Simon HB

Farage, on Today this morning, trumpeting how well the UK economy is doing as a result of Brexit. He appears to have forgotten he appeared on a stage yesterday that had a massive 'Broke Britain' logo and focused on how poorly the UK economy is doing.

Imagine being a huge fan of The Cheesecake Factory and not knowing that they have a strict no firearms policy, though

This was better than I think anyone was expecting, even if the follow-ups were more of less what everyone was expecting. (Was in a Visage video before he was 'discovered' by The Face, which I did not know.)

This story slipped by quietly over the weekend, didn't it? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Microsoft's current advertising slogan is "work goes on"; sounds like the last two letters should be struck through

Simon Heffer trashing Liz Truss with hindsight might be fun, but let's not forget what his foresight was like, when he was nodding along with Patrick Minford archive.ph/202208271912...

Actually, @theguardian.com I think you mean: Someone used Anthropic's Claude AI model to access Georgia voter data

Was thinking earlier about how much better recycled paper is than it was in the 80s, when it was murky and felt cheap and had that sense of performative self-flagellation if you were using it

I presume the reason Tomithy Robinson is praying via the medium of his Twitter timeline is because God has blocked him on all platforms

"thanks, Dazzle - and can you remind me what she looks like?"

BBC News helpfully explaining that the Welsh-language track Dolly Parton made "was recorded before her death"

The second story here - someone fined for stopping to read the sign, and the operator going 'well, you should have read the sign that tells you can't stop before you stopped to read the sign' is a bit that even Kafka might have thought too much

Remember walking in to Radio City reception back in the late 90s and they were playing The Undertones, which was a strange choice given their Top 40 format. Then saw a sign preparing to welcome Feargal Sharkey (during his Radio Authority period) to Stanley Street.

As someone who likes the Cheesecake Family: it's fine dining in the way Olive Garden is Italian cuisine; it's well-done faux, a chain dressed up to look high-end enough to bump all the prices up a couple of dollars. The perfect metaphor.

If you listen to The Archers via Apple Podcasts, the algorithm develops weird ideas about what your hobbies might be (basically seems to think I'm Brian Aldridge)

Distinctively British approach to AI is still using ChatGPT but prefacing each prompt with "If it's not too much bother"

Yeah, Evening Argus, I think the mistake in the threatening note is probably the least of the problems here. (Also, if you're going to call out the hooded visitors for making an error, might not want to describe a spelling mistake as a typo...)

Ghosts. Movie. Very good.

Badenoch very clear that she has no time to do silly stuff for the TV cameras in a bid to appear relatable to the wider public

Another bit of the West Pier has gone :(

He's got access to the MOD's Pindar bunker through a tunnel in his house. I don't think Burnham needs worry about having three tins of spaghetti hoops and a box of candles to hand.

Andrea True Connection: More More More Amol Rajan Connection: No, Even More Than That No, Even More Than That No, Even More Than That

According to legend, it’s 31 years to the day since the Financial Times killed one of Britain’s finest poets? They didn’t mean to. It’s just that Gavin Ewart was 79, and the day before they’d bought him a lunch that involved enough booze to fell an ox. A glorious story, but is it true...?

The entertainments committee would like to apologise for booking Philip Larkin as the entertainment for this year's company Christmas Dinner Dance.

You know you've watched Project Hail Mary too much when you're scrolling through a long list and find yourself saying "that's not our sun"

Echo Lake - Colorado www.g2photoworks.com/nature-and-w... #EchoLake #Colorado

Good news for people who already treat their car like a sort-of friend with benefits, I guess www.vice.com/en/article/k...

torn between “this is bad” and “their cyber correspondent doesn’t know what he’s talking about so maybe it’s just neutral”

This is a lot of fun

Newsagents actually did a "Is Trump Secretly Gay?" episode last night, and yeah, I'm sure there are bits of the internet putting these theories together, but also, under every famous person there's someone measuring their nose and cheekbones and claiming they are trans. The shark has been jumped.

The "is Ali G past his sell-by date" question: Before I was born, my dad once opened a tin of potted meat that was so rancidly off, he went straight into the garden, dug a hole and buried it. If you went to the garden & dug it up now, that meat would still be fresher than Ali G.

The first genuinely honest ad for generative AI I've ever seen, from Microsoft / CoPilot A mediocre white guy sees his non-white colleague getting praised for good work, he asks AI to *literally copy it*, and then he gets all the praise instead: www.ispot.tv/ad/SoDi/micr...

You can tell how much everyone hates it, because it's always rammed full of people going down just to check out how awful it is

We got that Reform thing shoved through our door this week, and the splash on the front is Farage saying Reform will deliver in 100 days "or I will sack ministers", and there's the measure of the man: If I fail, I shall certainly hold someone else fully accountable for that

I mean people bang on about how having famous people on the banknotes reflected our nation's heritage and yet, if that was true, how come Mr Teazie-Weazie never got a run out on the reverse of a tenner?

It's amazing the number of people up in arms about the axing of Radio 4 Extra who love the station so much they believe that it's an archive of all BBC Radio comedy & drama rather than (largely) an archive of programmes repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra in the last month

The TV column in Private Eye is usually terrible, but this week's one on the Celebrity Traitors is an all-time stinker

Shaken by this. Immediately changing my password to “Password2” for more security

we call that in the trade ‘one Polyphonic Spree’