My pitch for a new social media platform:

Our app will allow children of any age (but we’ll put 13 in the T&Cs), to engage in completely unmoderated chat with total strangers of all ages from all over the world! They’ll be able to freely exchanged photos, videos and any kind of file without restriction!

Can you imagine pitching that and getting investment? The current situation with kids and social media is ludicrous.

The rules for “branded content” on Instagram are very clear but there is no way to report Posts that don’t meet the requirements. Funny that.

Read Teenagers will always get drunk – so why don’t we just serve them in pubs? by Zoe Williams

Several things:

Firstly, how has this article been written without reference to Hot Fuzz?

Secondly, it’s not a bad idea. Especially considering:

If you’re 16 or 17 and accompanied by an adult, you can [already] drink beer, wine or cider with a meal.

Seems reasonable, right?

But, the major problem is that this does not remove the need for ID checks. Set the age at 16, you’ll get 13-14 year olds trying it on.

What we, in the UK, really need is culture shift where being falling down drunk is not tolerated and for landlords to abide by their license and stop serving such persons alchohol.

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I “do” data stuff for work. We look at patient experience in health and social care services. When I first joined, I (and colleagues) genuinely believed there was some revelatory nugget of insight (or even scandal) hidden away in the data. Now I’m just happy when our results affirm things everyone already assumes to be true, like working people would like increased access to evening and weekend appointments. Findings like people in poorer areas rely more on public transport, validates our research approach and methods. So, when we do find something slightly unexpected, it has a lot more credibility.

There’s lots of examples going around of generative AI giving bad results but here’s a fun thing you can try at home. Works best if you’re a nobody. Ask ChatGPT (or any similar technology) what it knows about you (based on your first name, last name). In my case ChatGPT decided that my name was just a pseudonym for a famous person with the same last name and asserted that we were the same people.

See how it works for you. Based on the results, you might consider this tech a viable platform for factual information or you might not.

It’s polling day in the UK, which means we’ll have seamless, live coverage of absolutely nothing until 10pm when the polls close. Then we’ll have an exit poll and live coverage of nothing happening for several more hours, until the first counts come in. In fact, the next 18 hours of news in the UK will contain very little actual news.

I was thinking about Trump’s conviction this morning and it occured to me that, if he had repaid Michael Cohen the hush money from the campaign fund AND written “Hush money for porn star” in the accounts – neither he nor Cohen would have done anything illegal

I think “winning” the second World War was the worst thing that ever happened to Britain psychologically. We continue to celebrate the losses and hardships more than the victory. Dunkirk, the Blitz, rationing. Ask five people on any high street, on which day of the year we remember the fallen and I reckon 4 out of 5 will tell you. Ask anyone over 50 and it’ll be 100%. Then ask them when VE Day is. I reckon anyone under-25 won’t even know what VE day is…