The helmet! The helmet!

Dear GOD if you want to save money in the asylum system 1. LET ASYLUM SEEKERS WORK 2. FAST TRACK STATUS FOR EVERYONE FROM CLEARLY UNDAFE COUNTRIES like Sudan, Syria, etc 3. Run an asylum accommodation system that is NOT FOR PROFIT #r4today

The fuss about the (temporary) environmental impact of trenching one offshore wind cable through the area has been considerably greater than that (if any) about losing the whole thing.

Maybe he’s thinking that if he could be where Farage was four years ago, in four years’ time he’ll be where Farage is now

It's funny to me that this has basically led to a search for "is there a culture group that does not do this?" and so far the answer seems genuinely to be "no".

Starmer having a look at the polls and deciding he wants to see what it's like in 5th place.

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

A grim, faustian pact to irreversibly couple the functioning of hospitals to the shallow, hype-driven boom and busts of the chatbot-obsessed tech industry selling modern Bitcoin - this is not something you have to welcome. You are allowed to push back.

They revoked Wole Soyinka’s US visa? I keep typing reactions and deleting them. Another new low.

I don’t think he cares at all. If one of your businesses is making $300bn it makes no difference if another is making or losing $100m. It’s a rounding error.

This is clearly true: it’s the reason the dramatic arts exist. (Also, successful politicians tend to be very good at it.)

BBC's editorial policy for stories of crimes committed by asylum seekers seems to be to boost them in the hope of achieving credibility with people who have already decided that the BBC is a pedophile protection racket

“Following his lecture, Yarvin will debate the legendary British historian David Starkey on history and the future of conservatism.” Everything about this is so cursed. Masks off at the University of Oxford.

Don’t they remember what happened when they tried this with that animated paper clip. It won’t go any better this time.

The head of MI5 has said he’s ‘MI5 born and bred’. Now trying not to imagine the secret locations where future MI5 agents are born and bred.

this explains a lot

On the centenary of Thatcher's birth, there have been predictable calls for a memorial to her memory. But Britain's 2300 food banks serve that purpose already.

Almost like someone had advance notice from inside Trump’s inner circle. Truly the golden age of corruption.

What an emblem of the billionaire class—descending on a peaceful city in a private jet on the horn to NYT asking for the place to be invaded by federal authorities because the rent-a-cops you employ for a week to harass a few junkies outside the convention center cost too much.

Alchemy!

I'm more sympathetic to the Haidt line than some but jesus H christ people with an *infinite flow of human labour* to support their families should not be lecturing people about this topic www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

repost this if an editor has ever saved you from yourself

This is one of the things I was trying to write about here www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I love the @lrb.co.uk “Close Readings” podcast, so it was a total treat to do this episode with @moonjets.bsky.social & Colm Tóibín on Henry James -- even if Colm remains inexplicably blind to the charms of Lord Warburton & his moat. www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...

is this the Kemi Badenoch, wanting to cut English, whose slogan misspelled "Britain"

Privatising provision equals lousy service and huge company profits, wherever it is done. “Asylum hotel provider makes £180m profit despite claims of inedible food and rationed loo paper” - BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

What should happen: National revulsion, hounded out of public life What will happen: New set design for Sky News as three very, very right wing parties fight out The Deportation Election

From a review of Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Men in balaclavas set fire to a mosque in East Sussex last night. It's only appearing on the BBC's local coverage, rather than its main national headlines, despite coming just a week after the (also under-reported) firebombing of an asylum hotel in London last week www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Turns out Batman’s been around at least since Roman times

you can't get just how lunatic and hateful UK media has been on this without knowing this. it is *astonishing* in both volume and spite.

Electricity now costs up to 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

During the curtain call for Verdi’s 1847 Macbeth in Busseto last night, two of the dancers laid a Palestinian flag on the stage. Most of the audience kept applauding though there were a few boos. And you had to wonder which part of ‘gli oppressi corriamo a salvar’ the booers hadn’t heard.

Something I wrote in 2018. The UK Labour Party could learn a lesson here but won’t. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/ma...

Although did I miss the bit of the speech when he was going to push back against rising racism, to help reinforce social norms in this area?

Only an administration intent on committing war crimes in the present and future would stoop to calling Wounded Knee a "battle" rather than what it truly was: a massacre of over 250 Lakotas, mainly women, children, and the elderly. 1/

Elmore Leonard ‘did more with less than any crime writer I can think of,’ @jrobertlennon.com wrote in the latest issue. On the podcast, Lennon joins @moonjets.bsky.social to discuss the ways in which great crime writing will always defy the prescriptions of its genre: www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...

A new study, based on a survey of 1,150 workers suggests that the injection of AI tools into the workplace has not resulted in a magic productivity boom and instead increased the amount of time that workers say they spend fixing low-quality AI-generated “work.” 🔗 www.404media.co/ai-workslop-...

Just to illustrate how much worse it's got, I have received more abuse over the past year and a bit - including death threats and a large volume of antisemitism - for what I write than in the previous 15 years of covering migration and the far right put together.

It won’t be the coked-up hooligans in Union Jack flags that get the Far Right over the line, but the Barbour-wearing retired stockbrokers in Surrey

I like this. Since under RFK Jr, Covid shots are now for people with underlying conditions that put them at risk, Michigan’s chief medical executive Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian states that not having the most recent Covid shot constitutes such an underlying condition. www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/inside...

The main story on BBC 6 Music News this morning is that a ‘boat carrying migrants is on its way to France’ Delivered in the same upbeat tone as England winning the women’s Euros. The migration ‘debate’ in this country is unmoored from reality, and the media-political complex is feeding it

This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent — and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it.

thir summons call'd From every Band and squared Regiment By place or choice the worthiest; they anon With hunderds and with thousands trooping came Attended: all access was throng'd, the Gates And Porches wide, but chief the spacious Hall

Spookily enough, one Keir Starmer was DPP when he issued guidelines saying there should be a high bar for Malicious Communications prosecutions…

'Welcome to my last four years.' A search for accountability and a full, detailed explanation for Martha's death . . . www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Business secretary Peter Kyle was asked by Sky News’ Trevor Phillips this morning if the demonstration – organised by far-right activist Tommy Robinson – “disturbed” him. Kyle said the number of people who turned out for the protest shows free speech is “alive and well” in the UK.’ For shame

The cognitive dissonance (which is perhaps generous) from the government on the state of free speech comparing its response to the far-right against those protesting the proscription of Palestine Action is increasingly hard to comprehend, as govt belief moves into govt (in)action.

Want to be clear that the predictable violence against the police wasn't the only problem with yesterday's march It's that 100,000 angry racists gathered in London for the biggest racist march in 50 years, and anyone not white had to steer clear The govt can't see that because they are inadequate.