The Royal Society for Blind Children (RSBC) urgent appealing to children’s authors, writers and publishers to donate stories to its new bedtime stories app. The charity relies on stories in the public domain but are running out of books. Anyone willing to donate should contact [email protected].

Question: Does “tech prosperity” really mean U.S. firms investing in British startups that are building surveillance technologies ostensibly to provide compliance with the online harms act..?

New from me at my favourite newsletter (again): the origins of the UK Online Safety Act were not grounded in child safety, but rather the authoritarian fantasies of the affluent white English right wing. So why aren't they over the moon about it? internet.exchangepoint.tech/the-dog-that...

Here you go, enjoy the back catalogue: www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

Nick Clegg's new book is absolutely atrocious and I cannot in good conscience recommend you read it. Instead, read my review for @newscientist.com about how bad it is www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...

See also South Yorkshire…

Poli sci students: study this carefully. This is the game of politics in action. www.ft.com/content/3a3e...

Globally, roughly a third more power is being generated from the sun this spring than last. If this exponential rate of growth can continue, we will soon live in a very different world, @billmckibben.bsky.social‬ writes.

This is the most cyberpunk thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life 😲

Just to be completely clear - this British Army Vet was NOT forced out of military housing to accommodate Afghans - who, by the way, put their own lives at risk to support and protect British soldiers. Just ever more rage-baiting by Matt! 🧵1/14

Please apply for this! While it's only advisory (and unpaid), it's a good opportunity to highlight what's working, and not working, in public sector AI adoption to ministers and senior civil servants. www.gov.uk/government/n...

I believe it is worth interrogating the fundamental forces re-shaping our information spheres away from liberal democracy towards myth, manipulation and magical thinking empowering autocracy and nihilism. Here’s how it all falls apart—a 🧵 in 6 figures ⬇️ www.protagonist-science.com/p/how-social...

@kevinmarks.com Great to see you’re in Sheffield & attending Front End North, Kevin! Are you here for the event or more permanently? If it’s the latter, it would be great to see you at GeekBrekky sometime - its every Friday morning from 9am at HowSt Cafe :)

It’s mind-boggling to me how much blame young people get for the failure of educators to excite, entertain, engage and motivate them. Of course they don’t have the resources of the digitised entertainment/advertising industrial complex, but so many educators do not even appear to trying!

Love this! A rant so good it creates an entire language of resistance 🙌

@suw.bsky.social Hey Suw, were you aware this happened at the Royal Albert Hall last night 🎉🎶 adalovelace.org.uk/news/2025-06...

Wrote a briefing for @NEF about how Europe needs an ambitious, coordinated, and long-termist macroeconomic approach in order to achieve its goals in this age of shocks and challenges. Whereas current policy is incremental, piecemeal, and short-termist... neweconomics.org/2025/06/a-co...

Someone out there's got £7 to just push us over that milestone, haven't they?

If this is true then all the Trump administration’s Tariffs should have been a quarter the size!!!! 😳 youtu.be/ML8_65_9tl4?...

How is *John Bolton* the voice of reason now? 😐

Being targeted by AI recruitment bots to contract for an AI company that's creating multi-lingual training data in a language they think I speak from 'analysing my profile', but in fact is not a lanugage I speak, really is a new low. 🙄

This is an interesting local inititative in Oxford, UK that invites #decorbonisation project "developers" and project "funders" to register their interest and then be matched with each other in order to drive more projects that support the city's overall carbon reduction targets.

This looks like an interesting book. I'll reserve judgement until I read it, but I do like the notion that city leaders shouild be troublemakers - "bold enough to challenge the status quo while maintaining institutional trust".

Current autonomous vehicle projects are like the famous "Iron Bridge" - interstitial expressions of a new technology applied within an old modality. Innovations in the process of adapting to new realities, but not *of* them. The incentives aren't right yet, anywhere in the world.

Earnest post for once. Yes things are bad - and getting worse in many ways. But even now, the illiberals are not getting all their own way. Things are being contested and opposed. And if the illiberals are ultimately to be defeated this how things start turning against them. If you can, hold on.

Another "Zero Bills" housing development in the UK - this time 113 units! Love to see it.

Calling smart city innovators & startups! “The World Resources Institute (WRI) Ross Centre for Sustainable Cities is inviting urban innovators around the world to apply for the fifth cycle of its WRI Ross Centre Prize for Cities”

Some thoughts on the European response to the chaos now emanating from the White House - on Ukraine and more broadly, based on chats with senior European policymakers directly or indirectly involved in formulating the bloc's response 1/

Everything the U.S. administration is doing is designed to break up the Western alliance, separate the USA from its allies, weaken its institutions, deepen social rifts and break its economy. Who would design & execute such a comprehensive programme of destruction? People need to see the totality.

I don't suppose there's someone in my network who's a Friend or Patron of the Royal Albert Hall is there? I really want to get tickets to the Sumo Basho in October when priority booking opens tomorrow morning! 😬 🙏

Yup. At least as far back as Russia sending “observers” to sew doubt on fair process in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Our intelligence services surely have known, but why has so little been done to harden our social & institutional defenses?! It’s been effing infuriating to watch!

Idly wondering about de-USAing our Smithery tech stack. Move from Wordpress to Ghost (Singapore HQ). Gmail to Protonmail (Switzerland). That kinda thing. Someone’s put together a reference site for this kind of thing of course. european-alternatives.eu/product/prot... Any other recommendations?

America, just in case you thought Friday went well here’s how the London Times saw it …..

In case there was any doubt about how much financial, humanitarian and military aid the U.S. & Europe have respectively provided:

“For us there is no exit. We win or we cease to exist. The only question is whether America stands with us.” That’s it. Right there. And the answer is devastatingly, humiliatingly clear. Do you get it now, Americans? Do you realise what you’ve done?

I cannot imagine how embarrassing it must be to be American right now 😬 What a humiliating scene. Everything the country has ever stood for in absolute tatters. Oof.

I don’t remember any of the great cyberpunk authors predicting this… 'I need help': Freed from Myanmar's scam centres, thousands are now stranded www.bbc.com/news/article...

I've just written some thoughts after reading @tomforth.co.uk's "Why North England is Poor" and @paulswinney.bsky.social's response to it. Not a critique, but just a couple of things I think are understated in the analysis. www.unfolding.co.uk/articles/some-thoughts-on-why-north-england-is-poor

Dictators reduce their empires to the size of themselves - to what they are able to understand and directly control. #MakeAmericaIrrelevantAgain

Big day for UK climate wonks tomorrow: the 7th Carbon Budget document is out. They only come around every five years, and these reports are pretty much the holy grail of what the UK has to do to get to net zero.

"More than half of government employees at the federal, state, and local levels report using AI applications weekly." - I'd love to know where that stat comes from and what those employees are actually using it for...

So how can the UK support its AI industry without harming its world-leading creative sector❓ Our new report examines the impacts GenAI may have on the creative workforce and presents 6️⃣ policies for the UK Government to take forward in its copyright regime. ➡️ www.mctd.ac.uk/policy-brief...

Kamala was right. And it only took him less than 30 days to roll over for Putin.

"Trump living in Russian disinformation space - Zelensky" That's exactly what's going on, and it's been going on for years. The whole MAGA movement is hermetically sealed in it. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c6...

Musk accused Reuters of ‘social deception.’ The deception was his. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

California debunks one of the main anti-renewables talking points From late winter to early summer last year, renewables met 100% of California’s electricity demand for up to ten hours on 98 days. https://buff.ly/3WNti8n #ShareGoodNewsToo

👏 “After one year of the zone, nitrogen dioxide from traffic was lower, GP visits for respiratory illnesses were down by 25% and those for heart problems decreased by 24%”

@wired.com under @katie-drummond.bsky.social is distinguishing itself as a rare news organization that’s meeting the moment.

This is the key chart from the @centreforcities.bsky.social Cities Outlook 2025 Deep Dive: Yorkshire & the Humber.

Last year we started a project to download and preserve public data. lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2025/01... Since saving public data is in the news today — but is always needed — let’s talk about what you can do to help.