Stargate smashes its quantum mirror the second time it shows up.
Teal'c has a philosophical position that "ours is the only reality of consequence". Which is the only way the concept wouldn't drive you mad really.
The "it is very important that certain people have jobs" bit today reminded me of this story www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Fun fact: Glasgow and Cardiff have the same number of letters.
Fun fact: Glasgow is further west than Cardiff.
Travelling from Glasgow to Cardiff today [seemless bridge into retweeting the candidate data for devolved elections]
Thread on how we can learn lessons from civic tech to get more collective benefit from atomised AI service interactions
At least part of the "you can't just gesture at your interest, you have to say what it is" rule is the mild embarrassment of having to preface statements with "guess who got free tickets to the BRIT awards??" www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=...
At least part of the "you can't just gesture at your interest, you have to say what it is" rule is the mild embarrassment of having to preface statements with "guess who got free tickets to the BRIT awards??" www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=...
Miss Hoolie: Oh, well, everyone makes mistakes.
Thread on how we can learn lessons from civic tech to get more collective benefit from atomised AI service interactions
This is awful news. One of the original legal bloggers and one of the very best. nearlylegal.co.uk/2026/04/gile...
Our submission to the Representation of the People Bill committee has been published: bills.parliament.uk/publications...
Can't believe someone would disrespect the disclaimer in the footer like that.
Yes, although I've seen that argument made much more about second jobs - where there are more substantial attempts at "these people are better MPs because of their outside interests". I'm missing the full "Parliament would be weaker if people couldn't accept tickets to glastonbury" argument.
I think the "this set of gifts is actually a security upgrade" is also interesting, because I think that's a bad way of managing and declaring security, but it does represent an actual problem that needs an approach.
bsky.app/profile/alex...
For example, the appearance of the idea of "legitimate hospitality" in the elections bill notes was the first concrete defence I've seen of "MPs are a special case". I think it's really unconvincing at a £2k threshold, but it's an argument! bsky.app/profile/alex...
Like, I understand what the argument is about "there should be no donation cap" - I disagree, but it exists. Much less clear on gifts.
And btw I'm legit interested in justifications of this, working out what the argument even is helps unblock progress (if nothing else, because writing it down might make it seem silly)
A fun contrast to a deputy speaker (Nusrat Ghani), who of course follows MPs rules, and can absolutely accept Glastonbury tickets from Google.
At one point working in the House 15 years ago, we had to return a bottle of bubbly a supplier sent our team at Christmas because the total value fell foul of our propriety rules.
To join up the other thread, there was an obvious point to tighten the rules that wasn't taken. bsky.app/profile/alex...
Parliament's rules are very permissive of conflicts of interests around gifts that just can't exist in councils. £300 is an absurdly high threshold for *declaring* gifts, and there's no rules at all about a level it's forbidden to accept them.
See the £250 bet here from the most creative lobbyists around bettingandgamingcouncil.com/news/bgc-gra...
The qualifier is we only know about gifts above £300, and as Scott Benson helpful told an undercover reporter, this is part of the calculus when offering gifts. We don't know what we don't know here. bsky.app/profile/alex...
And the thing is, it's just not the case that everyone's at it (important qualifier in a moment) - this time last year we had received the entire register and only had 19 MPs we saw with gambling links. A minority benefit, but the reputational damage is collective.
Now that was pre the "vibe shift" on freebies - but obviously these continue and here's a more recent one directly from a gambling company bsky.app/profile/alex...
It seems unlikely that this was the only Christmas gift of wine an MP received, and this shows a blind spot in the Register. The reason this £30 wine needed to be declared is because Reeves had received a separate gift from the Betting and Gaming council in March 2023 ("three tickets to a musical performance"), which means the aggregate value of gifts from the same donor crosses a threshold and the later, smaller gift needs to be declared. If Reeves had not previously accepted free tickets, we would not know about the free wine. There are two points to make here. The first is that Reeves should not have accepted these gifts. She was far from alone in doing so, but to state the obvious, people were giving gifts to the Shadow Chancellor in the hope of access or favourable treatment when she became the Chancellor. Should a government policy emerge around softer-touch regulation of betting companies to promote growth, it's a problem that Reeves has personally accepted hospitality from groups promoting that, regardless of the origin of the policy idea. The goal here is not just not being corrupt, but avoiding the perception that this might be what's going on.
Just to add a few things to this thread, I still find Rachel Reeves' accepting these tickets when she was shadow chancellor amazing - and I'd love to know her theory about why she was being given gifts. research.mysociety.org/html/beyond-...
Lisa Nandy: In a rare moment of agreement, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the gambling industry brings joy to a lot of people. He and I have discussed the harms that affect a minority of people. They are significant and important, but the industry as a whole brings positive benefits to the United Kingdom. I think he is underplaying the significant pressures on high street businesses that have existed over the last couple of decades—something that, frankly, his Government did absolutely nothing about over the 14 years that they were in government. We are dealing with those.
Yougov polling on perceptions of the gambling industry - 43% very unfavorable
Really worth stressing what a minority position "the gambling industry is good" is.
Hope we get an answer to this in the new series
Substack page. Title: Moon-joy: they should have sent a poet (so they did) Subtitle: on the Poetics of Space Travel Photo of Christina Koch braids floating in front of a view of the earth
I spent a week glued to the Artemis 2 livestream and wrote some words about THE MOON, OUR MOON, and what happens to language at the edges of human experience. open.substack.com/pub/nothingb...