Gareth Cooper
@strangecolours.bsky.social
Earth, Technoethics, Mental Health, Urban Communities • 🇪🇺🇺🇦 • GCU (eccentric)
If AI systems are trained to tell users what they want to hear, what happens when those users are cops and prosecutors? My latest @techpolicypress.bsky.social piece begins a three part series on Perils of AI in Policing, starting with risk of AI sycophancy contaminating law enforcement
Will AI Sycophancy Contaminate Law Enforcement?
AI sycophancy in high risk domains like law enforcement are under-analyzed, argues Tech Policy Press fellow Jake Laperruque.
techpolicy.press
Head of drone manufacturer critically injured in car bomb in Russia. Assassination attempt demonstrates Ukraine’s ability to continue clandestine operations deep inside Russian territory. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...
Head of drone manufacturer critically injured in car bomb in Russia
Assassination attempt demonstrates Ukraine’s ability to continue clandestine operations deep inside Russian territory
theguardian.com
Updated with a few more suggestions - worth looking at my photo of a uppity stag beetle 😄https://www.wildway.info/p/contribute-to-wildlife-research
Ways you can contribute to wildlife data collection
Help conservation with a bit of wildlife reporting and have fun doing it
wildway.info
The experience of being chased by a murderous kamikaze drone, a flying machine that behaves as if it were alive, is not one that humans are equipped to understand: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The Dystopian Future Dawns in Kherson
Putin’s human safari in Ukraine is the beginning of a grim new normal.
theatlantic.com
Trump will be mad because Iran and Oman, charging 3%-7%, are undercutting his price. www.cnbc.com/2026/07/13/t...
Trump proposes 20% toll on cargo through Strait of Hormuz; restarts Iran blockade
The Strait of Hormuz is a major oil shipping route and the epicenter of the U.S. and Israel's ongoing war with Iran.
cnbc.com
Successive recent governments have emboldened racist hatred through inflammatory rhetoric and cruel policy. This time must be different - we're proud to join @runnymedetrust.bsky.social and 100+ other organisations calling for a national anti-racism strategy.
Runnymede Trust@runnymedetrust.bsky.social · 7d agoFrom widespread racist violence, to attacks on places of worship and burning down homes and businesses of people of colour, our new Prime Minister is inheriting a country which is ripping at the seams.
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...
Liberty responds to Apple’s new legal challenge against UK Government’s secret access orders - Liberty
libertyhumanrights.org.uk
"Grocers are already bringing in more products from abroad because of the poor conditions at home" But the time is coming - soon - when countries will hold onto their own And the UK imports getting on for half its food www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Farmers warn shoppers face smaller and more expensive vegetables due to hot weather
This year's harvest could be the worst on record due to the exceptionally dry spring and summer.
bbc.co.uk
Kemi Badenoch on Today defending the neo-Nazi council candidate by saying that it is right to give those who have previously been radicalised a chance. Badenoch on Shamima Begum, whom was groomed by Islamic State when a child, "Citizenship is a privilege, she forfeited it." 🤔
The original idea for the Chunnel was that foot passengers would get a EUROSTAR train. Eurostars would start in LONDON, but also service other stations en route: - LONDON St Panc - Stratford Int. - Ebbsfleet - Ashford - [TUNNEL] - Calais Fréthun - LILLE - PARIS/BRUSSELS Sounds great, doesn't it?
Thousands of VEHICLES cross between Dover and Calais every day. Some take the ferries, some "Le Shuttle" (special trains via the tunnel). But "Le Shuttle" is not a passenger service! You need a vehicle. Nor are there any public BUSES that use it. Buses that cross the channel all use the FERRIES.
The map shows many ferries, but these "survivors" are mostly the longer routes. Only DOVER-CALAIS still has a 2h crossing and the only operator that takes FOOT PASSENGERS is P&O - who made headlines 4 years ago by sacking 800 staff and having vessels grounded on safety issues. Je ne suis pas fan 🙁
‘Humiliated’ P&O staff ‘treated like criminals and given bin bags for belongings’
P&O has faced widespread criticism after staff were sacked via Zoom without warning
independent.co.uk
Off on a 36h jaunt to revisit the pleasures of CROSS-CHANNEL travel, as a FOOT PASSENGER. Those raised in SE England will know the day-trip routine: cross in the morning, have lunch in France and throw it up in rough seas on the return 🙂 But what is still possible, now we have the Channel Tunnel?
this has a CRIMINALLY low amount of views. thousands of people illustrating The Fellowship of the Ring, frame by frame. it's so beautiful
Flipbook of the Rings "Chill Edition" (the first 11 minutes)
YouTube video by Flipbook of the Rings
youtu.be
This looks like an important book. It’s hardly surprising though that a system built on rewarding people for churning out papers in the same few journals is not very good at helping us find things out
Rebecca Sear@rebeccasear.bsky.social · 17h ago“The tragic implication of Plümper and Neumayer’s analysis is not that individual scientists are unusually dishonest, but that a system designed to incentivise truth-seeking has been incrementally transformed into one that often rewards its distortion” blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofb...
My column on how capital becomes a death cult. Faced with a choice between profit and human life, the radical right chooses profit. Then it tries to persuade us that mass death is what we want. It's the new phase of climate denial: accept your fate, earthlings. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Murderous heat, an endangered food supply, decimated landscapes: embrace the Mediterranean life | George Monbiot
As climate disaster stares us in the face, the radical right says ‘Embrace the Mediterranean life’. Embrace death, more like it, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
theguardian.com
Wait, what? "In Jerusalem’s Old City, a group of Israeli teenagers recently banged on the door of the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church and asked if there were Christians inside it. They wanted to spit at them. The boys said it was a religious duty, or mitzvah." Gift link!
Spitting Attacks Show Rise of Anti-Christian Hate in Israel
Negative attitudes toward Christianity are becoming more common among young Israelis.
wsj.com
"Earlier on Tuesday, Palestinians gathered for a mass funeral of more than 100 bodies finally recovered from a deadly Israeli strike in Gaza in 2023." "Over the weekend, first responders dug through the destroyed buildings and recovered remains of 112 victims, including 40 children"
The Associated Press@apnews.com · yesterdayIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will not withdraw from Gaza until Hamas has been completely disarmed.
Calling my #astrophotography chums in the Americas: will you be staying up late tonight with your telescopes trained on the Einstein Crater? Impact: 02:34 EDT; 4 tonnes of Space-X metal (15m x 4m diameter) travelling 5400mph Expected: 50km high plume containing ~1Mkg of debris 😲🔭
Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 5d ago"Will I be able to see the crash?" Probably not, but that doesn't mean friends in the Americas shouldn't try (daylight for those in Europe): look to the eastern limb of the Einstein crater. The @eso.org VLT will observe it & NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is taking before and after images! 🔭🧪🛰️
I recall we had a period of time where the response of Starmer and Cooper to concerns about these groups was ‘I like flags’
Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social · yesterdayLeaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.
Oof. Bending spoons now owns Evernote, Meetup, Eventbrite, Vimeo, and a handful of others. 1.2B is pretty substantial. Are those products better now?
Bending Spoons to buy Airtable for $1.28B | TechCrunch
At its peak in 2021, Airtable was valued at over $11 billion, but earlier this year, its shares were said to be trading on the secondary markets at a valuation of $4 billion.
techcrunch.com
This is the key thing that so many debates about AI replacing jobs miss. Whether AI can do your job is not relevant. What's relevant is whether your boss believes (almost certainly incorrectly) that AI can do your job, or whether your boss wants to use AI as an excuse to let you go to 'cut costs'.
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 3d agoFinally, there's an *economic* coin-trick: "AI will destroy jobs." Sure, yes, AI is destroying jobs. But there's a vast difference between "You got fired because an AI can do your job" and "You got fired because your boss was convinced that the AI can do your job, even though it *cannot*." 45/
This is, imo, absolutely the consequence of politicians, media figures and others being actively unwilling to condemn this behaviour
Charles EP Murphy@cepmurphy.bsky.social · 2d agonews.sky.com/story/nhs-st... stereotypically this has been seen as Old People, but not only would the old people of now have often been born post-Windrush, lot of this will be younger people who've always lived in a diverse Britain. The guy with a pregnant wife likely millennial at oldest
The state of this. A lovely day out for Badenoch and Philp, playing dress up and making pronouncements about early release schemes - having left the country with one hundred available men's prison places, after fourteen years in charge. You read that right. One hundred places.
A superb thread on the current moment in the general populace's bewilderment with what AI is (and whether we should arguably refer to it as 'Advanced Software')
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 3d agoThe greatest magic trick of them all is *lying*. The reason you can't figure out that coin vanish even after the conjurer performs it three times in a row is that they *didn't* do the same trick three times in a row! 1/
I find these kinds of platforms useful because they have a lot of colleagues and more politically mobilised people on them that engage with debates and issues I'm interested in. But you need to be realistic about how whole swathes of politics and everyday life aren't happening here.
