Starting my annual social media fast later today. If you're celebrating Christmas have an enjoyable one and hope you all get some time to switch off and relax. See you in the new year.

Using a microwave transmitter they've hidden in her toothbrush?

I haven't fully engaged with the detail yet, and seeing conflicting takes, but my boilerplate response is: if you're going to fuck with longstanding opportunities for the press, or indeed anyone, to scrutinise you, make sure you do it from a position of strength.

I'm sure the LOTO team are way ahead of me on this and are happy about where they are but is it wise to build a strategy around blaming every problem on migrants when your party is led by someone who the vast majority of the electorate would, if they knew the exact details, describe as a migrant?

Obviously it wasn't my first thought when I saw that tweet but maybe it wasn't just intellectual reasons that saw Badenoch's teachers steer her away from medicine. "So the psychometric tests came back from the career officer and have you thought about abattoir work at all?"

Listening to a podcast that I know has its first edit carried out by AI editing software and ...it just sounds awful. It's clipping the spaces between words, mainly to remove "ums" and "ahs", making the speech seem overly energetic and not quite human. The stuff around words is also communication

Listening to a podcast on the US' new National Security Strategy while shopping and suddenly struck by how a framework to view Trump's pushback to EU attempts to regulate tech & social media is the Opium Wars. Get home, google, and discover Fintan O'Toole did an entire column on this 2 days ago.

Yikes!

Auditors and new officials have been turning over stones at the body in charge of Teesworks. Turns out the Tees Valley Combined Authority has been lending hundreds of millions of £ to connected orgs, without loan agreements, and those orgs are now struggling to repay as.ft.com/r/ac457745-4...

It already drags over two days TBH, and a lot of it is less take out the trash than a desperate rush against deadline. But the truth is it still works (not wishing to downplay the devastating power of a Guardian live blog)

Isn't the whole Take Out The Trash Day stuff self-defeating these days? Didn't the Guardian live-blog it one year? Surely the current master move is for a department to release its inconvenient data dump the day before TOTTD?

If you're going to use a scary number try to all agree what it is first. This just makes it look like they're making shit up

Elf on the Shelf is actually a nightly reminder of the perils and pains of lying to your children

This reads, probably correctly, like a piece written by someone who has never thought about consciousness seriously before BUT has used ChatGPT for a few weeks so is more than happy to weigh in on the subject.

In possibly a festive first I've managed to find a copy of A Christmas Carol in my house before giving up and buying yet another copy or indeed just giving up.

As opposed to previous years when I spent the entirety of Advent in a state of anxiety I've now largely given up on worrying about Christmas. Done wonders for my sleep but don't think the rest of the family have yet twigged when I ask them what they're having for xmas lunch it's a genuine inquiry

Osborne hasn't been hired to do what the headline says he has, he's been hired to help stop countries regulating AI, the building of data centres or the procurement of the huge amount of power they need.

One of those Dry Robe manufacturers needs to make a version in the style of Lebowski's dressing gown

"Get anything good in the Black Friday sales?" "Oh, just some sausages..."

This seems a very unwise approach to the advantages the Chinese are increasingly building in EV production.

The subtext to the Trump BBC story is whether the rule of law still applies in America. The case is clearly ridiculous but does that matter when it's the president suing?

Brash US president sues the BBC who accidentally engages the services of a bumbling solicitor who has the same name as a successful libel lawyer. He travels from Guildford to Florida to fight the case and maybe finds love on the way? Coming soon from Richard Curtis...

At least the precedent has now been set on acceptable public comment when Trump finally dies.

Harry Cole nodding along as someone spouts weird racism in front of him highlighting how he got a big chunk of his journalism training sitting through Guido Fawkes team meetings

Andrew refusing to move to the farm until it has a fully functioning sex dungeon

Feels like something highly symbolic about Badenoch opposing a petrol car ban with the transition to EV cars being both inevitable and driven by a force and demand more powerful than the British state (and most certainly the Tory party)

My Google Photos review of the year unfairly suggests I love myself and the cats more than the rest of the family. Is it my fault that we're the most photogenic members of the household?

Obviously Fraser Nelson's editorship of The Spectator has already demonstrated that he's quite happy to ignore explicit racism if it's carried out by members of his ideological team

I found this quite amusing despite the pocket square: youtu.be/QibWyMXvwvM?...

This is probably the worst column I've read this year which is certainly some achievement. Yes it may only be the case because I have, for some years now, avoided all opinion pieces in the Sunday Times but still. And to think people repeatedly tell me the prick can write.

Thought I'd get an early start on some of the food for Christmas day and everything I was looking for was out of stock. I'm sure it'll be fine though. It'll be fine. Yep, just fine. *Pours drink*

Watching an interview and halfway through suddenly realising Adam Tooze *is* Simon Farnaby

Maybe it's just a self created conspiracy theory but every year I see a notable clustering in food that goes on off on the 24th of December. Obviously because it's "pre-Christmas food" that is completely different to "Christmas food" in having everyday packaging and costing significantly less.

Is there anything more Christmassy than a bored 60+ year old man sitting in a pub with his big coat on and a bag for life full of wrapped presents at his feet while the rest of the table chat happily over a bottle of prosecco?

2.0 suggests an evolution of the Tory brand but if you're essentially punting Monday Club style politics perhaps you should think in terms of a devolving

Christmas being cancelled is like my Economist subscription being cancelled: get's mentioned loudly every year and never happens (because they give me a decent deal to stay put).

As I slowly detach from the daily news cycle during December it does feel a bit handbrake turn to read the Daily Briefing email from the Times in the morning and be confronted by slightly deranged columnists shouting at me. As jarring as a box of teaspoons being through down your stairs at 4am.

This reads like one of those pull out pieces for a country you've barely heard of that gets paid to be inserted in your Sunday paper.

Thinking about how a huge amount of the stories that will define the Trump era are business stories and realising previous modern presidents wanted to reshape the country or the world and Trump, while having a bit of that instinct, mainly just wants to be paid.

Was always fun explaining to my American superiors, on single digit paid leave a year, why a project couldn't roll out during December because we were all out of the office for at least a fortnight.

Not sure whether to file this data point under cost of living or productivity crisis but I just paid £1.49 for a pint of bitter.

I am constantly amazed by how, despite everything, people think the ultimate form content should be consumed in is video. An audio only podcast has it's own appeal and doesn't need to be a TV program. Written content doesn't need to be video. Video has its place, so does other forms of media.

Spent this morning clearing my study and putting together a new reading armchair for me to sit in and all of a sudden the rest of the family want to hang out in my room and sit in my new super comfortable chair and I can not stress enough how this was so not the plan.

Imagine the poor immigration officer who has to read 5 whole years of your social media posts. You may not kill them but surely you've diminished their capacity to truly love again

I was absolutely dead against our induction hob until I read up on all the air quality stuff

Back when I worked in IT it was bad enough that the data centres were in Croydon

You never read a story like this about a 6' 2" bloke in their 30s being done by enforcement officers. It's simply monetised bullying and need to be stopped.

There's a slightly famous (if you follow Irish media) capuchin monk who, via the internet, wishes me happy birthday every single year and our relationship is almot entirely based on us both being members of the same Discord server. Beat that for weirdness.