Simon Fletcher

Infographic: Peter Thiel and detail of Palantir’s contracts with UK government departments, agencies and authorities. Where the amount is unknown, the contract has not been included in the overall £672m+ spend. The bulk of the contracts are post 2018, the Olympics contract dates back to 2012 and some work with unreleased dates could be earlier. Design: Lynsey Irvine

NEW Nerve investigation reveals extent of Palantir's enmeshment in UK state operations

Peter Thiel's surveillance company has deals with government bodies amounting to at least £670m – inc. £15m contract with nuclear weapons agency

By @carolecadwalla.bsky.social Charlie Young & Max Colbert

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Shabana Mahmood’s Panopticon scheme for all criminals and Palantir’s aims seem to dovetail. There’s zero chance that the current Labour leadership will distance itself from Palantir.

Not for the first time, I wonder why do our governments commission these reports and then appear to cast them aside.

In 1981, for a school prize, I was awarded Stephen Pile’s ‘The Book of Heroic Failures.’ (I’m still not sure what they were trying to tell me.) I’d gift it, except the word heroic hardly fits.

Behold KING KONG on a flatbed truck. Director Merian C. Cooper and animator Willis O'Brien stand in front.

“I have a foreboding of America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time–when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all of the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; with our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. And when the dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites now down to 10 seconds or less, lowest-common-denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”

“If it takes a little myth and ritual to get us through a night that seems endless, who among us cannot sympathise and understand? We long to be here for a purpose even though, despite much self-deception, none is evident. The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We long for our parents to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Our common sense intuitions can be mistaken. Our preferences don’t count. We do not live in a privileged reference frame. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.”

I miss Carl Sagan (1934-1996).

From Cosmos to Contact, in books and on screen, his intellectual work has had a profound impact on me.

In these days of embraced anti-intellectualism, his books should be revisited.

The bare branches of trees against a colourful sunset.

Sunset, New Year's Day.

"Sue Foreman"?

It was something that had been broadcast shortly after the story was televised - and his was just a casual mention of the Kroton emerging from its spaceship, I think - that the BBC repeated as part of some retrospective, but whether that was in the 90s or later I forget.

I have a vague memory of seeing a documentary in which Jonathan Miller, standing by a concrete zoo enclosure, unexpectedly referenced the Krotons. I wish I could remember what programme that was.

Arguably, the TARDIS was fully working ever since the Master’s repairs, except the Doctor’s mental block on time travel theory prevented him from programming it to go anywhere other than a short-range flight before it yo-yo’ed him back to the UNIT lab.

Signed.

Christmas lights on the facade of City Hall in Norwich.

City Hall, Norwich.

Renaissance painting of the Madonna and child.

Virgin and Child.

C15th: attributed to the school Pietro Perugino and bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Wonderful: brash, confident and a bit silly.

The Adoration of the Shepherds.

The Adoration of the Shepherds, with the Annunciation to the shepherds beyond. (Attributed to Benvenuto Tisi da Garofalo, circa 1500.)

Taken at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Stained glass at Peterhouse Chapel in Cambridge, showing the Nativity.

The Nativity, detail from Peterhouse Chapel, Cambridge.

Wow. The first good laugh of the day.

YouTube: Making Easter Island statues walk - Easter Island: Mysteries of a Lost World - BBC 4

Fascinating.

Doctor Who art prints by Scott Gray.

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Signed & donated.

I missed that one.

You would think, but the only BBC coverage I've heard on the radio and seen on their website about the visit is entirely positive and concentrates on the golf-related gifts.

Quite. Dr Gardner puts it more eloquently than I can.

It also makes me weary that in the UK the argument always seems to be framed around either using land for food production or solar power, when the same land can often be used for both.

Tom really was an insufferable idiot at times. He didn't deserve Barbara.

I haven’t seen a total eclipse since Turkey in 2006. Quite tempted to look into some sort of tour to see this next year.

Ever since I finished Question Time, Reform have massively been on the attack.

Including a rant from Richard Tice entirely designed to distract from Reform and Russia.

Everyone should know about Nathan Gill, the bribes from Russia and the link to Reform.

I never knew there was anything so progressive as a centre for gay and transgender health care and rights in Berlin in 1933. I mean, it’s over 40 years since I was at school, but I don’t recall any such detail being mentioned (and you know how we Brits love going on about WW II).

A selection of prints, a cushion, a phone case and a notebook featuring bold retro designs and a photo of Gail.

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