please, my government, stop trying to do this. Regulate big tech companies, yes; ensure fairness and competition. Don't ask for back doors; they make everyone less safe, you can't be trusted, future governments can't either, and it makes it harder to regulate Google and Apple when they are wrong.

Liberty@libertyhq.bsky.social · yesterday

NEW 🚨 Apple are challenging the UK Government's secret data access that could create a 'backdoor' to our encrypted information. Liberty and Privacy International are also challenging these secret orders, known as 'Technical Capability Notices' (TCNs). www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/issue/libert...

Guys, this is a FANTASTIC book so please do pre-order!

Anne Charnock@annecharnock.bsky.social · 11h ago

Author copies! Such beauties 🥰. I’m so thrilled ALSTON MOOR is alive! And I’m immensely thankful to everyone involved @goldsf.bsky.social @goldsmithspress.bsky.social @unamccormack.bsky.social Pre-orders are open at all excellent bookshops. 📚🥰📚 Coming 1 September 2026. @sarahsuch.bsky.social

One of the things that has made the loss of Glen Hansard so hard is just how easy it is to overlook the people who fight every day to make art, to make the world more beautiful, to ask us to see the transcendent.

👇👇🤩

robert j bennett, ceo, results omega@robertjbennett.bsky.social · yesterday

hey! that’s today!!

yyyyyep.

Paris Marx@parismarx.com · 2d ago

getting tired of people on the left still launching substack newsletters after all the reporting on that company in recent years

NEW How the BBC turned the litigation table on Trump The president now faces a dilemma about revealing his business records By me at @prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

You've no idea how hard it is for people suffering a health condition to self advocate. Living, daily with an illness as the dominant and sometimes debilitating background to your life, whilst working, eating, just existing. And then having to dredge up the energy to justify your existence

Picked this up on a whim and quietly loved it. It’s slim (an afternoon’s read for anyone doing couch to 5k), but w an emotional heft. What’s the point of art, Isherwood asks, when the world is on fire? And how do we keep creating that art when we see and feel the flames?

One of the deep cultural and policy differences between Ireland and England (not UK) is the punitive, often borderline or actually abusive secondary school system run by privatised 'trusts' with no local control. To an Irish person it really feels like a government that hates/fears its children.

Andrew Sissons@acjsissons.bsky.social · 2d ago

This is a harrowing - though not surprising - read. It’s probably hard to quantify, but I think we need to know how widespread this approach is, and what impact it has on young people’s mental health

TONIGHT! Still room if you want to come along! We might get a bit of rain but the terrace has big canopies on it so we should be fine even if so. See y'all there! 💚

ATProto London • Bluesky social events in London, UK@atproto.london · 3w ago

We'll be back at Newspeak House's beautiful covered terrace on 30 July for our second annual summer drinks social. No talks or presentations, just lovely drinks and chats with people in the community. RSVP here! luma.com/42emvbsy

They pulled the lion by the hair They hit him with the folding chair And from his lips they drew the Hallelujah

And as @kardyology.bsky.social observed, it's ok to pay more tax "to fix social care and the NHS as long as the private equity parasites that have infected both are eradicated" and not "to line the pockets of shareholders of companies that have been invited to enshitify essential public services."

Paul Hebden@paulhebden.bsky.social · last wk.

Fucking tell that to my mate in Pudsey who has had to sell the house his brickie father built to pay mums £80,000 a year care costs to a company based in a fucking tax haven. Charles Moore's family will doubtless have millions left to pay for this care. Most working class families have a house.

Sidebar on UK secondary history curricula abundance converging onto subject duopoly: Couple of years ago I jokingly asked my A-levels state school god-child if it was "all Nazis and Tudors" and he said "Yes. Literally yes. That's what we're studying." And that the teacher was SO bored.

Kerry CoCo is the first local authority in the State to unveil a statue dedicated to the women of the revolutionary period, 1912-1923-Standing in Tralee Town Park,the sculpture, Spiorad Ban Chiarraí, depicts a woman striding forward while clutching the tricolour www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster...

Tralee reveals ‘Spirit of the Kerry Women’ statue honouring women of revolutionary period

The 2.5m bronze sculpture in Tralee honours the contribution and sacrifice of women during Ireland's struggle for independence, in what is believed to be a first for a local authority

irishexaminer.com

Some fabulous audiobook recs on this thread where @hildur.bsky.social asked for suggestions.

Chris Doyon@nilbog3000.bsky.social · 2w ago

Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer - a very approachable and wildly entertaining history of the history of the mostly Italian Renaissance and a philosophical investigation of how we as humans create history

The most important book of the year -- get out the pitchforks. LIMITARIANISM: THE CASE AGAINST EXTREME WEALTH by INGRID ROBEYNS

In Dublin this evening.

yeah I think they're happy

One week to go!

ATProto London • Bluesky social events in London, UK@atproto.london · 3w ago

We'll be back at Newspeak House's beautiful covered terrace on 30 July for our second annual summer drinks social. No talks or presentations, just lovely drinks and chats with people in the community. RSVP here! luma.com/42emvbsy

Far be it from me to perpetuate rustic stereotypes but now we're on the correct island for a spell Milo and Chip are unabashed hayseeds

A small fine is a start, but saving the web and our information environment requires more ambitious approaches. We have the means, with the DMA as it exists, to be far more strategic in shaping a livable technological future. One such strategy, that also helps a lot for AI, is ftw.fund.

Funding The Web: A Wise Choice

The Web is slow-motion collapsing for multiple reasons, but at the heart of it all is a little known system: the Search/Browser Levy. Let's fix it!

ftw.fund

Teresa Ribera@teresaribera.ec.europa.eu · 2w ago

👉🏼 Self-preferencing in Google Search: People should see the best results, not Google’s favorite results. 👉🏼 Restrictions on steering in Google Play: Citizens deserve to know all options and developers should be free to talk to their customers. 2/2 ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

I feel like I encounter this dynamic - not only have we stopped pursuing long, open-ended searches, we're also losing the spaces, infrastructures, and knowledge architectures in which they happen.

@gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 2w ago

Scientific breakthroughs, artistic leaps, tech innovation rarely emerge from efficient retrieval of known information. They emerge from periods of undirected exploration, when people follow questions further than they need to & find things they weren’t expecting www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/o...

This is why we publish. 'I was in the @bookcornerhx.bsky.social raving about this book, the writing, the story & the characters connected with me. Maybe its because I lost my father recently but I was moved to tears in many places as I was explaining the story to the lady in the bookshop.'

Congratulations to everyone at Toppings York One of the finest bookshops in the land, absolutely blown away. It really is a book shop destination and great to catch up with Georgia too. A must for all book lovers. @thebookseller.com

Hi Bluesky. I’m officially asking my network for help. It’s been a tough 10 months on the job market, and I am actively seeking policy and policy-adjacent roles in agricultural emissions, greenhouse gas mitigation, air quality, and biotechnology regulation. 🧵

Google ads and Google analytics should not be in the same company and would not be if we cared about antitrust at all.

Search Engine Roundtable@seroundtable.bsky.social · 2w ago

Google Ads and Google Analytics bulk linking www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-b...

One of these years....! As it's my 2nd summer chained to the desk (and honestly not loving it) I can. not. stop. thinking. about all the lovely festivals and outdoor things I will do once I'm free Wigtown. Borris. Hay. And that's just the books Suffolk for some camping and folk music thing. Soon.

Lee Randall@leerandall.bsky.social · 2w ago

Off to Wigtown for a quick visit. We launch the programme with tickets on sale to all from Friday. Hope you like what we’ve built and come along this autumn. Www.Wigtownbookfestival.com

Historically, fascism has been most enthusiastically brought to power by corporatism. Google is no exception.

The Intercept@theintercept.com · 2w ago

Much of this record is now permanently deleted, erasing detailed testimony of people ingested by the U.S. deportation machine. interc.pt/3TJjOw0

An extended version of the preface to Platformland - on waiting, digital, and the surfaces the state presents to the world -: https://richardpope.org/2026/07/20/an-extended-version-of-the/

yeah if you respond to my post about an appalling, costly, and negative externality-creating HMRC proposal with 'only tax dodgers have a problem with this and self-employed people are basically tax dodgers' then it's an instant block. honestly wtf is wrong with (a small subset of) people