James Elder

I’m also recalling all the sneering and laughter from those on the right at the Lib Dems initially holding out for “AV Plus” as if they were being obsessed with detail when actually the “Plus” (some kind of list top-up based on national share IIRC) would make it somewhat more proportional.

Look at him! Look at Geoff Woad!

Didn't one of his sons write something on social media after his "the novel is doomed" interview laughing about how Dad was reacting well to his most recent books not selling and not being well reviewed?

Whenever someone on the right quotes (or in this case misquotes) Orwell, I wonder if they realise that he was a self-described democratic socialist.

(so much coverage of R&R demonstrates that the author has no idea about how Parliament works; just rehashes impractical or facile suggestions; or claims the work can be done more cheaply, without showing any justification. Always a relief to read something that avoids any of that)

Apparently I turn 50 today.

Presumably this is down to a clerical error somewhere. Does anyone know who I can speak to in order to get it corrected?

Oh Lord yes. We’ve just been given the full enterprise version of Copilot at work and there are potentially some useful things we’ll do with it (eg it may help us capture modern records for archiving from across the business) but ‘would you like help drafting this email?’ No, no I would not.

…partly because I look at some of the great ideas and methods on sites like librarycarpentry.org/lessons/.

I also read this which is interesting - but I’m still not sure what to think about it. bsky.app/profile/oliv...

AI Preparedness Guidelines for Archivists — Archives & Records Association

This guidance produced for the UK and Ireland Archives & Records Association is also thoughtful. www.archives.org.uk/ai-preparedn...

I think the DH people I know are engaging with LLMs (and with wider ML techniques) with healthy scepticism but a realisation that it opens up interesting new possibilities.

I was involved in this project. The report gets into some of the issues.

zenodo.org/records/1477...

AI Scraping Bots Are Breaking Open Libraries, Archives, and Museums "This is a moment where that community feels collectively under threat and isn't sure what the process is for solving the problem.”

Meanwhile, and deeply ironically, it was Anthropic/Claude that repeatedly knocked my site offline at the end of 2024 due to the extremely thoughtless way they had configured their scraper bots:

www.404media.co/ai-scraping-...

Yeah, I may have to investigate.

What I imagine will happen (and it may be happening already) is that hosting providers may start offering agents which will at very least look after the housekeeping activities eg installing security updates, designing backup regimes, maintaining firewalls etc.

I'll tell you what I want:

An AI tool that I can leave to do most SysAdmin jobs.

I run a website on a Virtual Private Server running Ubuntu (thamesrcarchive.co.uk) and I really resent having to run the backend. It's not my forte and it's a time sink.

Would love to be able to automate it.

It looks like the 'scope creep' argument doesn't hold that much water.

The much bigger cost does seem to be the refusal by many MPs and Peers (especially but not exclusively Conservatives) to countenance full decant.

This answer to written questions seems to undercut that:

bsky.app/profile/amea...

I think Walkers did a relaunch about 20 years ago returning them to their original size and taste - deliberately targeting adults nostalgic for them.

Art of Persia - Series 1: Episode 3 Samira Ahmed goes back to when Persia faced her gravest threat, Genghis Khan, and reveals how the Safavids, who succeeded the Mongols, give Iran a powerful new identity.

UNESCO-listed Golestan Palace damaged by US/Israeli bombing. www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/03/03/u... A historic building and archive of priceless objects like the Timurid era Shahnameh that we visited in Art of Persia (from 28 min 24s). www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

It's on my list!

It's one of the books which, if you work in archives, you're more or less contractually obliged to read.

Yes, you can just hear the sackcloth.

When I first saw the Sinners posters on the London Underground, having recently rewatched The Wire S1 my internal monologue was "Where's Wallace, String'? Where's Wallace?".

Trump's business connections to IRGC reemerge, a day after he called it a terrorist organisation President's firm entered partnership with 'notoriously corrupt' official to build Trump Tower Baku

Just a reminder of Donald Trump’s, umm, interesting history with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Having considered for 48 hours the best way to protect the autonomy, the equal voice and the equal right to cast a secret ballot of south Asian women at the polling station, Nigel Farage has concluded it is important to "go further" and to disenfranchise as many Asian women [+ men] as possible

A new branch of M&S Food on the site of an old branch that closed 10 years or so ago.

Somehow, M&S returned (to Putney).

In fact there’s probably an interesting story about retail trends there. This site was an M&S branch for around a century. The food hall gradually expanded until the clothes shop only occupied the upstairs.

It closed c2010 and the site has been empty since.

It was only on clicking through that I could see the post in question no longer existed.

It’s all standard ‘fog of war’ stuff but it does reveal that notwithstanding good behaviour all round, mistakes can hang around for a while.

4/

But her first post, embedded in the posts of the journalists who’d QTed it, was still visible in the Bluesky iPad client I use (Skeets) as a cached version for a fair few minutes, even though I’d updated my timeline.

3/

Two more journalists I follow had QTed noting how major this would be if confirmed.

First journalist realised she’d made a translation mistake, deleted and corrected.

2/

An interesting Bluesky phenomenon which I’m posting about to document, not - to be clear - to blame anyone.

A journalist who can read Hebrew initially thought that am Israeli TV news report said something that, if true, would be seismic in impact.

1/

A reminder of how remarkable and resilient the people and culture of Iran have always been…

It's disappointing to also see more than a hint of that in Starmer's letter.