Mike Holderness

Breaking News! Code: y-Axis Alert! Yesterday's Nino 3.4 preliminary sea-surface temperature anomaly set a new record high, at 3.48°C above the 1991-2020 baseline. To clearly show this anomaly, the y-axis max was raised to 4.0°C. Attention historians: this is gobsmackingly bananas.

The owners of Elvis Presley’s music sued Anthropic, saying it trained its AI models on more than 200 of Presley’s songs without permission, accusing it of copyright infringement. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/25/a...

HHS wants a new Medicare code that pays doctors extra only when they attribute a patient’s symptoms to a vaccine. Vaccine critics say doctors are paid to push vaccines. We aren’t. Under this code, we’d be paid to blame them. My new piece in @cidrap.bsky.social: www.cidrap.umn.edu/childhood-va...

It's really important to pay attention to the fact that Lula beat the fascist candidate not by compromising and trying to meet fascist voters in the middle, but by sticking to his guns, promising prosecutions for election interference, and mobilising his own voters to turn out in greater numbers.

Thousands protest in Prague against public media funding reforms https://aje.news/f2v1gk

Reform and Tories have pledged to reverse ULEZ repeatedly.

Wild new story from @natlash.bsky.social Bird flu has been raging uncontrolled on a mink farm for two months. Flu experts fear it could spark a devastating human pandemic. But officials haven’t acted, instead prioritizing the financial interests of the fur trade. www.propublica.org/article/bird...

The National Theatre on the South Bank was opened OTD 50 years ago. Designed by Denys Lasdun with three separate theatre spaces, the building is constructed of board marked, reinforced concrete. Read more about this uncompromising building here buff.ly/24tsr6m

#Serbia: Several women journalists have also been arbitrarily denied the right to report from various polling stations. Reference to non-existent or unenforceable requirements for media accreditation must not be used as an excuse to arbitrarily restrict access to journalists. 👇🧵

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory” — Obama

@bosh.worstpossible.world Latest on Orr. Sadly this Brit baby cant get round the FT paywall 🍼

"A distinctly British approach to artificial intelligence"

"First and only edition of this Juvenalian satire on London, "this great, wicked, unwieldy, over-grown Town, one continued hurry of Vice and Pleasure". "

"a distinctively British approach to artificial intelligence"

The new Chair of OfCom has rather oddly suggested I should set up a left wing version of GB News. This suggests he doesn’t quite know what his job is. But I have taken him at his word. app.prospectmagazine.co.uk/story/75420/...

If you're a business or artist with intellectual property, watch the clock. 7 days until Meta is 3wks from claiming right to scrape your site to develop its AI. Your consent? Apparently unnecessary. All it takes is use of Meta's services. Yes, they delayed but you shouldn’t.

Less than a month after arresting the entire Matsadaash newsroom, the Egyptian govt has now filed baseless charges against the editor-in-chief of Mada Masr, continuing their largest crackdown in years.   This assault on the free press must end NOW. Journalism is not a crime.

I still think AI systems should be paying me 150k per copyright violation. People keep asking me 'what laws do we need for AI?' and I keep saying 'enforce the fucking ones we already have!' There are copyright laws that should be being enforced right now that just... aren't. B/c it's billionaires.

One day a reporter will finally snap back “shut the fuck up, grandpa” and become the first GoFundMe billionaire

According to legend, it’s 31 years to the day since the Financial Times killed one of Britain’s finest poets? They didn’t mean to. It’s just that Gavin Ewart was 79, and the day before they’d bought him a lunch that involved enough booze to fell an ox. A glorious story, but is it true...?

One fascinating characteristic about nationalists is that they invariably know sweet fa about their own nation's history. In fact, Poland has one of the oldest continuously existing Muslim minorities in Europe, with Muslims living there since the 14th century.

Burnham’s government is telling people to stockpile food & water in case of a climate crisis/“technological dependency” while contributing to that climate crisis with Jackdaw & embedding *Palantir* into government systems. Labour is literally saying “protect yourselves from our bad decisions.” 1/2

Why is this student so upset about the mushroom, though? What could it have done to make her protest across the whole continent

Not of course defending any unlawful/ unethical behaviour (which I see is denied) but it’s striking that while ITV, C4 & AJ have been exposing the far right, the BBC’s undercover operations have focussed over & over again on publicising alleged immigration-related crime

As a child I had this, it was incredible, I would read it cover to cover. Modern equivalents seem to be a single volume and picture heavy. Obviously all the information is on the internet, but what am I meant to do, hand a child Wikipedia? No thanks.

The Society of Authors is surveying members about their so-called AI charter: 1) Rip it up and start again 2) Include explicit red lines where AI use is UNETHICAL with examples. i.e. No use in generating ideas or plot. No AI-written text. I don't care if you use it for spellcheck or voice-typing.

Please read my lil exposé of what AI is doing to property listings. Estate agents are jazzing up the photos without declaring it so now they all look identical - these three ‘photos‘ are of entirely different properties: heawood.substack.com/p/its-the-de...

Jack Ross, CEO of Turning Point introduces an undercover reporter from Al Jazeera to a former UVF man who offers to do a contract killing for the right price. Ross talks about violence but says, once sting revealed, he was joking www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottis...

#India 🇮🇳: We call for a swift investigation into the killing of Mohammad Naseem Ahmad, reportedly beaten to death. Those responsible must be held accountable. Journalists must be able to work without fear of violence.

It sure looks like a multi-thousand-dollar short story prize a couple of months ago went to a white American writer with a story that appears to be AI (and who has been transparently publishing a deluge of likely-AI work in over 20 mags and outlets over the last year).

NUJ members at The Lancet are on the picket again today in their fight for fair pay. Thanks to our parliamentary group for coming down and to everyone who sent messages of support! #SolidarityForScience ✊ Live coverage: www.nuj.org.uk/resource/lan...

Israel denied entry to four European journalists last week, including French reporter Sylvain Mercadier of L’Humanité, whose visa was revoked just days after being issued. The incident has raised fresh concerns over restrictions on foreign journalists reporting on Israel and Palestine.

Here’s a chart of Brent oil futures for delivery NEXT December — 2027. The highest ever. “.. Oil traders are increasingly pricing the battle over the Strait of Hormuz as the new normal.” - @bloomberg.com ⛽️

Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First https://theonion.com/protestors-criticized-for-looting-businesses-without-fo-1843735351/

Trump Tries to Ban Jack Smith Testimony as BBC Lawsuit Implodes newrepublic.com/post/216805/... via @newrepublic.com

We're backing the Lancet pay strike! 👉The Lancet was founded in 1823 to widen access to medical knowledge 👉Its expert staff do a great job fulfilling that mission 👉They've had years of real pay cuts while the company pockets £1bn profits Pay up @elsevierconnect.bsky.social ! #SolidaritywithScience

I needed to know what day the semester ends at my own university; it only took me a web search and 8 separate clicks to find

Watched Digger - a wild & visionary satire about the fossil fuel industry and politics. Great dialogues, often laughing-out-loud funny and disturbingly true. It won't be popular in the US but may well become a classic. Tom Cruise deserves an Oscar for his portrayal of oil company boss Digger.

Question for the Treasury + the Home Office + Downing Street to try to come to shared view: Would they prefer to forego £7 billion or to forego £14 billion to reduce immigration? Would they want net migration to land around 100-150k - cost £7bn - or to get to zero + stay < 50k: [cost doubles]?

A bad update: we're getting reports of pro-No Kings creators who have been suspended today as well. And we still lack backend access to the official No Kings account. Stay tuned, will report news when I have it.