Staring into the abyss, France calls for the recognition of Palestine and Britain says it’s really really bad to spray-paint planes.

Data bill opposed by Sir Elton John and Dua Lipa finally passes Leading artists said the bill needed to be changed to protect them from having their work copied by AI.

Amidst all the awful news this week, you may have missed that the party of workers, has become the party of the Broligarchs

UK govt pushed back against an amendment that would protect the copyrights of musicians and creatives against AI sloplords www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Our Song Paperback. ***THIS IS A PRE-ORDER TO BE SHIPPED ON OR AROUND THE PUBLICATION DATE IN JUNE 2025*** A heart-warming second chance romance perfect for Emily Henry fans

My sister @urchinette.bsky.social's new book which has BANDS and DUBLIN and LOVE in it is out TODAY!
www.kennys.ie/shop/our-son...

If only there was some way of knowing what caused all this…

If you can’t make your multibillion dollar product without stealing artists’ work perhaps you should compensate those artists you freak

Coverage of idiots claiming ‘betrayal’ or ‘surrender’ isn’t just bad journalism, it’s a dereliction of our duty to explain things. I’d actually forgotten just how bad it got but here we are, straight back to treating liars & spivs like authorities of equal weight to experts & honest brokers.

I think a lot of people are self-conscious about their ability to express themselves and when a machine is fluently, confidently full of shit they feel like they can't compete with that.

If you wouldn't accept "we are at risk of becoming an island of strangers" from Kemi Badenoch or Nigel Farage you probably shouldn't accept it from Keir Starmer. Don't pretzel yourself trying to explain why it's ok from the guy in the red tie.

If you want to live in the UK, you should speak English. That's common sense. So we're raising English language requirements across every main immigration route.

Spain, you could do the funniest thing right now...

Lovely to hear from the Prime Minister that the historical policies which allowed my Mum to remain in the UK after studying here, thus enabling my existence, was a “squalid experiment in open borders”.

The Prime Minister imitating Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech is sickening.

That speech fuelled decades of racism and division. Echoing it today is a disgrace. It adds to anti-migrant rhetoric that puts lives at risk.

Shame on you, Keir Starmer.

if trump tariffs foreign film production then canada will not hesitate to impose a steep export tax on ryans both reynolds and gosling

I always tell this to my research assistants: if you use AI to summarize and write for you, you don't need to be my assistant. You don't need to do research at all.

Research should be selfish: *you* (not a machine) learn how to read, write, innovate, and dream. Otherwise, what is the point?

Local Elections: 'Keir Starmer's Rightward Shift Is Laying the Ground for Nigel Farage' Labour's embrace of economic and political orthodoxy is forcing voters to look elsewhere for change, argues Keir Starmer's former adviser Simon Fletcher

Local Elections: ‘Keir Starmer’s Rightward Shift Is Laying the Ground for Nigel Farage’

bylinetimes.com/2025/05/02/l...

They want you to believe words are more harmful than genocide. Establishment figures, desperate to silence us, have combed through hundreds of hours of footage and interviews, extracting a handful of words from months or years ago to manufacture moral hysteria. Let us be unequivocal: we do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah. We condemn all attacks on civilians, always. It is never okay. We know this more than anyone, given our nation's history. We also reject any suggestion that we would seek to incite violence against any MP or individual. Ever. An extract of footage, deliberately taken out of all context, is now being exploited and weaponised, as if it were a call to action. This distortion is not only absurd - it is a transparent effort to derail the real conversation.

All two million Palestinian people in Gaza are currently being starved to death by Israel. At least 20,000 children in Gaza have been killed. The British government continues to supply arms to Israel, even after scores of NHS doctors warned Keir Starmer in August that children were being systematically executed with sniper shots to the head. Instead of defending innocent people or the principles of international law, the powerful in Britain have abetted slaughter and famine. This is where real anger and outrage should be directed towards. To the Amess and Cox families, we send our heartfelt apologies, we never intended to cause you hurt.

Kneecap’s message has always been — and remains — one of love, inclusion, and hope. This is why our music resonates across generations, countries, classes and cultures and has brought hundreds of thousands of people to our gigs. No smear campaign will change that. Suddenly, days after calling out the US administration at Coachella to applause and solidarity, there is an avalanche of outrage and condemnation by the political classes of Britain. The real crimes are not in our performances; the real crimes are the silence and complicity of those in power. Shame on them.

A Palestinian man stands by graffiti in Gaza that thanks Kneecap for "being the voice of the oppressed".

📣 KNEECAP STATEMENT:

This is a really useful template if you don't know what to say to your MP other than "fuck this is bad and I'm scared" (I said that too).

Counterpoint: Ted Sarandos hasn’t a leg to stand on when he commissioned a $320 million film with no return to make its money back. Barbie, Oppenheimer, Wicked and now Sinners have proved that the cinema audience is there. Audiences want quality, not something that will be forgotten about in a week.

Why Shopping Local This Indie Bookstore Day Is More Important Than Ever Several independent book store owners are encouraging people to go out to their local independent bookstores to buy some novels to help celebrate Independent Bookstore Day and keep independent busines...

Need an excuse to buy more books? Now you have one! Saturday is Indie Bookstore Day! Show your favorite indie some love.

"AI is coming, its inevitable" no its not you sniveling weirdo. how are those 3D TVs going. how are NFT markets looking these days. Seen anything cool in the metaverse lately?

anyone who says we need to resign to using it, that itll be here whether we like it or not, is a feckless dipshit.

Can’t get over some of the scenes in this film. Brilliant!!!

‘My son was killed in front of my eyes. Three bullets in his chest’: Patrick Freyne in Chad’s desert camps An unforgiving conflict between rival military factions has killed 150,000 people. Another 12 million people are displaced, many fleeing to a huge desert camp in eastern Chad. Photographs by Chris Mad...

There’s a city of 237,000 refugees on the Chadian/sudanese border in Adre. The Sudan war is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world right now. 150,000 dead and 12 million displaced. Chris Maddaloni and I spent a week in refugee camps in east Chad.
www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

always a good time to give a bookish kid who thinks magic is cool the Earthsea books

In the shadow of the recent court decision, hopefully it comes out in my writing but: trans rights are human rights and 'biological sex' is a complex non-binary phenomenon.

This is where your Harry Potter money goes

Tech execs declaring all-out war on creators who don’t want their life’s work pillaged for profit

America is no longer America.

‘A lot of children die’: Inside Chad camps for Sudanese refugees US cuts to foreign aid could be ‘a death sentence for millions of people experiencing extreme hunger and starvation’, says World Food Programme

I spent the last week in camps for Sudanese refugees in east Chad. This is the first piece, about international aid cuts & hunger. The kid at the end reminded me of my nephew. More coming next week. The heartbreaking photos are from Chris Maddaloni www.irishtimes.com/world/africa...

Oscars: Film Academy Establishes Stunt Design Award The award will be presented beginning at the 100th Oscars, which will recognize films released in 2027.

hell yeah

This is really unfair to everyone who just voted for him for the racism.