Profile avatar
patchthompson.bsky.social
🌹✊ 📸 | researching civil rights & Irish-British relations | bang average photographer | All views my own etc.
1,694 posts 862 followers 565 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter

🚨BREAKING: We’re deeply concerned at the use of counter terrorism powers to target protest groups. This is the latest in a succession of measures taken by the UK government to clamp down on protest in the UK.

Oh, David Goodhart wrote that piece in the Standard? Makes a lot of sense.

I forgot my favourite David Goodhart story! When I pointed out in my LRB review of "The British Dream" that he'd got some facts wrong, he emailed me to complain that "80% of the facts in the book are accurate"...

Have you ever embarrassed the MoD so much that you get declared a terrorist organisation? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The great Brexit Intellectual Powerhouse™ David Frost

Today’s London Standard has a big report on how the capital “isn’t working”. It blames immigrants, especially Muslims, and the lack of “White British”. It asks “if there’s a minimum number of natives” at which London must give it up its status as the UK capital. www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/lond...

New research from MIT found that those who used ChatGPT can’t remember any of the content of their essays. Key takeaway: the product doesn’t suffer, but the process does. And when it comes to essays, the process *is* how they learn. arxiv.org/pdf/2506.088...

The NYT published a piece on AI this week in which two of the country's highest paid technology columnists demonstrated they have zero understanding of this foundational concept outlined by Katie below

Mass doomerism from American liberals strikes again.

You don't have to let the Mail and some weirdo thinktanks and Spiked magazine set your policy priorities! You just don't! If you're the government you can literally just tell all those people to go fuck themselves! In fact, that's sort of your job!

The problem with this ‘let’s weaken our commitment to the ECHR so as to fend off Farage’ plan is that when it doesn’t work, we end up with Farage *and* a weakened commitment to the ECHR at exactly the moment we need the ECHR the most.

Why, though? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bluesky is the #1 app for introspection

Kathleen Stock turning into a firebreathing anti-choice campaigner is one of those things that was in retrospect both entirely predictable but is also just so funny to witness

The Ministry of Justice scrubbing LGBT, race and gender from its diversity policy isn’t neutrality it’s erasure. You don’t protect marginalised people by pretending they don’t exist. This isn’t progress. It’s a warning sign, and we should all be paying attention!!

Anyone who cares enough about the ECHR for it to decide how they vote will not suddenly support Labour because of this.

I am surrounded by people who are outsourcing their own thinking to ChatGPT and they are quickly and obviously becoming dependent on it for even the most banal tasks. Once again, the "figuring it out" is the important part. Yes, you can use a crane to lift weights but you will not get stronger

'A senior LCC source told Spotlight that loyalist transition is on course to be concluded this autumn, with an announcement of the complete dismantling of all paramilitary structures' is a very good joke. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Under the 'foreign born' definition of migrants that the Telegraph and Goodwin have been pushing, Douglas Carswell is an immigrant.

"Whats this line item?" "Counterintelligence, sir" "It says they bought over 10,000 pizzas in FY25?" "Yes, sir"

Some good, on the ground reporting from Ballymena here. Worth noting that the 'Regeneration Groups' appear to have fulfilled the role normally filled by the lesser spotted 'Community Worker'. www.thejournal.ie/ballymena-an...

There is a real retro feeling to this: Stormont Minister publicly reveals where burnt-out families from Ballymena have been moved. The inevitable happens. Respond with outrage at the suggestion that he might have some responsibility.