It might irk some, but Prince Edward has a lease on the Royal Lodge which gives him it rent free for 75 years after paying £8.5M in advance for upfront costs. Effectively he owns it as any other leaseholder would. lordspress.co.uk/royals/the-c...

There is a real problem in creating a quasi judicial inquiry if it starts by accepting conclusions before it has even begun its process even if those conclusions seem reasonable and genuinely felt. Overly restricting the guidelines of an inquiry is as bad as overly broad ones.

Dr Greg Newby CEO of Project Gutenberg dies. mastodon.social/@gutenberg_o...

So the SRA has had regulation of AML stripped from it and given to the FCA. A lot of legal firms are going to be panicking and I wonder how the SRA conference is going.

I remember🙏

What did the Seventies do for us?

I have a reader in England (I know, shock) who really, really likes the Alien series. I have forgotten and cannot find their handle. If this is you (we've spoken before), please say something?

Todd Rundgren is a bit of a whore for technology.

Is Venezuela going to bring charges of Piracy against the USA?

Are English politicians going to apologise to Birmingham SAG, Aston Villa and the Police for inserting themselves in the public order risk assessment.

I guess the referees couldn't quite steal the game from the Broncos.

Last night we went to Timbl's interview at the #CheltLitFest on his memoir, This is for Everyone. It was both sad and evidence of courage with his devotion to openness in our little land of Web. thisisforeveryone.timbl.com

if you've been enjoying my posts about block game development you may want to hit up the site to look at the FAQ and maybe get a clearer picture of what the game will actually play like enikofox.com/blockgame/

Some of the old cities remained and were yet to be cordoned off. My favourite was Southampton, where you could walk for hours, alone, save for salt badgers & maritime ghosts. I like how in this photo of it you can discern the remains of Borders Bookstore, the NCP car park and the original Colosseum.

If people think Press/Media/Platform Barons are evil today, look up Horatio William Bottomley. He was finally done for fraud but was a general swindler and using his publication John Bull both to promote his populism and as a machine for his blackmail of those in High Society.

"[A]cting responsibly ... is not a task that can or should be automated. This is precisely why we need to think carefully about how we do our work and what means we want – and do not want – to use for that."

More fucking nonsense on the Today Programme about 'AI', this time that Agentic AI being capable of creative endeavour. Dangerous fucking nonsense. #BBCTodayProgramme

McGuiness Flint, "Happy Birthday, Ruthy Baby" album, joins the list of the great albums of 1971. #Music

For those that didn't hear The Briefing Room on the ONS, the overall solution to the failure of the ONS is the lack of a National Register of People and a way to connect all Govt data about people. ie A single ID to rule them all. #DigitalID

Decades after the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters, can politicians please not second-guess expert safety assessments for football stadiums. Thank you. An Aston Villa fan.

The exodus continues. Two more people contacting me to unsubscribe and complain that my newsletter is “different” because it’s not on Substack. It’s literally identical, and identically frequent. It just doesn’t have “Substack” anywhere on it and is now under 1/3 of the price to read everything.

It kind of sounds like the Chinese Spies case would have failed on whether the information passed was secret at all. Rather it was political gossip and analysis.

I've had to rebuild this a bit - & my following - since moving away from Substack & losing a lot of oddly Substack-loyal people, but I relish the challenge as it means I have to work hard & write well. Huge archive of work on there. All of it can be read for £2 a month/£20 a year: www.tom-cox.com

I’ve entered this music video I made into an international competition for hobby musicians and I’d be enormously grateful to anyone who could give it a “like” on YouTube. And I’m quietly rather proud of both the song and the video, and I hope that you might enjoy it! youtu.be/sh7sE6O0yvA?...

Looks like Microsoft have released several queues of patches and updates this week as Windows 10 nears end of life.

Having a day of extreme cognitive dissonance today. On the one hand, I'm going to Parliament for a Westminster Hall debate in honour of Ada Lovelace Day, a thing that I created in 2009 and that I'm very proud of. Otoh, I'm broke. By many measures, ALD was a huge success — people picked up the...

I have to admit I do not like the Tokyo Tower 🗼 game. #AliceInBorderland

At #CheltLitFest, briefly, for Martin Parr's talk. Bought the book after he signed it and we exchanged the only words we have ever had which is Thank you, and Cheers, though he did prefix it this time with "Oh, I can spell that". This is remarkably special for me, less for him I suspect.

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand: "All graphics in GINO-F"

I was pleased to get the new Josienne Clarke CD, Far From Nowhere in the post this morning. An acoustic set which I'm listening to now. #Music

I've often thought that the entirety of US Society is anti male sexuality and the current slight wave in social media that the evil GOP are all in the closet is just the latest example. However, Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, does appear to be cosplaying Frank Underwood.

First Nation Communities across Saskatchewan are mourning the loss of Seth and Rene Constant, members of the band Constant Reminder and citizens of the James Smith Cree Nation. They were among three men killed in a collision on Thursday evening. redpopnews.com/james-smith-...

I had two fairly detailed dreams, the first was about the escape and subsequent epidemic of a deadly virus; the second was about the unsafe holding of industrial by-products that escaped. So watch the news and dig a hole in the back garden.

We went to the second night preview of Macbeth at the Other Place RSC. You have to be naturally tolerant of previews; we've had some that have been cancelled ahead of time and some cancelled as they began. This one cannot be saved.

The UK Govt needs to get out of the business of financial investment advice. Or they accept Compensation demands when the yield of the Stock Market declines, as it is doing at the moment. Pension funds can manage investments, ordinary individuals need to run a mile from them.

This is probably another age thing, but FOMO is trumped by FOFI. Fear Of Missing Out Fear Of Forced Inclusion

It's so nice in age questions to be in the too fucking old to quantify group.

Titus in his normal regal pose with crossed paws.

Please remember the Spanish Civil War. Please remember the Chinese resistance to the Japanese imperial Kokkashugi from 1931. Please remember Rosa Luxemburg. Please remember the struggle against Italian Fascists from 1919 and for the next 35 years.

In last night's QT, the audience won, against the poorest crop of politicians and a journalist of misinformation. I would elect this audience of Shrewsbury, even the Reform voter who was also fed up of hearing about immigration. Politicians have collectively beaten the subject to death. Good.

This is sketchily true and part of the corruption of the 'Change to create value just by existing, the concept which broke the banks and which we still haven't learned from. It's also corrupt from an accounting view, discounting a sale which is revenue by diluting the ownership is a fraud.

'Wenn Russland Gewinnt' which sounds like a book I should read, is translated as 'If Russia Wins' which I understand because wenn is a conditional, it can either be translated as If or When. In my head I translate it as Might Russia Win, which in changing the tense allows the conditional.

There are phony wars and phony ceasefires.

It is not consistent with being British to claim anything is un-British. This is not the USA which corrupts itself by labelling its parts with hate. Disagree by all means but don't make citizenship dependent upon obedience.

Folks, i need a job or a contract so bad. I'm a full-stack developer, i work in several frameworks (including #laravel and #yii2), and with several CMSes (notably #craftcms and #expressionengine but i can also work in Wordpress). I've got SQL wizard skills and a deep focus on #a11y . Please hire me!

[If you see this post, post a random picture from your phone]

I think in the drafting of the Constitution and its Amendments there's a good deal of "yes, but we didn't mean these people", in that drafting. #USPolitics

Playing Quarteto Novo, recorded in 1967. Yes there is an atmosphere of a BBC 2 Test Transmission in the late 60's. #Music