Dan McCrum

BLOODY AI,a thread:so, I saw a picture online of the Towers of Perugia by a Renaissance artist, Benedetto Bonfigli whose other work I know a little bit. Here is the image 1/n:

“If [economic] growth was actually your priority, you would not be doing this,” said Jonathan Portes, a professor at King’s College London.

Will Arnett was on Conan and told a story about how Conan dealt with the death of his parents by accusing Jason Bateman of killing them. It’s so funny.

Some of the best content on the FT.com is not being produced by FT journalists, but by below-the-line commenter Winter Cruise Allowance.

Here's their take on the new taxes on cash held in stocks-and-shares ISAs:

One ring to rule them all,
One ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them.

Don't get the hump,

High-speed use of the price-sticker gun

A study on 1.7 million people in Hong Kong shows superior hybrid immunity to Covid in people who got vaccinated before infection vs. people who got infected first. "Our findings are a direct rebuttal to arguments for natural immunity," the authors write. doi.org/10.1016/j.va...

Buy the dip

As Justice Kagan begins her dissent by pointing out, what is even the point of trial, of fact-finding, of clear error, of standards of review, when the Supreme Court simply ignores every single part of that and decides everything purely on the papers without any real consideration of the facts?

14. The government artificially restricting court “sitting days” - effectively closing perfectly usable courtrooms and forcing judges to stay at home, to make a tiny saving on court staff.

This happened regularly under the last government. The new lot are still doing it.

the need for juries is a minor contributor to that though

Quick, someone sell Trump on the type-26

An excellent breakdown of why the poverty line doesn't work for measuring actual poverty or drivers of inequality & deprivation.

Why Canada should join the EU Europe needs space and resources, Canada needs people. Let’s deal

Just leaving this here. www.economist.com/europe/2025/...

ICE arrests at San Diego green card interviews include military spouses These kinds of arrests began Nov. 12, multiple immigration attorneys say, many adding they had never seen anything like this before.

“I kind of feel betrayed, to be honest. We do everything that we can to protect and serve our country. And then they betray us by treating us like we’ve never done anything.”

www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Altice International bonds sink as Patrick Drahi moves assets out of creditors’ reach Investors in debt of billionaire’s group say move is ‘super aggressive’

'I never thought Drahi would take MY collateral,' sobs bondholder who invested in the Drahi Taking People's Collateral Company.

www.ft.com/content/33fb...

How to Win Red States With a Labor Party We can take political power without asking Democrats for it.

Labor unions can recruit working class candidates in red states, run them as independents, fund them with money they now give to Democrats, and use union members as the core of their volunteer base. The numbers are more plausible than you think.

www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/how-to-win...

lol, of course, sorry

Suggestion Rachel Reeves exaggerated fiscal pressures is absurd Chancellor was instead far too optimistic about public finances and government’s ability to secure cuts

Feel like I'm going mad. The Budget's 'headroom' is based on frankly irresponsible and wildly optimistic claims about what Labour will do in the final year of the forecast, and on ignoring a bunch of upward pressures on spending, and the claim is that she was being exaggeratedly *pessimistic*?

As someone who criticised the government back in January for not having a clear growth strategy it is good to see Torsten set out in plain language what the govt’s strategy is and how it hangs together. This is much better and clearer communication.

Whose line is it anyway? Politicians are always on the hunt for a memorable sound bite. But many of their best-known quotes are not exactly what they intended

yes exactly, I wrote about this a while back

“Hug a hoodie”, “You’ve never had it so good”, “Crisis, what crisis?”

All were written by newspaper sub-editors rather than politicians

www.ft.com/content/2c07...

Let me give some insight on this, as a producer in the dub industry who worked with major streamers, who's witnessed first-hand where this push for AI is coming from.

tl;dr: Only CEOs want this. Tell them how much you hate it. Be loud, email, call, @, post. You will kill this.

🧵⬇️

NimbAI

FT Alphaville | Substack We're the FT's finance blog. If it's dumb, delightful or just weird and involves money we're probably interested in it. Click to read FT Alphaville, a Substack publication.

the only substack you need ftav.substack.com/?r=4ys07&utm...

* it's free, it's funny, it will make you feel fleetingly like you understand finance and economics before you remember that's not your brand. Other reasons may apply YMMV

Did you know there's a 500-million-year-old species that lives in the deep sea called Paleodictyon, but we only know it from trace fossils and marks on the seafloor and have absolutely no idea what the animal is?

It could be a sponge or a foram or a xenophyophore or something totally different.

OpenAI needs to raise at least $207bn by 2030 so it can continue to lose money, HSBC estimates A burning platform

My dude, FTAlphaville is free to read if you register and I suspect it might surprise you

YouTube video by comedyklips Alan Partridge 2.4 Monkey Tennis.mp4

Budget day vibes

Nusantara has a long way to go

Ireland can’t receive messages from other country’s security services because it doesn’t have secure communications.