Darren Loucaides

3 layer sophisticated Winnie the Pooh meme Al is like The Library Of Babel Al is like Pierre Menard, Author Of The Quixote Al is like Ton, Uqbar, Orbus Tertius

Thames Water boss says turnaround to take a decade The company's future remains uncertain as it posts losses of £1.65bn for the year to March.

Thames Water has paid £7bn to shareholders since privatisation. Customers can’t switch companies cos it’s a monopoly. Nationalise it www.bbc.com/news/article...

ISIS, Al-Qaeda… and a group that spray painted planes

Dunno why we still pretend our politics is polarised when the there’s an authoritarian consensus on so many issues across

@darrenloucaides.bsky.social finds some troubling bedfellows. observer.co.uk/news/busines...

Additional reporting @gabrielthierry.bsky.social

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov and Elon Musk are set to launch a $300m partnership via Grok that caps off a long tech bromance. My piece for the
@observeruk.bsky.social on Sunday

observer.co.uk/news/busines...

Additional reporting
@gabrielthierry

Sets a worrying precedent. If the default is now to state the suspect is white to defuse misinformation, what will happen when their race cant be identified or they’re not white? Troublemakers will be able to fan flames even easier

If the riots had been in, say, France, I would say yes. Can’t see the uk prosecuting musk, but the Telegram boss’ arrest shows you these things are not impossible

lol I wondered when she would try it again

Inside Elon Musk’s ‘Digital Coup’ Musk’s loyalists at DOGE have infiltrated dozens of federal agencies, pushed out tens of thousands of workers, and siphoned millions of people’s most sensitive data. The next step: Unleash the AI.

A must-read feature (with heart-stopping design) from the @wired.com team:

Elon Musk’s loyalists at DOGE have infiltrated dozens of federal agencies, pushed out thousands of workers, and siphoned millions of people’s most sensitive data.

What's next? Unleash the AI.

www.wired.com/story/elon-m...

Erm guess what the reply was

i'm sick ironically and perceiving this through brain fog but are you actually criticising sick pay

i just started a new band 😅

or prey?

That’s so much worse! It’s so weird!

I just keep thinking about the air quotes around his own name

I had a cover story with NS once that seemed to get some traction, but they ignored every subsequent pitch I sent; didn’t even reply to say why

There's literally no plan to stop this other than promoting Labour deportations with a sky-blue colour scheme

Good morning to this man, and this man only #bbcqt

RFK Jr has just been confirmed as health secretary. Here’s my piece about him from earlier this week

That should be @naomiaklein.bsky.social ofc!

oh damn! yes, thanks

I had been reporting on Querdenken and similar movements for years, without knowing that @williamcallison.bsky.social and @quinnslobodian.com had coined the term diagonalism, popularised by @naomiklein.bsky.social in her excellent Doppelganger. Def read their work to know more!

Robert F Kennedy Jr has mass appeal despite his extreme ideas. This theory explains why | Darren Loucaides In just a few years, Kennedy and his dangerously popular ‘diagonalist’ politics have gone from the fringes of the web to, perhaps, the White House, says Darren Loucaides, a writer based in Barcelona a...

RFK Jr epitomises the dangerous new “diagonalism” at the heart of Trump’s coalition

Me for @theguardian.com

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Inside the Bust That Took Down Pavel Durov—and Upended Telegram The Russian-born CEO styles himself as a free-speech crusader and a scourge of the surveillance state. Here’s the real story behind Pavel Durov’s arrest and what happened next.

Very busy week; I missed this @darrenloucaides.bsky.social feature on Pavel Durov. Interesting nugget: a WIRED analysis found that Telegram was very likely to have more than 45 million users in the bloc. That's the threshold for a Very Large Online Platform under the Digital Services Act.

Thanks Justin!

Inside the Bust That Took Down Pavel Durov—and Upended Telegram The Russian-born CEO styles himself as a free-speech crusader and a scourge of the surveillance state. Here’s the real story behind Pavel Durov’s arrest and what happened next.

Last August, Telegram's boss Pavel Durov was arrested in France for alleged complicity in crimes that could land him in prison for 10 years. Ever since, I've been digging into how this all came about and the roots go back years. My latest feature for @wired.com

www.wired.com/story/pavel-...

The case against Durov, the CEO of a huge mainstream platform, was unprecedented. And it came at a moment when his professed libertarian ideals & laissez-faire attitude to moderation seemed to be ascendant. The small size of Durov’s team had actually inspired Musk.. @kateconger.com @rmac.bsky.social

Thanks to @gabrielthierry.bsky.social for additional reporting.

Also for the painstaking edits by @anthonylydgate.bsky.social @johngravois.bsky.social and WIRED's fact-checking team

And amazing art by @samgreenstudio.bsky.social