The climate emergency is not looming; it's here. 200,000 forced to flee wildfires in France and Spain. The Rhine at record low levels. Fires in the Cairngorms. Hosepipe bans across England. No meaningful rain in Cambridge for 6 weeks. www.france24.com/en/europe/20...

Wildfires force more than 200,000 people in France and Spain to flee

Massive wildfires burned out of control in southwestern France and central Spain on Friday, prompting authorities to evacuate more than 200,000 people. French President Emmanuel Macron ordered the mil...

france24.com

Happy UK paperback release day to our book! www.penguin.co.uk/books/468070... w/ @alexhanna.bsky.social

It’s HEREEEEE!! Bad Services ships tomorrow but here’s a sneak peak of the long awaited sequel to Good Services. good.services/writing/bad-services-has-landed

Just finished reading The AI Con by @emilymbender.bsky.social and @alexhanna.bsky.social A fantastic book dismantling AI hype and talking about a more human future for AI. It’s refreshing to read, so many business meetups are caught up with the AI dream, it’s good to take a hard, critical look.

As part of #IndieNewsWeek, join Bylines Network for a special webinar exploring the future of UK independent journalism. How do we tackle news deserts? What role will citizen journalism play? And how does Indi News respond to AI, disinformation, Big Tech and political extremism? bit.ly/BylinesINW26

@neillyneil.bsky.social hi - just bought BFI membership via the website (on a mobile). Do you know the direct debit form is a bit hooky (sort code requires no dashes, just numbers, but doesn’t say that). And order summary is unreadable on mobile. Would be lovely to see that improved! :)

Sad to read the news that the wonderful artist David Hockney has passed. The Modo gallery in Cambridge has some lovely examples of his work. I love the vitality of his art. #RIP modoart.co.uk/in-memoriam-...

Remembering David Hockney (1937–2026): A Life That Transformed Modern Art

We remember David Hockney, the celebrated British artist whose bold vision, colour, and innovation reshaped contemporary art for over six decades.

modoart.co.uk

This evening we watched the superb Once More With Feeling & videos of Anthony Head as Frank-n-Furter in Rocky Horror. An amazing talent and a wonderful actor. RIP Anthony Head #buffy

New blog post: London Data Store Relaunch https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/06/london-data-store-relaunch/ It has been sixteen years since the launch of data.london.gov.uk. Back then, it was a trailblazer as one of the first major cities to release Open Data in this way. Now, over a decade later, …

London Data Store Relaunch

It has been sixteen years since the launch of data.london.gov.uk. Back then, it was a trailblazer as one of the first major cities to release Open Data in this way. Now, over a decade later, it is more than a mere repository; it is a celebration of Open Data and the way it can improve Londoners' lives. So, time for a refresh front and back. As well as a bunch of back-end updates, the front-end…

shkspr.mobi

NEW Marilyn Monroe, the Hollywood system, and the law of contract How Marilyn Monroe took on Twentieth Century Fox and defeated a major studio By me at @prospectmagazine.co.uk, on Monroe's centenary www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/7367...

I’ve been reading the Odyssey so thought this rather nice porter, Blind Poet from New River was rather apt! An excellent Cambridge Beer Festival :)

Excited to start reading this translation of The Odyssey by Emily Wilson, as recommended by @wmarybeard.bsky.social. I skipped the intro (for now), but the translator’s notes is an interesting read and talks about the care Emily took in translating this ancient epic poem for a modern audience.

Yesterday I was in London with Kate for a rather special garden party! It was a wonderful experience - military bands playing James Bond tunes, beautiful palace gardens, and a lot of fabulous formal wear. We were invited thanks to Kate’s excellent work on community cafe www.cherryhintonhub.org

No. Have better ideas. That's the approach. This strategy is futile.

Robert Saunders@robertsaunders.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Farage has 3 key weaknesses on which the other parties should be laser-focused: - His insatiable appetite for money, and his willingness to prostitute his party to billionaires, crooks & tax-dodgers; - His subservience to Donald Trump; - A nasty temper, which he struggles to hide under pressure.

now thats an anecdote with a punch, from Gillian Tett www.ft.com/content/c0ae...

"....there is a deeper problem no one has really reckoned with openly: expanding Cambridge from its centre makes very little sense." capx.co/cambridge-do... Re Forest City. John Parry Lewis said similar back in 1974. You can see his plans... -->

READ MORE

There is a bold new plan to harness Cambridge’s growth potential

capx.co

Interesting article about online search engine to allow Germans to find out if their ancestors were members of the Nazi party. But why in this modern age does the BBC still not link to the website? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... The Die Zeit website appears to be www.zeit.de/wissen/2026-...

Nazi search engine shows if ancestors were in Hitler's party

Christian Rainer told the BBC he found his grandfather within seconds using the online tool, which also helped clear other members of his family.

bbc.co.uk

Good example of the particle-wave aspect of LLMs: These tools can allow you to do amazing things very quickly, but they are often the wrong things. Something is still missing. annaecook.com/writing/2026...

AI Prototyping: Harder. Worser. Faster. Wronger. — Anna E. Cook

As teams use AI tools to generate high-fidelity prototypes, the focus shifts to output instead of purpose. Prototyping should be about testing ideas and learning what actually works before building.

annaecook.com

Even better: stop treating tech monopolies as if they're an immovable part of the landscape which we can only accept, ban, or regulate. We have the means to replace toxic social apps with better ones, including youth-designed and youth-governed alternatives.

POLITICO Europe@politico.eu · 4mo ago

Europe should regulate Big Tech instead of banning kids from social media, Estonia says

Just watched The Assembly with @nicolasturgeon.bsky.social and @stephenfry.bsky.social. A joyful, intelligent programme, well worth a watch. Some great questions & the performance of I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free at the end of Stephen’s episode was beautiful. #itv

Watching the livestream on BBC as the Artemis 2 astronauts become the furthest people from Earth. Incredible :)

This is about how to detect these fake citations, but I'm trying to wrap my head around *how* fake citations end up in papers. (thread) www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?

Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests.

nature.com

"The real threat is a slow, comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing. Not a dramatic collapse. Not Skynet. Just a generation of researchers who can produce results but can't produce understanding." ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma...

I remember the many tech bros who told me this would go away as the tech got better. And called me an idiot for saying this is clearly just how the software operates on a fundamental level.

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws

In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...

computerworld.com

🧵And we're off, ladies and gentlemen! It's "they're banning the word EASTER" week. Regular as clockwork... So here comes a history lesson and media lesson all rolled into one thread! PS, I can't believe there's no easter egg emoji? This was the best I could do - 🗿🥚 🤣 I digress! 1/19

I've decided to shut my business and do more volunteer / community work. If you know of an organisation which could use a board member with strong digital skills, extensive experience in open source and open standards, or cybersecurity please let me know.

A few thoughts on the "old" Internet tylergaw.com/blog/the-old...

The Old Internet is Still Here

The “old” Internet isn’t gone, our expectations have changed.

tylergaw.com

Just wrote about my books. Some of them are ready to go! llewellyn.substack.com/p/fulfilment...

Fulfilment is Fulfilling

I'm finally starting to ship books

llewellyn.substack.com

Had a great time at the CamCreatives Neville Brody talk this evening, hosted by @billt.bsky.social Lots of talk about design, the importance of young people creating things and breaking the rules, and how technology changes design (not always for the better). #design #cambridge #creativity

Cambridge Disinformation Summit free webinar, this Thursday, 19 Mar 3:30 PM UK Interventions to Psychological Manipulation Featuring: Diane Benscoter, CEO of Antidote.ngo, former cult member & deprogrammer, and author. Register here: cambridge.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...