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War Diary Day 1095 The leader of @reformparty_uk @Nigel_Farage is in the US doffing his cap to @realDonaldTrump who believes that Ukraine should not have started this war. This is a big fat Russian lie. 267 Russian drones hit Ukraine last night. Don’t be chicken, Mr Farage. Come to Kyiv. Or is it that you are not here because, in old-fashioned English, you are a Russian spy?

MIT University just released free online courses. No payment is required. Here are 7 courses you don't want to miss in 2024:

Gosh this is brutal 🔥

Confessions of a rookie politician Hobbling up the driveway, I start on my patter, Liberal Democrat leaflet in hand, when the man barks at me, a ferocity to his voice: “Go! Go!” I’ve just written a book about Alexei Navalny who got murdered in the gulag for standing up for democracy in Russia so I take this badly. Back in the day when I was only a journalist this fellow would have got a lick with the rough edge of my tongue. But that was then and now I am trying to become the LibDem MP for Sutton Coldfield, against the odds, so I stop, say: “OK, then,” and limp back to the pavement. (I’m using a crutch because I fell on black ice in Kyiv last December while delivering crutches with my pal Major James Hewitt. Oh: the irony!) Being a politician is next-level harder than being a hack. The scrutiny is full glare, the fury of people who don’t like your ideas jarring, the rewards uncertain. Also: have you ever slipped a leaflet through a letter box while listening to the Hound of the Baskervilles slaver his chops a few inches from your fingers? And yet it is fascinating and addictive and I feel sad when my two fellow canvassers, thirty and forty years younger than me, said they had had enough for the day. People listen when I say that the Tories have been in power for too long and Labour, in control of bankrupt Birmingham City Council, have shown themselves poor guardians of other people’s money, that there is a third way for the people of Sutton Coldfield. When one lady says she will vote for me and stick a poster in her window, I blow her a kiss and call her “sweetie” which is almost certainly a transgression of election rule 34, 3b. But still: it is cool. I’m standing because Navalny couldn’t. Because my friends in Ukraine are fighting and dying for the idea of democratic freedom. Because I am a proper Paddy Ashdown Liberal and I believe in individual liberty, free speech and poking crocodiles in the eye with a stick. Because for far too long our ruling class has let the monster in the Kremlin get away with murder after murder after murder. Because rich people and rich organisations don’t pay their fair share of tax and our infrastructure in schools and hospitals and rivers is going to hell in a handcart. Because I want to fight for the ordinary, extraordinary people of Sutton Coldfield. The sitting Tory member is squatting on a majority of 19,272. Andrew Mitchell was nicknamed “Thrasher” at Rugby, says Private Eye, a charge he denies in his funny and entertaining book, ­Beyond A Fringe. Mitchell is aka “Mr Plebgate”, a One Nation Tory who fell out with the Downing Street cops in a rather spectacular way. Out of the headlines he has used three tax avoidance schemes. Tax avoidance is not a crime. Killing people is. Mitchell has been a champion of Rwanda from the early 2000s. But his “hero” strongman Paul Kagame is a fascist whose opponents die or vanish. The father of Diane Rwigara was killed in “a car crash”. When she ran against Kagame in a presidential election and said she feared her father had been murdered, nude pictures of her appeared, then she and her mother were locked up for a year. A dozen of her party supporters have disappeared. Mitchell white-washed murder after murder. While on the backbenches, he chaired the All Party Parliamentary Group on Rwanda and received north of £120,000 from SouthBridge, a bank close to the Rwandan regime. That looks like 120,000 conflicts of interest to me. The centre of Sutton Coldfield is dying, the shopping mall full of empty shops; on the edge of town is a massive new Amazon warehouse built on a green field site. I use Amazon but want an internet sales tax of 2% and the money raised should go back to our communities. And we must not asphalt our green and pleasant land. Mitchell’s biggest problem is that in my day people worked hard, bought their own home and had kids. Today’s young people have no such luck and on the doorstep I have met dozens of people who are furious for the Tories for pushing home ownership out of reach or, thanks to Trussonomics, hiking mortgage rates. These people are smiling at me. The other day Ben, one of our local Lib Dems met Mitchell who was trying to get into a taxi Ben had booked. Ben pointed out Mitchell’s mistake. Mitchell replied: “I’ll let you have the taxi if you vote for me.” Ben replied that he was voting for Mr Sweeney. “A vote for the Liberals is a vote for Labour.” Mitchell seemed a little rattled. From the left, there is Rob Pocock, a charming Labour schmoozer of a certain age. Labour controlled Brum City Council went bankrupt to the tune of a £1 billion last year, services got slashed and council tax is going up 21% in two years. Will ten thousand disaffected Tory voters vote for Pocock, a Labour councillor who voted to close libraries but signed a petition to keep them open? We shall see. I have a slim chance of upsetting the apple cart but, time and again, people on the doors say that I am the only candidate who has make it up their driveway. And I have, for now, only one functioning leg. But also the other thing. In Sutton Coldfield, the poshest bit of Brum and a lovely oxymoron, I am exercising my right to stand for the politics I believe in and despite the ferocious man and the Hounds of the Baskervilles and all the other nonsense, our democracy is a thing of beauty.

The Full EURO 2024 fixture list and the UK TV channel it’s shown on: What game are you most looking forward to?

MIT just made its classes available online for free. Payment is not necessary. The following 10 classes are must-takes in 2024:

I'm 36. Stress controlled me for years so I turned to neuroscience. After 1200+ hours studying elite athletes, CEOs & psychologists, my toolkit is now full of powerful neuro-hacks. Here are the top 7 that will change your life:

ICYMI my latest post on an Australian Original, @MtPleasantWines Lovedale Semillon "...the nose is so beguiling that it demands contemplation before even moving on to a sip" frankstero.com/2024/05/07/mou… @damewine @ricasoli99 @Wine_Allies @wine1percent @Effiwine @unac90

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Here's a fun AI story: a security researcher noticed that large companies' AI-authored source-code repeatedly referenced a nonexistent library (an AI "hallucination"), so he created a (defanged) malicious library with that name and uploaded it. 1/

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Classic best friend move right there

A thread on how I accidentally blundered into an invisible campaign to censor the internet, and remove inconvenient news stories from Google...

Introducing Sora, our text-to-video model. Sora can create videos of up to 60 seconds featuring highly detailed scenes, complex camera motion, and multiple characters with vibrant emotions. openai.com/sora Prompt: “Beautiful, snowy Tokyo city is bustling. The camera moves through the bustling city street, following several people enjoying the beautiful snowy weather and shopping at nearby stalls. Gorgeous sakura petals are flying through the wind along with snowflakes.”

Atlético Madrid’s Christmas ad will bring a tear to your eye.

The Top 7 Belly Fat Burning Hacks For 2024 That Are PROVEN To Work! We've checked the data and these are YOUR favourite moments from The Diary Of A CEO this year. From sleep hacks to exercise myths and the relationship between stress and weight gain, these are the moments you replayed the most. Theoretically, this should be the most insightful, helpful and valuable episode we've ever produced. Are you ready to kickstart your 2024? Start Here! 👉🏽 g2ul0.app.link/DOAC2024

Thread of the most insane AI tools that came out in the last 2 weeks:

We still get chills every time we hear 'Insomnia'. RIP Maxi Jazz — a total one-off.

Woah. Wtf. All anchors in this 21min news clip and numerous other things are AI powered. Holy smokes, things are going to get wild

My latest post looks at 4 stickies from 🇫🇷 🇮🇹🇦🇺🇵🇹 Which would you choose? Details👉frankstero.com/2023/12/05/win… @Fiery01Red @damewine @RedWineCats @cara_vino @Friscokid49 @wine1percent @JeremyPalmer7 @ricasoli99 @_melaniemay @KitchenSprout @zappafaye @SteveKubota @AngieYWine @nineov