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James Ball

@jamesrball.com

48K followers 1.1K following 6.1K posts

Tech, policy, politics. Political editor @ The New World, Fellow @ Demos, newsletter @ techtris, PhD researcher @ UCL Laws. Latest book: The Other Pandemic – How QAnon Contaminated The World. 🏳️‍🌈 https://www.jamesrball.com/

www.jamesrball.com

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · Aug 11

Enjoying my posts? (If not: sorry..?)

I have a newsletter here, plz do subscribe: www.jamesrball.com

Details of books I’ve written here: www.jamesrball.com/p/books

And all my writing for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social is here: www.thenewworld.co.uk/contributor/...

I often pop up elsewhere, too.

Techtris | James Ball | Substack

A weekly(ish) newsletter on technology, policy and society, from James Ball. Click to read Techtris, by James Ball, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

www.jamesrball.com

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Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 7h

It's just gutter racism, through and through

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 7h

What if the unidentified masked men with guns don't accept the validity of your papers?

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 3h

morning

James Ball @jamesrball.com · 15h

Just noticed this aspect of the embarrassing CBS screenshot doing the rounds and this is somehow by far the most embarrassing part.

Nicholas Slayton @nslayton.bsky.social · 15h

And it was posted on Oct. 10! Three days later and they still have Mamdani's name misspelled in the headline and URL!

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 16h

I look forward to reading about this in your forthcoming book on the topic!!

James Ball @jamesrball.com · 18h

None of this will remotely cut through to the actual public, but to Badenoch’s political colleagues – the only people who will see it – it’s just *embarrassing*

Thomas I-G @thomasig.bsky.social · 18h

Lol, actually wild stuff to say on today of all days when it's pretty good news all round.

The Guardian live page update from today:

Referring to the post from Steve Witkoff this morning (see 9.53am), Badenoch said:

■ I was not born yesterday. I think it is actually very sad that the government is having to beg people to send tweets to say something nice about Jonathan Powell.

The American ambassador to Israel has actually criticised the government, saying they are delusional for saying that they have anything to do with this peace deal.

I think that that is quite tragic, the way that the UK's reputation is falling under this Labour government.

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Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 19h

Honestly almost nobody criticising the use of the "passive voice" has any idea what it means. "The man died after an interaction with federal agents" is active voice. "The man was murdered by federal agents" is passive voice.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 19h

underrated part of this is that stoller very clearly has no idea what "the passive voice" is

Ghostin this Hell @hoovybaby.bsky.social · 1d

no quarter given lmao

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 20h

I laid out the details of the extraordinary corruption case against Benjamin Netanyahu a few months ago in @thenewworldmag.bsky.social. It seems like it’s helped him bond with Trump.
www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-t...

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 23h

If you feel comfortable giving me a few pointers of where / what to look at in DM I’ll look into it

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Holger Hestermeyer @hhesterm.bsky.social · 23h

The complexity of Trump's tariffs is what will kill exports to the US in the end. The requirements concerning steel are so burdensome, that you cannot export complex machinery. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

One of Europe’s biggest farm machinery firms halts US exports over ‘hidden’ tariffs

Krone says ‘alarming’ levies on about 400 goods including hair dryers and combine harvesters have forced pause

www.theguardian.com

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 23h

This is a fairly obvious slap down to Mike Huckabee’s idiotic social media freelancing yesterday, from someone a considerably closer to the White House.

Not sure there’s too much more to read into it than that, though it maybe starts to put Number 10 on the hook for Blair…

Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

Interesting.

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

Inevitably, when any group of people on a policy meeting realises they have no good recommendations that don’t cost a fortune or take more political will than is present, they suggest the issue could be helped by adding it into the national curriculum. And then they go for lunch.

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

This would inevitably be dropped into any policy roundtable on tackling polarisation/misinformation/etc by a delighted newbie.

Someone would then have to ask what it do to address the issue while we wait for today’s ten year olds to enter the workforce. And how much the speaker remembered of PSHE.

Gabriel Milland @gabrielmilland.bsky.social · 1d

Nothing, but nothing, shouts "lazy PR takes advantage of lazy journalist" like demanding something be taught in schools.

Bonus lazy-points to this example for ignoring the fact that it's already in the KS1 national curriculum.

The Times & Sunday Times @thetimes.com · 1d

Kaleb Cooper, the breakout star of Clarkson’s Farm, has called for farming to be taught in schools so that children understand where their food comes from ⬇️

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

Am working on something related to this that I can’t really talk about yet. So don’t tell anyone I told you.

Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 1d

I bang on about this a lot: I think the combination of a global pandemic, underregulated internet/SM, collapse/corruption of trustworthy media, plus now unregulated genAI, is a wildly toxic environment for radicalisation & mental health. We see the results of that in our politics & lives every day

James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 1d

Everyone knows at least one person (normally, but not exclusively, a guy) whose gone properly mental due to net rabbit holes.

We see public figures regularly go mad and destroy themselves.

And we have, at a policy level, just decided to put our fingers in our ears and go nahnahnah

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

Great point BUT: Can’t believe you launched this post without a hyphen, when they’re free, though.

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Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 1d

tfw you’re launching state of the art trains with no USBC, even though it would cost a few quid per train to change the faceplate at this stage

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

“A viral and ridiculous image, such as a cute cartoonish frog standing off against a row of heavily-equipped militarised police, or even national reserve members, tells the story far more quickly than official statements ever could. It also spreads further and faster.” inews.co.uk/opinion/trum...

Trump’s movement was fuelled by Pepe the Frog — now another amphibian is pushing back

A new figure has emerged at anti-ICE protests in Portland - a man wearing an inflatable frog costume

inews.co.uk

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Justin Elliott @justinelliott.bsky.social · 1d

Here is our full story that Vance is dismissing, with primary source documents showing Trump cabinet members with multiple primary-residence mortgages

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

“Across social media, images of dancing frogs, unicorns and T-Rexes are being shared, all in stark contrast to the masked and belligerent law enforcement officers on the other side.”

inews.co.uk/opinion/trum...

Trump’s movement was fuelled by Pepe the Frog — now another amphibian is pushing back

A new figure has emerged at anti-ICE protests in Portland - a man wearing an inflatable frog costume

inews.co.uk

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

Trump’s movement was fuelled by Pepe the Frog — now another amphibian is pushing back

A new figure has emerged at anti-ICE protests in Portland - a man wearing an inflatable frog costume

inews.co.uk

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Reposted by James Ball

James Plunkett @jamestplunkett.bsky.social · 3d

Are there any live proposals to get DSIT (and/or CLG?) to create a Civic Tech Fund? An initiative to support the UK’s civic tech movement (pro-social platforms like Library of Things, Olio, Park Run, etc) and shared infrastructure for community organising. 1/n

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

andrej

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

You had to click back to it about once or twice a week! That’s all!

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

I just absolutely do not get his grift it’s not even monetised here, at least not directly. Is he just addicted to the #numbers?

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Clay Jackson @clayjak.substack.com · 2d

that lawyer was me.

open.substack.com/pub/radleyba...

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

Smh, can’t believe we’re still having to have this argument when we’ve all got a better social network now, one where people bother to click articles and read through to the second tweet in threads.

Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 3d

The platform formerly known as Twitter may be horrible, but it is still shaping policy. So were we all wrong to leave?

Was the left wrong to leave X for BlueSky?

The platform formerly known as Twitter may be horrible, but it's still shaping policy

www.newstatesman.com

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