Communications Lead at @Livepeer Foundation Retired journalist, ex-@Reuters, @BBC, @telegraph.
Berlin
Joined January 2013
- Tweets3K
- Following2.3K
- Followers525
- Likes5.2K
Pinned Tweet
I love living in Germany because you can be sent a letter out of the blue for 16 grand payable immediately and the only way to contact whoever sent it is via fax between 10:00 and 10:15am twice per year
Obviously very late to the game on this piece, but this was really insightful and a terrific profile of Zuckerberg.
Many moments in this that changed how I think about him & Meta
@colossusjeremy really well done on this, I've shared it with so many people
colossus.com/article/mark-zu…
Going to bet the wife and kids that climate change will push this band north and that Grimsby will be the new Monaco
once ASI is here and living somewhere because of "work" becomes pointless, people with money will just move to the nicest places on earth
Mediterranean climate, ocean, mountains, good food, beautiful isolated towns
places like this are going to become insanely valuable
probably worth buying real estate there now
59
We need an absolute moratorium on Claudeslop in BBC podcast scripts
Recent perpetrators:
I'm Not a Monster Presents: Where is Austin Tice?
Intrigue: a 9/11 Story
WE CAN ALL TELL GUYS
1
123
Joseph Birch retweeted
I am increasingly frustrated about the state of conversation about AI in the UK. It feels like we are in never ending cycles of deluded thinking. Under current trends, Britain will be defenceless against the transformative effects of AI and have no leverage over development at the frontier.
We are the most exposed economy to AI in the world. We have very little data centre capacity and few credible plans to expand – and our high energy costs mean we would struggle to even if we tried.
I am publishing a paper today on what the UK should do to build that leverage, let the economy capture value from AI and prepare the state to adapt, however AI develops.
The three strategies are as follows:
1. Build the infrastructure that gives us leverage. Fix the grid, fix planning, make Britain a place frontier AI can run.
2. Let the economy capture the value of AI. Reform the regulatory, labour and talent barriers that stop British firms adopting AI.
3. Build a state that can adapt to a changing world. Build a tax base that survives the labour market changing, public services that use AI to deliver better, and capacity to weather the upcoming geopolitical storms.
Two years ago, we published a similar report on AI - many recommendations of which ended up in the action plan. I remember feeling hopeful, but sadly the fundamental problems facing the country on AI have not shifted. I truly hope that this week of momentum culminates in action. There’s still a narrow path for the UK, but everyday that path is narrowing.
There's still time for my 2026 prediction that recycling trutherism will cause a major policy reversal in at least one country to come true
Throwing rubbish in a landfill is (usually) better for the environment than recycling it. With few exceptions, recycling ends up emitting more CO2 and costing more money, while landfills are cheap and secure.
- Recycling mid-tier plastics (like plastic bottles or butter tubs) costs thousands of dollars per ton of CO2 saved. It's cheaper to do direct air CO2 capture than that! And there is no shortage of plastic, nor any problem with sequestering it in the ground once we're done with it.
- Modern landfills are extraordinarily secure and are *much* more than just big piles of trash. They capture 75%–95% of methane gas. Groundwater contamination is doesn't really happen with landfills built since 1990. A study of 31 landfills built since 1988 in NY found no adverse effect at all on local groundwater quality.
- The crusade against single-use plastics has driven us to products that use far more materials and energy and would need to be used an absurd number of times to actually be an improvement. A steel straw needs to be used 150 times to be worth using. A ceramic mug needs to be used 1,000 times to beat a polystyrene cup. A cotton bag needs to be reused 173 times to beat single-use.
- Some things ARE worth recycling. Recycling metal saves a huge amount of energy and material – recycling aluminium saves 95% of the energy spent on making fresh stuff. So we do a lot of it already: about 30% of steel worldwide is recycled.
Modern, well-run landfills cause minimal environmental damage. We have plenty of space for them – less than 0.01% of the US is used for landfill and only about 0.02% of Germany. We can even build on top of old landfills, so the land area is not spent permanently.
New in @WorksInProgMag, @robertwiblin and @chalmermagne on why it's usually best to just bury your trash. worksinprogress.co/issue/jus…
1
100
Berlin Brandenburg Airport is the best airport ever as long as you manage to make the required sacrifice of two pairs of AirPods per year
1
2
489
Everyone stop what you are doing, the best Youtube channel in the world is back after 2 years of tumbleweed
youtube.com/watch?v=vGt7-WnW…
108
It is incredible to me that people are eating jacket potatoes in 2026
You can get on for a fiver in the British Library canteen and I had one purely for anthropological purposes
Truly one of the worst foods and yet people are scoffing them down like manna from heaven
80
Did not expect to see vast swathes of parks and public space reduced to scorched, dusty earth. As a sporadic visitor to the UK, this is quite shocking. Is it like this every summer now?
1
75
If anyone is having a bad day, I will reveal, upon request, the location of a seat in the British Library where you can see people getting blasted in the face by an overpowered drinking fountain all day long
1
69
My dog 0.1 seconds after I open the fridge door
U.S. company Satyress is developing threehalves, a centaur-style robot designed for dangerous environments such as wildfires, rubble searches, toxic areas and confined spaces. The system combines a humanoid upper body with a quadruped mobility platform. #USA #Robotics #UGV #AI
106
Some people never know their unique talent but mine for sure is losing eyewear off my own face without noticing
1
70
god give me the confidence and insulin sensitivity of the man I've just seen powering through a salad bowl full of liquorice allsorts in the library while wearing a trilby
1
1
118
Wild fact in @PrivateEyeNews:
Almost 50% of Anguilla’s economy comes from sale of its “.ai” domain name to companies.
Not included in the article but interesting to consider the fate of “.io”, the other popular domain name du jour belonging to the British Indian Overseas Territory that was sold in 1997 to a private individual and sold again in 2017 to a private company for $70 million.
The Chagos Refugees Group UK (yes the same Chagos at the heart of a diplomatic dispute between the US, Mauritius & UK) submitted a legal complaint seeking repatriation of the domain and $7m per year in back payments.
As of 2024 and the ceding of the territory to Mauritius, “.io” may have to be phased out entirely.
At least Anguilla managed to get an airport out of theirs!
