Andrew Gwynne, one of the MPs rumoured to be thinking of standing down to make way for Andy Burnham, has applied to the Commons authorities to retire on medical grounds.

Fascinating chart

From the BES, Labour's biggest drop in support (percentage points): -20 Unemployed -20 Social renter -18 Private renter -17 Yorks + Humber -17 Students -17 Lesbian, gay, bisexual -16 North West -16 North East -15 Age 46-55 -15 Jewish -15 Scotland -15 Age 36-45 -14 East Mids

Staggering chart from the FT. Each of Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta (MAMA!) are set to spend over $100bn annually on capex by 2030, more than all four combined in 2020. All because of the LLM-triggered AI boom... on.ft.com/3HwH8Y8

@gralefrit.bsky.social You have to see these! A friend of mine has been collating a series of images entitled "Things my students have written turned into Philomena Cunk quotes" and they're just glorious.

So many different parts of the public services seem to have failed in this very sad case.

These are the top replies, being financially rewarded for posting this stuff, and the explanation offered by the site’s own AI for why it’s like that. Anyway just flicking through the Sunday newspapers reading about some minor content infractions that Ofcom might look into at the BBC/Channel 4.

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

It’s the first night of the proms! I feel Radio 3 should have mentioned it recently so it didn’t come unawares.

With the latest “fall” in inactivity, you have to wonder whether most of the “rise” after covid was just the Labour Force Survey being rubbish.

Fen Diagram A cartoon for the mathematically-minded lovers of flatlands, a particular Venn diagram in itself. www.worldofmoose.com/products/fen...

Plot twist: Angela Rayner resigned her Unite membership several months ago, I understand, so cannot be suspended.

All you need to know about the importance of air conditioning for climate change summers via @jburnmurdoch.ft.com

Big strategic moment for 🇫🇷 and 🇬🇧 (and Europe) at the summit in London today. The two countries are to state for the first time that their respective nuclear deterrents “can be co-ordinated”, and that “there is no extreme threat to Europe that would not prompt a response by both nations”

This isn’t good (from OBR report)

Nice to see one of my pet policy hobby horses (the greying of private renters is a big fiscal risk) make the OBR Fiscal Risks report. obr.uk/docs/dlm_upl...

Fantastic yarn by @chloehadj.bsky.social this: about the falsehoods at the heart of a bestselling series of nature books:

Faith Kipyegon, possibly the greatest female middle-distance runner in history, using the most advanced tech and with a dozen pacers drafting her and cutting out wind resistance managed to run 4:06:42 for the mile. Meanwhile in New Zealand..... www.youtube.com/watch?v=62p-...

From small town to opera superstar, Pretty Yende on her journey www.channel4.com/news/from-sm...

I’ve written this essay for The Observer on Keir Starmer’s first year as PM, the very private side to him that you don’t often see in public, and how he has learnt from the mistakes he has made. observer.co.uk/news/politic...

This is a very honest interview with Keir Starmer, where he apologises for a number of things observer.co.uk/news/politic... (being too gloomy to begin with, appointing Sue Gray, mishandling the freebie row, and the rhetoric over immigration - i.e. islands of strangers and incalculable damage)

What a hollowed-out fucked-up corporate “local news industry” we’ve got, reliant on disillusioned poverty pay graduates rewriting dodgy press releases that are gamed for SEO by a casino, all enabled by Google pushing this shit through its Discover tab. pressgazette.co.uk/news/the-pr-...

Say what you like but he's a communications genius.

Assisted dying, vote by party Labour: 224 (+2 tellers) - 160 (+1 teller) Con: 20 - 92 (+1 teller) Lib Dem: 56 - 15 Green: 4 - 0 Reform: 2 - 3 Plaid Cymre: 3 - 1 DUP: 0 - 5

It'll be two years, this Monday night. Time, at last, to write about Agnes.

Obviously the Stow, cmon now

Documents www.gov.uk/government/p...

What to believe?? - UK jobs up (workforce jobs survey) - UK jobs up (labour force survey) - UK jobs down a lot (pay as your earn tax records) This matters and we are clueless

One of the issues with undergrad students is that - despite all the “digital natives” hype - their online literacy is often quite poor. In two academic offences panels this week a student was totally perplexed when asked why an AI made up quote was in their essay: “it was the 1st result on Google.”

Last year, 2x/3x lethality was defined as having a British brigade combat team defeat a Russian combined arms army of 21,000 (see below). By the same token, SDR aim of 10x lethality would mean that a lone British division should be able to defeat ... the entire Russian invasion force of 2022.

Reading an article about the 25th anniversary of Tate Modern and learned the building was in use as a power station for less than 20 years, from 1962 to 1981 - meaning it's been an art gallery for longer than it was ever a power station.

The secrecy necessary in the original story has made it hard for other media to follow up but I’m very proud of colleagues especially @ddesimone.bsky.social who’ve worked on this for a long time. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Proms and Tour de France lowest for Reform. So cycling and classical music with least appeal.

The IMF proposals for tweaking the fiscal rules are interesting and merit consideration. But some of the coverage is wide of the mark. Changing the rules, as the IMF suggest, to allow more flex *between* major fiscal events wouldn't make Reeves' life any easier at the Autumn Budget.

🚨 Exclusive 🚨 Ian Rush has put his name to a 90-minute, score-settling, AI musical in the style of Hamilton about his legal battle against a Surrey scaffolding company and a small Wigan law firm, in so doing attacking, among others, Robbie Fowler and Jamie Carragher. 1/7

The “international travel to the U.S. is taking a dive because of Trump” story turns out to be mostly about Easter falling later this year (though there’s something to it for Canada). Important to keep confirmation bias in check. (Gift link: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...)

The Centre for Internationalism has new dates for your diaries! 1. Tuesday, 27 May, 6-8pm (Birkbeck Central Building, G08) Roundtable discussion of @dacretu.bsky.social's Foreign Aid & State Building in Interwar Romania - with the IHR's Rethinking Modern Europe series www.sup.org/books/histor...

ONS confirms our exclusive story that Ian Diamond has resigned as head of the national statistics body! It came after mounting pressures over the ONS's handling of a collapse in response rates to key household surveys. It had made its unemployment and employment figures useless

London Evening News, 3 May 1979. The day of the general election

A meme for May 4th

Number of wards won with more than 50% of the vote: 🌹 Labour: 3 (!!) 💚 Greens: 9 🕴️ Independents: 14 🌳 Conservatives: 27 🐦 Liberal Democrats: 55 ↗️ Reform: 66 (!!)

Interesting to see places Reform have relatively struggled. Oxfordshire 1 seat out of 69. Buckinghamshire 1 out of 77 (so far). This is the not the traditional pattern of left-right politics.

It's been a month since Kemi did an event that Getty thought was worth sending a photographer to.