This might be the best Lunch with the FT I've ever read (it helps to be obsessed with Tom Hollander). Fascinating, funny, wholly un-vain on both parts, vulnerable but never cloying. Loved every word and re-read chunks repeatedly, savouring it to the end. extra gift-link here: on.ft.com/3Vzowud

Milo's quiet sense of slightly stunned pride is palpable here.

Apologies to anyone who's DMed me. I can't access to Bsky messages - thank you UK Online Safety Act security theatre. I'll check em next time I'm in 🇮🇪 (afaik it worked without 3rd party ID verification last time I was home) Until then, try lastnamefirstname at Swiss sub-atomic particle .com

Ask the 'privacy-is-dead' bros (you know, the ones who are all "everything we do is tracked, anyway") for a single thing in 20 years they've done to stop growing surveillance? The 'there's no point' dudes never lifted a finger for ANYONE. So no, my dude, I don't listen to you. I do the work.

Here's what the new co-owner of TikTok US and existing co-owner of the Tony Blair Institute (the 'let's do digital ID' guys) had to say this time last year. This is who's dictating and planning to profit from mandatory government digital ID, starting with immigrants and expanding to everyone else.

hey @latams.bsky.social and @noemamag.com 😍😍😍

Well!!!! This feels quite surreal, in a very, very delightful way.

😆

For all Tim Cook's discomfort at joining Trump's tech bro entourage - literally, check out the pics of the state dinner at Windsor Castle - He's no better than the rest of those loathesome, anti-democratic billionaires, sucking up to Daddy to flout and destroy European law in actual bloody Europe.

I demand that Apple scrap its App Store tax and search engine default. They worsen user experience, deceive consumers about privacy commitments, defund journalism and the web, are illegal collusion with Google, and undermine the fundamental right to engage in commercial activity.

Iceland's UN Ambassador fights back tears at today's "Call to Action for Palestinian Children in the West Bank and Gaza." She’s not the only one.

Well this is rather wonderful at the UN today. Syria is back.

Just arrived from the printers. The Book of Bogs began as a community response & has grown beyond the Walshaw Moor into a wider celebration & campaign for bogs & other peatland ecologies. This was the most brilliant crowdfunded project, with over 40 contributions from artists & poets. OUT NOW.

This is just amazing news. I hope it gets rolled out to people in UK and EU soon. What a proof of the value, necessity and profound joy of scientific research. 🥹

Ordered the paperback of Andrew Miller's The Land in Winter a few weeks back and just grabbed it from my local bookshop (Philip Howard books in North Leeds) Already excited to give it a read but not bad timing as it's gone from long to short listed!

Brilliant news! A new @annecharnock.bsky.social book is always a cause for celebration

We usually just think of hedges as just dividing up fields, when they are, in fact, the city streets of the countryside.

We have a massive rose in the back garden with a dense honeysuckle growing through it. In the last few years it's become a bird-condominium. The birdsong this morning is SO loud and sweet. Milo's sitting beneath. I'm sure they're saying '"Did you see that fucking dog is back" but it's GLORIOUS

this is a great piece

Has been an absolutely game-changer for several friends...there are all sorts of books, art and other great things that wouldn't be out in the world without it.

So glad London hosted this individual for a second royal visit LAST BLOODY WEEK

this weeks fediverse news: mastodon is getting into the business of managed server hosting, and i think that makes a lot of sense for them connectedplaces.online/reports/fedi...

This book is wonderful, I give it my highest recommendation.

As a court weighs remedies in Google’s adtech monopoly case this week, will it shift power online or merely rearrange the company’s empire? Robin Berjon instead envisions a Wikipedia-scale ad platform alternative—built for the public interest—to sustain democracy online, rather than undermine it.

Beautiful and true, warts and all. "He was set on making the world into a more interesting place, with richer collective goods and better conversation." I interviewed someone recently who remembered Aaron as a young teenager being brought by his parents to W3C open protocol meetings. Formative.

Thread.

Quakers in Britain welcomes the announcement by our government today to formally recognise the State of Palestine. We see this as a first step to right a historic wrong. Read the full story here 👇 www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...

Embedding Palantir in all the UK's systems isn't a trade success, it's a security catastrophe

Here is an in-depth privacy and security guide by @fightforthefuture.org that goes beyond the basics, answering questions about VPNs and how to run an anonymous blog. There are also quick references but I recommend reading the 43-page PDF. www.turnoffyourphone.org

bollocks I'm going to have to write my newsletter now aren't I (and a BOOK)

We don't have decades of time for people new to activism to learn that it's possible to work productively with people you personally dislike. You don't have to undermine them and your own goals by constantly picking fights.

So, THIS is happening "Rewild the Internet: How to Resist Big Tech" will be published by Simon & Schuster in NY and Bloomsbury in London. Every bit of power we take from Big Tech takes it away from autocrats like Trump. Showing how is what I'm doing to meet this moment. (tk u @robin.berjon.com)

FYI my bio says 'No DMs' because I live in the UK and the Online Safety Act does not allow me to (without uploading age verification ID to 3rd party off-shore providers with zero data protection law compliance, which ... LOL no) I can't read your DMs now or ever, and don't know who sent them.

The Gaza Strip is Palestinian. It is the place of residence of more than 2 million humans who were born there, most of them descendants of Palestinians who were expelled or fled from their villages and lands inside Israel in 1948. @haaretzcom.bsky.social www.haaretz.com/opinion/edit...

Do you know the "Three Moves to Stop Broligarchy"? No? In that case, come to MozFest to see the amazing @coricrider.com and yours truly talk about it! schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/15

Delighted that the Nominet DNS Fund is launching today. If you’re involved in OSS with the DNS you should apply #dns #opensource nominet.uk/news/nomine...

over here desperately trying to raise money to pay editors and other staff who with skill and experience bring real stories from around the world to be freely available online for anyone to read, and meanwhile people are spending huge amounts on visual, textual, technological lies, lies, lies

Gave a speech in Germany on how European tech sovereignty is existential now that the mad US king has 'untied his own hands' and let loose all kinds of evil Mentioning the genocide in Gaza, 3134km from the venue's door, I just choked right the fk up. Writing it and saying it are <not> the same.

Flaubert on arriving in Alexandria in 1849: "I gulped down a whole bellyful of colours, like a donkey filling himself with hay."

To know more about Real Time Bidding and mass surveillance, see: www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

the year is 2349, the Irish DPC engages in its four-yearly writing of the confirmation of near readiness, no-one remembers why, etc etc

'It Keeps Her Mind Off Death': The Gaza Students Who Keep Learning Amid Intense Airstrikes There's no end in sight, but students are continuing to take exams and earn degrees virtually – when there's internet www.haaretz.com/middle-east-...

Every 4 years Ireland's data protection "regulator" writes to the Irish Council for Civil Liberties to say their investigation into shady Real Time Bidding ad networks' surveillance of <everyone> is at a "mature" stage and its release is imminent And surveillance + sale of data to ANYONE goes on

We cooperated with RTE PrimeTime over the last year on this very significant story about RTB data exposing the movements of Irish people, including military and political personnel. Link to this morning's preview piece is here --> www.rte.ie/news/primeti...

I got to read this a while back, and am delighted that everyone will now be able to share the harpy love!

Hello everyone! Announcing Eurosky Live: Berlin 2025. Join founders, developers, media, policy-makers, and investors for a full-day public programe exploring the European open social web. If you're building on ATProto and interested in showcasing, please reach out! To register: luma.com/knk1342n

The 1st episode of the new pod-miniseries I'm hosting at @issuesinst.bsky.social is out now! I talk with spec-fic writer & anthropologist of tech @boriscrito.bsky.social about the slow disaster of data centers, the rapid disasters of hurricanes in the Caribbean, & the ways we envision the future:

Surveillance as a service. I'm only surprised China's using a hedge company. It's been doing this openly, and flying African officials to China for training in surveillance-related public policy for over a decade.

Concerning indeed. Think you need to reassure your users this isn't going to/ can't happen again @proton.me