Andy Brockman

"They don't want to have leaders against them that can move the conscience of people." Father Paolo Benanti on the motives of #AI punting Broligarchs in meeting with faith leaders.

Meta and #AI are destroying independent media: Discuss. "Insiders cited broad industry-wide online traffic problems plaguing numerous online publishers, including Meta’s decision to deprioritize links to news articles and the rise of chatbots and AI summaries, which have decimated search traffic."

A reminder that if you live in the UK the clocks go back one hour to GMT in the early hours of Sunday... ...and archaeology and heritage adjacent social media accounts will re-run the same old joke about workers having to move the stones at a certain monument in Wiltshire to take account of it.

#DarkHeritage Gets Darker? News The Kehlsteinhaus (aka The #EaglesNest), a surviving part of the complex of buildings and facilities which served Hitler and leading Nazi Party officials at Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, has been heavily damaged in a fire. One arrest has been made.

Breaking: (Thanks to "Whiskey Pete" Hegseth) the US Military, the reputation of the US & President Eisenhower's WW2 globe. "So I think this is just more of the same, which is he does not plan well and executes poorly." Brigadier General (Rtd)Ty Seidule, history professor Hamilton College on NPR.

Spoiler Alert: Quelle suprise...One of the Labour Peers speaking at the event organised by Baroness Claire (ex Revolutionary Communist Party and Brexit Party) Fox's Institute of (batsh*t) Ideas, was Lord (Blue Labour) Glasman.

Questions over the future viability of commercial image libraries as Getty Images blames its collapsed merger with rival Shutterstock & the increased use of #AI images (which are often created using stolen copyright material), for the company filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware.

The push back against #AI data centres reaches Finland as Google goes full Trump Washington golf course and fells illegally as many as 400k trees across two sites.

Edinburgh Reporter: Following decades of delay, Category A, 1723, Mavisbank House, Scotland's"most at risk" historic building, is to be taken over by Midlothian Council and transferred to the Landmark Trust for restoration.

#AviationArchaeology News Having researched the story of 617 Sqd Lancaster "Easy Elsie" and visited the evocative crash site just outside Porjus in Sweden for a TV documentary, I am really pleased the in situ wreckage of the aircraft has now been declared an ancient monument by Norbotten Council.

#HeritageCrime News The Greenwich Wire reports serial antique manuscript thief Melvin West has been jailed for three years after stealing a map from the National Maritime Museum. The map, cut out from a 17th century Dutch atlas, is still missing.

The UK Government has listed the recipients of £18m in grants from the The Places of Worship Renewal Fund and £13m from the Heritage at Risk Capital Fund. These are funding streams forming part of the £1.5bn Arts Everywhere Fund.

In shock news for aviation archaeology the latest expedition in search of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart has proven that an anomaly seen on air photographs isn't connected with Earhart's missing Lockheed Electra. Better luck next time, and the next and the next...

Scottish Society for Northern Studies warns about the HE #BonfireOfTheHumanities "...we risk depriving future generations of essential knowledge, skills, and wisdom, whilst making Scotland, and the United Kingdom as a whole, a less attractive and desirable place to teach, learn, work, and live."

#FreedomOfSpeech News "TikTok has banned the Musk film advertising account, citing a repeated pattern of political content that violates its policies." So, a presumably fully lawyered, documentary critical of the world's richest Broligarch is "political content". I think we get where that goes.

One of the reasons people were so upset and angry at the closeure of the world class archaeology department and other cuts at Sheffield, including to community facing programmes, was it was seen as a betrayal by an out of touch VC and SMT of the University's origins, funded by local working people.

Racist motive suspected as plaque commemorating African-Carribean POW's from the Naploeonic Wars is stolen from Portchester Castle and a bench is defaced with hate inspired graffiti, days after the plaque was unveiled.

Forget the fake flying car stunt. This is today's real story about Elon and his SpaceX tech toys, where the world's richest Fash adjacent broligarch gets to say who gets to play and kills Ukrainian civilians as a consequence.

I am reminded of the Monty Python "Ovine Aviation" sketch about sheep which think they are birds. The shepherd says, as the sheep fall from a tree, "Notice they do not so much fly as plummet."

"An absolute disgrace" claims the Campaign for Real Ale as a Private Members Bill to protect heritage pubs is talked out in the House of Commons. The Bill aimed to provide greater protection to such buildings and was inspired by the suspicious fire & unauthorised demolition of the Crooked House.

The exchange rate in the West Wing is now 2.5 Zacharias to the Scaramucci

@thevicsoc.bsky.social reports that four of it top ten endangered buildings are in receipt of awards from the latest round of the Historic England/DCMS Heritage at Risk Capital Fund.

When a senior Microsoft Executive calls #AI LLM's the"largest theft of labor in human history" there is no responsible and ethical use of generative AI services, especially by authors. Discuss

The story behind one of the iconic photographs of the 1940 Blitz on London (and its cost).

I must confess that, even as a follower of things #AI I did not have the "Skynet T800 will take the form of your fridge" on the bingo card.

Some potentially good, heritage related, news from the beleaguered world of the UK's hospitality industry. Jay Rayner in the FT (£) reports that the Covent Garden home of the UK's oldest restaurant, Rules, has been donated to the National Trust.

The Best #CultureWar Money Can Buy The Guardian investigates the small group of Right Wing academics, journalists and millionaire media owners who are behind attempts to stall the Church of England's attempt to pay compensation for the church's role in chattel slavery. (Oh and also #RestoreTrust)

Combining three of my favourite subject areas, Culture, current affairs, and the inequities of #AI, the best one liner on BluSky today (probably).

#Schadenfreude News It's not been a great few days for Elon. Not only has the critical documentary "Musk" opened, the world's richest broligarch punted letting his Grok #Theftbot go shopping. Ooops! His screenshots had enough information to let mean people try and spend all his money on Lego.

“This is not a story about fractions and SAT problems...This is something that is happening to human knowledge and human expertise from top to bottom and from grade-school students all the way to the leading experts in the world.” Study show #AI use damages the very abilities needed by researchers.

"This is all hugely divisive and will not end well.” Staff at Cardiff University respond to cuts imposed by the University SMT, including in research time and conference attendances.

#WhoWouldHaveGuessed News After all, what with those boozy lunches with the Russian Ambassador, an ex-KGB colonel hosting parties attended by the UK's Foreign Secretary (without his security detail), those spots on RT & a Farage friend doing time for taking the rubles, there was never any evidence.

Allegations that OpenAI used unpublished research without permission or credit, to "solve" mathmatics problems and in the process trashed the research of early career mathematicians and destroyed research programmes.