Michael King

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@charise_lee Hi - this video is fake. I am the newsreader in the image. Have reported to X. Please remove.

- Drafted a blog post - Used an LLM to meticulously improve the argument over 4 hours. - Wow, feeling great, it’s so convincing! - Fun idea let’s ask it to argue the opposite. - LLM demolishes the entire argument and convinces me that the opposite is in fact true. - lol The LLMs may elicit an opinion when asked but are extremely competent in arguing almost any direction. This is actually super useful as a tool for forming your own opinions, just make sure to ask different directions and be careful with the sycophancy.

It’s that time of year - folks asking us about #bumblebees - WHY THEY’RE SEEING THEM ON THE GROUND - so here’s a thread to explain. Please #retweet! Every queen that survives means a new colony that gets to exist & produce queen #bees for next year! So important to #share! 1/9

some of us have been jailed, poisoned, beaten, fighting against russian fascist machine we believe Ukrainians have a right to exist peacefully, and a right to defend themselves and their land we are artists -  we do this protest out of an absurdity of silence and inaction from people who can actually pressure Ubiquiti

This is a brilliant - bleak - piece about the broken local politics of Birmingham. First class on the ground reporting by @alexrogerssky @JoshGafson1 These pieces aren’t easy - you only get footage like this with skill, graft and luck - please watch:

Having publicly executed a 19 year old member of the country’s national wrestling team last week, two more scheduled executions of young lives with bright futures urgently highlight - during a war - the mentality of a regime that prioritises executions over protecting their own population. While keeping the country under a digital blackout, itself a crime against humanity. A regime that parades teenagers on national television to humiliate them and accuse them of crimes they’ve not even heard of. And all because they went out on a protest. This is what the people of Iran have been dealing with for decades. #StopExecutionsInIran #ShervinBagherian #PeyvandNaeimi

I fully agree that "globalism" (subordinating Britain's institutions and values to transnational ones) betrays Britain's unique gift – the open society of institutionalised criticism and consent. That breakthrough happened here, not elsewhere, and is to this day strongest here. But it's not in the genes. I strongly disagree that it's possible to protect it by arbitrarily prioritising ancestral "natives" over integrated non-ancestrals. Like Queen Victoria, Popper, or me. Isn't British exceptionalism *true*? And isn't it therefore an idea anyone can agree with? And choose to assimilate to?

Bishop of Willesden on the Iftar : "The public iftar in Trafalgar Square was not an act of cultural imposition, nor a signal of division. It was, rather, a moment of hospitality: an invitation to share in the breaking of the fast during Ramadan, extended by one community to the wider public. It was open, generous and peaceful. It reflected something profoundly British; the instinct to gather, to mark significant moments together, and to make space in our common life for the traditions that shape our neighbours. "To suggest that such an event is somehow threatening risks misunderstanding both the nature of religious expression and the character of our national life. Religious freedom in this country has never meant the privatisation of belief. It has meant the opposite: the right of individuals and communities to live out their faith openly, visibly and without fear. That principle applies as much to Muslims observing Ramadan as it does to Christians celebrating Easter, Jews marking Passover, Hindus celebrating Diwali, or Sikhs observing Vaisakhi." churchofengland.org/media/news-and…

Whether the next president is a Republican or a Democrat, can we have someone with at least a little class next time? Because this is embarrassing.

I find the conflation of British Islam with "Islamism" by some commentators alarming. And I also find the left's denial there are any issues at all in our multicultural society troubling. The discourse on this is so toxic on all sides, and we all end up losing out.

Luck plays a huge part in football but if you're a good team with good processes in place, you basically nullify the impact it has on your season. We're letting bad luck moments shape our campaign because we're a coin-flip football team. We don't do enough to win games.

I'm being asked by many users how they can verify images and videos of the conflict in the Middle East, including many fakes that are going viral. This is a thread I wrote exactly three years ago with a step-by-step guide on verifying online images that anyone can learn to do.

@hippyygoat No, this footage is insanely AI, it ain't real. The explosions are off, the phone screen doesn't match the scene it's supposedly recording, and the 10-second length is a massive giveaway.

Heck of a claim to make about a highly respected pensions journo with your replies turned off

@elonmusk s

This is absolutely brilliant from Ange Postecoglou

The Uk has pension assets worth around 80% of GDP. That's a very good thing. Most EU countries have more like 10%. That's a bad thing. We have that pension security because we don't let you break pensions before pension age. That shouldn't change.

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of Peter Mandelson's big pre-Washington interview, when he claimed questions about Epstein were "an FT obsession" adding: "You can all f*** off." ft.com/content/085e20…

@SandyofSuffolk Lying for clicks. Pathetic. (Mandelson bought the Regents Park place for £2.5m about 16 years after he stopped being press secretary)

Peter Mandelson is obviously a very charming man. Funny, well connected, gossipy, you hear a lot of people talk about him with affection in Westminster. My own stand out memory of him is a little different. The first time I met him was at my first ever Labour Party conference, I was a trainee reporter in my early twenties.  In other words, I had no status or any connections really at all. And I guess the best way to put it, is that Peter Mandelson was dismissive rather than charming. The reason I'm saying this is because I think it goes to the heart of Westminster's problem, a problem that I believe is deeply connected to the Epstein scandal (in Epstein’s world status - connections - and money - was everything.) Because people who look at Westminster - in the same way as they might look at Washington - and think, this is a closed group of elites, who all know each other, who go to the same parties, and share the same in jokes... well, to a large extent, they are right. There are too many people in Westminster who look over the shoulder of the person they're talking to see if there's someone more important in the room. Status is everything... what stories can they give me... how can they further my career? The personal and the professional become blurred.  And Peter Mandelson is the embodiment of that. Charming, well connected, gossipy. In the inner circle.  If we're honest with ourselves, that's the reason he's been allowed to fail and then be rehabilitated so many times. It's the reason he was given the best job in politics - US Ambassador - despite being friends with a paedophile. And it's the reason he's had a softer landing than many others would have in his position.  A softer landing... until now. Because after the latest dump of Epstein emails, there really is no coming back. Not even for the most charming man in Westminster.