Even sincere actors get pulled into the same incentive field. Their beliefs may be genuine, but the attention economy doesn’t distinguish. To be heard, they must compete with the grifters on the grifters’ terms.

I LOVE this

It's that time of year

I am reading Walter Ong’s ‘Orality and Literacy’ and it is DEFINITELY the next ‘book that I buy copies of and give to people’.

New ChatGPT ad copy: "Shallower than Google"

“Things happen.” Jamal Khashoggi was a journalist and Washington Post columnist who was literally murdered and dismembered by agents of the Saudi government inside a Saudi consulate. Shameful. So shameful.

We lived in a pub when I was growing up and when I was 3 (50 years ago!) we had someone in to draw the pub for a business card. I sat next to him and watched him draw every line. I was transfixed and it was a huge inspiration for me. I’ve dreamt about owning that drawing for years…

Saw this photograph today... It took nearly a year from the declaration of war in 1939 for the British Government to ban Mosley’s Fascists and intern him. bsky.app/profile/ianm...

Hunt For Red October, but Sam Neil is doing a greencard scam in the background.

The Prime Minister said in September that we are at a fork in the road. These asylum proposals suggest we have taken the wrong turning. The idea that recognised refugees need to be deported is wrong. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

I have been listening to Shabana Mahmood on the BBC talking about the Labour government’s new immigration plans, and the consequences for refugees. I feel sick. What the actual, @tonyvaughanmp.bsky.social?

At some point, for the love of God, will someone ANYONE at long last take the council funding crisis seriously?!? Because THIS is what will break down a society, not some poor soul escaping incredible dangers, arriving on our shores.

"The cat scratched my groin when he saw that woman from Strictly" "Claudia Winkleman?" "No, man, but it was close"

Every single media lawyer I have spoken with this weeks agree that the BBC is doing exactly the right thing in admitting a mistake without admitting liability.

we have a president who only does good things when everyone calls him a pedophile. our mission for the next 3 years is clear.

Trump v BBC: I can’t imagine there being many surprises tbh, but it will certainly provoke a conversation about patriotism and leadership

Basically saying "if you do crime for me, I won't only pardon you--I'll give you millions of dollars of public money." Truly unprecedented level of corruption www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

It’s difficult to underestimate the extra burden that this is placing on our public libraries. For example, on a daily basis library workers are now filling the in-person/human service gap that billion euro banking institutions have abdicated from to maximise their profit margins.

Happy Fenton Day to all who celebrate. Jesus Christ, fourteen years. youtu.be/3GRSbr0EYYU

When you're a Liverpool theatre and you need an absolute cert to subsidise your more experimental programme.

TV conspiracies: we’ve hacked their computers but they’ve perfectly cleaned up the evidence! Real conspiracies: To: conspirator From: famous person Attachment: evidence.png

This is crucial - and not just a reflection, but a steer.

Just a note of caution Epstein was sick, perverted criminal who thrived on building social networks with the powerful. Part of that game is pretending that you’re a lot more influential than you actually are. This is also how you scare people into not going to the media or pressing charges.

Vast sin-concealing chaos

Thank God no nation is alone with its bigots - this is a wonderful thread for Brits of every extraction, and for anyone worldwide with an imagination about their different-accented neighbours

uhhh this actually reminds me a lot of how LLMs function at a basic level too - predicting tokens based on proximity & context, etc 😬 ...so we're teaching kids to read like AI & saying AI level is good enough

Writing messages as a woman: *Types* *Adds smiley face to seem friendly* *Deletes smiley face to seem professional*

RIP Tatsuya Nakadai

Damn, lost another. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/m...

Good for Mark Damazer standing up for the BBC and the thousands of extremely conscientious people who work for it. We lose it at our peril.

inspired by this, I have done a free extract of this section of the book here. it is about understanding that *with all its problems* the BBC is as important for our intellectual health as the NHS is for our physical health: naomialderman.substack.com/p/the-bbc-an...

Depressing that the BBC has so little inherent institutional strength, it is kicked about so easily. This is not good sign for our polity.

If BBC News's rivals who are today damning it for bias were held to similar standards, most of them would be shut down on the spot.

Alexei Sayle's Stuff (9th November 1989). The latest teenage craze is a rather unexpected one. And Pete Murray has a complaint from 1960.

Found myself hunting for the source of that line about a liberal being “a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel”; Robert Frost apparently (saying that JFK was *not* that kind of liberal, also an earlier version from W. Hocking). #BBC

If you’re a US citizen puking up over the cowardice of your institutions, you can at least take a tiny bit of comfort tonight - you have company.

We are so far through the looking glass that the man who tried to overthrow an election becomes president, the people who attacked the Capitol are turned into martyrs, & it's the BBC that gets punished - cheered on by the worst news outlets in the UK & the two most dishonest politicians of our age.

Stinking, disgusting pollution being pressure-hosed away, so sharing…. If you get satisfaction from dirty things becoming shiny and new you may like this!

1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️

Updating my LEGO White House

New York millionaires: threatening to flee the city since 2009

Incredibly classy move from a WIRED reporter who’s just been fired (for what seems like protected union activity) – completely commendable way to look out for your colleagues and their work. Feels like the kind of person any newsroom would be lucky to have, tbh.

God this is superb stuff. Beware mocking the whole thing: it's about public promises and what 'losing face' anxiety can cost, and that's a problem for all democracies in an attention-addicted world.

Nice to see that media literacy and critical thinking is going to be added to the national curriculum – that was one of the recommendations at the end of Post-Truth, published eight years ago… news.sky.com/story/bigges...

This is absolutely inspirational, and far from dated feels really quite modern and almost urgently contemporary in what it is arguing for. Must watch

Your AI and your LLMs will never write headlines like this.