"Pathetic": I told the Guardian what I think about the Starmer government's plan for nature It's more of the failed politics of the past 40yrs: failing to take public control of the nature crisis & contracting it out to private landowners. Burnham must do better www.theguardian.com/environment/...

"We should demand much more than just AI safety. We should demand AI that’s built to help us flourish" www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-...

“It was overwhelming; movement everywhere, surround-sound buzzing, chirping, calling. To say the land was singing might be fanciful but something was happening here. Something very alive.” www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ju...

“Even if the entire population of Earth donned motion-capture suits, it would take decades to generate the amount of data that was used to train ChatGPT” www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

⚠️ ICYMI: Nigel Farage Resigns (Translated) 🙏 Please like and share the latest report from #BrokenNews. youtu.be/uuwilrnxCtk

“inconsistent measures and a change in how some but not all people interpret the concept mean the state of young people’s mental health is far less clear than we think” www.ft.com/content/063b...

“Clearer judgment does not come from pretending our biases are not there. It comes from allowing them safely into awareness, where they become something we can see rather than something we simply obey” aeon.co/essays/can-m...

That’s it then

Afternoon and evening

Morning walk

Hundreds of species under threat from deep-sea mining added to IUCN Red List. Species’ ingenious survival strategies no match for human destruction, red list reveals - www.theguardian.com/environment/...

“he had organised the screening of World Cup games across the Gaza Strip, which had become a welcome diversion from the continuing misery of a very partially observed ceasefire… Two brothers aged eight and 10 were also killed…” www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

North Devon coast near Hartland this evening

“The government can summon billions for new military hardware... We need an equally decisive mobilisation of investment to restore the natural world on which we rely for our food, water, and clean air. Without these essentials our country has no future” www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Which day is bins? Every day!

"shared purpose is key, not shared ancestry" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“I became small in the face of what they carried – the knowledge that death is inseparable from love, that love risks literal dying, that trauma does not distort reality but exposes it.” aeon.co/essays/what-...

For those who may not be aware, Count Binface is actually a serious comedian and historian, Jon Harvey, who did a very interesting series on BBC Radio 4 about the origins of democracy a few years ago. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

“I am. We are. That is enough. Now, we have to start.” Ernst Bloch, The Spirit of Utopia, 1918. Quoted by Sarah O’Connor in We Are Not Machines

“Here at Reform, we submit our candidates to some of the most stringent vetting procedures of any political party in the world. So, if you’re not reading this from a prison cell, congratulations: you’ve passed…”

“The first series got the lowest ever BBC focus group score. Joint bottom alongside women’s bowls which had been rained off.” www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Really worth reading this piece by @judewebber.bsky.social on the state of collapse in Cuba including the withdrawal of universal state rations which have been in place since 1962 and now restricted to the most vulnerable. Feels like something will snap www.ft.com/content/859f...

In one chapter of his book entitled 'The Art of the Bribe', Nigel Farage donor and convicted fraudster George Cottrell describes how politicians can be bought www.ft.com/content/7a0f...

“Putin certainly has escalation options. His problem is that they are all bad. Nonetheless, there is little sign that the Russian leader is ready to accept defeat. So Ukraine and its western backers are braced for a dangerous summer” www.ft.com/content/f36a...

“A system base on relationships of trust, underpinned by a careful balance of power.” So much to learn from Sweden. Chapter 6 of We Are Not Machines open.spotify.com/show/6uVjfCf...

“It’s bad to coarsen our hearts.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/05/b...

“a shared decision to rise above fear and revenge” www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

“when you are so much scared [by tactical, terror or accidental use of nuclear weapons] that you don't know what to do about [it], you try to neglect it. Basically, you try to believe that it is not as important as it probably is.” podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/p...

“the collapse of the idea of the mortal human, and on the other side, the collapse of the idea of the immortal collectives, is something that also might dramatically affect the way we experience time and the way we do politics…” podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/p...

In America “everyone can be a Captain Ahab… Be it power or wealth or status or pleasure or leisure, be it religious or political or aesthetic or athletic prowess, what drives America…is this tireless & restless pursuit of something out there in the sea, beyond imagination” www.ft.com/content/6494...

“Putin’s Russia deliberately fires missiles at Ukraine, randomly murdering civilians… Netanyahu’s Israel is still committing genocide by targeting Gaza’s children… The normalisation of immoral conduct in public office may be Trump’s lasting legacy” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“a very big book of which we only have a few scattered pages” www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2...

Farage was always master of the grift. Remember ten years ago when @carolecadwalla.bsky.social and I revealed his Leave EU team were in and out of the Russian Embassy in the run up to Brexit, looking for gold and diamond deals with the Kremlin? Farage must have known, and approved. Ten years ago

“It’s amazing how deep and difficult the challenge is of finding an appropriate reference for what AI is. We know it isn’t human… AI can clone itself. It probably doesn’t have a personal point of view. So it’s partially human-like but it’s definitely not human” www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

"...The doomed go on, cheerfully, undaunted: The peacock does not know his tail will grow (he’s brave), The vines, they will be pruned. All that I wanted, I have. There’s nothing we can save." A. E. Stallings in Auden-esque voice www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Scrutiny, accountability and democracy - what a read From @gabrielpogrund.bsky.social @georgegreenwood.bsky.social @venetiamenzies.bsky.social @manumidolo.bsky.social Revealed: Nigel Farage secretly funded by convicted criminal www.thetimes.com/article/aa2f...

“At a time when growth cannot simply be ‘unleashed’ or ‘kickstarted’, no matter how much political will there is…the left has little choice but to think about progress in social and political terms” www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Just here to post this again like I do every year, not only because Douglass was one of the founding philosophers of American liberty but because I am so moved by the kids Frederick Douglass’ descendants deliver “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July”

The President of the United States stole from *a million people* www.nytimes.com/2026/07/04/u...

“the 10 million people who were enslaved over 246 years and found a way to hold on to their humanity and the dignity... I think they are the heroes of that story” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/03/o...

Last of the sunlight

“I was never jealous of big houses, but of big windows” — Yiannis Ritsos. Fortunate to visit some big trees early this morning

“a bubble that surpasses anything ever seen in US history by an extreme margin” www.ft.com/content/8e93...

“hotels, villas, and hundreds of apartments; retail areas, a golf course, water park, tennis courts, and a casino.” Such dismal, imagination among people who already have vastly more than they’ll ever need www.ft.com/content/55fe...

“The cell is not alive by any definition. It can’t survive without constant deliveries of food and ribosomes… It has no defenses or a good waste removal system. But it’s the strongest demonstration yet that it is possible to generate life from nonlife” www.quantamagazine.org/for-the-firs...

Reform UK: millionaires serving billionaires

Climate 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card known as the global ocean (it has absorbed >90% of the excess energy in the Earth system, and the imbalance hit a record 23 zettajoules last year) continues to goes up in smoke (?) www.theguardian.com/environment/...

‘“Manchesterism is the end of neoliberalism,” Burnham has declared in one of his campaign videos. If this is to be so, a reckoning is needed not only with neoliberalism’s privatisation of public services, but also of land itself.’ righttoroam.substack.com/p/why-manche...