Rob Blake ∞

Merkel urges the EU to regulate speech online to "save democracy"

The British company that might break the AI energy trade. Two weeks ago, I watched its CEO make the most aggressive claim I've heard in British deep-tech this year. 90% less energy than the hardware the entire industry currently runs on. Light, not electrons. Free weekly.

We’ve automated every single thing we can @every with AI agents. And yet there’s way more human work to do than ever. We’ve gone from 4 -> 30 human employees since GPT-3. I wrote a report on the structural reasons: how AI makes expert competence cheap, why that drives up demand for experts, and why the dynamic only intensifies as we approach AGI. After Automation: every.to/p/after-automa…

The insistence that this is necessary - a claim that is not founded in any consultation - is even upsetting Labour’s own base, as in the quoted post. Rayner’s proposal would involve age gating of the entire British population on entry to much of the internet, in order to bar 16 year olds from ‘social media’ (a term not well understood by those pushing for this). Every person in Britain will be compelled to doxx themselves to simply use sites the government has deemed to fall under their definition of social media. This is a form of digital ID, framed as child safety, with no justification based in reality. The Englishman has had unfettered internet without calamity in the past - he shall be enabled do so again, and our state will be forced to drop its censorious impulses. @NoToDigitalID

It is incredibly frustrating to hear Angela Rayner treat state-mandated digital exclusion as an "easy fix" and low-hanging political fruit. The implications of a blanket ban are far from simple. Enforcing these restrictions will fundamentally alter how all of us interact with the digital world, inevitably ending the right to online anonymity. On top of this, the evidence from Australia is already clear: prohibition is failing. Polling shows that over 60% of teens still have active accounts, with 70% of those users reporting it was "easy" to circumvent the rules using VPNs or entering fake birthdays. With Keir Starmer currently facing intense political pressure over the future of his leadership, we cannot risk this draconian and unworkable policy being fast-tracked simply to appease backbenchers or secure a quick political "legacy". We urge all potential Labour leadership candidates to clearly outline their positions on digital rights. We need an evidence-led approach that forces unaccountable Big Tech monopolies to fix their toxic, profit-driven algorithms, not a blind imitation of Australia’s failed experiment. Read more ⤵️ telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/…

We don’t see it, but we see it every day. The aesthetic of the era is code.

Great article. Well worth five minutes.

South Carolina built a surveillance system. They call it "Age Estimation" It profiles your behavior every 100 hours. They called it stopping harm from addictive social media. The surveillance system is the harm.

When in political panic, they always grab the BAN bag. Ban social media for under 16s but give 16yos the vote; proclaim digital ID will be voluntary but age-gate post 16s to access online public square; evidence-based policy that ignores ALL evidence from ban in Australia...GRRR

Age verification for the internet is the end of human rights and freedom of speech for generations to come. We are watching the freedom values of Western civilization collapse — adopting the same digital cage that others are already trapped in. Human rights are taken away every single day — all because too many of us are still not ready to defend them, mistakenly believing these rights are simply given. Generations fought for these freedoms, high standards of values, and paid with their lives so that we could enjoy and live in a free Western society. Ask yourself: what have you done, and what are you doing every day, to protect this heritage?

We’re going to need to dismantle Ofcom.

Future books will be written monk-mode, by hand, completely offline, in digital monasteries purpose-built for focus.

The digital divide has reversed. Digital is cheap, ubiquitous, often fake. Physical is the premium product now.

Labour’s Digital ID: Your Papers, Please There is a pattern here, if you have the stomach to look at it straight. In the past twelve months, this government has moved to strip most defendants of the right to trial by jury. It has tightened restrictions on protest. It has expanded the reach of digital surveillance law. And now, through the Digital Access to Services Bill, it has announced that every person in Britain will be enrolled in a centralised national digital identity scheme. Each measure comes with its own justification. Efficiency. Security. Modernisation. Taken individually, each sounds almost reasonable. Taken together, they are something else entirely. The Trilateral Commission’s Blueprint for Britain In 1975, the Trilateral Commission published a report titled "The Crisis of Democracy." Its central finding was startling in its frankness: the problems of Western governance, the authors concluded, stem from an excess of democracy. The solution was to restore the authority of central government institutions. In plain language: citizens were participating too energetically, and mechanisms needed to be found to reduce their capacity to do so. That report is fifty years old. Three of the most consequential figures in Britain's recent political life are members of that same Commission: Peter Mandelson, Jeffrey Epstein (until his death), and Keir Starmer before he entered Downing Street. The convention holds that members step back from active participation when they reach high office. They step back. They do not resign. There is no philosophical departure from the worldview the Commission exists to propagate. There is merely a temporary adjustment of public visibility. A mechanism of institutional plausible deniability. It is a big club. And you are not in it, but you will conform to it. The British state has a long, honourable history of treating its citizens as entries on a ledger. First the Domesday Book, then the census, then the National Insurance number, then the poll tax register. Each new iteration arrives wrapped in the language of efficiency, security and modernity. Each one makes it a little easier for the state to know where you live, what you earn, how you spend your time and how much you owe them. Now the current government has dusted off Tony Blair's old blueprint under a new guise. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has been sent out to sell it. And her sales patter has already begun to fray. 'Everyone in the country will have a digital ID,' Nandy told Sky News, before hastily clarifying that it would not, in fact, be mandatory for pensioners or children. 'All UK citizens will have a digital ID,' she told BBC Breakfast, before the government confirmed that non-workers would not be required to hold one. The messaging has been so slippery that Full Fact has had to publish two separate corrections in a single fortnight. That is not a coherent policy. That is a government making it up as it goes along. Digital Access to Services Bill is coming. Read the full investigation: 👇 labourheartlands.com/labours-digita… #DigitalID #SurveillanceState #TrilateralCommission

Digital ID = Gateway to mass surveillance

Richard Nadler's work is my personal catnip. #collections" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">richardnadler.com/#collections

📵How can this government argue that our 16-year-olds are well-informed enough to vote, while simultaneously trying to lock them out of the modern public square where they actually get their news and debate political issues? Instead of relying on unworkable bans that exclude young people from political discourse, we must build their digital resilience and force unaccountable tech monopolies to fix their toxic business models.

Tell the publishers to stop blocking @waybackmachine 🚫🕳️ savethearchive.com/newsleaders/

@tedmitew Your wonderful but despair inducing essay inspired me to write this: treb0r.net/post/eucatastr…

See what happens when the government snoops on our bank accounts - and us: Savers are wrongly being ordered to pay thousands of pounds in tax after HMRC was given licence to monitor bank accounts. The authority is clawing back tax on savings interest that either does not exist or is shielded in an Isa, after banks were forced to hand over details of their customers’ accounts. An investigation by The Telegraph found taxpayers had been wrongly billed to the tune of thousands of pounds and had their tax codes adjusted to repay the sum. Now with drive for 8 million directors on One Login along with Make Tax Digital for Self Employed, things worsen Pls sign share the Pledge today below #scrapdigitalid telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/inco…