A valuable note of caution from @thebenedictevans.bsky.social on the current AI hype and SaaSacre 👇

Spotted around Shepherd’s Bush recently. Not sure what it means but I kinda like it.

@petemarcus.bsky.social just pointed me to this article which is a very thorough takedown arriving at the same conclusion: www.exponentialview.co/p/how-95-esc... The "95% fail" number is essentially meaningless

People often jump to saying online propaganda is either the work of radicalised actors, or else Russia. In practice, it’s amazing how often the answer is much simpler – someone is chasing either (a) clout, (b) money, or (c) both.

X: Britain isn’t as good as it used to be. Bluesky: America isn’t as good as it used to be. Insta: Football isn’t as good as it used to be. Threads: Music isn’t as good as it used to be. No one everyone’s so depressed, pessimistic and angry.

This morning is my first someone’s-doing-a-Teams-call-on-the-Central-Line experience

Just learned that the guy who founded Capital One is called Rich Fairbank. Talk about nominative determinism!

I get so much value out of my @londoncentric.media subscription, but the most value is the guilt-free ability to say “no thank you” to the fake charities at stations.

It used to be said that the left was far too 'online', but it seems that this is increasingly (more) so for the right nowadays.

TikTok coverage seems to have become somewhat numb to this, but worth remembering that the President simply refusing to enforce a *crystal-clear* law of Congress for over a year to instead broker a deal on his own terms, & Congress just shrugging, is very much not how this was supposed to work

Just contemplating a news article sentence that begins: "As part of his long-running plan to seize Greenland, Donald Trump says..."

Stat in @economist.com: 71% of US podcasts now have video. Interesting suggestion that video aids social sharing and discovery too. (Audio is notoriously difficult to share and seems not to be inherently viral like text/video.)

So does every generation of writers eventually feel like their job is just reminding people of things everyone used to just know

Interesting to see the logic set out in Ben H's post on a16z's new fund. The chain goes: policy --> tech --> geopolitics --> freedom. They increasingly understand the first two links as connected, and essential for underpinning the second two. You can argue against it, but that's the logic.

"In 2024, the biggest opportunity for comms was going direct... In 2025, the edge came from winning attention... In 2026, narrative alpha will come from doing real things." www.getflack.com/p/standing-out

The author of a viral Reddit thread alleging fraud at a food delivery company tried to back up his claim by sending me AI-generated documents. Today I'm publishing those documents in the hopes that it helps other reporter see what we're up against in the age of AI www.platformer.news/fake-uber-ea...

Bit of a marmalade dropper in the UK tech world newsroom.accenture.com/news/2026/ac...

This person went on a buying spree over the past 24 hours. Fresh wallet. Only existed since Dec 27th and has only bet on Venezuela-related markets. polymarket.com/@0x31a56e9E6...

Coining a new term to explain modern media: operafication. Like opera, the major cultural forms of the postwar era (the novel, movies, rock and roll) are in decline. New stuff is still being created, but the canon is set and most activity is about replaying key works.

An excellent tour of the comms horizon from @arunsudhaman.bsky.social www.earned-first.com/spectres-at-...

The average person isn't bothered by AI really

Tech predictions for 2026 from @caseynewton.bsky.social www.platformer.news/2026-tech-pr...

New AI tell: "quietly".

Clever headline

Just getting round to reading the NYT's obit for Tom Stoppard and I'm struck once again by the brilliance of this speech from The Real Thing...

With the cost of LiDAR plummeting, Waymo's bet to use it in their autonomous cars is looking smarter and smarter.

Good chart from @azeem.bsky.social that captures something I've noticed anecdotally: AI obsession from businesses, leaders, elites; AI suspicion from workers and consumers...

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

I just published 52 things I learned in 2025 medium.com/@tomwhitwell...

We just published a new report on how UK journalists are adopting AI in their work Authored by @neilthurman.bsky.social @sinatk.bsky.social & @richardfletcher.bsky.social, it's based on a survey conducted in 2024 Read in full reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/ai-adoption-... 10 findings in thread

Interesting TfL data that shows Londoners are slowly coming back the office more and WFH less (via @jim.londoncentric.media)

Nothing lasts forever but it’s a sad moment when agency names like Harvard (46 years old) and Good Relations (65+ years?) disappear. Was proud to play my role in 12 great years of the Harvard story. www.provokemedia.com/latest/artic...

This insight from @caseynewton.bsky.social is very good. It gets at something I've been trying to work out - the death of hypocrisy in tech, making shamelessness the most effective strategy.

Public attitudes to AI, according to Edelman data. Pretty stunning.

Not only are generations fake, they’re also something we basically invented a few decades ago. Compare when generations occurred (shaded areas) with when we settled on their names. From this week’s newsletter: www.howtoreadthisch.art/ample-exampl...

Lovely idea from Nils Leonard to rebrand WPP so it stands for "we proudly present" and go all-in on creativity. Never happen though.

Atomico's new State of European Tech report is live: www.stateofeuropeantech.com

Interesting/depressing stats on AI-generated podcasts 👇

Welcome to the party, guys... digiday.com/marketing/th...

The two real legacies of Covid: 1. WFH 2. People putting their Christmas trees up in mid November

"A wealthy country where everything visible seems to be slowly breaking while everything invisible keeps getting richer... It’s invisible prosperity and visible decay." Powerful summary of tech, economics, & the state of US (and wider West?) via @kyla.bsky.social kyla.substack.com/p/30-days-9-...

TIL this Astronomer ad, made by Ryan Reynolds’ ad agency after the CEO-HR Coldplay gig shenanigans, has more views than the Deadpool 3 trailer…

Reading Robert Graves’ “Goodbye To All That” and this anecdote is on page one. Wondering how far backwards and forwards we could take this chain of connections…?

So much of this "Matt Clifford 4 PM" stuff just seems to be America-brained wishful thinking. In the Westminster system you can't just donate £100k/£1m to get someone to 'run for PM'. That's not how this works. And smart tech people should know that.

The fact that the BBC has made serious culpable errors does not negate the point that there is a real and concerted right-wing media campaign to destroy it. Both points can be true at the same time and the campaign would not end even if the errors did.

The modern equivalent of sitting in someone's warm seat on the bus, is getting into their phone booth after a call...

Be clear, the American far right are coming for British democracy.

The average American now spends 13 hours a day on tech/media, including 5 hours on video. Because of multitasking, it adds up to a 32-hour day...

At the AMEC AI day summit and the news breaks that Getty Images has lost its copyright infringment case against Stability AI. What are the implications for other copyright owners and monitoring companies?