Andrew Mobbs

"I am setting out a distinctively British approach to AI"

I thought a Range Rover was classed as a SUV, but apparently it's a crossover. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The total recoverable capacity of the Jackdaw field is around a day of global gas consumption, maybe a day and a half at most. I agree that there is a climate emergency and every bit of CO2 emission counts, but I don't think the scale of this project justifies the "environmental catastrophe" label.

Feeling rather pleased with a toy French vocab game I vibe-coded for my 9yo's homework this week. He was utterly engaged and enthused, the project worked. The homework is done so the code is disposable. Used only self-hosted infrastructure on my desktop PC to build it, no data centres were involved.

Someone taught the fly brain to trade crypto bsky.app/profile/moll...

Today I'm starting a new job for the first time in over 13 years. It's all very strange. (Off to help Masayoshi Son's golden geese lay eggs... Not sure that moving from the defence industry to the AI one really helps my Bluesky credibility, but it should be fun.)

6yo got a nice Lego set for his birthday. "…awesome toy playset, featuring a cliffside prison […] includes a helicopter, police boat, dinghy, 3 officer and 4 prisoner minifigures, plus police dog and shark figures." Only slightly dystopian… very 2026. www.lego.com/en-gb/produc...

If I can, let me explain today's Times story. This is less to do with renewables and much more to do with where generation is located and how it shows up at a system level. /1

Given the enthusiasm for AI usually shown, I'm amazed my Bsky feed isn't inundated with messages celebrating aiappreciationday.org

Sov/AI sounds a little... Soviet? (or am I just old?) www.sovereignai.gov.uk

Never mind AC, AF is the technology to beat the heatwave.

Increasingly, the two cities’ strengths and weaknesses seem to complement one another. The British Cambridge wants to learn from its American counterpart—and join up with it

big miss for boolean functions if we don't get a Andy v Nandy race.

61% of Britons believe Brexit has been a failure so far, with just 25% of those who voted to Leave the EU a decade ago believing it's so far been a success More of a success: 12% More of a failure: 61% Neither: 19% yougov.com/en-gb/articl...

Very glad we chose this week to go on holiday to the south of Italy to escape the heat of an English Spring. Much cooler here than at home.

J'Acuzzi

Looks like a policy laser-targeted to start a fight with Westminster/the courts over the UK Internal Market Act and market-access principles; and with it, attempt to hitch the old the constitutional fight to the crisis du jour. If you're debating whether the SNP understands markets, you're losing..

This paper represents a small but deeply impressive and genuinely important achievement by the much maligned British state in what is probably the most important global issue of our era. Hear me out ( 🧵) 1/ www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/our-eva...

Britain won the Second Boer War. However, it did so at a surprising cost and exposed fundamental weaknesses in the image of imperial global hegemony. That emboldened Germany in its imperial and regional ambitions. The result of that ambition was the First World War.

It is striking how little media appetite or interest there has been for the Covid inquiry's conclusions

Truly the Fyre Festival of strategic campaigns.

The divide here between Cambridge/South Cambs and Fenland/Hunts/East Cambs/Peterborough is, in parts; hilarious, real and tragic. It means the Midlands/South border is between us and the next village. I'm reminded of @jeremycliffe.bsky.social 's 2016 column - www.economist.com/britain/2016...

Macbeth: SHIT

From an Economist leader in August 2000

These Tureen tests are getting crazy

Thought I'd let the kids experience a proper turnip lantern this Halloween. Possibly not the best carving ever...

Must-read @ecfr.eu : Putin’s Valdai speech marks a shift. He brands Europe “enemy #1”, vows more military pressure, backs far-right parties & steps up info warfare — while praising Trump as a model. Europe must reinforce defence and resilience ! ecfr.eu/article/enem...

5yo has a toy digital camera. He's just declared that he's put it in "1980s mode". He meant black and white, because that's old.

Am I right in thinking that unless there are riots across the UK this weekend then various predictions will turn out to have been wrong?

Rest in peace Tom Lehrer m.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9...

"London hotter than <typically hot holiday destination>" is a regular headline, but this time I'm on the other side of that. It's a pleasant 26°C here in the Algarve.

The conditions that have led to what’s happening in the US today exist in democracies around the world. They are an inevitable outcome of our collective failure to adapt to fundamental changes in the information ecosystem on which our democracies were originally built.

The front fell off.

Expires 2038? They really should have moved on from using a 32 bit time_t for trade negotiations...

Starmer has taken the median voter position's on a set of issues - immigration, foreign aid, self-ID - for no electoral gains because the median voter is a valence voter: they vote on perceived ability to deliver (mostly economic) security, and that's something you can't triangulate yourself into.

I needed this laugh.