Tories launch campaign to Save The Ponies and party sources insist Starmer "has a history when it comes to supporting the slaughter of defenceless quadrupeds."

The propaganda channels Lyukshin used to spread disinformation, “run from accounts based in Russia, posted ‘lies about the motive for the arson attacks,’ which were then spread by far-right anti-Islam activist, Tommy Robinson.”

Perhaps people can shut up about “rent boys” now?

A striking thing about Trump is that he seems very concerned about the lives of Russian soldiers, completely unlike Putin

📱There's no such thing as a social media ban for under-16s It means we will ALL face a “papers, please” demand to get online. Holding platforms to account and giving parents the tools they need are the answer for child safety - not government-issued bans and digital ID checks for all.

I can't believe I'm sharing this, but here is 13 year old Tom, vlogging on his youtube channel from his bedroom. This a video from a channel long since shut down, from the year of our lord 2010. None of it is my proudest work - but I got better as I got older. I learned skills and made friends, some of whom I still know to this day. Making these silly videos over time taught me so much about video editing, talking to cameras, and being effective on social media. I failed a lot before I got better. But I had the chance to try. I developed skills that have helped me enormously in adult life. Had I not been able to make silly videos on youtube - and get motivated/excited about thousands of people watching them - my subsequent life would have certainly looked very different. Some might argue that would have been for the better, but it would have certainly been for the more boring.

Scene, Downing Street: ‘How can we make ourselves even more unpopular?’ ‘Well, prime minister, we could allow Natural England to proceed with their plan to shoot 90% of the ponies on Dartmoor’ ‘Yes, that might do it.’

The Youtube ban is going to to have particularly adverse effects on youngsters interested in two areas that are almost dead now in the state sector in the UK: Music, and Languages. When I was learning Russian, there were loads of great free resources online.

The identity checks that the UK government is planning to force on social media companies have long been deemed unconstitutional by the US supreme court. They reject any attempt to "protect children" that might impact on adults. That includes identity/ age checks that some adults may be unwilling or unable to carry out. The UK is walking into a situation that the US constitution was written to protect against

It's back. Incredible how giving the state powers to assist people to die, is a now considered a higher priority for some politicians than fixing an NHS that struggles to keep people alive. Grrr.

Terrible news today that Digital ID for all adults has been announced by the Government. Would Stalin or the Stazi liked this? Yes.

Already something very fishy about Lauren Edwards’ assisted suicide Bill. Edwards says she doesn’t think the Bill should be enacted through the Parliament Acts, yet is insisting exactly the same Bill be passed by the Commons as last time, refusing even to incorporate Lord Falconer’s 70 amendments from the last session. There can only be one reason for this: the Parliament Acts require the same Bill to be passed by the Commons in two sessions. I’ve no doubt that Edwards will continue to present her Bill simply as an opportunity for the Commons to ask the Lords to “finish the job”, but the idea that the Bill won’t end up on the statute book if the Commons passes it again is, frankly, disingenuous.

It is almost an iron rule of politics that a policy that is generally popular and enjoys wide cross-party support will turn out to be a disastrous mistake

So he thinks that 16 years should be able to vote but not watch YouTube after 9pm? This government is utterly baffling.

This is, perversely, good news for Britain, Australia, Japan, Europe, and other countries being cut off that would once have seen themselves as close allies of the United States. It shows us what the future may hold if AI is the strategically and economically decisive technology of the 21st century and is controlled by the US and China. It is good news because *it may be happening early enough to give us time to act.* I think this will be rescinded pretty soon, but it’s a sign of things to come. In a future where frontier models cannot be used outside the US, our industries and economies will fall behind and American businesses may not be able to operate overseas. We won’t be able to defend ourselves militarily with defence systems built on obsolete software. Europe 2031 is a good scenario of what a future like this could mean: europe2031.ai Some of the things we need to do are ‘no regrets’ measures we should do anyway. But some are genuinely costly and risky. We need cheap electricity – powered by gas, coal (this is costly, coal is very bad), deregulated nuclear fission – whatever can provide *cheap, reliable, 24/7* power. This almost certainly excludes wind power, which is enormously expensive and unreliable. We need projects to be able to connect to the grid in days rather than years by paying for fast-track connections. We need to make it incredibly easy to build data centres, with the property taxes retained locally and hypothecated for local tax cuts so there is some direct benefit for locals. This doesn’t need to be nationwide. We need to create new regulatory regimes for innovative businesses that give them the right to hire and fire staff with ease. The difficulty and cost of firing staff is one of the main reasons Europe has fallen behind so badly. We need to create a parallel employment regime that companies and workers can opt in to: worksinprogress.co/issue/why… Even though I think it will probably fail, I think we should probably try to create a good, non-American frontier AI lab. I am quite pessimistic about this – even extremely well-resourced, innovative software companies are struggling to do this. But the stakes are so high that not trying seems foolish. One thing that might work in our favour is the number of brilliant AI engineers who are not US citizens, who under the current export controls do not have access to Mythos/Fable even if they live and work in the US. What happens to Demis Hassabis, Ilya Sutskever, Andrej Karpathy, and the many other Europeans, Canadians, etc who are working on AI models in Britain and America who are affected by this? I do not think we should force our own companies to use model, because this would exacerbate their economic weakness – this lab should have to compete on an even playing field. I am deeply sceptical that this can work, but we cannot rule it out. If we do it, it has to be able to pay US salaries, operate without political constraints. worksinprogress.co/issue/how… It is cope to tell yourself that Trump is an aberration or that these export controls are a one-off. To repeat, I think these specific controls will be lifted quickly and it will be easy to move on and forget it happened. But this is a look into a potential future. Every one of us that is not a US citizen is at risk. The standard political divides do not apply here; the question is whether you grasp the enormity of AI as a technology. We have to act!

“The defence of our nation is the first duty OF GOVERNMENT”. A duty in which this government is self-evidently failing. Praising the devotion of the armed forces does not cut it any more, I’m afraid.

“Why John Healey had to resign —Institutional inertia meant Healey’s defence reforms fell flat.” By Air Marshall Edward Stringer newstatesman.com/politics/uk…

Al Carns’ resignation letter reads (much, much more than John Healey’s) like the start of a leadership bid

I wonder if Al Carns waited to see if he was offered the job before he resigned

Al Carns, the British government’s Armed Forces Minister, follows Defence Secretary John Healey in resigning his position. x.com/AlistairCarns/status/2…