Minjie Chen of the Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton, has requested that a library database field called #MARC041 about #translation be made visible. Please consider sharing this with your local library team, especially those working in #metadata: www.linkedin.com/posts/christ...

No, really? The 65+ cohort exhibiting a strong sense of entitlement, is it?

My latest review looks at Sally O'Reilly's 'Hagtale' (courtesy of Scribe Publications), a two-strand novel that takes a new look at an old tale... tonysreadinglist.wordpress.com/2026/06/29/h...

Ford has rehired hundreds of senior engineers after replacing them with AI backfired and has cost the company billions of dollars. AI adoption is blamed for Ford being the most recalled automaker in the U.S. with 51 recalls covering over 11 million vehicles in the first half of 2026 alone.

As Britain swelters through another heatwave, few people will have heard that ministers have quietly dropped plans for solar carports. Cars cooler in summer. Shelter from the rain in winter. Clean electricity all year round. A missed opportunity?

AI, its apologists, and its cheerleaders continue to make life worse for everyone. And Apple, which used to do a good job acting like it cared about its users, continues to demonstrate that it now cares only about making more and more money.

As Europe's heatwave heads east, temperatures rose above 35°C in parts of Poland today. The town of Słubice, on the border with Germany, hit 38°C at 6 p.m. Tomorrow is forecast to be even hotter, with temperatures potentially reaching 41-42°C in western Poland

One of the lessons of the last two years is that Labour urgently needs to stop being afraid of its own shadow. Burnham should appoint whoever he thinks would be the best Chancellor and throw his authority behind them. The Daily Mail will try to kill them anyway. So just govern.

Of course unions look out for their members but it defies belief that they chose *this week* to lobby for more North Sea oil drilling. They should be lobbying for super-generous retraining terms.

Over 40 economists write to leader of Unite the Union, rejecting her claim that Ed Miliband would destroy jobs if he becomes next UK chancellor "The net zero economy generates output worth over £100bn and employs over a million workers....these numbers will grow” www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I had to cross central Sheffield at five o’clock yesterday afternoon. Barely a tree on my route, just hard surfacing. It was brutal. We need to transform our cities fast, yet where is the vision? By contrast, Paris is planting trees and growing creepers like there’s no tomorrow.

Starmer saying the next PM will inherit a country that is 'fairer' than the one he inherited 2 years ago. In the one Starmer inherited, trans people could use public toilets.

Really don't care what someone thinks of net zero. They should be able to recognise that we suffer from a systematic aversion to specialism and competence. He bucked that trend.

The attacks on Ed Miliband, the one truly successful person running a department under Starmer, shows that the lack of seriousness in British politics goes way beyond No.10 to the press, the trade unions, the business sector.

For a while, when he was Labour leader, Miliband threatened to smash up Murdoch's media empire, just in case you are wondering why the Murdoch's papers are worried about him.

The most dangerous thing about AI is not that the machines might one day think. It is that we are being trained, by men with enormous financial gains riding on our acquiescence, to stop thinking for ourselves.

Instead of working through your #TBRpile online, why not call into your local indie bookshop this weekend and get talking to some fellow book lovers, maybe even take a chance on their latest recommendation? Take a page out of Kurt Vonnegut's book, don't let the computers do us out of that.

Reform have now lost six by-elections in a row in England, Scotland and Wales. Their national poll rating is 26% – below Labour in 1983 – and Farage’s approval rating is -37. They’re very far from the voice of the people and need to stop being treated as such.

I bet he has. The people for whom Starmer chose to govern won't want to see their man give up power.

"There was a 'clear directive to use language that guaranteed they would be shortlisted and ultimately favoured... The pressure was explicit and we were told that if the team didn’t deliver this outcome, leadership would find people who would . . . The threat to our job security was unmistakable.'"

"France, Germany and Switzerland have all excluded or cut contracts with Palantir from their armed forces and intelligence agencies in recent months, seeking more local alternatives. Trump’s export controls on AI company Anthropic’s latest models have only added to sovereignty fears."

Keir Starmer’s under-16 social media ban can only work if everyone proves who they are, so it’s a natural move for a government selling surveillance as safety By tech policy expert and digital rights advocate @heatherburnstech.bsky.social www.thenerve.news/p/under-16-s...

Interestingly, the intuition I felt and spoke from -- that embodied knowing -- is precisely the kind of thing AI, for all of its performative anthropomorphic gesturing at the simulacrum of personhood, can't do. Tech billionaires want us to believe that our embodied/human ways of knowing are useless!

I'm attending a digital humanities event in Montreal. There was a keynote on AI and something about the talk made me wonder if it had been written by Claude. I said as much in the Q&A. As I posed the question, the speaker shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. What he said next shocked the room +

This morning scrolling Bluesky, there is nothing at all in my feed about Putin’s barbaric attack on the Ukraine’s holiest site, the UNESCO protected Lavra so I’m posting this here.

I’ve also grabbed this from Twitter, absolutely haunting sound of the bells ringing out this morning.

This is Ukraine’s foreign minister: ‘We expect strong reactions by international institutions and capitals. No vague words, silence, or weak steps. We need action now to stop Russian barbarism’

i've seen tonnes of signs from the glasgow event and this one is by far my favourite

And then he'll post about it on a website rigged to help Nazis and post non-consensual pornography.

In today's inbox: three requests to work for free. One would cost me £190 in rail fare, another would cost me at least 40 hours of work, and the last says "we don't have a budget for speakers, but we can promise a nice lunch." Folks, if you're paying the caterers, you can pay your speaker.

This is flawless stuff 👏

I just don't understand this stuff. Labour isn't in opposition. It's not writing for an essay competition. So don't whine, legislate: "X com has become a tool by which malignant foreign actors spread disinformation and we will bring before Parliament legislation to block it."

Just noting that when Sarah Everard was kidnapped and murdered by a police officer and a vigil held for her on Clapham Common, Farage urged people not to attack men or the police.

Britain was perhaps the leading nation in maintaining a consistent principled line on Ukraine. We just threw that reputation away.

Utterly the wrong call. Weak. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Europe should not be running after Putin. It should be maximising the military & economic pressure on him. Every initiative to “reopen formal channels” will be seen by Putin as a sign of European weakness, & will encourage him to keep fighting.

How about: a) I believe the UK should rejoin the EU; but b) Neither we nor Brussels are ready for a formal negotiation; and c) EU membership would not be a panacea for our national challenges; so c) I will work to build trust and lay foundations with the EU, while advancing other priorities.

Sneaking a giant screen into the flagshagger march is one of the funniest things @ledbydonkeys.org have ever done. "STAY HYDRATED" 😂🤣😂

I hope this isn’t true. There are times when it’s more important to put country before party. This is one of them. Burnham’s longstanding commitment to a fairer voting system could transform our democracy & counter the dire threat of a Reform UK government elected on a minority of the vote

The richest punishment that can meted out to self-styled revolutionaries and insurgents is electing them, so that they can discover that actually governing is hard, tedious and thankless. Shame it has consequences for the rest of us.

More flexible, saves money, and, critically, (1) can be more trusted by the public and (2) doesn't hand sensitive private data over to actual fascists (3) preserves rather than relinquishing national sovereignty.

Does that include the £5mn?

Why are the media so uninterested in Ben Habib allegation that Farage and Johnson were each handed £1m by Christopher Harborne to fix an election. It at least merits further investigation and scrutiny Imagine the resources they'd invest if it was a pair of glasses for Starmer

The Labour leadership contest should be a big, meaningful debate about ideas, not a madcap knife fight followed by a coronation inews.co.uk/opinion/wes-...

This letter is really something, my god.

"Self-interested lizard."

So if Starmer announces his departure today, because the Parliamentary party has lost faith in his leadership, what happens to the King's Speech? Farcical for it to go ahead when a new leader will, almost of necessity, have different priorities?

We were told our data would stay under NHS control. But an internal document just revealed the truth: Palantir staff are being granted “unlimited access”. Join us demanding this spy-tech firm gets out of our NHS 👇 goodlaw.social/658abc