Mark Appleby

Wow, how Google has fallen

Business leaders have been making this tedious schoolboy category mistake on and off for over a century. This guy should read up on John Davies. Or if he can't be bothered, he could just take a glance across the Atlantic.

The Great Free Speech Absolutist

Perhaps the EU / member state governments could learn something from Serbia and bring some young people / new ideas into its discussions. Because at the moment paranoid populism lite isn't working. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

After years of obstructing the EU, Orbán is apparently being lined up for a promotion to obstruct the entire world.

wow, #meta just won't stop being evil, will it...?

👀 At this point, the US appears to be run by people in a death cult. From measles outbreak to explosive diarrhea, now "A bird flu outbreak has been raging uncontrolled on a Utah mink farm for two months. Flu experts fear it could spark a devastating human pandemic."

“In America, biblical teachings tend to jump from the Ten Commandments at the beginning of the Old Testament to the Book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament. The Gospels, the Beatitudes, all that provides the key teachings of Jesus Christ is a footnote” www.theverge.com/tech/1014252...

Fraser Nelson commendably points out to the Right that their narrative of 'lawless Britain on the verge of civil war' is the inverse of the truth. And the big rise in immigration has coincided with a big drop in crime. frasernelson.substack.com/p/lawless-br...

The Besnard Lakes at Bristol Strange Brew last night. Psychedelia,spacerock and Beach Boys harmonies all most enjoyable.

Truly awful. I wonder if/when these will start to show up in higher-level stats like the global poverty or infant mortality data bsky.app/profile/mcle...

"With a seeming flick of a switch, Musk has the power to alter the course of a deadly conflict. " Nobody should have that kind of power www.wsj.com/world/ukrain...

Trump laments that Ukraine was not subjugated on day one of the illegal Russian invasion, with all the torture, kidnapping and slaughter that would have followed.

Worth noting that while Johnson and Hancock deservedly get much of the flak for this deadly failure, the minister who failed to protect the care sector was Helen Whately - who is now the Tory shadow minister pushing draconian benefit reforms

Abolish the Home Office.

This speaks to the deep trouble the Tories are in. Retired military men with a code of honesty & concern for national security used to be core Tory voters. If the party has lost these people, what is its constituency?

The OPCW, who did great work investigating chemical attacks in Syria despite foreign interference and rampant conspiracy theories, is facing a funding crisis thanks to the US withholding funds - europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary/t...

Trump and Musk going all out to protect Putin

cc: @bencollins.bsky.social: reality is coming after @theonion.com and it's a close race.

"'Unprecedented' Cyberattack cripples supermarket fridges across Europe as hackers activate automatic defrosting — delivery and store prices also impacted by incident" www.tomshardware.com/tech-industr...

Ah that old thing of the Home Office declaring a place to be safe when the Foreign Office advises against travelling there. Safe for the likes of them, but not for us.

This reminds me of the abhorrent Tuskegee Experiment, which ran in Alabama from 1932 to 1972 and involved deliberately not treating black men who had syphilis - to see what happened.

Good thread on AI… One way of looking at it is that the ai buildout has turned low cost high margin businesses (Google, Meta) with moats into low margin high cost ones without them.

'Watson told the podcast he would work with a Reform UK government on immigration crackdowns if the situation arose, saying: “[Palantir] don’t actually work in that sector, but yes, of course we would"' www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Absolute trash, by trash people who are not scientists

To govern is to choose, or some such. Not difficult to see why so many see the Tories as the nasty party.

"a new mental climate". "a culture of resentment". Interesting and thought-provoking beyond France, what is belonging and society in today's extensively inter-connected world, and do politicians have answers - not obviously.

The UK becoming one big fossil fuel fired data centre for US hyperscalers with a few isolated housing developments with no local amenities scattered around them is certainly a vision. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Me, 2021: describes openly racist age verification providers licking their lips at the possibility of using their products to identify and ban foreigners from the internet in Britain 2026: Rupert Lowe is an investor in an age verification provider theuglygame.wordpress.com/2026/07/15/p...

Going to be honest this might be my favourite headline of the AI bubble

Hey, remember when engineering fields (all of them) took pride in precision, rigorous testing, safety standards, sufficient margins for error, etc? Yeah, that was nice. www.404media.co/these-tech-w... >>

Reuters got some of the IPO docs. Anthropic is a total dog of a company. Spent $12.6bn to make $4.6bn in revenue in 2025, $7.33bn of which was compute costs. Operating loss of $8bn. Losses getting worse year over year. Amazing stuff www.reuters.com/business/fin...

as a satire on so-called late stage capitalism how could one beat investors pouring a trillion into a company offering to wipe out humankind

Wow ... "X Blocks Account of National Conference of Bishops of Brasil As Catholics Back Lula" paydayreport.com/x-blocks-acc...

The false ”rogue” narrative rolls out again. These autonomous hacking tools have been built and released on the orders of tech bro execs who need to be prosecuted each time this happens. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/t...

Big NYT investigation into how Russia uses shell companies and Tether, a crypto coin, to evade sanctions and buy arms www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/b... One of the key shareholders in Tether is Christopher Harborne - the Thai-based man who is Reform's biggest donor and bunged £5m into Farage's pocket

Open AI will have to answer for this ... "ChatGPT also discussed reloading time and potential casualties: "Assuming each shell results in one hit, you might down 1o to 20 people max, depending on spacing, density, reaction times, and chaos." www.motherjones.com/media/2026/0...

As always, the party of individual liberty wants to subject the choices and behaviours of the worst off to relentless moralising control

I think once black clad men are interfering with rescues at sea, we are past "legitimate concerns". Once they're attacking boats, and risking the lives of everyone on board, it's just thuggery. The Home Secretary's statement is on the side of criminals. There's no other way to read it.

I did say Shabana Mahmood would be on the side of the thugs. Burnham keeping her in post was an utter disgrace. Labour supporters should be brave enough to say so. So should Labour MPs.

The British right has now descended to the point where 'the England team are not English' is becoming the consensus position

‘We’ll eradicate the state pension’ would be quite the proposal for Reform www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

who's up for robbing banks while shouting "stop the boats" so no-one arrests us?

Just set up a monthly donation to RNLI after reading this thread. Christ.

What a farce. As farmers fail to access funds to support sustainable farming, this will undoubtedly mean valuable wildlife habitat (recently created or much older) will be destroyed, as farmers feel they have no option but to intensify their farming systems. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Hard to explain how gobsmacking this is. The government opened applications for farm subsidies this morning at 10. And closed it just before 4 because they'd run out of cash. Applying for your livelihood like it's Oasis tickets. defrafarming.blog.gov.uk/2026/09/22/s...