IT'S OUT! @ukandeu.bsky.social brand new survey of the policy challenges confronting the UK, done in partnership with the wonderful @resfoundation.bsky.social ukandeu.ac.uk/reports/poli... 1/???
Consulting software engineer. Politically homeless; radical centrist; anti-fascist; advocate of electoral reform. Collector of cognitive biases + reasons why world is messy.
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IT'S OUT! @ukandeu.bsky.social brand new survey of the policy challenges confronting the UK, done in partnership with the wonderful @resfoundation.bsky.social ukandeu.ac.uk/reports/poli... 1/???
The body of evidence showing that when centrist parties adopt the priorities and talking points of the far right, they torpedo themselves is vast and powerful. Yet Keir Starmer's Labour Party seems determined to ignore it. A few examples in 🧵: theconversation.com/how-should-l...
The thread on one page: skywriter.blue/pages/did:pl...
Self Care September - Day 2: Notice the things you do well, however small actionforhappiness.org/self-care-se... #SelfCareSeptember
‘So Jo White, why are you 15 points behind Reform?’.. ‘so Sian Berry, why are the Greens not connecting?’ .. BECAUSE you the broadcasters are massively over platforming Reform. No one else can get a word in edgeways. Keep signing &pass on folks. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/71...
Imagine the message it would send if Gary Lineker won 'Presenter of the Year' at this year's National Television Awards Standing up for compassion & the right to speak out And, the feathers it would ruffle My lovely followers, you know what to do: nationaltvawards.com/vote 🗓️ Deadline: 12th Sep
Reform UK, the right leaning think tank Policy Exchange, and some Labour grandees, are all pushing for us to either leave the ECHR, or disapply parts of it temporarily or permanently. This puts me, you and everyone at risk, not just those seeking sanctuary.
Reform MP says they will negotiate with the Taliban.
"I'm not sure we should be dealing with these extremists", said a Taliban spokesman
What, specifically, is the problem with having a private and family life?
Jimi playing with The Ronettes, 1966
I’ve never argued against the license fee - but I am now. The idea that I’m funding this unremitting political propaganda campaign is appalling.
Seeing stories like this, a lot of people say: "The laws don't matter. No one is enforcing them so they're not worth the paper they're written on." That's doomerism. The fact is, federal law hindered the bad guys a lot in this case. We should put more teeth into these laws. They matter. 🧵
Horrific. If you think it's shocking though you've not been paying attention. The USA had not one but three mass shootings yesterday. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08...
This is a lovely tribute to those who go the extra mile to make fantastic things.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUF4...
What need have I of swiftness, when I have iron bees? Etana has the answer to all questions.
Going to be wild to have Clarence Thomas and other members of the court write that even the appearance of impropriety is sufficient to allow the President to remove Federal Reserve members from office, and then head off to Harlan Crow’s yacht
Newsletter: My 16,000 word opus - How To Argue With An AI Booster, a comprehensive guide to arguing with AI boosters, addressing both their bad faith debate style and their specific (and flimsy) arguments as to why generative AI is the future. www.wheresyoured.at/how-to-argue...
The government is giving off strong "Strict but nervous supply teacher losing control of the classroom" vibes
So much for transparency & commitments to deliver social good. Elon Musk’s xAI terminated its public benefit corporation status last year per NV public records first obtained by LASST. (xAI’s own lawyers were still calling it a benefit corp. in court filings this year.) www.cnbc.com/2025/08/25/e...
Hi @skywriter.blue Your sign up page is no longer working, always says email address is already registered. Just wasted 30 minutes trying to find my existing account, but have found that even if I sign up using a masked, generated, email address I get exactly the same error.
3. How do countries who have outsourced supplies best manage the “counterparty risk” by ensuring that supply origins are distributed across multiple countries? Your point seemed to be that having a single point of supply (whether internal or external) has a negative influence on security.
2. In a globalised world, how do we minimise the amount companies can game the regulations of different countries, playing them off against one another?
Great conversation, Ben. It promoted some questions: 1. Benefits of globalisation were mentioned: Are there any metrics that reveal exactly *who* has benefited most? I.e. is it the super rich, shareholders, mobile workforce, etc.? Is it the distribution that makes ordinary people feel poor?
Which of these parties has more ELECTED MPs? 72 v 4 Which gets more broadcast media coverage? Sign this petition now &pass on. Democracy depends on it. @bbcnewsnight.bsky.social @skynewsrss.bsky.social @itvnews.bsky.social @channel4news.bsky.social petition.parliament.uk/petitions/71...
We need to know what humans do before we argue that machines can do it just the same. There can’t be AI literacy without a literacy in being human: how we make meaning in work and life, distinguishing the artificial from the imaginary from the true. mail.cyberneticforests.com/human-litera...
#OnThisDay 40 years ago, at Zandvoort, Lauda won an #F1 GP for the 25th & last time. It was a drive typical of the tactician he’d become: 10th in quali, he made an early pit stop, & he emerged in P1. He beat his McLaren team-mate Prost by 0.23sec. More tomorrow in #MotorSport…
I don't know if there's anything we can do to mitigate it. Same trust in gAI that's driving the growth of the bubble also prevents people from taking the danger seriously. The moment that trust's gone, the bubble bursts. No grace period. And delaying the burst only makes the problem bigger.
Happy 30th Birthday to this Brian Eno banger
Anne Moffatt's memoir, The IT Girl, details the story behind the photograph with the baby—where Moffatt, then Technical Lead at Shirley’s company, Freelance Programmers, programmed the black box flight recorder for the Concorde
I wrote about her and some of her company’s work in this chapter called “The Baby and the Black Box”: marhicks.com/writing/Hick...
Steve Shirley escaped the Holocaust as a child & went on to found one of the earliest software startups. The really impressive part? She employed women programmers who had been pushed out of the workforce after having kids, & allowed them flexible, family friendly, work from home jobs—in the 1960s!
Started listening to his interview on Politically, but it was just too weird. I expected it to annoy me, but he was just weird.
Good grief. Politico: "Former Conservative Minister Steve Baker has set up the “Fighting for a Free Future” project, which he hopes will help “amplify think tanks.” I don't expect he means the progressive IPPR and New Economics Foundation, which actually publish who funds them...
Because that requires thinking/planning/strategy?
Misremembering obviously, not mistreating
I might be mistreating, but didn’t pre-Musk Twitter have active policies (and bans) to limit the amount of toxic content? Didn’t Twitter repeatedly get into trouble with the right because of the alleged biases of the moderation process? I feel Twitter and X are very different beasts.
Remember this picture, & others like it, every time you hear someone in your city say "we're not Amsterdam." This was #Amsterdam in the 1970s. Many of the cities we admire made better choices regarding cars in the past. and are still making better choices today. Better choices instead of excuses.
He wears the herds of fish so well that when the wild deer stirs in the forest, though she is six leagues distant, he hears her.
There have always been Trumps, as there have always been Johnsons and Farages. None are particularly complex or interesting characters. What needs understanding is how the barriers that shut them out have collapsed, and why - in the case of the first two - established parties have knelt before them.
The Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish mail carriers will not accept shipments to the US under the previous «de minimis» limit of 800$ after Friday August 22*. (I assume they estimate a 1 week delivery). Mail carriers are collaborating to figure out a solution. * exception for gifts under 100$
Also listen here 👇 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Listen to my conversation with the marvellous Stephanie Flanders from @bloomberg.com on the themes of my new book “Exile Economics: What Happens If Globalisation Fails” 🎧👇 pca.st/episode/9a17...
Pie on Jesus.
NVM - seen your replies elsewhere
What was your recollection of Elliott Smith’s support set?
How we're all changing under the gaze of AI, as we learn to see ourselves as the machine sees us iandunt.substack.com/p/machine-me...
May this portion of the dissent by Ketanji Brown Jackson haunt John Roberts forever and be the final word on his tenure as Chief Justice.
We groaned with the gazelle and killed the snake of Heaven, we slew gazelles in the passes of the land where the horse groans over the fierce beasts of the wild!
The UK's equality regulator has criticised the Metropolitan Police's use of live facial recognition technology (LFR), saying the way it is being deployed is breaching human rights law. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
But don't worry - the clients may be stuffed, but Ms Goodchild has just started again at a new firm, with a glossy website that fails to mention her dubious history.
Dodgy tax advisers often promise their clients they're fully insured, so the client has nothing to lose. So when Zoe Goodchild's Apostle Accounting falsely claimed HMRC refunds for 800 clients, leaving them with huge bills, you'd think they'd be fully insured. Right?
CC: @garymarcus.bsky.social the thread above was inspired by your recent posts. Keep doing the lord’s work.
My retweet of this post got flagged as "Violent/Graphic Content" during a social media review by a potential client 🤣🤣🤣
The Telegraph’s editorial stance consistently rallies against any measures to reduce car dependency. Their readers have now voted for their favourite European cities. The top 3: Seville, Copenhagen and Venice are well-known for not being filled with cars…
Presumably based on Trump’s experience of how easy it was to climb onto the roof of the White House?
Oh yeah things are falling apart. You've got paranoid guys on Blind freaking out now
Good Morning Bluesky! Hey you! Yes, you. Pause a moment… 🕰️ And breathe… Inhale calmness… Exhale hurry… Ready? 💪 Then let’s begin, you’ve got this…
New 📈💨: a record number of renewable power projects were granted planning permission in Q2. Battery storage projects drove a lot of the increase. But developers warn grid connections are still the real bottleneck..
“LLM Reasoning”?!!
If you were thinking “hey maybe they only had one terrible idea,” I have some bad news for you.
Don't worry, the next one will be good
“Even at the grocery store, Texas troopers don’t let Democrats out of sight after walkout” 8/20/25 apnews.com/article/redi...
Is it the pen or the writer that is wobbly?
It is thought that there are anything from 2.2 - 3.8 million species of fungi. geltner.cz
Pre-pandemic, people in the UK on average made 10-11 social contacts per day (according to a large study we ran with the BBC in 2017/18). In late 2022, when there were no COVID restrictions still in place, it was around 6-7 in the UK. Have a guess what the number was in late 2024/early 2025....
64% of the richest 10% in Britain got most of their money via inheritance, not by working for it. Such as Allsopp, the eldest daughter of Baron Hindlip, chairman of Christies, who got her start in TV via her art history degree, which she studied at ... Christies. But sure. More austerity.
His hats ... featuring a "joke" about overturning the constitution
Last week, Boston received a letter from AG Bondi threatening to prosecute officials and withhold funds unless we cooperate with carrying out mass deportations. The US Attorney General asked for a response by today, so here it is: stop attacking our cities to hide your administration’s failures.
very odd vibes at this White House meeting. Everyone seems to be having a good time but everyone also knows the mad uncle might say something really inappropriate during the groom's speech.
European leaders dropping everything, last minute, to rally behind Zelensky in Washington is one of the Continent’s finest political moments this century.
A ceramic tile picture at Haslemere station.
And we all know that when the lecturer’s grade is lower than the AI’s predicted grade, students will argue that the lecturer is wrong
The @washingtonpost tracked where Trump's forces are patrolling in Washington. Spoiler alert: They're not where the crime is.
Day 1 of posting Rat content until I find my people. Presenting: Big brain Inga #RatsofBsky #Rats #RatsofBluesky #BskyRats #BlueskyRats 🐀 #Rat #PetRats
Oh, Nowhere Nigel always loves somewhere where he gets paid for not turning up.
Seems to me that, ideally, the HoL should represent a cross-section of all parts of society rather than reflecting the party-allegiances of the HoC, distorted as they already are by First Past the Post voting. Can’t see how adding Reform Lords would add anything.
...the TARDIS turns into a bright blue portaloo, fitting in perfectly next to the skip. "TARDIS? Turdis, more like, professor" says ace. Billie Piper looks concerned, steps back inside the TARDIS, sound starts, it turns back into a Police box...
CDC leadership also hasn’t been very communicative. To be fair to them, their staff who would would have dealt with this situation were mostly fired by DOGE. So my fellow civil servants at the CDC feel abandoned. They are hated with a murderous rage and no one cares.
A terrorist targeted federal workers last week. There wasn’t much reporting on it. But I’m not finished thinking about it! 🧵 An anti-vaxxer fired more than 500 gunshots into CDC Atlanta, shattering 150 “blast-proof” windows on 6 buildings. Employees were pinned down in terror.
Visiting Belfast I was horrified to find that a proscribed terrorist organisation has somehow snuck a mural up onto a wall there without the knowledge of Sir Kier Starmer, I hope there's a load of cops on the way to scrub it off and arrest the perpetrators
TIL about the 1670 case in England where a judge imprisoned a jury for reaching the ‘wrong’ verdict. Fascinating.
Riding bikes is 10X more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities. And that’s just the climate emissions part. #ClimateCrisis theconversation.com/cycling-is-t...
I saw the UK premier of that and the director was there, he thought he was going to be making something for a special features DVD on the album before it all went to shit. He still couldn’t believe his luck.
Have you learned about my favorite character prank, the Greek question mark? It looks identical to a semicolon. Just sprinkle it into a C codebase and have fun #define ; ;
The only people who have spoiled the nature of this area were the mindless thugs who came to our homes last evening and created chaos. I’ve never been scared by the asylum seekers. I’m terrified that the angry mob will return. So, how do I get *my* country back from them? I’ve genuinely no idea
TIL the original paper describing CRISPR, by Francisco Mojica, was rejected by 4 journals and took 2 years to be published
![CRISPR as a microbial immune system In 2003, Mojica wrote the first paper suggesting that CRISPR was an innate microbial immune system. The paper was rejected by a series of high-profile journals, including Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Molecular Microbiology and Nucleic Acids Research, before finally being accepted by Journal of Molecular Evolution in February, 2005.[3][4]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:73aicoale2mqwrap63rdzwep/bafkreibu3dburfn527r3sbu2ov6y7gebv6zopaznagnfytjtsn6y4k7cs4@jpeg "Click to view full size")
Great point. Do you have any figures talking into account the economic ecosystem that surrounds each of those sectors? E.g. fishing has fish processing, fishing & boat supplies, which are all linked to it.
I suppose this is the point when I should say again that: the amount of money the videogames industry brings into the UK economy every year is *more than double* the value of the fishing and steel industries *combined* what this country is really good at is producing culture
“Now, kiddie chatbot companies are suggesting that your child can avoid bothering you and passively ogling a screen by chatting with her mechanical helper instead. Which feels a bit like unleashing a mongoose into the playroom to kill all the snakes you put in there.”
Isn't there any way to get an audio and kindle version of a book together, so I can highlight quotes I've heard?
Want to create your own mini-meadow? Here are the plants to grow to attract pollinators ⤵️ Jenny Rhodes reports on a 'renatured' wild meadow in Essex:
IPSO ruling on my complaint about the Telegraph's "1 in 12 Londoners is illegal migrant" headline. IPSO found that Telegraph breached Code by publishing false info and failing to take due care. But (1/3).. www.ipso.co.uk/rulings/0025...
![. The “one in 12” claim was not included in the report – rather, the publication had calculated it using the estimates the report provided. By its own admission, it has done so inaccurately. It had failed to add the estimated migrant population to the overall population it had based the article upon. In addition, it had not taken account of the fact, in its reporting, that the report was based on the population of the Thames Water London Water Resource Zone - rather than of London itself. This represented a failure to take care on the part of the publication – and had resulted in the publication of inaccurate information, which had appeared in the headline, and on the front page, of the newspaper. 42. The Committee also noted that the headline referred to “one in 12” in London being an illegal migrant - it was not made clear that this was, in fact, “up to one in 12”, based on the publication’s calculations. The Committee considered that this also represented a failure to take care. While the article went on to report that “London is home to as many as 585,000 illegal migrants”, it considered that reporting that “[o]ne in 12 in London is illegal migrant”in the headline – rather than up to one in 12 - was misleading. This was because it gave the misleading impression that it had been established by the figures given in the report that this was the definitive position – rather than the highest estimated figure.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:td7ymvnnntooulzpovf6u6sd/bafkreid5zmkx3rkkdsjnq3vguevjuq5o3ouuzunk433svu4o53kh4n7z2u@jpeg "Click to view full size")
😳🥵 “‘How come I can’t breathe?'” Elon Musk’s AI company is “belching smog-forming pollution into South Memphis *** None of the 35 methane gas turbines that help power xAI’s massive supercomputer is equipped with pollution controls typically required by federal rules.” 5/6/25
Adding "Epistemicide" to my vocabulary! We're in the midsts of the largest organized destruction of knowledge imaginable.
Gerrymandering news: the Princeton Gerrymandering Project has scored the draft Texas Congressiional plan. It gets…an F. No surprise. But…it gets a C for competitiveness, because of some potential to backfire on its crafters. Details: gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistrictin...