Sathnam Sanghera

Today, we're publishing Don't Steal This Book - a (mostly) empty book from almost 10,000 authors, protesting the theft of their work by AI companies.

🧵 1/3

One would hope @ofcom.bsky.social would have a think about this 🧵— particularly the established power of these sort of narratives as rationalisation for violence

But not optimistic it will

To celebrate the publication of my new book 'The Secrets of Painting' I am embarking on a nationwide book tour & I’d love you to join me at a venue near you. For more information and tickets follow the links on my website lachlangoudie.com/news/

Public support for US attack on Iran down 10 points since last week. 59% oppose to 25% support. Tory supporters now evenly split. Another Keminaissance triumph.

67% of Britons describe themselves as anti-Trump, with Reform UK voters the only group more likely to be pro-Trump than anti

By 2024 vote
Lib Dem: 89% anti-Trump / 2% pro-Trump
Labour: 85% / 3%
Green: 82% / 4%
Conservative: 61% / 19%
Reform UK: 24% / 46%

yougov.com/en-gb/articl...

My book on the history of British South Asian political activism is out this September!

Available to pre-order now from all good bookshops and online.

My money is on George Osborne.

Publishing WTF moment:

I get a pitch for a book that's pro-AI pedagogy, asking me which proposal guidelines to use, as we have 2 files on our website.

We only have 1 file on our website.

The second file is 8 years old and not publicly available.

I ask where they got it. /1

Stephen Fry: “I’m deeply worried by the darkening shadow that’s going over the world, a shadow that we have to call fascism”

Laura Kuenssberg: “You would use that word?”

Stephen Fry: “Oh absolutely. It’s a cult of power; and power only speaks to power”

#bbclaurak

Just fascinating to see Blair, a man whose reputation was ruined by the Iraq war, advocate joining a war that is exponentially stupider and more chaotic. How is it possible to learn nothing from the worst mistake of your life?

“Already won” 🧐

move slow and repair things

We don’t talk enough about how morally depraved the tech industry turned out to be. Every single ounce of their self-regarding statements of values was an outright lie.

Grumpy book rec

🧡

Definitely doing a bunch of festivals, gm might not be core chalke subject tho

🙏🏾

A little bit obsessed with all the nut clusters currently ‘ashamed to be British’ because Starmer didn’t sign us up to this shit show.

I think you'll find, if you do a little research, that Greek, Jewish migrants weren't talked about in exactly these hostile terms in British history

🙏🏾

I will seek help.

Haha. Im sorry

Artist Jeremy Deller went viral recently with his 'Thank God For Immigrants' posters featuring Wham, but they weren't precisely accurate: George and Andrew were sons of migrants. It explained a lot. My new book Tonight the Music Seems So Loud: the Meaning of George Michael is out soon. sathnam.com

there are like 50 people in the country who want the UK to get involved in the Iran War, one of them is Kemi Badenoch, one of them is Nigel Farage, and the other 48 are newspaper columnists

I remember when ‘Brexit Means Brexit’ became a way for silly people to insist that they supported something they could neither justify nor explain. Obviously the context is very different, but something similar is already happening with the ‘war’ in Iran. And it’s mostly the same people doing it.

FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

Your regular reminder that the UK is in fact a high trust society and anyone who implies it isn’t is either selling you a pup or has bought one.

The influencers leaping to Dubai’s defence [FREE TO READ] As missiles streak across the region, unfazed residents insist they ‘know who protects us’

‘British expats, he claimed, were refusing to fill out evacuation forms provided by the British government “just in case it somehow turns into a tax form instead”.’

No notes.

as.ft.com/r/65cf2b43-6...

All I can think about is Jeff Bezos saying that he slashed jobs at the Washington Post — including those of foreign correspondents in the Middle East — based on "the data," and a few weeks later a whole war breaks out in the Middle East that these laid off folks would have covered as true experts.

Hegseth: "We are only four days into this and the results have been incredible."

- Middle East engulfed in regional war
- 11 countries attacked by Iran
- Oil & gas prices skyrocketing
- Strait of Hormuz now a conflict zone
- Terrorism threat raised across the world
- No sign of Iran regime collapse