A relational approach statistics production (now do use!)

Who Funds Nigel Farage? Mapping His Millions Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is the highest-paid Member of Parliament. In less than two years as the MP for Clacton, Farage has racked up £2 million in personal income and gifts, on top of his £94,00...

With Farage making a shed load of money from bitcoin and an assortment of weird companies, we’ve launched a map and live tracker of his income 👇🏻👇🏻

The average person doesn’t give a fuck if AI has some niche use where it actually excels if used properly. In fact, that is what a tool is *supposed* to do and none of us will have a problem if it is used like that. What we see is AI fucking up real life in a massive way.

Calm down, computer software isn't making decisions about who lives and who dies in war. It merely processes a ton of data and then makes a recommendation to a human who has no realistic way to verify it

Naming my security company after the giant evil eye that, crucially, was too distracted to see the actual threat sneaking in

Youtube comment: @ScotClose • 3 hours ago I'm disappointed that you blocked me on Bluesky for trying to bring some real skepticism to this topic after you strongly implied that Platner is a Nazi and ridiculed people for asking for evidence. If you're only a skeptic about topics you disagree with, are you really a skeptic? Reply 0 replies ^ Graham Platner is an Embarrassing Liar WE @RebeccaWatson • O seconds ago I'm not shocked that a man who openly defends an obvious liar with a Nazi tattoo is also apoplectic that the woman he was yelling at opted out of a conversation with him. This is psychotic behavior and you should see a therapist.

PSA: never in the history of humanity has a woman cut a man out of her life for being insane and then changed her opinion of him after he found other methods to contact her.

also, I feel like this is worth pointing out: this has happened to me dozens of times and not one has it been a woman. not a single time. Women say dumb shit to me almost as often as men but not a single one has tried to dodge me blocking them.

Table listing African nations' suppliers for smart city surveillance tech. Countries: China, Korea, Russia, UAE, Israel, France, Spain. African nations included: Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe. China supplies all listed African countries. Korea supplies Kenya. Russia supplies Egypt. UAE supplies Egypt. Israel supplies Kenya. France supplies Senegal. Spain supplies Algeria. Source: Institute of Development Studies.

China is the only country providing AI surveillance technology to all 11 major African nations currently investing in smart city monitoring systems restofworld.org/2026/africa-china-ai-sur...

Russian economy is faltering despite oil windfall, Sweden warns Stockholm’s military intelligence head says Moscow is manipulating data to make its economy look better

Exclusive: Sweden has intelligence indicating Russia's systematically manipulating data to fool Ukraine’s western allies into believing its economy has withstood the strain of its war spending & western sanctions, Thomas Nilsson, head of Sweden Military Intelligence, told me & @maxseddon.bsky.social

The Catechism of the Catholic Church on Just War Doctrine.

Ghost Sharks, Robo-Dogs, and the Theater of Border Technologies Petra Molnar explores border spectacles like robo-dogs and Ghost Shark, revealing how visible tools mask deeper infrastructures of migration control.

Robo-dogs and ghost sharks grab headlines—but they’re just the spectacle. Behind them lies a vast system of surveillance, data extraction, and automated exclusion shaping modern border control, writes Tech Policy Press Fellow Petra Molnar.

Drones, Iran war escalating horror as Sudan war enters fourth year UN says hundreds killed by drone strikes over past three months, as medical charity reports two more deaths in Darfur.

4 yrs of conflict & #genocide in #Sudan, now exacerbated by the US-Iran war which is impeding supply chains of humanitarian aid. Drone strikes also an issue, killing hundreds this yr alone. #IHL #humanRights #warCrimes www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/...

Webinar invitation on Advancing Rights-Centered Reporting on Nigeria's Cybercrimes Act. 21st April 2026.

In Nigeria, overbroad provisions in the Cybercrimes Act continue to be used to target journalists, civil society + online expression.

Join our webinar tomorrow to unpack the law, ongoing legal challenges + how to report on it through a human rights lens. 🔽

www.accessnow.org/event/advanc...

Over the moon! The top law & technology conference in the UK and Ireland will come to Scotland next year - it's been 32 years since Strathclyde hosted it and 9 years since a Scottish university had such a privilege. Going to BILETA changed my career, I'm sure many have similar stories to share!

Damn typos

And yet.

When connectivity disappears during crises, the consequences are often deadly.

In the World Disasters Report 2026 by @ifrc.org, our contributions across 3 chapters trace a clear pattern: when people lose access to reliable, timely information, they become isolated and face greater risk.

World faces food ‘catastrophe’ if Strait of Hormuz disruption persists: FAO Global agriculture is highly exposed to the blockage of waterways, risking higher commodity prices and food inflation.

FAO warns of global #food crisis if blockade of the #Hormuz Strait continues. www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/...

Now imagine creating such graph, looking at it, and thinking "this is cool"

Yeah it's BS. But even as a bunch of BS, imagine creating a graph proving you burnt through most of humanity's best investments and all you delivered is a sexual harassment machine on stheroids based on meme culture and plagiarism

Opening text of a thread by Palantir from X Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different.
twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...

A couple points on this manifesto, apart from the racial superiority subtext others noted.

Palantir is a company built on public contracts, they bill the state billions to surveil and target the state's population. The manifesto exists to justify their demand for even more.
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In the Gulf, GPS jamming leaves delivery drivers navigating blind The war has led to mass GPS-jamming, forcing drivers to rely on memory, landmarks, and phone calls.

After 20 years of driving in Dubai, one delivery driver has started ignoring his phone entirely because GPS spoofing has begun turning a five-minute trip into a 40-minute detour restofworld.org/2026/gps-disruption-gulf...

Can't say I'm surprised, but still

Well crap

Opinion | The Warmongers Have Their Greek History All Wrong

“The Trump administration’s relentless bullying ignores a central lesson from classical antiquity: Athens’s shift from benevolent hegemony to malevolent empire paved its road to ruin.”
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/19/o...

Stabbings, kidnap threats and arson attacks: how the Iranian regime targets UK journalists Staff at outlets critical of Tehran have faced chilling intimidation and violence, amid calls for greater protection and support

Iranian journalists in London “say they fear for their lives after a recent spate of threats and physical attacks,” and I’m willing to bet the regime is leveraging digital attacks against critics too. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Extremely normal and fine for a company to put this in a public statement

Yeah no judgment here, it wouldn't be my coping mechanism but that's it. I guess what makes it awkard to me is the influencer tone, but again I assume once a brain is wired for clout that's just how folks communicate

Absolutely true. The "using the tragedy for content engagement" remains troubling tho, and that's not an accident