POLITICO: “.. They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies .. and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.
The government really need to be a lot more thoughtful about what they’re briefing out, or they’re very quickly going to move from “narrow, specific amendments to the ECHR” to “we should just leave the convention altogether”
The latter is not a space they’ll want to get themselves into, politically
A man who works for the people overseeing America’s nuclear stockpile has lost his security clearance after he uploaded 187,000 pornographic images to a Department of Energy (DOE) network. Included AI-generated robot porn.
Perhaps I'm being too pessimistic. As Sarah points out, the macro-trend does point towards this. And we *are* seeing companies successfully experiment with 4-day working weeks
I'm just sceptical that a market that's currently so fixated on profit maximisation would derogate from that in any form
First of all, it's not crazy to think technological change can lead to shorter working hours. Indeed, for much of the past 200 years, that's exactly what we've seen in developed countries. BUT to believe we're going to have another big decline in the work week, you have to believe 3 things...
Investors are betting big bucks on the idea that AI will create an explosion of leisure time...e.g. it was a key part of the public rationale for the massive $55bn takeover of video games maker Electronic Arts. But are they right?? (short thread linked to my column today www.ft.com/content/4011...)
One unfortunate effect of the subscription model – and access to detailed audience data more generally – is that it very much incentivises you to speak primarily to your audience and their perspective, rather than approaching topics holistically
It's as if The Times only discussed motoring from the POV of Bentley drivers. Private schools are essentially an irrelevance but it dominates their coverage of education.
Private school can feel like the only option when the state system isn’t meeting your child’s needs, but the financial burden goes far beyond school fees ⬇️
Promoting the editor-in-chief's personal side project. Zero named sources in a story that promotes the editor-in-chief's personal political position. Misspelling the subject's name. It took one day for CBS News to become a conservative blog.
It feels somewhat apt that over here it’s advertised along with just two 5 star reviews: one from the Times’ Kevin Maher, the other from the Telegraph’s Robbie Gibb
Who's training people in government to talk like this?
Nobody's being won over by these Fisher-Price LLM-style statements. The average takeaway from the below quote will just be "oh, this person's a weirdo"
Embarrassing and childish behaviour here; all, no doubt, just to generate some engagement and a few extra clicks
It really is a bad sign that so many more senior journalists are willing to debase themselves in this way online. It’s time to grow up and show some professionalism again
since we're talking about The Other Place, one now pointless gripe I still have is that actually it could have remained a fair bit more pleasant and usable and useful if more people just used the non-algorithmic timeline and I'll never understand why they didn't just do it
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we'd be far better off treating Twitter use among journos/politicians as an addiction to the platform, and operating on that basis
It's why all the "it's good to stay and be exposed to racism" arguments don't really, on their face, make any sense
Det här kändes uppenbart redan innan den senaste Maktbarometern presenterades. En av mina tankar efter Svenskarna och internet veckan innan dess. open.substack.com/pub/fredrikw...
The whole internet loves Cola Bottle Nate, a lovely guy who almost kills himself eating Haribro cola bottles! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you Mr. Rimmington is racist
A scene transition may not sound like much, but think of how many films and shows utilise now-famous cuts and transitions as part of their storytelling
These small details are integral to the overall story. It's an affront to artists, therefore, to suggest these can be 'automated' or assisted by AI
By contrast, while it may look as though a "transition from scene 5 to scene 6" in The Wire is the same endeavour within a different medium, it misses the fact that "art for art's sake" is often primarily in more creative works
Functionality exists in fiction, of course, but it's often secondary
Even journalists who might consider themselves more creative writers fall into this 'efficiency trap' due to the inherent demands of the medium. The practical mindset, when it comes to writing, can overwhelm the creative
And if it doesn't for the writer, it certainly will for their editor
Art, style and flair naturally appear in all great journalism, but are subsumed, to some extent, by the practical need to deliver information to the reader in a clear and concise manner
The specific example Shapiro gives encapsulates this difference rather nicely, because it's the sort of conundrum you sometimes face when writing an article – how do I cleanly bridge these two aspects of my story from one paragraph to another?
