Friday 26 June, 2026
Café life
Quote of the Day
”Criticism and Bolshevism have one thing in common. They both seek to pull down that which they could never build.”
Noel Coward
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Abdullah Ibrahim | Little Boy
Long View of the Day
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video might be worth a million.
I could have generated a transcript of this video by Hannah Fry, a Cambridge professor, which provides the most useful and accessible explanation I’ve come across of why AI ‘agents’ might be both the smartest AND most worrying things we’ve ever invented. But I think the video conveys the message more cogently than text. It really made me think because I had downloaded OpenClaw but had held back from using it to build autonomous agents because (i) I couldn’t think of an application that would be both genuinely useful (for me) and (ii) safe. It’s still sitting there, looking at me reproachfully.
My commonplace booklet
Lovely piece of satire by Private Eye.
Many years ago Brits used to laugh at Italian politics where the country seemed to have an endless merry-go-round of Prime Ministers. Well, guess what? When Andy Burnham takes office in July the UK will be on its tenth Prime Minister in a single decade!
Teaching Meta a lesson
For the background, see here.
Thank you for reading this far. If you’ve enjoyed the experience, please consider recommending it to a friend or a colleague. Here’s a link that makes it easy to do. Many thanks.