Lammy has said Vance's book "reduced me to tears"

Is this what international relations experts mean by ‘strategic ambiguity’?

i still can’t believe the Supreme Court ruled that when Parliament passed legalisation with the express intention of codifying trans people’s rights, what it was actually doing was bringing in the most draconian anti-trans legislation in the western world

in this week's newsletter! a super cheery essay on why I think I'm no longer in denial about AI shafting us all in the media and creative industries: youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/not-half-f...

Oh so it does have phd level intelligence

I am Sober app message for UK users when you try to access the community feature: 6 Aug 2025 Custom • Day One Community access temporarily unavailable. Due to the UK Online Safety Act, community features are currently unavailable for UK users. Your personal tracking, daily pledges, milestones, and all other app features remain fully accessible. We expect to restore community access soon once we implement the required age verification systems.

I decided I want to go back to not drinking, I use this great app I Am Sober a huge part of which is the community feature where you can make friends and get support and motivation, it’s now unavailable for UK ppl due to the online safety act….in case teenagers are illicitly trying to get sober?

Interesting that the Times story seems to indicate that the elimination of trans people from public life seems to be a stalking horse for introducing ID cards by the back door by making it possible for pubic bodies to demand birth certificates as evidence of whether you are allowed to use the loo.

Every time you see a Labour MP heading to the toilet, make sure to intercept them and demand documentary proof that their Supreme Court-undefined "biological sex" matches the socially constructed gender signifiers in the icon on the toilet sign, and then simply refuse to accept any proof they give

Just taking my birth certificate with me on the big shop in case I need a piss in the Asda customer toilet and the toilet bouncer doesn't like the shape of my skull

So Trans blokes can't use the men's loos and can't use the women's loos either. Good plan Labour, encourage some al fresco weeing, i'm sure that's a fab idea 🙄

For fuck's sake

I've literally had AI boosters tell me "AI is not biased, you're just bad at prompting" because they don't actually understand how bias works or how an LLM is productized outside of a chatbot.

The scariest thing about this tech isn't when you talk to it. It's when you don't see it at all.

"Microsoft is cautiously onboarding Grok 4 following Hitler concerns" is one of these headlines happening a dozen times a day that nobody blinks at which for any science fiction novel, movie, comic book, game etc written at any prior point of history but set in 2025 we'd have said nah too cartoonish

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described the model as "like having a team of PhD-level experts in your pocket”

A shitty map created by ChatGPT5. it purports to be US States with an R in their name, but it's wrong and dumb and worthless just like LLMs.

My goto is to ask LLMs how many states have R in their name. They always fail. GPT 5 included Indiana, Illinois, and Texas in its list. It then asked me if I wanted an alphabetical highlighted map. Sure, why not.

A Facebook post from the Newcastle Chronicle saying: "Lloyds, Barclays, NatWest customers urged to close account within 48 hours" with no other details.

Local journalism update: this Reach title is trying to cause a run on the banks.

This whole story is the perfect summation of the anti-trans panic. A trans person (if they were even trans!) dares to exist in a public setting. A bigot makes an insane complaint. The press and GC public figures loudly portray the trans person as dangerous. And that's the message the public here.

Oh you absolutely useless wankers

sorry to say this made me laugh out loud

the one thing we didn't want to happen!

Absolutely mind-boggling that the UK Govt has *still* not reviewed its use of X

Just today I asked a male (!!!!!!) shop assistant in Boots about maternity pads. This level of proposed segregation by sex is truly Victorian in its morality and moral panic.

Legally, there isn't the slightest basis to the complaint, even on the most extreme possible interpretation of the Supreme Court judgement. A shop floor is not a single sex space, regardless of whether they sell bras or not. This is just hatred and spite, unleashed.

obviously always reread this whenever it pops up but also: never entirely sure what it says about me that it made me really fancy Tom Hollander

every Democrat in this country should be using every single ounce of their power to loudly and publicly support these Texas politicians like the 10-alarm fire this is

genuinely what jobs will be left for those of us who like having ideas and discussing them publicly but who do not want our faces to be plastered everywhere, I write and I do radio and podcasts instead of going on television for a reason, please just leave us alone

And yeah, I think that the DOGE folks at agencies kind of had unilateral decision making authority in a way that's kind of scary because they both had the we should come into government and do common sense things mindset without realizing that the most common sense things are actually the hardest to accomplish for very specific reasons.

Coding interviews from people who left government earlier this year, and this is a fantastic quote in response to a question about what DOGE tech folk don't understand.

for some reason I'm often the person people take for coffee when they launch a media start-up (it's nice! I'm not complaining!) and the one thing I would say is that a lot of people can't really tell the difference between "we found a gap in the market!" and "this gap is clearly here for a reason"

What about Mediterranean countries where restaurants are closed until 7pm? Well dear reader, I simply die.