Charles Ubaghs

I've not tried lossless streaming audio until Spotify added it to premium finally. Good god. It's like listening to a CD again in terms of audio quality but I feel like I've finally emerged from the cave. Note you need wired headphones or expensive bluetooth ones that support lossless.

Some big news from us today

I have not seen Love Actually. Whew. Got that one off my chest

I've watched a lot of it. It's like one of the parody ads in Robocop

YouTube video by MrBeast Would You Risk Dying For $500,000?

This would have been a sketch on Brass Eye years ago. But now, here we are. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo7i...

Ian Penman · Infinite Wibble: Brian v. Eno At his best, Eno is a model of how to inhabit this role with verve and mischief; at other times you may wonder how...

I’m an Eno fan but there’s some excellent poking at the myth here. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Notes on the 'Balance of Forces' Civil Society as a Battlefield

I jotted down some quick notes about where things stand post-Kimmel:
www.unpopularfront.news/p/notes-on-t...

NEW PODCAST FROM ME👇👇

So excited to bring you Coining It: a 6 part documentary series telling the extraordinary story of the Blackpool bitcoin millionaire, James Parker.

It's a fusion of politics and true crime. A tale of tech, morality and justice. It must be heard to believed. Out Sept 30th.

Just had this ad served to me on insta. As someone who went to high school in 90s America where not selling out and alt music was the thing, this would have enraged my fellow teens at the time.

Google will put posts from X and Instagram in your Discover feed Google Discover is becoming more like a social feed.

Discover is one of the key traffic lifelines left for publishers in the A.I. summary world. Adding in links to social content in that space is going to complicate that traffic pipeline.

Marjorie’s, London W1: ‘Original, and truly, madly good’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants Some of the most accomplished and imaginative food in Soho right now

Tried Marjorie’s last night. I will be thinking about the chicken liver rocher and the bavette for a long time to come. Really excellent.

Ready for my Mentat training

My six year old twins just demanded that I push them on swings at the park because I am their butler. And if I don’t do it they will have me run over by the car, which they paid for. I am doomed.

How Do You Spot a ‘Performative’ Male? Look for a Tote Bag.

I normally have a high tolerance for these silly archetype trend pieces. But not this time. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/s...

Superman actor Terence Stamp dies aged 87 | LBC Hollywood actor Terence Stamp, best known for his starring roles in the Superman franchise, has died at the age of 87.

Terence Stamp as Zod in Superman 2 is one of those performances that just burned itself into my childhood brain.

www.lbc.co.uk/article/supe...

My six year old twins have somehow picked up the phrase “if you do X I
will haunt your dreams”. They’re surprisingly adept at deploying it.

In case you missed it @newsagents.bsky.social has a brand new website. Since the start of the podcast the aim has always been for it to be a 360 news brand that does video and articles with a podcast at its core. This is another key step in that direction.

www.thenewsagents.co.uk

It’s good proper heavy techno for us now Luke.

My god. The site is still up and found a pic of me and keely on it from 2012

Exactly that. I’m sure @luketurner.bsky.social has thoughts from when we were running around there

Because I am of a certain vintage, I randomly started thinking about the popularity of party photographers at club nights I used to go to in the late 00s in East London. People would be excited to spot themselves on those websites the day after. A behaviour that I feel wouldn't land today.

I could watch those films all day.

Have decided to up my tote game.

Some will. Some won’t. The upside is that some bad practices will go. The downside is, well, pretty clear

Google Search: Introducing AI Mode in the UK Ask more complex, nuanced questions on Google Search with AI Mode, now available in the UK.

AI mode is now in the UK (via @stevewb.bsky.social). There's a reality where that becomes the default view in search. And, once again, I don't think you can underestimate the impact that will have on information ecosystems at all levels. blog.google/around-the-g...

when they close it all up, I do believe this will go down as the funniest video on the internet

Sharp read by @cwarzel.bsky.social here. + soft brain scroll” is an inspired label for what/how people consume whatever post monoculture bucket they’ve landed in.

When users did not see an AI overview, the authors write, they clicked on links 15 percent of the time. When they did see one, that number fell nearly by half, to 8 percent. The study also found that people are likelier to stop browsing after encountering an AI overview, suggesting that the overview has satisfied their curiosity. Researchers saw that outcome 26 percent of the time when AI overviews were displayed, up from 16 percent when they were not.

A new Pew study offers data to back up what we have suspected for a while now: AI answers are draining all the traffic out of the web www.platformer.news/google-ai-ov...

Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain Google’s AI Overview, which is easy to fool into stating nonsense as fact, is stopping people from finding and supporting small businesses and credible sources.

So, that impact on information ecosystems feels even bigger now than it felt those previous weeks from a few weeks ago. What innocent times they were in comparison.

www.404media.co/googles-ai-i...

Ozzy is one of like 3 people in Decline of Western Civilization Part 2 that comes off as a decent human being and I always love the scene where Penelope Spheeris interviews him making breakfast while he explains the ups and downs of the business.