Michael Goodier

V prescient piece! Compare meta to a company like jagex - my mate Connor who never quit RuneScape as a is obsessed with the new sailing part of the game on something that is so old it's cringworthy but in many ways is so much more the actual vision of metaverse

further to the quoted section below from one former pupil: The Guardian has acquired a copy of the Dulwich College roll in 1980. It shows (this collage is just an excerpt) how there were 13 pupils that year with the surname Patel, and 12 with the surname Smith.

Dubious experts deployed by MyJobQuote published more than 600 times in UK press A network of apparently fake experts has polluted the British media with at least 600 pieces of often AI-generated and misinformed commentary.

Great scoop by @robwaugh.bsky.social in Press Gazette. Just searched my emails and I have 113 unread from this spam PR company

pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/d...

‘Posh-poor divide’: the rise in areas of England where wealth and deprivation appear side by side Data shows increase in neighbourhoods where few metres of asphalt, hedgerow, or wall can separate deep inequality

Really enjoyed working on this one with @journo-jess.bsky.social looking at the areas where deprived and non deprived neighborhoods sit side by side. Good example of using datasets to find case studies

www.theguardian.com/inequality/2...

Small changes to ‘for you’ feed on X can rapidly increase political polarisation Study finds that a week of political content can bring about a shift in views that previously would have taken three years Small changes to the tone of posts fed to users of X can increase feelings of political polarisation as much in a week as would have historically taken at least three years, research has found. A groundbreaking experiment to gauge the potency of Elon Musk’s social platform to increase political division found that when posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity were boosted, even barely perceptibly, in the feeds of Democrat and Republican supporters there was a large change in their unfavourable feelings towards the other side. Continue reading...

Small changes to ‘for you’ feed on X can rapidly increase political polarisation

Also the 'nick 30 ans' thing started in 2020 and the British one in 2023 apparently so made-up Nick would actually be 32-35. Thanks for reading my fact check.

From now on, when discussing the budget, please use “is this measure bigger than the cost to the exchequer of gen Z drinking less” as your metric for assessing whether something actually raises or costs a significant sum

Office for Budget Revelations

Absolutely extraordinary - this seems to be the OBR's entire economic outlook, posted half an hour before the chancelor stands up:

obr.uk/docs/dlm_upl...

Have got my friends hooked on @chartle.cc - honestly one of the great puzzle games

Influencers made millions pushing ‘wild’ births – now the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world A year-long investigation reveals how mothers lost children after being radicalised by uplifting podcast tales of births without midwives or doctors As Esau Lopez was asphyxiated for the first 17 minutes of his life on Earth, the atmosphere in the room remained serene, even ecstatic. Acoustic music crooned from a speaker in a modest two-bedroom apartment in a suburb of Pennsylvania. “You are a queen,” murmured one of three friends in the room. Only Esau’s mother, Gabrielle Lopez, felt something was wrong. She was pushing hard, but her son would not be born. “Can you help [him] out?” she asked, as Esau crowned. “Baby is coming,” the friend replied. Four minutes later, Lopez asked again, “Can you grab [him]?” Another friend murmured, “Baby is safe.” Six minutes passed. Again, Lopez asked, “Can you grab [him]?” Continue reading...

Influencers made millions pushing ‘wild’ births – now the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world

also in essence its saying 'we must do what the racists want, in case they are racist'

UK public service journalism heroes recognised at British Journalism Awards Express, FT, Guardian, The i, Standard and Eastern Eye make public service shortlist.

Very happy to make the shortlist alongside brilliant colleagues @robevansgdn.bsky.social @rowenamason.bsky.social @michaelgoodier.bsky.social David Conn @anlugonz.bsky.social for this year's Public Service Journalism category at the British Journalism Awards for our project The Lords Debate.

‘Deeply shocking’: Nigel Farage faces fresh claims of racism and antisemitism at school Bafta-winning director among contemporaries urging contrition and apology from Reform UK leader, who denies the allegations

Exclusive: ‘Deeply shocking’: Nigel Farage faces fresh claims of racism and antisemitism at school

Bafta-winning director among contemporaries urging contrition and apology from Reform UK leader, who denies the allegations

w/ Dan Boffey and @drblacklock.bsky.social

The government recently started publishing the immigration status of Universal Credit claimants. It showed that EU claimants are more likely to be in work than their UK counterparts.

46% of EU citizens claiming Universal Credit are in work compared to just 31% of those from the UK and Ireland.

The Home Secretary says "we have become the destination of choice in Europe, clearly visible to every people smuggler and would-be illegal migrant across the world"

That is a factually untrue claim: the Home Office shows that the UK is fifth, getting 1/10 claims, while Germany gets 1/5 claims

That's pretty good!

This is very cool especially how you're using the wikidata and judging the guesses - how long did this take you?

How many people would be comfortable buying a wedding ring that had been seized from a refugee. Maybe it was the last item they had to remember a loved one.

Is that the world we want our government to actively encourage?

If you get made a traitor your charity should switch and the money should go towards ppe medpro or saudi aramco or palantir or some otherwise evil company in order to up the stakes of the game

[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.] JANET: Ugh... LIZ: What's up? JANET: I am so bored of cooking peas! LIZ: Have you tried... AI peas? JANET: AI peas? LIZ: They're peas with AI! [Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI]. LIZ: Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas JANET: What LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines] Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas? [Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it] LIZ: Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine [Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas] LIZ: With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas! JANET: What LIZ: Shut up LIZ: Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow From opening the bag of peas to boiling the peas to eating the peas To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means. JANET: Is it really necessary to- LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]: THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET [Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan: AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas. [Ends]

Every ad now

HMRC trial of child benefit crackdown wrongly suspected fraud in 46% of cases Exclusive: Almost half of families flagged as emigrants based on Home Office travel data were still living in UK

Exclusive: Lib Dems demand to know how HMRC child benefit crackdown got go ahead after data from pilot scheme shows high error rate, with 46% of those originally flagged as emigrated, living in the country.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Ah yeah the seer power thing I forgot about that. I guess the shields basically work as a doctor role too

they should add the policeman role to traitors somehow

Lower migration is bad news for the UK economy - UK in a changing Europe Lauren Gilbert argues that migrants to the UK are net fiscal contributors, adding much more to the economy than they take out, and that the recent collapse in immigration will harm the UK's economic p...

"Home Office data suggests that recent immigrants are more likely to be working than British nationals and make higher wages than them."

✍️ Lauren Gilbert argues that migrants to the UK are net fiscal contributors, adding much more to the economy than they take out,

ukandeu.ac.uk/lower-migrat...

A London lawyer is demanding dozens of Sheffield homeowners pay £25k to buy the freehold off him - or face court action for covenant breaches

Given he acquired these freeholds for under £400 each, this equates to a potential profit margin of over 6,000% www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/a-london-law...

End of The Line: how Saudi Arabia’s Neom dream unravelled Mohammed bin Salman’s utopian city was undone by the laws of physics and finance

the line has passed away. RIP u will live on forever. Cant believe it. I wanna run to u. Really cant believe this. @

ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-l...

The fact they've had to prove it to the home office (famously difficult) again. We can appeal the appeals if you like but honestly your statement about most child asylum seekers actually being adults is the one that needs justification

As in, a higher than 50% success rate. Of course they could be getting a lot of non appealing people wrong the other way but I'd like to see any evidence for that if you have it

How likely? The Home office data for successful age appeals (when our government has said asylum seekers are over 18, and they actually turns out not to be) is just over half - if anything children are more likely to be classed as adults than the other way round