Tom Hadley | Exodus 25

France’s Engie strikes deal to buy UK Power Networks for £10.5bn French utility to acquire owner of electricity cables and power lines across London, south-east and east of England

Another day, more vital UK infrastructure sold into the control of a foreign corporation.

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

"As part of its Grassroots campaign, BLACK+DECKER has crunched the last two years of Met Office figures against that 7°C growth threshold and suggests that 13 March 2026 is the first realistically safe date for a light national first cut."

The first truly spring-like day of the year and my desire to rush to the garage and get the lawnmower out is overwhelming.

Mineworkers of the digital economy Is human knowledge now akin to a fossil fuel?

I'm increasingly interested, not so much in AI itself, but how "softened up for AI" we have become. And why.

open.substack.com/pub/exodus25...

YouTube video by Nick Robinson (Babylonian) the director's commentary for "the vvitch" is extremely funny

I adore Robert Eggers for judging himself, not by the standards of anyone else, but solely by whether his craft delivered what he knows his imagination to be capable of. I feel like this about all of my work.

youtu.be/5qdP7lr8kI4?...

Disinformation was ‘central accelerant’ in Leicester Hindu-Muslim clashes, inquiry finds Report into ‘unprecedented’ violence between members of two communities in 2022 calls for action on communalism

Whilst feeling as though I'm atop a lot of eggshells, the inquiry this article describes has raised a number of very thorny issues we should be talking calmly about.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

What is sport these days, but a "battle of narratives"?
I'm surprised we even need a ball anymore.

The content-industrial-complex has made everything so bloody boring.

I'm rather enjoying the fact Emerald Fennell keeps pissing off the cultural puritan chatterati.

I think it means she's making worthwhile art. Or as Dave Mustaine once said "Whaddya mean I ain't kind. Just not your kind".

A bloody good point. Seen a lot of Americans wishing they could have the equivalent of the "Andrew arrest". But at least they got the files to enable such action. Impossible in the UK.

"Emergency podcasts, sir. Thousands of 'em"

Another media frenzy day of rolling updates about a story that will have absolutely nothing happen. Ugh, all devices off, time to read a book.

Agreed. But then no one factored in what 20 years of producing nothing much other than 'content' might do to all of us.

96 years in, 4 to go. How are your confidence levels?

The Obscure Media Theory That Explains '99% of Everything' Or: How did America's mid-century communications theorists get it all so right?

Wow, wow, wow. This is an incredible read.

open.substack.com/pub/derektho...

Choosing friends in the digital era Young or old, what persuades us to form human connection?

Friendships, communities, tribes. The digital world has impacted young and old alike.

open.substack.com/pub/exodus25...

YouTube video by Like Stories of Old We've Forgotten how to Travel

I found this strangely affecting. I really feel the absence in travelling of associated mystery, jeopardy and thrill.

Since 2022 I have stopped sharing anything about my travels online. I didn't really know why I stopped, but maybe this it.

youtu.be/FjV3tkrCYIY?...

"Whether in my book or not, every man is tabernacled in every other and he in exchange and so on in an endless complexity of being and witness to the uttermost edge of the world."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

720,000 YouTube videos
4.4 million blog posts
3.2 billion shared images

Per day, every day. And those are 2025 numbers.

The pointlessness of our endless expression is quite something.

No fuel, no tourists, no cash – this was the week the Cuban crisis got real Diplomats in Havana are preparing for an alternative Trump tactic: the country being starved until people take to the streets and the US can step in

Of all the worrying things in the world right now, the python-like constriction of Cuba into regime change feels like the most cruel. There is no need for it to happen, they're not a threat to anyone.

www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

I'm going to suggest the 'National Association of Business Crime Partnerships' should have got the word reduction into their name somehow.

‘Jellyfish’ and ‘doormat’: why is Keir Starmer so deeply unpopular? From his public persona to a sense that he sold the country a pup, many factors seem to feed a sense of ‘great dislike’

I genuinely believe the "great dislike of Starmer" is mostly down to availability heuristic. It's the inverse of why Boris was so liked, despite patently being such a twat. He knew how to make vivid things work in his favour, Starmer lets them work against him.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I find it genuinely funny anyone can still bring football into disrepute, given it's little more than a sanitised front for global money-laundering. If anyone does something to bring into repute, that'd be newsworthy.

I'd welcome it, I've been training myself to ignore any breaking story for at least 12 hours, if not 24, then look. The difference in how that consumption makes me feel is very noticeable.

I'd love it to be more widely discussed as to whether "breaking live update" news feed pages are something we actually want in our media. Are they effective journalism? Do they help anyone, or just confuse and aid misinformation?

Why do we have to accept these things as sacrosanct and ubiquitous?

From Brontë to Ballard, Orwell to Okri: the best songs inspired by literature – ranked! As Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights gets a boost from a new film adaptation, we survey the surprising, seditious and sensual ways in which prose has influenced pop

The fact there is no entry for Iron Maiden on this list given their vast number of literature-based songs is unforgivable.

www.theguardian.com/music/2026/f...

I really want to see their brand platform and how they attempt to rationalise that name. It'll have more leaps than a parkour course :)

The Only Generation We Have What Matt Shumer's survival guide and Dario Amodei's civilisational reckoning both fail to ask

Strategy peeps and general humans alike, this is a gem of an essay about AI; the hope, the horror, the mission (should you choose to accept it). It's all here:

open.substack.com/pub/hybridho...

Fair play to Andy Burnham for giving Jim Ratcliffe the kicking he deserves, nice framing of "some of us build institutions, others just siphon their wealth".

Two things can be simultaneously true: Starmer can be a very poor PM and the British public can feel unsettled by the extent to which the media have engineered the demise of (about to be) 5 PMs in 7 years. I'd just like someone to run the country effectively and be left alone for a term to do so.

Life at the speed of feeling What if words became worthless?

I've been pondering this article for a while. Then, as so often, Yuval Noah Harari came along and inspired me to complete the thought process.

open.substack.com/pub/exodus25...