William Perrin

i have found house of commons enquiry service incredibly helpful on this sort of thing if asked nicely and given a few weeks

Elon Musk posted about race almost every day in January Many social media posts by Tesla CEO on his platform are indiscernible from those of white supremacists, say experts

quelle surprise www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Parallel or "mixed member majoritarian" systems where voters cast a vote for a district seat and for proportional seats—but the PR seats don't compensate for district results—often result in high disproportionality like in this case when there's one dominant party and their opponents are fragmented

At the rate SpaceX's ambitions are receding, by 2030 they'll be promising to put a supertram service in Leeds

@adrianshort.uk saw this and thought of you

totally this

I am writing to you because your collection, Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories, is a masterclass in modern speculative fiction. The way you’ve humanized (and cat-ified) the birth of artificial intelligence through our search histories is not just clever, it’s a profound commentary on what it means to be seen and understood in the digital age. Your ability to balance "wit and intelligence" with genuine tenderness is a rare gift.

This morning, I got one of those scam emails that are currently abundant in the writing community, where someone offers to "feature" your book at a book club for a fee. These messages always include an effuse essay about how great your book is, written by a LLM.

Spanish PM Sanchez: "Social media has become a failed state, and when democracies start to impose order, their owners get nervous. We will move forward despite their threats."

Talking points from Moscow: How RT and the GRU set the agenda on German-language Telegram #Ukraine

Federal judge: "The presumption of regularity that has previously extended to [the United States Government] that it could be taken at its word—with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes—no longer holds."

This is in a case where the Trump admin sued Oregon.

you don’t say. No one mention Spinvox

Update: FUCKING RODENT

so a month ago I was reading @markpackuk.bsky.social’s speech on Twitter in the lords and there were obviously fake stats the government used to justify Twitter’s UK reach and its continued importance to British audiences

Rob has now found the source of the data was… Twitter

YouTube video by Channel 4 News Who's interviewing who?! Richard Ayoade speaks to Krishnan Guru-Murthy

as an interview is is up there with the Ayoade/Guru-Murthy encounter www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjC3...

YouTube video by Harlequins Absolute GOLD from Joe Marler - Bath preview turns into impression of Irish horse

so @stephenkb.bsky.social is channelling Joe Marler and the horse here - what accent does the Abyss have Stephen? www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8VR...

US government to fund Maga-aligned think-tanks and charities in Europe State department grants to spread ‘American values’ are part of Washington’s 250th anniversary celebrations

The U.S. State Department is set to fund MAGA-aligned think-tanks and charities across Europe to spread the Trump administration’s policy positions.
We eagerly await the patriots'/sovereignists' strong indignation and their demands for investigations to be carried out! 🕵️

US cuts ties with Polish parliament speaker over Trump Nobel row | Euractiv The episode adds fresh strain to otherwise close US–Poland security ties

Meanwhile, on X (I'll spare you the screenshots) another social media induced diplomatic spat:

The US ambassador to Poland has declared to cut off all contacts with the speaker of the Sejm because he refused to back nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Price. Donald Tusk has publicly pushed back.

yup the Typhoo Tea factory, easily big enough

Some sort of corporate sponsorship / naming rights type deal perhaps?

US tech giants pressuring EU to keep us addicted to social media "They can leverage Trump's America First policies, framing EU digital laws as foreign extortion, censorship or discrimination."

A new report shows the enormous pressure EU lawmakers are coming under from American big tech giants.

It's the old newspaper cutting about the jubremony at the libary. Headline "The memories live on" I did copy and paste the text but it's a bit hit and miss because of the old photocopy and I don't have time now to go through all the delightfully made up words it hallucinates. You'll get the drift. CROWLAND'S Silver Jubilee committee was finally wound p on Thurs day evening with presen tatios cerem e Ib rary. The jubilee fand described by chairman Frank Parnell as 'one of the finest efforts incoln- shire' fremony rary. The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Parnell as "one if the libraryaony aremony The jubremony at the lib- rary. Tremony at remony at the library. Thrremony at tremony at the liremoay at the lib raremony at the library. The described by funi chairman Frank Premony rremony at the liremony aremony at the libremony atremony at tre mony at the library. Tremorremony at the lib- The jubilee described by chairman Frank Parnell as 'one of the finest efforts in Lincoln- shire', fa be latched onto a through ball. Although be by the I managed to ba I home for second week to leave the field injured, this time suffering eye trouble. The winning goal was another 25-yard shot again from Blackstones' central defender- coming from their second chance of the game. from Boys, had a good debut.

After this swam into my brain last night (unbidden, if you will, but clearly there are neural pathways that divert here at the slightest nudge), it occurred to me that a few people may not have experienced it. Put that hot drink down. Now. Yes before you start reading.

Didn't I say that getting rid of shortwave radio services was a very 1913 thing to be doing?

I just identified Jeffrey Epstein's Wikipedia account (I'll post a link here shortly)

'Let a thousand flowers bloom': Jensen Huang says demanding ROI from AI is like forcing a child to make a business plan for a hobby | Fortune You don't ask your kids to prove to you how they're going to make money for you, Huang said. "We never do that at home. But we do it at work."

Start stockpiling canned food.

fortune.com/2026/02/04/j...

ahhh I didn’t read to the end

indeed but do appointed Ambassadors (say, just for instance) get out under the always odd Ministerial exemption. Or might in fact that exemption apply retrospectively so that what a person did while a Minister not be checked, in some downright weird way?

we don't really know why Bezos decided to fully give up on the project but it's not hard to sketch out an explanation. Owning the Post was supposed to give him a foothold in Washington. Instead it made him a target of the Trump administration and got him nothing during the Biden administration

We're building a machine that hallucinates and training it on deranged hallucinations to come up with even more unhinged hallucinations

To some extent it started to bother me that we're now ascribing everything bad to this select group who are we refer to as Epstein's friends, as if they're some sort of James Bond baddie cabal

It was in another country and besides the Hoover is dead