tomo,
Lucy Connolly was mentioned in a Brendan O'Neill podcast recently and I read the story a few days ago. Just outrageous. I'm always banging on about the "three axes": freedom, fairness, tradition. This case gets a terrible score on all three. Starmer is right that it sends a message, but why on earth would you want to send *that* message?

Of course his background is as a human rights lawyer. Did that make him this brutal, or did it attract him because he was already a brute?

I think the people glad they'd had the vaccine are trying to hold the faith. In the midst of the COVID shenanigans I posted here about a syndrome I called margaretmeaditis. Mead, when confronted with evidence that her research had been wrong, simply accepted it. But many of the people who'd been educated according to the Mead doctrine refused to let her change of heart change theirs. For her, it was logic, for them, it was belief.

Biden's broadband: heavens! Kafka if you like, though I have a soft spot for Brazil.

Mailman,
Yes, AI is likely already in a good enough state to take a couple of dozen people doing a fairly useless job and replace them with one person guiding the AI to do a similar useless job for all of them. The problem is that that's not how technology gets applied. It won't be the low-value HR department that shrinks, instead we'll be replacing skillful people with useless people augmented by AI to do important jobs.

This happened in Victoria something like 30 years ago. They stopped staffing the ambulance emergency line with experienced ambulance officers. Instead, the phones were manned by unskilled people with a standardised questionnaire. This was deemed a "success" because it was so much cheaper and the appropriate dispatch evaluations only slipped from 98% to 94%, which was described as a mere 4% slip. Of course Blind Freddie can see that it was actually a *tripling* of inappropriate dispatches. People were dying and it became a festering scandal after a few months.

You can bet the same sort of nonsense is going to happen with AI.

I suppose it comes down to the fact that boneheads are cheap, so use AI to replace the eggheads.

Now we're in full election mode, and I've been unable to avoid occasional glimpses of our PM. Prior to getting elected, he had his crooked teeth straightened up. Arguably, this made him more photogenic, but unquestionably it worsened his speech impediment. Seeing him now in campaign mode, it looks like he's lost some weight (fighting fit and all that, I suppose), but the effect has been to make his head look larger and rounder. I'm wondering if he's trying to transform himself into Elmer Fudd.

I doubt AI is going to kill much…at the moment.

Using it quite heavily at work but does require time and effort to check its output once generated but it’s definitely got potential to remove humans altogether from some applications within my work place.

Also this;

https://dailycaller.com/2025/04/04/court-delivers-massive-blow-famed-climate-scientist/

There is a god! 😂

tomo,
Maybe shadow bureaucracy was a misleading term, but there seem to be plenty of signs that various NGOs are unofficial branches of the bureaucracy. Their incomes are largely provided by government(s) who, in turn, give serious consideration to their pronouncements (that eating meat increases greenhouse gases, or that nuclear power is no solution to the climate crisis, etc.) I think the old saying that he who pays the piper calls the tune applies; it's all driven by the bureaucrats.

Same tale with USAID of course, but with an American accent.

Hinkley Point story was fun:
That guy's on the take.
How do you know?
He shared the same bribe I got.

I'd go for the quad-bike over the boxing tickets anyway.

Agree with you about the Americans being (sensibly) less precious about the sanctity of judges. Big item of faith that Australian reporters have drilled our politicians in is separation of powers. The stupid reporters only enforce it in one direction. Howls of outrage if a politician criticises a legal ruling, but never a peep if a judge turns activist and starts pushing policies.

Flu vaccine study: I've never been tempted to take one (on the basis that I rarely catch flu), but that study doesn't seem very compelling. Placebo controlled double-blind would make a difference, but it looks like self-selecting. Could be quite a few people with my outlook in the no-vaccine side.

tomo,
The "soothing" message that the corruption between the EU and NGOs is that it can't be pinned on one or two naughty people, so don't bother looking.

A suggestion: how about the status of NGO gets removed the moment one dollar/euro/pound/kroner/whatever of government money enters their coffers. What proportion of NGOs *aren't* part of a government shadow bureaucracy.

It doesn't add up...,
tomo and I must have been seeing too much of each other lately, because the same alternative came to mind as I read your list. The researchers might not really care about the destination, the main thing is to enjoy the journey. A good outlook for life in general, but a bit cavalier when dealing with bioweapons and the like.

I didn't think about anti-virus head-boppers, so there's still value in reading tomo's thoughts.