Congratulations Mel!!

If the genocidal famine in Gaza makes you feel helpless, follow @thecynicist.bsky.social who regularly posts gofundme's from people she can vouch for, and give what you can.

If you ever wondered what you'd have chosen and done during historic genocides, it's what you're doing right now.

UK government dropped health push after lobbying by ultra-processed food firms Exclusive: Guardian investigation reveals guidance for retailers in England changed after campaign by global food firms

I spent the half-year working on this investigation. Extraordinary influence of UPF lobby behind the scenes.

'UK government dropped health push after lobbying by ultra-processed food firms' 👇

www.theguardian.com/society/ng-i...

EU ruling: tracking-based advertising by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, X, across Europe has no legal basis EU data protection authorities find that the consent popups that plagued Europeans for years are illegal. All data collected through them must be deleted. This decision impacts Google’s, Amazon’s and ...

Big news this evening

This EU ruling has been 7 years in the making

www.iccl.ie/digital-data...

Email trail: UPF firms pressured Sunak gov't to withdraw recommendation that food promotions prioritise minimally processed foods.

And current gov't accepted it.

Not surprising - yet so disappointing

Bravo to Soil Association for securing these via FOI

For those of you without access to X, here's Grok being manipulated to deliver answers with a particular political spin by its operator. Doesn't exactly do much to make us trust the neutrality of these platforms.

Daily News 13 \/ 05 \/ 2025 Commission publishes draft guidelines on protection of minors online under the Digital Services Act \nToday, the Commission launched a public consultation on draft guidelines for the protection of min...

DSA - protection of minors "The draft guidelines are now open for public feedback until 10 June 2025. The Commission is seeking contributions from all stakeholders, including children, parents and guardians, national authorities, online platform providers, and experts."
ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

The effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning performance, learning… | Lucas Wright "The meta-analysis results of this study confirm the positive impacts of ChatGPT on learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking, while highlighting some variations in eff...

Ilkka Tuomi has done the digging on this terrible AI in education "evidence" reproduction again over on LinkedIn if you want receipts www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

Yet again a big "meta-analysis" of the effects of ChatGPT on "learning performance" - largely arguing there are big positive effects - is getting wildly and uncritically promoted by the usual big names and yet again it appears to be a review of seriously bad science...

So many different thoughts, ideas, feelings and art works pulled into a collage that gently reveals itself as a whole new thing entirely. Magic.

Was this my favourite episode of Podyssey? Probably. But all so far are all a beautiful meld of myth, music, movies, literature and piercing yet delicate insights about life - timeless and contemporary, personal and political.

Opinion from the FT's Editorial Board: 'The US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally that shares their values have issued barely a word of condemnation. They should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity.' www.ft.com/content/f5fd...

The problem we have about health is that it’s marketed as this personal thing & conceptualised as the result of what you do to yourself or what individually happens to you -your bad luck-
But health is largely a collective expression of our environment & circumstances. This requires societal action.

Strongly recommend this thoughtful paper - much of it applies beyond the discipline of law

the problem with “tech journalism” is that we had 2 decades of mainly white men regurgitating press releases about new cell phones and usb ports on laptops who now are their own publishing platforms while being unable to grasp how the future became automated high frequency feudalism

This sums the whole situation up quite nicely.

Re: Kids+tech. @tpf.bsky.social is a pioneer in operationalizing risk assessment, w massively influential processes she invented for Google and Common Sense. Her recent work determined AI companions aren't safe for kids <18.
So this news from Google is...interesting.
techcrunch.com/2025/05/02/g...

Performing AI literacy Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash A new international test of young people’s “AI literacy” has been announced by the OECD. Providing a global measurement of the competencies to engage with AI, the t…

"AI literacy" is set to become part of the OECD's international testing and ranking exercise. The assessment's not due until 2029 but the OECD is already preparing resources for schools to teach to the test and perform on the ranking. codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2025/04/30/p...

I know I’m harping on about this endlessly, but just imagine replacing the word ‘universities’ with any other, be it ‘businesses’ ‘schools’ ‘hospitals’ or ‘farms’. This is Labour’s very own “F$&# Business”

Labour's biggest issue is neither being too socially conserative or not socially conservative enough. It's cuts. People have had enough.

It is such a deeply narcissistic way of defining friendship. Someone who knows you. Who tells you what you want or need to hear to feel better. Whose very existence revolves around you. Not somebody you find interesting, you want to know more about, help, support, learn from.
Dictators will love it.

Could the UK-EU Summit reset post-Brexit politics? New post on my Brexit & Beyond Blog. If framed as a major strategic announcement, the Summit could challenge the Farage insurgency far more effectively than Labour's 'make Brexit boring' approach: chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2025/05/coul...

The Association of Internet Researchers (@aoir.bsky.social) has released a crucial new guide on risky research—essential for anyone studying digital harms, disinfo, extremism, gender, race and sexuality, etc ... A must read as it's full of practical and actionable advice. aoir.org/wp-content/u...

The average American has 3 eggs, but has demand for 15. So here are 12 photographs of eggs. I am a business man.

With new junk food ad restrictions coming into force this October, adland is already finding ways to dodge them, borrowing tactics from Big Tobacco with sports sponsorships, social media stunts, and cryptic campaigns.

Full story in Ad Nauseam in the new Private Eye, out now.

Reality Check I'm sick and god-damn tired of this! I have written tens of thousands of words about this and still, to this day, people are babbling about the "AI revolution" as the sky rains blood and crevices open...

Newsletter: I am sick and god damn tired of everybody pretending that generative AI is the next big thing. The media is complicit in accepting fantastical nonsense - both in the numbers put out by OpenAI and the silly jobs created by Anthropic - and it has to stop.
www.wheresyoured.at/reality-check/

Microsoft’s AI Starts Reading All Your WhatsApp, Signal Messages Be very careful what you send — here’s why.

[including disappearing Signal, WhatsApp msgs] anything you send may not disappear into the chat archive on a phone, but may be analyzed, indexed and stored by AI in an easily searchable database on a device you do not control

www.forbes.com/sites/zakdof...