The Home Office has FINALLY announced a public consultation on how police are using unregulated facial recognition tech. But it's being rapidly rolled out to town centres across the country. Join us in calling for safeguards on how its being used. action.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/page/182163/...

Most people are ignorant on most things, being ignorant is fine. It’s the active, assertive pride in being ignorant as an organizing principle that’s really the awful thing. It is bad to be stupid. You should not be proud of being stupid.

Kill it. Kill it dead.

Call it “mutual” and suddenly people get it.

Lily has been even more of a nutty Christmas cat than Carla - but we will always miss our girl

Remember Starmer's "urgent" review into foreign interference after Nathan Gill? Well, there's already two ex-UK ambassadors working in Westminster on behalf of a pro-Russian foreign government whose de facto leader is under UK sanctions... New on D4S: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/ex-uk-amba...

Translators, illustrators, researchers and editors all do creative, human work that is important and cannot be reproduced in part or in whole by AI any more than writers. Their interests are our interests. To legitimize the use of AI to replace them is a failure of principle as much as strategy.

At some point they will need to accept that a suboptimal deal is hardly worth doing The SM is so beneficial because all 4 freedoms work together in harmony It’s not dogmatic for the EU to insist they are indivisible, it’s common sense

V sensible for Labour to focus their entire policy strategy on the 8% of voters they’re losing to the right and permanently alienate the 29% they’re losing to the centre/left.

If you call asylum seekers an ‘invasion’ but won’t lift a finger to deter Russia, you’re not a patriot. New article from me: www.forthedeskdrawer.com/p/who-would-...

Your usual reminder that the UCKG is an extraordinarily shady outfit. It is not clear what the money they collect is for or where it goes. They are collecting all over London today. Avoid.

Labour’s foreign interference inquiry needs to go *much* further Had an excellent conversation with the equally excellent @petergeoghegan.bsky.social for his 'Democracy for Sale' substack: foreign influence on UK politics, Russia, my book Homo Criminalis... open.substack.com/pub/democrac...

I wrote a piece about translation earlier in the year, talking about how a good translation isn't, and can't be, just matching words one-for-one: whatever.scalzi.com/2025/02/03/h...

Authors, remember that you CAN insist on human translation for your foreign-language editions and have it written into your contracts. You can no longer just assume you're going to get a human to work on the book whose every word you wrote with intent.

Fuck all of you saying "this is inevitable" or "it's here deal with it" or even "it's fine"/"it's not a big deal". Be antihuman on your own time. This is a moveable needle. It's ruining lives (mine included already), ruining the environment, ruining art and creativity, isn't needed and isn't wanted.

Ian Curtis on stage with Joy Division at the Bains Douches, Paris. 18th December #otd in 1979 #JoyDivision #IanCurtis Photo by Danny Dupic.

That's so stupid and so odd. I mean why would you investigate interference and then ignore the biggest and most important examples of potential interference in the last 50 years? Why?

Labour are launching an investigation into historical foreign interference in UK politics. But they are explicitly excluding the Brexit referendum from the investigation. That's like pledging to investigate instances of arson while ignoring the wall of flames spanning the horizon.

This builds on earlier @peterjukes.bsky.social @bylinetimes.bsky.social stories Whilst Manuel “I know nothing” Farage would have us believe he was stunned to hear of Gill’s Russian asset work it really is not remotely believable. See my 🧵 below outlining for how long Farage’s been a 🇷🇺 helper rôle

“Political communication by mainstream parties plays a central role in the electoral success of the far right” How much more research do journalisten, politicians, pundits and strategists need before they finally change course?

My friend Sascha is a professional musician and he's lost a viola bow on the way to Heathrow. Please signal boost to help him get it back.

Don’t do this

Don’t handle tear gas grenades with nitrile gloves. Also don’t handle them at all as some may be flashbangs that have nit functioned properly

All this extra cost (time & money) for *less* fucking access to our continent. Brexit is such ridiculous "self harm" For god's sake UK, stop with your Gammon Curtain & do what rest of Europe doing: join the EU/reciprocate FoM; join Schengen. Embrace freedom share.google/JzWU7bHyBxKy...

AKSHULLY, I wrote a separate piece on Hegseth's military jamboree, and again, my issue was one I chose: The declining mental acuity of the man with the nuclear codes. You can read it here: www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

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.

This is the person the GOP are seeking to canonise.

For those that cosplay and yearn for a civil war: they have no clue. Half of them would die from not having insulin Civil War? The REALITY You NEED to Understand youtu.be/YqAqYMHe6Gk

on.ft.com/4nqr2P2 Moscow holds Ukrainian children at hundreds of sites across Russia

It’s unforgivable. Who the hell does he think he is to deny a perfectly reasonable political ambition from millions of old and especially young for the arbitrary duration of his pointless “lifetime”… he’ll be political dust long before then, thankfully.

They can go fuck themselves then.. They deserve everything coming to them..fuck all growth. & Brexit still isn't yet (TCA, WF or EES) fully done No prospect of UK rejoining EU in my lifetime, says Starmer’s reset negotiator | Foreign policy | The Guardian share.google/vekn4wn5Y4Ah...

The artist Banksy acknowledges his work by publishing photographs of it on his website. So we know that this is his latest work. But look more closely at the images. rozenberg.substack.com/p/more-damag...

An increasingly global problem…

Evolve Politics: Estate agents are legally required to verify the source of funds in property purchases. Nigel Farage’s partner bought the £900k Clacton home in cash. If Farage is the source of funds, and HMRC prove he’s the true beneficial owner, he’s evaded Stamp Duty. That’s tax evasion.

Absolutely true. But the problem is that he’s the same guy who said, with total conviction, in Island of Strangers™️, “We’re shutting down the lab” - I can’t imagine him saying what you suggest. And few in the UK have the courage to name the union flag-bedecked Russian elephants in the room either.

Every step Labour chase Farage down that path brings him one step closer to power. It bears repeating: every step Labour chase him down that path brings him one step closer to power. So what SHOULD they be doing instead? Yank the fight over to a different battlefield, such as rejoining the EU.

The deadline to make your submission to Ofgem is this Friday. Don't let the man who switched off Starlink in Ukraine, helping Putin, have the keys to switch off your electricity here in the UK.

🧵 THREAD: What the leaked Alaska summit documents really reveal (excellent scoop by @NPR) 1/ NPR just broke some big news: US government documents were accidentally left in a hotel printer in Anchorage, revealing the actual plan for the Trump-Putin summit. They show exactly what Trump intended.

Full interview here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

Are tech billionaires drivers of industry and innovation, or an existential threat to democracy? Adam Becker, astrophysicist and author of the new book, “More Everything Forever," makes a case to @karaswisher.bsky.social for the latter. Full interview here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

👇

This is the perfect AI story - Google hires the labor of hundreds of skilled professionals, then pretends their dumb machines did it. This is the story with so much automation - someone is still doing the work, just hidden from view.

Every rich person is going to tell *you* how great AI teaching is while sending *their* kids to the kind of schooling the Ancient Greeks would recognize. I just wish everyone would think about why that is.

Anyone who thinks historians and mathematicians will be among the top 40 most affected professions by AI has not used AI and has no clue what those jobs involved. AI constantly hallucinates sources which it presents authoritatively and can’t do basic arithmetic.

Amen. Unless you’re using it to cure cancer I don’t want to hear about how you “just use AI to generate a hilarious image of my cat in a kimono”

For Christ sake, a corrupt felon is president surrounded by an evil cabal of fools and Russian stooges.An army of masked thug bounty hunters are roaming the country. Trump is stealing billions. Stop with the focus groups. Attack, attack, attack.