More from the Hansard Society. www.hansardsociety.org.uk/publications...

‘Move fast and break things’ wasn’t supposed to be a manual for legislators.

What do you say to someone who believes their chatbot has unlocked the keys to the universe? I talked to mental health experts who are following the 'AI psychosis' issue closely to find out: www.404media.co/ai-psychosis...

As GDC starts this week, I published a story summing up the overwhelming fear stopping many international developers from coming to San Francisco this year. arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/...

Meta appears to have invested a bunch of time and money into improving FFmpeg, after realizing its internal fork was diverging heavily from the main project. Which means we all benefit from Meta’s fixes. Not a huge Meta fan but this is cool. engineering.fb.com/2026/03/02/v...

Hardly surprising. Pair poorly drafted online safety laws with the challenges of content moderation at scale and this was always going to be the outcome. www.the-independent.com/news/health/...

My latest for Playboy, but "my" is a generous term. This is a piece that centers and shares the experience of three incredible trans people who were kind enough to tell their perspectives, and an editor who did the very noticeable work finalizing my draft into this! www.playboy.com/read/sex-rel...

Bold of him to assume the UK government is capable of creating such a form. Just imagine the interdepartmental workings required.

Jesus wept. This is the most horribly ill-conceived UK government public awareness campaign I've ever seen. And that's saying a *lot*. It could easily lead a teen to self-harm, or worse. It should be urgently and immediately pulled. What are they thinking?!

“There is no such thing as the Digital Age of Consent.” My post on part of the ‘Growing up in the Online World: a national consultation’, interpreting the proposals, and ‘emergency style’ DfE govt powers. jenpersson.com/there-is-no-... #onlineSafety #AV #DigitalID #SocialMediaBan #AgeVerification

In a new op-ed, CDT’s Aliya Bhatia & Michal Luria explain why many families are skeptical of mandates like selfie-based age checks & platform restrictions. Parents & teens say they want flexible tools & stronger privacy protections.

Aside from a few AI generated images, there is no evidence any "wars". The wild west here is the media, police and schools spreading unsubstantiated bullshit when they should know better. Classic press fueled hysteria, just like with the momo challenge in 2018 and rainbow parties in the 2000s.

Send me instead. Rachel's sweary tours of Britain's model villages.

And today on the BBC... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Have a lovely day, everyone.

I see lessons have not been learned from the spectacular loss of Gorton and Denton. If Labour insists on continuing down this route, then they do honestly deserve to lose the next GE. Utterly infuriating.

Instead of digital ID, can we get a single website for checking bin collections—preferably powered by WasteWorks—because my soon-to-be-abolished local council’s one is terrible.

this is an interesting development, but I think initiatives like @eurosky.social are a much better idea also, it seems laughably naive to think that a social network that is an EU body and at least partially funded by taxation "could stay impartial and independent from political pressures"

The Guardian's back on its anti-sex work soapbox, calling the anti-slavery commissioner's recommendation of a public consultation on banning camming(?) "sensible", as its a gateway to IRL sex work. Ignoring that restricting online SW pushes folks to more exploitative alternatives as seen with FOSTA.

If all else fails, play the "they'll get the bomb soon-ish" card. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzmt...

At this week’s Prime Minister's Questions, Kemi Badenoch claimed Type 45 destroyers “cannot take out incoming missiles”. In fact, they can. The Ministry of Defence says their primary role is air defence, including against missiles.

A US submarine sinking a lonely, dinky Iranian surface ship an ocean away from the theater of the main conflict—and 9000 miles from North America—makes it pretty clear the US is fighting a general war, without the declaration required by the Constitution. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

First poster for the ‘LIFE IS STRANGE’ TV series. Coming soon to Prime Video.

BREAKING NEWS in the world of Sticky Toffee Puddings

No, BBC, end-to-end encryption isn’t ’controversial privacy tech’, it’s industry standard protection

"I listened to 170 hours of Joe Rogan’s podcast – trust me, he hasn’t turned against Trump" Me, for The Guardian, on why we can't just believe out of context clips about Rogan breaking from Trump. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Received a data removal request from Incogni and the email includes person’s full name, email and home address. Do Incogni users know its sharing their details with random websites, not just data brokers, in the hope getting data removed? I've now got more info on this person than I started with.

This story is so on the nose for the Telegraph that the first couple of times I saw it in my feed I assumed it was a parody. But no, there's an IPSO ruling www.ipso.co.uk/rulings/0210...

Setting aside the creepy (and not original, other companies do this) use of AI here to manufacture words from the dead, this framing also reinforces the Western belief that grief is something is to be cured, moved past, ended, with a terminal point of 'going back to how things were before.'

The proscription of Palestine Action has been found unlawful. So what now for content takedowns? Ofcom must urgently make it clear what platforms are expected to do under their duty to remove 'terrorist' posts and stop censorship. Read about our open letter ⬇️ www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

In @svenskadagbladet1.bsky.social and @goteborgsposten.bsky.social investigation, the people behind Meta’s smart glasses testify to the hidden stream of privacy-sensitive data that is fed straight into the tech giant’s systems. www.svd.se/a/K8nrV4/met...

Parents have always been an amazing vector for viral misinformation and rumours. Once something gets to a school, it risks a backlash from parents if it doesn't take it seriously. Same with police. So they often distribute it even if sceptical. In turn, other parents worry a hoax will become real.

Home Bargains’ facial recognition system has once again wrongly accused someone of being a thief. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A large number of privacy and infosec researchers have published a detailed letter calling for a moratorium on laws requiring age assurance technologies until there is a scientific consensus on the risk/benefit tradeoff of using them www.politico.eu/article/age-...

The Joy of Redacting

Starmer's ability to find the exact sweetspot which pisses off everyone is extraordinary. He's a savant.

Utterly cruel, pointless and harmful. It does not minimise how bad Conservatives were to say Labour are now the most anti-asylum government in most people's living memory. This prevents people feeling any sense of safety and security after fleeing persecution. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

I counted every time S.I.G. or Spectrum Is Green is said in all 32 episodes of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. youtu.be/HGIakIwIsG0?...

New — I spoke to eight trans people in Kansas about the new state law that invalidated their driver’s licenses overnight, what’s it’s like to live there right now, plus details of two DMV emails exclusively obtained by The Handbasket that shed light on the law’s chaotic and cruel rollout:

From The Archives:

Internet connectivity in Iran is now in a near-complete shutdown, down about 98% vs the previous week. The disruption began around 07:00 UTC, following reports of military strikes — and in past incidents the government has responded with nationwide Internet shutdowns.

“At the DfT’s request, O2 trawled people’s web browsing habits, including those of children, to identify “EV users”. … It then tracked those people’s physical movements around the country and sent “anonymised and aggregated” data to the government.” www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/25c4107...

The current argument of the British right is that Muslims turned out in "blocs" with "family voting" to cast their ballots for a party led by a gay Jewish man, and this shows that multiculturalism has failed, voting is "sectarian" and we are in a crisis. Hmmmmmm.

Horses. Up there with bicycles as the bane of many an artist. However, I figured out a foolproof way of drawing them, and I want to share that with you! 😊

Hoping Sir Oink A-Lot wins. 🤞

Hey, so we got a trojan horse ag.ny.gov/press-releas...

Vault-Tec would be proud.

The impending by-election result nobody can predict will affirm the pre-existing views of everyone.

GNU Rob Grant. 💔

Ali Akbar, the last newspaper hawker in Paris, has been awarded a knighthood by French president Emmanuel Macron. “Macron went on to refer to Akbar as ‘the most French of the French — a Voltairean who arrived from Pakistan.’” [npr.org]