Dr. Rob Cronin

Starmer - [Farage is] A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist.

“Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.

Considering 99.999% of people would more likely assume it’s a riff on Disco Inferno by the Trammps (a black band fyi), this feels like a bit of a stretch.

Going round & round with this immigration white paper stuff. It is what it is, & hysterical arson attacks are simply deplorable.
I'll leave you with a quote from Starmer today:

Keir Starmer house fire: Police investigate links to two other fires Police are investigating a fire at another property and a vehicle fire to see if they are connected.

If there has indeed been three separate fires overnight linked to Starmer, that is really quite bonkers news, no matter your political persuasion.

Coordinated arson against the Prime Minister. No wonder counter-terrorist squads are investigating!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

YouTube video by THE RINGO JETS THE RINGO JETS - Spring of War (Official Video)

For no particular reason at all, here is some excellent Turkish punk music:

youtu.be/1LXNQQ9V8pE?...

After the Atlantic published the texts this morning, Tulsi Gabbard is confronted today on why she lied in her testimony to the Senate yesterday. She says she misremembered.

Left out guy at the party meme with caption “They don’t know I’m the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.”

Starmer phone call with Zelenskyy:

“The Prime Minister expressed his support for President Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s democratically elected leader and said that it was perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during war time as the UK did during World War II.”

A dictatorship hosting another dictatorship to negotiate with an aspiring dictatorship about the future of a democracy that’s not represented.

Bumping for relevance.

Watch him get confirmed, and then draw conclusions about those guardrails you think are there in the American system…..

This is a very good read, and chimes with what I’ve been seeing since Labour came to power.

The govt has not been without scandal, but the scale of some of the reporting has not matched the scale of some of the stories.

Some stories need hounding down, but not every story is Starmer’s watergate.

deepseek screenshot

kinda curious how deepseek decides when to use "can't answer" and when to give propaganda

Thesis by B.Chaudry (2024): prism.ucalgary.ca/items/694490...

Journal article by Muzumdar et al., (2025): www.researchgate.net/profile/Prat...

This sent me down a rabbit hole to see if any academics had written about the 'Dead Internet Theory' (read: 'conspiracy').
I haven't found much, but there's an interesting thesis submitted to the Uni of Calgary last month, and a comp-sci journal article. Both sound interesting. Links below:

It gives me the same kind of heebie jeebies that I get when I hear of Google Gemini giving false medical information in search, or students using OpenAI to check sources.

This technological revolution is coming with some SERIOUS red flags.

It would be interesting if such interference applied if you hosted the model locally rather than accessing it through the company (since it is open source), but for now, we can just add this onto the pile of world-changing tech that we are distributing to millions of users completely uncritically.

DeepSeek AI refuses to criticize Xi Jinping: "Talk about something else" Chinese-owned DeepSeek AI was also unable to provide any information on Tiananmen Square when asked by Newsweek.

I was debating trying the new Chinese 'Deepseek' generative AI, but the official app lets you know that it collects key-strokes etc...; you need an account to try it on the web, and according to Newsweek, it refuses to talk about Tiananmen square.

Yeah, no thanks.

www.newsweek.com/deepseek-ai-...

It’d be nice if you could sort Bluesky lists by number of subscribers. I’d like to see the most used lists.

Presumably the goal will be a “discover video” feed, alongside these custom video feeds they are encouraging users to create.
The combination of vertical video and custom feeds has fascinating implications for decentralising social media in the long run.
Definitely something Bluesky will leverage.

Notably, the trending vertical videos (TikTok style) work way better for me:

Trump confirms that the US is again withdrawing from the Paris climate accords.

"We're not going to do the wind thing" says Trump, saying wind turbines are ugly. Reaffirms that the policy is to "drill baby drill."

"It was a Roman Salute" the Elon Musk/Paolo Di Canio crossover we didn't know we needed (because we didn't)

I mean, I can’t even watch back my own video that I just uploaded 🙃

I do like video, but…

Am I the only one who experiences this consistently?

Occasionally a video will work, but it’s the exception not the rule.

Vivek's involvement with DOGE lasted negative Scaramuccis

A day later...

Would be nice to have some breathless media coverage about what this tells up about market perceptions of the state of the UK economy..

A pol comms side note - I’m sick of seeing news reports like:
“100 killed, including 31 women & 27 children.”

When it should be:
“100 killed: 42 men, 31 women, & 27 children.”

The former infantilises women, removes their agency, and at the same time acts like the deaths of men aren’t a concern.