Monkeys crashing through the trees outside my balcony at dusk. Having a lovely little time there, you legend. ❤️

It’s here! My book on the origins & weird growth of cyberwar as global participation sport, ‘We Are All Targets' is published in a Portuguese edition this week by the wonderful team at Casa das Letras. 'Estamos Todos na Mira' is at all good bookshops and here: www.almedina.net/estamos-todo...

I’d pay to see the back-and-forth email thread workshopping this one with the PR advisers.

Always interesting to see how often safety takes a backseat to revenue in the tech industry. Unlike other industries, it has really light safety obligations and even those (CSAM on X) don’t seem to get any enforcement. Seems odd for an industry embedded into every corner if society, no?

This combination of peanut butter, honey, chilli and poached egg probably shouldn't work... and yet it is freaking delicious 😋 🍳 #breakfast Should we start a cooking channel @mattpotteruk.bsky.social?

When AI was added to a tool for sinus surgery: “Cerebrospinal fluid leaked from one patient’s nose. In another… a surgeon mistakenly punctured the base of a patient’s skull. In two other cases, patients suffered strokes after a major artery was accidentally injured” www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Wow! I thought me getting off of Google products was a bit para!

On its own, for Microsoft, Google etc., this is a small move. But as an indicator of just how far trust in Silicon Valley's integrity (and its independence from the whims of a rogue US administration) has plummeted globally – even among allies - this is huge. www.politico.eu/article/fran...

The Austrian Tiroler Tageszeitung has a lovely, relaxing approach to spoilering its own potential clickbait. I swear to god this approach to journalism would solve a lot of problems in the world. Like, team, for looking after my stress levels, thank you. 😍

Come for the news, stay for a quick history lesson on the use of government spyware in Europe, something that's been happening since at least 2004. techcrunch.com/2026/01/22/i...

weird, it sounds like they're doing an invasion of a sovereign state

Well done everybody, great work etc. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Corollary to @faineg.bsky.social's discourse on "good tech needs no begging to adopt": when the humble web browser has become so encumbered by AI features that an article about using the command line to run GitHub scripts to shut them off is viral news amongst normies, it's a full repudiation of AI.

Be more like the creative who presented this idea to Buckinghamshire County Council.

If all this is really about bolstering Greenland's capabilities, as Graham is claiming, why is the White House so angry about other NATO states bolstering Greenland's capabilities? And why couldn't the US have done it within existing frameworks that allow for a US military presence?

Very much enjoying how the Mail has now dispensed with the name ‘Brooklyn Beckham’ on its captions. It is now referring to him as ‘The nepo baby’ - as if that was an official title, like The Prime Minster, a rapper or one of the Avengers.

🏺 We don't think enough in archaeology about how often things were stored by being hung up

There are some lovely examples from well-preserved burial chambers where things are either still hung on a wall or can be shown to have fallen down from it, but in general the upper space of rooms tends to vanish and with it a particular part of material culture.

The UK is not currently planning to join Trump’s “Board of Peace”, Bloomberg reports. Starmer is concerned by Trump’s decision to invite Putin and Lukashenko. His spokesperson says the UK commitment to the UN is “unwavering”. The Board of Peace is on its way to being the Board of Dictators.

#Canada #Carney now taking questions. Repeats we are giving ourselves more than anyone can take. We are clear that the old world order is permanently gone. In perfect Carney style now schooling on how the rest of the world has the market and the people

The current U.S. president is the least popular since world war II. Europe should start communicating with the American people rather to the Trump regime. Sanctions like suspending tourist visa could be much more effective than escalating the trade war. And the E.U. should talk to state governments.

Just as a matter of interest, in what way has globalisation failed the U.S. and the West? Until the relatively recent lunacy, the west and US were prosperous, successful, healthy…

I am not sure Americans grasp the degree of damage that’s been done. Trump could leave office tomorrow and it would take a generation to fix relations with the countries that used to be the US’s closest friends.

Think of this every day

@ingridkopp.bsky.social Hello! Good to see you on this side of the formerly-Twitter fence! Also: I’m organising a cool panel in SA, and wondered if you might be about/interested in being on it? Can tell you more any time. It’s mid-Feb, Joburg, expenses all paid. Anyway, even if not, hey. ☺️

As a side note to this thread, one other thing I've seen over and over is how violence becomes normalised and loses its ability to gain traction in discourse.

I spoke to the Secretary-General of NATO, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Friedrich Merz and Giorgia Meloni. Together we stand firm in our commitment to uphold the sovereignty of Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark.

Trump believes he can take Greenland through Anschluß, the way Hitler took Austria. But that isn't happening. There is not just no groundswell of support for annexation in Nuuk. There is no support whatsoever. www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

Absolutely incredible, not to mention bizarre and dismaying, that this statement against Trump’s/the US government’s sabre-rattling in Europe’s direction should even need to be made. And yet. www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/such...

I wrote this last year on Five Eyes, the world’s deepest intelligence relationship. Cooperation is so built in that none of the countries really have working global signals intelligence if it collapses. That risk looked distant last March. Given Greenland, it now looks distinctly more possible.

Something to keep an eye on in Reform-land is Zia Yusuf's ever-escalating rhetoric. Calling political opponents "traitors" rarely ends well.

Here's what Shakespeare actually wrote in around 1596 about the loss of a son - in King John. In the play, the young Prince Arthur isn't dead yet, but his mother knows she will never see him again. For me, this is far more moving and pertinent than anything in Hamnet.

I think the White House badly underestimates the strength of the pan-European folk memory of 1930s appeasement, and how deep it still cuts. I suppose this is what happens when you learn in school that WW2 started in 1941 in Hawaii.

NATO IS THE SECURITY UMBRELLA. That is why UKRAINE WANTS TO BE UNDER IT. Sorry for shouting but this is the Treasury Secretary of the United States, the world's still-dominant military power. And the Treasury is most definitely a foreign policy agency.

This is the crucial point: "The level of understanding in UK politics and media about Silicon Valley’s alliance with Trump and the geopolitical and security consequences of this appears to be non-existent." How does one inform UK politicians of the entirely foreseeable implications? 1/

“The Europeans won’t fight back” is a wildly factually incorrect statement and shows an astonishing lack of understanding of 1) how the geopolitics of escalation works 2) how Europe works 3) how war works France is a nuclear power and is deploying troops in Greenland, for God’s sake

Someone just gave me an amazing Easter Egg: Cillian Murphy has been in a sequence of six space-time-bending Christopher Nolan movies. The exception being Interstellar. Which concerns the main character’s quest to bend space & time in a bid to reconnect with his prodigious child, Murphy.

I agree with @karaswisher.bsky.social that the App stores must pull X and Grok. The images I am shown on the “For You” page is disgusting. Grok/X is a weapon of mass harassment.

Bandcamp bans AI music. For all the faults in its running post-acquisition, Bandcamp is still the best music streaming and purchase platform by a country mile. consequence.net/2026/01/band...

Compromising your own national defence by turning it over to AI 4Chan to own the libs

⏰ Last Call! Today is the FINAL day to submit your VCWAP 2026 Paleoart! 🦖🎨 If you’ve been thinking about applying, now’s your last chance to show off your prehistoric creativity! 🖌️✨ Don’t miss out – make your artwork roar into the spotlight! 🌟 #paleoart #VCWAP2026

I wrote about the background of how bullshit social media posts (and videos) about a long-running fraud scandal led to the ICE deployment and to Renee Good’s killing here a few days ago: www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-i...

The stated reason for ICE agents being in Minnesota is because of the ongoing fraud claims around daycare and other services. The two prosecutors leading those investigations have now resigned in the wake of Renee Good’s shooting. Even the internal supposed logic of this deployment is falling apart

Just imagine if all the money Meta put into the metaverse to accomplish nothing, produce nothing, and generate nothing of value to anyone--even them, went to healthcare instead.

ICE just broke a woman’s windows and yanked her out of her car at Park and 34 in Minneapolis. This is after a crowd gathered while ICE raided a home.

This DHS post on X about their new drone program, touting "American Air Superiority," prominently features a Chinese-made DJI drone. Which are the exact same drones that the Trump administration recently banned from import into the United States.

Oh ouch. (Not gonna expose the poor popstar whose Wikipedia page this is on, but 'citation needed' after a claim of critical acclaim is amazing.)

Is this... is this all so we'll stop laughing at his fucking toilet? www.standard.co.uk/business/bus...

The employment scam SMS has mutated again. Now with added fiery death. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...