Kevin Sargent

YouTube video by Release - Topic Je$u$ on the Payroll (Unreleased Instrumental Version)

First Thrashing Doves release for many many years - previously unavailable instrumental of Jesus on the Payroll, part of Paraíso: The True Sound of Ibiza, Rebirth Records. youtu.be/dwYpMIXXy6Q?...

We opened for them for a few nights in London, great gigs: Porchester Baths and I think Town & Country.

Anthropic to pay authors $1.5B to settle lawsuit over pirated chatbot training material The artificial intelligence company Anthropic has agreed to pay authors $3,000 per book in a landmark settlement over pirated chatbot training material.

"The company has agreed to pay authors about $3,000 for each of an estimated 500,000 books covered by the settlement.

"As best as we can tell, it's the largest copyright recovery ever," said Justin Nelson, a lawyer for the authors. "It is the first of its kind in the AI era."

Reasonable assertion.

Correction, before anyone else does: 'Cwddylddy'.

The Telegraph Rayner tax scandal - £40k tax dodge - Statement Angela Rayner dodges £40,000 stamp duty Deputy Prime Minister reduces tax bill for Hove flat by declaring it as her main residence [Photo: Angela Rayner pictured at the weekend in Hove, where she has just bought a flat Credit: Dan Charity/The Sun on Sunday] Robert Mendick Chief Reporter. Amy Gibbons Political Correspondent 29 August 2025 8:57am BST

The Telegraph Money > Property > Second homes How to avoid tax on your second home From stamp duty to council tax, shield your wealth from Labour's tightening net [Photo of houses around a bay - Areas such as Cornwall have added a premium to council tax bills for second homes Credit: iStockphoto] Fran Ivens Senior Money Writer 29 August 2025 1:21pm BST

On the same day in the Telegraph:

Despite his pretensions to the English gentry, HP Lovecraft's ancestry was mainly Welsh, which he discovered to his dismay. The correct spelling of Cthuthu is evidently 'Cwddlyddy'.

(Breathlessly) "Hello! Melvyn Bragg was born in Carlisle in 1939 and spent his childhood in Wigton, Cumbria before attending Wadham College, Oxford then going on to becoming arguably one of the country's leading broadcasters ..."

Worth the license fee on its own

This is tremendous, Joel.

I learnt this week that in Paris under Nazi occupation, students would carry two fishing rods as a secret sign of protest: ‘Deux Gaules’ …

Knoll's Law of media accuracy:

"Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge".

Correction: it’s the brass

Rewatching LA Confidential last night and enjoying again Jerry Goldsmith’s lean, brutal score. At one point the strings metamorphose into the flies infesting the basement where corpses are stashed. A mere sound effect would never have had such phobic or poetic effect. Just masterful.

The Guardian view on bringing back Play for Today: a reboot that feels right for the times | Editorial Editorial: As our politics becomes ever more polarised, Channel 5’s move to revive one of British television’s most influential series deserves to succeed

TV about modern Britain for modern Britain offering opportunity to take creative risks and vital experience in a rapidly shrinking industry. The other PSB channels should follow Channel 5’s lead and do the same. Low cost, huge benefits.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

TELEGRAPHIC MEMORY “STATE censorship and press control is rife,” warned the Telegraph of the United Arab Emirates when a fund backed by the country’s vice-president looked likely to take full control of the newspaper. Former editor and ongoing columnist Charles Moore warned that this would be “unforgivable” on the grounds that even the UAE’s “best friends would not pretend that it is a democracy, or that it has institutionalised the rights and liberties of the Western world”. Now that the same UAE-backed fund has got government clearance to retain just a 15 percent share, releasing the paper from its two-year ownership limbo, the Telegraph seems much, much keener on the place. All year opinion columnist Isabel Oakeshott has been singing the praises of her move to Dubai, the UAE’s biggest city – but she’s not the only one. “Weather, quality of life, a sense of community: why I left stagnant Britain for Dubai,” read a column at the start of this month by PR Alice Holtham-Pargin. Another, by travel writer John O’Ceallaigh, said: “I joined the exodus to Dubai – and it’s a relief to be out of the UK.” As well as the opinion desk, the money section of the Telegraph has also been bigging up the UAE. An article from late July headlined “Quitting high-tax Britain? Here’s where to move for the most money” put the UAE first on its list. Money reporter Madeleine Ross interviewed a real estate agent who said: “I’m 33 and leaving for Dubai – the earning opportunities are enormous,” while a news piece quoted perfumer Jo Malone, who moved to Dubai four years ago, brown-nosing the city’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed as “the most wonderful leader”. The travel pages have been joining in too

Lots of Telegraph writers ranting about Britain's spiral into despotism seem to have decamped to...the autocratic UAE. Via Private Eye

They really build in that closing section. Check out the double kick drum hits. I was starting to play drums around the time it came out, so was listening!

And live drums throughout.

The Great Gate of Kiev sounding particularly magnificent from the Albert Hall tonight #bbcproms

Therapy comes in many shapes and sizes but fundamentally it is a relationship between two humans where one has a professional and ethical obligation to promote the wellbeing of the other.

Chatbots cannot do this. They can trick vulnerable people into thinking they can, but they simply cannot.

Hope you’re ok, Justin

Psychopaths walk amongst us.

cf. Spotify

This was my thought always: it was a Hollywood showbiz setting.

One from the top, please …

The original charter and agreements with the MU ensured that ‘needle time’ was balanced by employment for musicians, hence the ‘sessions’. We recorded them for Janice Long and Simon Mayo.

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

If you are a published writer & object to Anthropic slurping up your writing for AI, you have until 8/15 to sign up to help defend your copyright. Check this database to see if they hv taken yr writing (you might want to check regardless):

www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Then . . .

1/2

They were totally that.

"Ohh, Sig'ney ..."

Drummer Hugo Burnham and his brother Jolyon managed Thrashing Doves for a while.