It was backing Robinson (ditching Farage over his exclusion of Robinson) that took Musk to 80% disapproval in Britain - as that was how he secured majority disapproval from Reform, who had been the only group who approved, to go with his toxicity to Conservatives & centre-left voters

Marc Benioff's stock is going down because his AI agents don't work so it's time to rev up the hype machine

this

"Similar to" but importantly not identical. Meta is drafting off the higher trust that people have in movie ratings to suggest that Instagram is as safe for a 13-year-old as seeing Superman. But movies aren't social media and Meta isn't even publishing its actual revised content policies

Age old point that throwing money at things is no guarantee it will work if you can’t be clear on focus, get quality leadership and good governance www.thetimes.com/article/416b...

Elon Musk's key ventures: SpaceX xAI Model X YaXley-Lennon

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

Incredible public service. See also Congress Data: github.com/ippsr/congre...

#Berlin makes losses in the millions on its ... residential parking permits. Because the price of about €10 per year is lower than the costs to the administration (which is about €42). www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/koste...

one thing that has been obvious for a while is this aspect of the authoritarian internationale: they recognize that their allies abroad are not *countries* but *political movements* within foreign countries. time we liberals woke up and recognized this--because it's the truth.

The idea that political dissent can only be the product of “paid protesters” or “outside agitators” has a long history. Here is the Mississippi columnist Tom Ethridge in June 1963 concerned that attendees at the upcoming March on Washington might be “whipped into a frenzy by skilled agitators.”

This deserves more attention than it has received. Gove: "we were too anxious as a government to secure those deals in order to show that Brexit was working". Exactly as so many of us warned at the time, and as the government denied at the time. www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/country-and-...

NEW: How a U.S. anti-abortion group has quietly positioned itself as a powerbroker between the Trump administration and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Latest investigation w Elizabeth Dias.  www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/w...

Faced with Trumps' tariff chaos, the EU needs to reach a understanding with China, to reduce disruption. But it cannot be based on China massively diverting sales from US to EU while curtailing exports of critical materials for European production and clean tech on.ft.com/42FMvvI

Every time someone makes me read something Peter Thiel said it’s like “Scrooge McDuck is Jesus Christ and Huey, Dewey, and Louie are Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel and Daisy is Mary Magdalene and that’s why women voting has lowered American sperm count.”

“WHOAH! Be careful not to step in that pile of shit there!” exclaimed the man pulling his pants back up.

Anyone writing about the influence of these thinkers really needs to provide detail on what they have actually written. Most of it is incoherent, lacking any substance and often downright weird.

Or more simply: they're using violence as a tantrum, in the instinctive belief that if they tantrum hard enough they'll get what they want. This is a recipe for horror, of course, but also for their own overthrow.

Who benefits from the abolition of stamp duty land tax? The first answer: people buying very expensive homes. Average saving for someone buying a £10m+ home is £1.7m. Average saving for someone buying a £250k-£500k home is £5k.

this is sociopathic behaviour and I think we need to treat it as such! just because something has become easy to do doesn't mean it has become less creepy, or more acceptable!

"My father's no different than any other powerful man. Any man who's responsible for other people. Like a Senator or a President." "You know how naïve you sound?" "Why?" "Senators and Presidents don't have men killed." "Oh. Who's being naïve, Kay?" #DianeKeatonRIP

Glad to see Nigel Farage has finally remembered Nathan Gill, former leader of Reform in Wales - found guilty of taking bribes from Russia. Maybe he'll now remember how much he took from Putin's propaganda broadcaster Russia Today for all his TV appearances when he was a MEP?

The first reports of what would eventually be called AIDS and its causative agent identified as HIV were published in the MMWR in 1981 alerting health care and public health systems across the country. A tremendous loss for public health.

The thing I'm "stunned" about is why this isn't the biggest domestic news item on every flipping platform bylinetimes.com/2025/10/11/s...

every single tech idea is like “soon our robots will be capable of playing catch with your kid, freeing you up to spend more time working on your employers’ spreadsheets”

Not to gas myself up but I think my piece on shitposting from like, 2017, is a great companion piece to @sarahjeong.bsky.social's incredible, important Verge article

Imagine using Meta’s AI in educational contexts or having it integrated into edtech products. When it’s overseen by MAGA representatives like this, imagine asking it what Antifa means, if there is a relationship is between race and IQ or what is causing climate change.

The alarming aspect of this deliberate "anti-woke" algorithmic biasing of LLMs from an educational perspective is our institutions all bought in to an imaginary of innovation, then got locked in to enterprise contracts, and now the models are being recoded so they undermine educational values

A tan suit!

This is a powerful image

They are building a Propaganda State. They are cooking the books on job creation. Now they are rigging death numbers so no one knows how many people die because of their attacks on vaccines and science.

The MAGA-fication of sports is not just about influencing voters, but also about pushing our collective boundaries, Sally Jenkins argues:

🔴 If Gill took Kremlin cash to say it...why was Farage saying the same things? 🐻🇷🇺🪆 This looks Bad! This looks identical! #Brexit #Putin

“Do they give Nobel Peace Prizes to war criminals, Minna?” “All the time. Aung San Suu Kyi, Henry Kissinger, and also the prize you think, it is not the Peace Prize.” “Oh, don’t start with that.” “It is a second tier peace price. It is made of very hard plastic.” A world class character foil

Europe's new Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising rules kick in today. They set standards for ad labelling, spending disclosure and ad targeting. Unfortunately, thanks to Meta and Google deciding to leave the EU pol ads market, the effect of the regulation is very uncertain.

Was a mistake to drop the "weird" attack

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

In case anyone thinks this is paranoid, Trump’s junta has defined terrorism to include trespass, naming ICE agents on the internet, and whatever “civil disorder” is.

Fun fact: the U.S. did not have a professional diplomatic corp for much of its history. Businessmen doing shit drove a lot of U.S. policy, including the acquisition if imperial territories in the Pacific.

I went ahead and did the starting work for someone who wants to chase this angle. Most right-wing influencers who participated in the "Antifa" roundtable at the White House yesterday have easily provable ties to TPUSA (8 of 12). The other four need a closer look I don't have time for right now.

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

By wooing Nigel Farage, the crypto industry is linking its fortunes to a maverick politician who has compared Bitcoin’s "insurgency" to that of his own party.

Another day. Another presidential threat to jail two of his political opponents. What will it take for Republicans in Congress to speak out? While we still have a democracy left.

What was that Sooty? The children can't hear you!

Lords Heseltine & Kinnock seem more alive to these self-evident truths than most members of the Commons. Similarly, I find thinkers with direct lived experience of far right dictatorship, Greeks of a certain age for example, crystal clear about what’s happening now.

U.S. Military Carries Out Strike On Scuffy The Tugboat https://theonion.com/u-s-military-carries-out-strike-on-scuffy-the-tugboat/

Stephen froze like a deer in the headlights and pretended to have connection issues because he unintentionally gave away the game plan. “Plenary authority is complete, absolute power over a specific area or issue, with no significant limitations." Show people this clip. This is an insane slip up.

“You described Reform and other parties across Europe today as among the 'right wing equivalents of the fascists in the 1930s'. Why?” “Because that’s what they are” @vicderbyshire.bsky.social asks Lord Heseltine about remarks he made at Conservative Party Conference. #Newsnight

Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, was appointed to a senior DHS position in which she’ll help oversee election security. “DHS now appears poised to become a primary amplifier of false election conspiracies pushed by our enemies,” one expert said.