Thinking that the best way to deal with racists is to try to get them to vote for you by enacting racist policies just means you become racist. The only way to deal with them is to fight back, to oppose them, and (for those who can change) to change them. And render the remainder powerless.

Why Labour's cruel Reform-style refugee policies will backfire for the Government www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/shabana-ma...

Will be interesting to see how this plays on the doorstep in the run up to the local elections in England (less than 6 months away).

To reiterate, this is about making life immeasurably more miserable and stressful for some of the most vulnerable people, in the almost certainly vain hope of winning over the votes of racists. Anything more shabby and shameful is difficult to envisage.

What does it say about my week that I am cheered that my train goes from Platform 1 at Cambridge (near the barrier) and not Platform 8 (all the way over the bridge and back again)? Such small victories over fate.

The departure of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness means the BBC is leaderless when it needs leadership more than ever. Where are the people at the head of the BBC standing up for it? www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The Internet Archive has removed 500,000 books from its Open Library. If it trained machines instead of people, like Anthropic, it might have avoided all the fuss arstechnica.com/tech-policy/... www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Live your life in such a way that when you die people don't literally rise from the dead to shit on your grave.

There is no limit to the vicious cruelty and pettiness of these people.

The Sunday dozen A venerable tradition returns to the re-booted Illuminations blog with a weekend selection of links www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/the-sunday-d...

Well done to everyone who remembered to vote. Once again the Restore Trust group were seen off. Let's do it all again next year.

Join us for the 2025 Public Policy Lecture with Prof Ricardo Hausmann @harvardkennedy.bsky.social on how today’s policymakers can drive growth & prosperity in an age of disruption. Thu 20 Nov 2025 | 17:30–19:00 | Jesus College, Cambridge Book your place www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/events/annua...

We seem to have collectively decided to disregard the fact that the US President, assisted by Elon Musk, is responsible for hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths, a number that will grow over time. But hey, "one trillion dollars" www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

If I see one more stupid Rosalind Franklin take I'm going to lose my mind. Thank god for @matthewcobb.bsky.social and @nccomfort.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

James Watson was not just a scientist who was a racist. He was worse - a scientist who offered other racists the comfort of scientific authority.

"World's first potential trillionaire has killed 600,000 people, including 400,000 children" is the only headline that anyone should ever read about Elon Musk

I was busily telling a friend about a weird dream I'd had about them where they were hiding in fog, when I noticed they were wearing white loafers – very out of character for them – and then I awoke from telling them about it.

#OtD 1 Nov 1936 the Jarrow marchers arrived in London. They had marched all the way from Jarrow in North-East England to protest hunger and unemployment as a result of the closure of the town's shipyard, which was the main employer in the area stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8136...

Really enjoyed this thought-provoking in conversation with @profafinlayson.bsky.social renewal.org.uk/articles/the... which is very timely as we start to organise the first Society for Hopeful Technologists community events

I was selfish and took the milestone episode to explain why we must get off US tech, some options that are already available to us, but also why our governments need to step up. We can’t keep allowing the US government and Silicon Valley billionaires to have so much power over us!

We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?

So why does the BBC label the academic and economist Faiza Shaheen an "activist" but refuse to do the same for the former academic, turned anti-migrant activist Matt Goodwin?

“we’re explicitly not building Skynet” says man who is 100% building Skynet

My week: "my bad.. when i said tomorrow it was tuesday and when you said tomorrow it was wednesday and I didn’t realise, and I’ve got call at 11 today (which is the tomorrow you were referring to yesterday)… could we do another time?"

Zohran Mamdani caught lying that he understood Plato’s allegory of the cave, yet when asked to explain it, he seemed to instead explain Baudrillard’s theory of Simulacra and Simulation where reality has been replaced by symbols and signs, which seems similar to Plato’s theory but is not the same

Oooo!

Prince of Darkness

this is obviously appalling - and he should lose his job - but it's also really quite shocking; I first met Calgie when he was a baby reporter in his early twenties and sure, he was always a Tory, but he was....fine and normal? right-wing radicalisation is out of control in SW1

For those of you keeping score, 18-22 year-old students calling for an end to slaughter in Gaza are so racist they need to be expelled or deported, but 24-35 year-olds celebrating Hitler, rape, and, um, racism are just kids being kids so chill. Also, racism is over so no need for Voting Right Act.

If you know basic kabbalah it's actually not too hard to make a golem out of a labubu. Don't recommend it though. They have a pre-existing body-dharma. As soon as they wake they run straight for the sea. V hard to counter. Lost the first one. No idea what it's doing out there. Moved like lightning.

I love this ad, but I also need to point out how sad it is that it's the pretty much the only time any Democrat with national visibility has used their platform to issue a full-throated defense of trans people at all, let alone a concrete campaign promise for trans rights.

This is a lie. There are many criticisms you might sensibly and truthfully make of the Sentencing Council and the Sentencing Guidelines. I’ve been making them for years. But this is an outright lie. Pure fabrication. A fraud on the public.

Birthday. Cake. Kaffeine London. The finest coffee shop in town.

How will technology continue to shape how we talk to each other? We’re seeking a researcher to help tackle big questions like this. Working with Co-Director @eli.bsky.social, this is a chance to engage with experts, dive into the research, and contribute directly to the field and our strategy.

It's a small point but CBS is the BBC's news partner in the US (ABC had played this role for at least a decade previously) and they often use CBS correspondents for smaller US stories. Can that continue?

At a time when new cyberattacks debilitate British businesses seemingly daily, the UK government is demanding that security is made worse for UK users.

*sigh* Bluesky is Blueskying again. Here's that link again, this time visible to everyone. Trans people's experiences are not adult content, mods. www.vaginamuseum.co.uk/communitygal...

Because much of my professional life is pointing out how laws meant for one thing are used for something else: the Trump administration is using a law meant to protect access to abortion clinics, which it is no longer enforcing, to go after pro-Palestinian protesters. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

A really good reason: not knowing where someone currently resides is a huge risk when it comes to legal redress if they nick the hire car or whatever. I love how the magic word 'digital' makes idiot ministers think chaotic humans will suddenly transform into compliant automata because of an app

Call Gavin Newsom's office like you called ABC/Disney/Sinclair/Nexstar

This is the British political equivalent of arguing that the Women’s Institute are a Nazi cabal and control the Conservative Party.

I'm seeing so many takes around parts of the "ID card" melange, I have to add a few. It's not about cards. It's about registers. A register is a definitive 'true source' of data, about people, places, buildings, whatever.

A beautifully captured lunch with one of the actors who never disappoints. And a useful life lesson for us hacks from @janinegibson.ft.com - don’t choose the ciabatta.

BBC Radio 3 Train Tracks Tom Service with a musical and cultural celebration of a landmark moment: the 200 year anniversary of the birth of the modern railway.

Not sea glass but fragments of plastic car tail lights, indicators and brake lights, probably washed into storm drains after heavy rain, eventually making their way to the sea. #oceanplastic

People, good people, civil servants, give up their time and their money to make Civil Service Staff Networks the fantastic resource and public service they are and the government spits in their face, it makes me sooooo mad... Grrrrrr

Why doesn’t @bbc6music.bsky.social get louder as my tram gets nearer to Media City? That’s where they are playing from…

Yes, it being 'unworkable' and 'unfunded' is the problem. JFC.

It’s clear that the cruelty is the point. Anything to distress, frighten, undermine, create divisions. And the answer has to be to say ‘no’, ‘never’, not ‘this wouldn’t work’. Anything less is complicity.

Retrospectively removing indefinite leave to remain would be immoral and economically damaging. It would tear families apart. Attacking it as ‘potentially illegal’ is completely beside the point. Argue with the (awful) idea. Don’t try ’well, actually you can’t do that’.