Totally thought it was Gadafi

Of all the sentences I never thought I’d be saying, “Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson is looking more like former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi as he ages” is right up there.

he's re-running birtherism on the powerless

I love @theguardian.com, but why exactly would you interview a Trump loyalist, founder of Newsmax, and NOT A LAWYER on whether the BBC should agree to a nonsense extortion settlement with Donald Trump? This lawsuit will not cost $100 million to defend. Maybe $0. www.theguardian.com/media/2025/d...

It does seem to be easier this year. Most of the Christmas tunes I’m hearing here in the US are more of the boomer-pleasing 50s throwback ilk.

I lost this in November here in the states….i think purist mode is the way to go…Taylor Swift doesn’t count.

They’re working together!

I had a similar lucky escape. A friend used a cover of it for their reel. I mean, come on. Then I discovered 'no covers' and breathed again

Academics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.

But it's the 18th and I am still untouched!! Rare achievement!

Exactly! That’s a Near Wham Experience. The chill hand of Wham settled on you shoulder a moment… then moved on. Today, it wasn’t your turn. (Props to the student though, takes skill/beer/both to A Capella Last Christmas at someone.)

A very good question! In my case, I am playing to avoid just Wham’s, and would view any exposure to a cover version of ‘Last Christmas’ as the equivalent of hearing a sniper’s bullet whizz past my ear and hit a tree. But I’m a novice - I bet there are purists who play on Advanced setting. 🏆🙌

#Whamgeddon is unexpectedly fascinating. On the face of it, it’s an auditory Floor Is Lava, where you have to make it through December without hearing ‘Last Christmas’ inadvertently - not in shops, bars, parties, TV, anything. What it does is make you so much more bloody aware of everything.

Early Christmas present for myself. ‘Worlds Apart’ by …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. This has been one of my favourite records for 20 years. I reviewed it on release & just felt so thrilled & excited that any band was being this ambitious, poetic, and expansive. I miss them!

While the media chums it up with Greene, reminder that she has a bill going before the House today to make it a *federal crime* to provide or advocate for healthcare for trans youth.

Read this. Then read it again.

RIP "American wars are not about oil" 1990-2025

NEW: Humanitarian officials staged a last-minute plea to Trump officials at their fancy hotel to re-start food aid $ for a huge refugee camp in Kenya. The Trumpers blew it off and babies starved. @annamaria.bsky.social & Brett Murphy www.propublica.org/article/keny...

I know all my colleagues in the field feel the same way. Always the Cassandra The fact that you deal with emergent stuff means that it's always an uphill battle trying to tell people what it is, why it matters. Please refer to my very scientific infographic involving chief Brody losing his shit.

"A little festive advice to those in Reform" Keir Starmer tells Nigel Farage's MPs. "If mysterious men from the East appear bearing gifts, this time report it to the police"

With time, it's become more and more clear that the Belgian objections to giving Russian frozen assets to Ukraine are not just legal/technical. When Italy's Meloni joined the anti-assets fight, it became clear that this is about US pressuring 🇪🇺capitals.

Before any nats start complaining about being ignored by Westminster I think it's worth remembering they're not capable of fixing a bridge about three miles away in west London either, it isn't personal

Working in online disinfo is weird. There are so many 'urgent' govt reviews, supposed 'scoops' & 'shock' revelations announced, which you've been living with FOR YEARS. It's like, "Ah well, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, I guess the 2nd-best is now." news.sky.com/story/urgent...

It’s just always another reason.

You look back now, and you think, you know: Horse_eBooks was always the best of us.

still galls me that when they premiered I pegged Gorillaz as waaay too high concept for America. I’d have bet money they’d do a fraction of Blur’s already puny US sales and have a few college hits. history teaches that “nonbinary cartoon singers” is less of a high concept than “British men (toffs).”

We’re betraying the very people who put their lives on the line for our agendas, just because the West is once again having a nervous breakdown over immigration.

When US friends describe things in lbs, I refer to the only 3 objects I know in Lbs for an idea of weight. 1) US pack of butter = 1lb 2) Ann Peebles, "99 lbs of natural born goodness" = 99lb 3) Possessed dog Cujo, described by Stephen King as "a 200lb St Bernard". Can these become standard units?

This is wild - for both companies in different ways. OpenAI now has to get way more stringent with creating a safe AI environment, while Disney just became an AI investor. That's before you get to the AI copyright fight Disney is waging openai.com/index/disney...

It does not get anymore dystopian: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Wow - the EU is launching an investigation into Google nicking web content and summarising it using AI. Good to see someone sticking up for content rights ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

Very helpful thread on why waiting lists aren't falling much despite a lot more appointments being offered.

We are burning all our fossil fuels and pricing computer components out of reach of most people just to come up with garbage like this

Every age gets the scandals it deserves. 1950s, Cold War paranoia: McCarthy 1970s, polarisation/smashmouth campaigning: Watergate 1980s, greed: Iran/Contra 2025: The Hawk-Tuah Memecoin Melania Trump Clueless Populist Self-Incriminating Idiocy Industrial Complex rudevulture.com/hawk-tuah-go...

Weird Tom Stoppard memory. I saw Leopoldstadt on the eve of Covid Lockdown in London. At the end, all of the characters we’ve met are being asked about. They are ticked off one by one in a grim roll-call. ‘Auschwitz.’ (They blink out as the spotlight is extinguished.) ‘Auschwitz.’ It’s relentless.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... [paywall]

Never let it be said that the British press is out of touch

I like to imagine that their previous failed "crypto food delivery idea" floundered because neither of them could pretend to be food or crypto.

the price of populism

This is also how I judge the History Channel. If it’s about a topic I know, I spot at least one lie per minute watching the History Channel, so it’s horrifying to think how many lies I’d be swallowing without knowing it if I watched about a topic I don’t know. LLM search results are even worse.

the entirety of human history has actually been manipulation by cats to get them to every corner of earth.

All of that on Nathan Gill and Reform as tools of Russian foreign policy - and the sequel being written here, today. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I just heard that an old friend & colleague with whom I’d lost touch has died. There are lots of things to be said by people closer to them than I had become. But this person was kind, & classy, & creative. And by being all of that, they made the world, and so many other people’s lives, far better.

These are astonishingly bad numbers:

X categorised itself as “News” so that it wasn’t obvious how it was performing on app charts versus other social media apps. News is a less competitive category so Elon gets to “win” even as he hides X’s weak performance. (Also I notice Truss went to the effort to find the silly “X” of the logo)

Women at NASA, starting with one of my favorite #WomenInSTEM photos 🧵

US designates four groups in Europe as terrorists, calls them 'violent Antifa' www.reuters.com/world/europe...

Marczyński, P., & Tebaldi, C. (2025). The wellness pipeline: Tracing far-right health narratives on X. New Media & Society, 0(0). #CommSky

“William Blake’s poem ‘Eternity’ was written in 1880, which was after his death in 1827.” Great work, Google AI. The Zero-Click Impression is working out swimmingly. No notes.