Heather Burns

They’re all like that sadly.

You just need to develop a deeply cynical sense for timewasters and if in doubt, don’t bother.

Classic sign of them having picked a contractor already, but they need three quotes for the procurement rules. I hated this so much when I was contracting.

I’ve started calling my local Asda Brexit, because they’re not even getting deliveries for fresh everyday goods in. I just went in for some fresh baked bread and eggs. Nothing, of anything, in the bakery, at all. No delivery today. No eggs.

My Co-op corner shop can’t even be counted on for a pint of milk anymore

Is it just me or has anyone noticed how UK supermarkets now look like the beginning of Covid, except the empty shelves aren’t panic buying, that’s just the everyday normal now? Like the fundamental concepts of stock and logistics have gone “whatever”?

TL;DR: WTF Is Going on in Tennessee Five bills you need to know about

Incredible find from @rachelwells1.bsky.social: Tennessee Republicans are trying to codify fetal personhood through an AI regulation bill

wellsrachelm.substack.com/p/tldr-wtf-i...

საფერავი 👍

Two column text which alt texted into gibberish, sorry

Private Eye, last September.

I had a recent spell of messaging with a friend in Ukraine in the two hours a day he had been allocated some rationed electricity, in -17° cold, oh and while being bombed. It was awful.

. @signal.org is hiring for a major gifts fundraiser role and this may well be one of the most important jobs in the world. Pass it on to the right person.
(Don’t ask me, I’m just passing this along)

jobs.lever.co/signal/68f75...

As bad omens go, I was just walking along in my Scottish village and some absolute wanker drove past in an actual American Ford pickup truck with California plates, with an old gas engine spitting fumes. I think this was in Revelations.

Brilliant. An expat im Dubai has a startling revelation, by @stephencollins.bsky.social

scanning one’s iris is framed as the fulfilment of a citizen’s duty to prepare for AGI threats. This moral instrumentalisation obscures the profit-seeking nature of this product by making participation appear as contribution to collective security rather than individual surrender of privacy rights

This passage from a paper on Worldcoin and AGI absolutely nails the UK’s current obsession with age-gating all services on the open internet. (Paper is link.springer.com/article/10.1...)

CBP Tapped Into the Online Advertising Ecosystem To Track Peoples’ Movements An internal DHS document obtained by 404 Media shows for the first time CBP used location data sourced from the online advertising industry to track phone locations. ICE has bought access to similar t...

New from 404 Media: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples' movements, according to an internal DHS document. Shows for the first time DHS tracked phones via process for putting ads in ordinary apps—video games, fitness apps, many more www.404media.co/cbp-tapped-i...

Global Age Assurance Standards Summit 2026 Get tickets to Global Age Assurance Standards Summit 2026, taking place 14/04/2026 to 16/04/2026. RingCentral Events is your source for engaging events and experiences.

Case in point: the AV lobby has an all singing all dancing annual policy conference complete with a vanity awards ceremony. The last digital rights conference in UK was 2019 and it was a lot of people ranting about crypto and Julian Assange.

events.ringcentral.com/events/globa...

Actually this is the original vision of Kidron’s first draft AADC from 2019, when the actual quote from the ICO at the time was a gobsmacked “can’t we just age gate everything?” The AV lobby has been relentless since then whilst digital rights paid people peanuts for 12 month contracts.

Screenshot showing part of a UK Government amendment to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill introducing one of several new clauses for the Online Safety Act: "Power to require internet service providers to restrict access by children to certain internet services"

Meanwhile in ping-pong on the CWS Bill, the UK Government has introduced clauses empowering itself to restrict access by children to specified internet services or features publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbi...

As @cyberleagle.bsky.social points out this isn't limited to OSA-regulated services

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'LOL SEND ME A PIC': Screenshots show cop sending sexual messages to 'young girl' Screenshots have been released after a former police officer sent sexual messages to someone he believed was a 12-year-old girl from Airdrie.

Just a serving police officer here grooming a teenage girl who was in fact a decoy police officer on a non-e2ee messaging app, if you wonder why some of us are rather crotchety about it. (Good luck to all of you attempting to read our local dialect.) www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/scottis...

Friendly reminder that I am no longer doing blog post explainers of these consultations or proposals (which inevitably go top of HN to compound the stress). That don’t pay my bills. If anyone wants my help on the consultation, do it properly.

Incredibly my daughter is now doing IR at uni, and we have a lot of conversations along the lines of “well, you wanted IR, you got IR.”

On the other hand:
Me, 2000-2016: why tf did I even do a degree in international relations
Me 2016-present: *opens beer* so,

I imagine that the Delegated Powers Committee will have something to say about this; and that whatever they say will be ignored.

homer simpson from the simpsons is standing in front of a grassy field . Alt: homer shrub

Me leaving that meeting

Used one of those charities for a conference venue just before Covid, it's literally art therapy for damaged and disabled kids. We are absolutely losing something across the city as a whole, and not getting anything back.

Had some clients who seriously asked me if they could incorporate their business there. You could hear the record scratch sound in my head.

In recent weeks young people have read a lot of graphic explicit detail from the Epstein Files just in the mainstream news, and it makes you realise that if the girls _in the files_ had had access to that level of information and communication at that same age, they'd have run away fast.

“whether mandatory overnight curfews would help children sleep better and what age they should apply to” is a real bullet point on this consultation

See when you're in the maternity ward with a newborn baby, they give you a piece of paper with a gradiated colour chart to help you understand your magical journey through newborn baby poo. It's definitely on the colour chart.