Daniel Knowles

(Honestly I am not entirely sure how this works. Just know it's a thing!)

Licensing regimes work differently in different places. In the US it's fairly easy to get a commercial license for streaming for a small business that isn't that much more than a normal consumer Spotify account or whatever. But I don't think that's available everywhere

I think it's a licensing thing. Playing music at a restaurant/in a commercial place requires a different licence to just having Spotify or whatever, and muzak covers are cheaper. I knew a guy in London who, while trying to make it as an actor, made his actual living recording muzak covers

Murder Officially Plunged in 2024 That and more takeaways from the FBI's 2024 Reported Crime in the Nation report.

New data from the FBI: Murder fell 15% in 2024, the fastest drop ever recorded & violent/property crime rates fell to levels not seen since the 1960s. Murder returned to pre-COVID levels in 2024 & is may be the lowest level ever recorded in 2025.

jasher.substack.com/p/murder-off...

"Anything Republicans want to do is legal and anything Democrats want to do is illegal" is fast becoming the overriding theory of governance at both the state and federal levels.

I'm going to have to just learn Spanish finally to avoid the humiliation. I should have years ago tbf

I am in Mexico on holiday and I do not speak more than a smattering of Spanish, but I do speak passable Hindi and good French and anyway, how do I stop my brain supplying phrases like "ek aur cerveza s'il vous plait" in restaurants?

Well this doesn't look great

What Kids Told Us About How to Get Them Off Their Phones Children who were raised on screens need more freedom out in the real world.

"Children want to meet up in person, no screens or supervision. But because so many parents restrict their ability to socialize in the real world on their own, kids resort to the one thing that allows them 2 hang out with no adults hovering: their phones"
@theatlantic.com
Really interesting survey!

The British media outlet ITV also went on a Jordanian airdrop and simply ignored the Israeli government’s illiberal demands:

www.itv.com/news/2025-08...

This is real: President Trump is standing on the roof of the White House briefing room right now and no one knows why

Lawyers question legality of Alligator Alcatraz, ask federal judge to intervene “This is an unprecedented situation where hundreds of detainees are held incommunicado, with no ability to access the courts, under legal authority that has never been explained and may not exist,” pl...

“‘This is an unprecedented situation where hundreds of detainees are held incommunicado, with no ability to access the courts, under legal authority that has never been explained and may not exist,’ they argued.”

www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

Hey it helped that DOGE kid decipher bits of those ancient burned scrolls from Pompeii

Wanna see a crazy chart? Of course you do.

Spending on constructing datacenters and manufacturing facilities for computers & electronic products in the US now exceeds the entire retail and wholesale industry and almost as much as the rest of the office and manufacturing sectors combined.

I do half like the noise. Makes me think I am in the Blues Brothers, and it doesn't interrupt sleep or anything. But it is loud!

Yes, that's the sort of thing you get in London

Which is to say, I do wonder if the city could do more to make the L quieter. There seem to be surprisingly few noise barriers and obviously the track is not in great shape (which is a problem more generally). But slowing down trains is an insane solution

I live 150ft from the blue line, and the noise can be *intense* especially outside on the street. It's definitely a lot louder than the train I used to live almost as close to in London, which was on a brick viaduct rather than elevated metal. So I have some sympathy. But yeah you're exactly right

god the Jim Acosta "AI" interview sounds even worse than I thought. this would be very funny if it wasn't so tragic.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds A statistical analysis found that the number of fake journal articles being churned out by “paper mills” is doubling every year and a half.

“If these trends are not stopped, science is going to be destroyed." Here's my story on the accelerating growth of systemic research fraud--aka paper mills. Gift link: nyti.ms/45rDirw

AI Flight Pricing Can Push Travelers to the Limit of Their Ability to Pay Airlines, including Delta, are testing artificial intelligence in pricing. Get ready for what one startup calls the “exploitation phase.”

My coworker @chafkin.bsky.social got ahold of an internal white paper from Fetcherr, the AI pricing company that is working with Delta and other airlines to make fare prices even more erratic for consumers. It details what the company calls the “exploitation phase”: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Amazing

Wild! I was just wondering if it was some 26 year old who had not realised that newspapers exist outside of her Monday to Friday office

How old was said PR?

lol yes

Like, it has to be analytical about it and say something new, not just restart the fight with a bunch of people/ideas that everyone recognised went overboard within about six months

Yes, totally fair. I just think a good one would have to acknowledge that the left lost the war pretty quickly

Or at least... a lot of publishing is people who are just trying to prove they were right a couple of years ago and aren't actually looking out the window now

I mean maybe it will be good? I just fear dredging the very recent past over and over again to understand why people are doing things badly now leads us astray as often as it guides us, especially because it's often avoiding what is actually happening right now

oh god