What I love about dumb conspiracy theories are... if this were true, what are the implications? Is the suggestion that Supertramp were planning 9/11 all the way back in the late 1970s?

Not nearly enough is made of the incredibly impressive feat Indian Railways has made to electrify almost 100% of its 135,000km of track, while also growing renewable sourcing. Huge: timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/ind...

It is morally wrong to want a computer to be sentient. If you owned a sentient thing, you would be a slaver. If you want sentient computers to exist, you just want to create a new kind of slavery. The ethics are as simple as that. Sorry if this offends

people are gonna have a real rough time when they start getting old and don't have the cash reserves to look like bradley cooper

huge notice that pops up if you try to edit the cat article

It's not widely known, but the people who listened to the Swift/Kanye beef on the radio actually thought that she'd won.

Sharing a planet with America has felt for the last decade like being tied to the mast of a ship while the mad captain scuttles it

OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this

It was always pretty invidious to ask one of the UK's most deprived cities to choose between regenerating its urban core and WHS listing. But worse than that, UNESCO gave no credit for the preservation of the 19th century heritage (Albert Dock is just one example) that came from that regeneration.

'Give me 10 years of your life, and I'll trade in that puny flab for living muscle. Physique you desire! Shoulders to hold your shirt up. 5 years ago, I was a poor student at college; today I am two separate gorillas. No tiresome exercises, no tricks, no unpleasant bending. Wrestle poodles and win!'

The bees have discovered Brutalism

I can't even be annoyed at this because '<<simulacrum of reality created by hyperconsumerism in 2002>> is way better than <<simulacrum of reality created by hyperconsumerism in 2025>>' is just too funny.

I wrote about this in "The Unaccountability Machine" - when you describe leveraged buyouts to ordinary people, half of them say that it should be illegal and the other half are often convinced that it already is.

Journos love making generalisations about class and consumption habits, despite the fact that in modern Britain there's actually a pretty weak relationship between what you eat and class/occupation/region.

Terrific back and forth, this:

Frodo you dumb bastard.

Just watched The Spy Who Loved Me for the first time in... 20 years? Anyway, the secret of why a slightly creaky Roger Moore convinces as sexy James Bond is that all of his superiors and even the villain are dessicated old men.

The 'Riyadh Comedy Festival' reminds me of the story of Freddie Starr performing in the Middle East, under instruction not to swear or refer directly to Prince Hussein. He came on and said 'Which one of you fuckers is Prince Hussein?' and the curtain immediately came down.

It is really funny that Jimmy Kimmel Live showed more moral fortitude and adherence to a system of values than Columbia University

RIP Tony Harrison. Listen to his extraordinary poem ‘v’ which scandalized 80’s Britain. Highly relevant today. m.youtube.com/watch?v=FA3A...

Sam and Frodo threaten the willow with fire, but Merry and Pippin scream; it has started to crush them. Then—a song? Downstream, behind them, they hear: ‘Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo! Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow! Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!’

I received an email from Octopus today saying they're hiking their time-of-use tariff rates, in part, because consumers were too good at shifting their use to cheap periods, so they were losing money. This tells you how powerful price signals are in driving efficient use of the power system.

The South had no interest in governing Boston (in the sense of a military occupation/mirror world Reconstruction) because it was *obviously unfeasible for a much small and poor population to control a larger and wealthier one, which had a strong attachment to the idea of Union*.

This is *extremely* nerdy, but I've just noticed that, despite now being a private company, Royal Mail branding has followed HMG in switching from the St Edwards Crown (used by QEII) to the Tudor Crown (used by the current King).

Shadowfax carries Gandalf across the Fords of the Isen and into southern Eriador. The Nazgûl crossed the same ford six days ago.

The heuristic of 'if you couldn't make a decent stab at writing their obituary without further reporting, you shouldn't write a thinkpiece about their thoughts reveal about our times' remains very strong.

'In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen - not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!'

All this article tells us is that its author can't cook.

If you've ever visited The Times website then you will be followed around the internet for eternity by adverts for pieces entitled "How I shagged three dads at the school gates — and still made my 9am corporate meeting".

this exists it is called thinking

Tony Blair used to talk about the difference between the 3-second, 30-second & 3-minute conversation - the point being that simplistic policies, that poll well, collapse under the more sustained scrutiny of an election or time in govt. So what happens when there is *only* the 3-second conversation?

Having learned that the land called ‘Shire’ lies near the Elvish towers at the Grey Havens, the nine Nazgûl cross the river Isen—entering Eriador again for the first time since the Witch-king’s defeat at the Battle of Fornost 1,043 years ago.

This is as clear of an indicator of a dying empire as any other expected mile marker

Again, it is not the media landscape of 30+ years ago. If I were a broadcast TV network I would very much not be walking around acting like media personalities have nowhere else to go besides broadcast TV.

[me, a journalist who spends all day every day on a social media app where the discovery algorithm is personally controlled by its owner, captain birdseye] you know, a lot of people are talking about fish fingers, we should probably cover that

Henry Kissinger, who has been dead since December 2023, co-authoring a book about AI which no doubt promises to be up to date... I have questions.

My gf's TikTok algorithm has just thrown up a Dwight/Mamie Eisenhower fancam reel.

This is it, the clickbait winner for 2025, no chance of this being beaten. Absolute must to click this - brilliant, world class, if only there were clickbait awards. 🏆

The Times appears to have interviewed an 'ex Buckingham Palace cleaner' who supposedly divulges royal stain removal secrets but doesn't seem to exist, is possibly AI, and probably placed by a PR agency to boost SEO for a tiling brand. pressgazette.co.uk/news/royal-c...

Obvs it depends on the priest, but my experience from 25 years on and off of hearing Catholic homilies is that they're an order of magnitude less political/culture wars-y than my non-churchgoing friends expect.

Inside Bran Castle: this is a serious historical monument. British vampires aren't real. Don't ask us about Bram Stoker. Look, here's Queen Marie's dressing table. Inside the gift shop: and would Madam like a Dracula Christmas bauble? A Dracula towel? Dracula wine?

I am visiting Bluewater shopping center for the first time, and it is the most Nineties, neoliberal, pomo place imaginable. They may as well have a marble statue of John Major in the lobby.

Please booktok read wuthering heights i need to see people cancelling heathcliff for being mean to dogs and making memes abt him regretting not getting to dropkick a baby

every birthday message to epstein is like "dear jeff, you're so rich and so handsome but probably the thing about you i love most is that you're a prolific child predator. never change <3"

Here, have some concrete! These are the dolos blocks which form the breakwater and sea defenses by Torness Nuclear Power Station, in East Lothian. Each one of them weighs about eight tonnes.

Aristocratic patrons have traditionally held considerable sway over parish livings. Eleanor Doughty investigates

Winston Churchill, 1925: