This is a great piece of local journalism - about all those flags going up in Brum. Some interesting details.

Rye Lane is on BBC2 tonight 9pm. The lovely escape you need from real life www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

WTF is this? They can cone off the road without any good reason and the police let them?

For many years I have been posting little observations online. What you may not know is that for many years, artists have been illustrating them - for no reason other than they wanted to respond. Below is a thread of some of these beautiful drawings because they should be seen 🧵

"So then it was, 'What do you think of Marx?' And I said, 'I think their pants have dropped off but you can't fault their broccoli.'" [NB the laughs are so loud you can't hear the end of this line. I only know it because I pored over V Wood's script books Barmy and Up to You, Porky as a teen.]

Many things in the world are hard this week so I'm wearing multiple cats for a bit of cheer 😽

Hopefully the copyright holders will sue them into oblivion. If copyright is still a thing 😔

Oh this is very very bad. So horribly compatible with fascism - making it impossible to know what's true, doubting everything, hoping we give up on truth, facts and trust

DWP contracts with IBM for mega AI deal IBM will help DWP as it “identifies, builds, and tests proof-of-concepts to investigate how AI can help the department address ‘to-be-identified’ business problems”

Either real-time bidding data or app SDK data is being bought and used by ICE to seize people from the streets. If you didn’t believe that the adtech stack is a human rights concern, I’m not sure what more evidence you need. www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-t...

Also, "hello I run a research centre that coincidentally researches the thing I say is really important in this article, please can I have some more money?" I must try this strategy

The amazing thing about the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on AI development is it doesn't even include all the externalized costs like higher electricity prices for hundreds of millions of people.

I thought I should read this before rolling my eyes, so I read it then rolled them really quite hard. I am more worried about existing actual humans not being granted proper personhood than whatever muddled nonsense a 'digital mind' might be.

Depressing but important work from the TUC on insecure work. This is one policy area where government are making some positive strides however! www.tuc.org.uk/research-ana...

✉️💡🚨Next edition of my newsletter will be out NEXT WEEK Join over 100 (woo!) other readers to learn about my adventures in FoI when I tried to find out about DWP's use of AI Also includes 👩 a guest appearance 🖥️ a technical fail ✅ and barely a mention of digital ID Join the party ⬇️

🔔 freelance researcher call At @carefultrouble.bsky.social we're looking for freelance researchers to deliver a literature search on the impacts of AI adoption, looking at worker safety, infrastructure resilience, and environmental safety www.careful.industries/blog/2025-9-...

✉️💡🚨Next edition of my newsletter will be out NEXT WEEK Join over 100 (woo!) other readers to learn about my adventures in FoI when I tried to find out about DWP's use of AI Also includes 👩 a guest appearance 🖥️ a technical fail ✅ and barely a mention of digital ID Join the party ⬇️

For four hours on Friday 12 September, while most of us slept, GB electricity demand was being fully covered by generation from clean-energy sources The first-ever period with 100% of demand covered by clean energy was in 2021 The longest to date lasted 15hrs, on 26 May 2025 2/7

Also, volunteer management is a big task, even when your volunteers actively want to be there. Who is going to fund and support the organisations to host? Has anyone actually asked charities if they want enforced volunteering?

Great news! JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month www.jstor.org/action/showL...

Of all the things that I don't need in my life this is close to the top of the list

Got lots of lovely data to code and analyse. I ❤️ this bit of a research project

Timeline cleanser 🐈

To be read alongside the reporting of Ellison’s funding of the Tony Blair Institute’s advisory / advocacy efforts: www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

At least 50,000 disabled people could lose access to financial employment support if the government goes ahead with plans to scrap the WCA benefit assessment, according to a new report from Citizens Advice The true figure is likely to be higher By me, for Big Issue www.bigissue.com/news/employm...

If we have billions to throw at magic pixie dust vendors for digital ID, we have billions to end poverty.

Also the second you roll them out the fash will be stopping anyone the "wrong" colour or speaking the "wrong" language demanding to see their papers.

Forget any philosophical issues around ID cards Introducing them as an anti-immigation initiative when racist attacks are soaring and your largest political rivals are proposing internment camps and mass deportations of immigrants is utter madness.

"Civio pulls back the curtain on public algorithms: Spain’s Supreme Court orders the Government to release BOSCO’s source code" civio.es/novedades/20...

Err ok. Invoking the antichrist to avoid regulation. It's original, I'll give him that. h/t @foundationsofthedigitalstate.com

Revealed: How Tony Blair is lobbying on behalf of tech billionaire Larry Ellison We expose former PM’s unprecedented influence over the UK govt & how this is shaped by the interests of his Institute’s largest donor & one of the world’s richest men www.newstatesman.com/politics/202... Thread

TBI tech output has long seemed like marketing rather than actual research, and this makes it very clear why

🤨

“The biggest US-listed companies keep talking about artificial intelligence. But other than the ‘fear of missing out,’ few appear to be able to describe how the technology is changing their businesses for the better.”

They would finish HS2 next week and then start on building millions of new houses. They'll solve homelessness by Christmas.

The rapture is going well here

Here are my top 10 fall dogs!

These scams are carried out by organised criminals, and yet the individuals affected are tied in knots trying to clear their names. This is not a useful way to tackle fraud. Would like to know where the DWP automated fraud detection systems are involved in this mess.

Actually can't wait

Seems like people now broadly understand that data centers use a ton of energy but pols are happy to trade that for "high tech jobs." But just bc it's big computer doesn't means it's big jobs! It's a big storage facility. The jobs are mostly in construction, with a tiny maintenance crew thereafter.

I saw Hilary discuss this work earlier in the year - it's an essential conversation - particularly with the ever-present speculation about the impact of AI on work. Get yourself to Bath!

You may know the software company Palantir as a contractor for ICE + the military. But in recent months, it's relaunched its merch store & said it wants to be a "lifestyle brand." What does it mean for Palantir to be a lifestyle brand...? I unpacked it here: www.wired.com/story/palant...

A ballsy move - imagine if this failed when everyone is trying to do Christmas drinks?!? There really would be rioting on the streets

A short thread on digital ID (cards) just to bear in mind. There are a few myths that I keep hearing about this idea that need clarifying/debunking. 1/10

Went to France. Found an actual Fraggle Rock

"Lib Dems consider ditching opposition to ID cards" www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits." www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

When in France, buy tomatoes and tinned fish

We're going to need a spotter's guide to all this shit so you can identify it quickly and get the hell away from it