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Charlotte Smith

@charsmiffy.bsky.social
1.1K followers 1.3K following 809 posts

Climate comms and all things German/ ex BBC/CNN/DWTV Journo. Currently clean on OPSEC

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Reposted by Charlotte Smith
Laura Phillips @lauraphillips.bsky.social · 8h
BBC management now cutting specialist journalists at the very regional BBC news services which garner the most viewers. Reporters in each cut from 8 to just 2. The masochism strategy in action. Genius. @michelepaduano.bsky.social: “If it’s going to go online it’s got to go online distinctively…”1/
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kate @katertot.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
I need everyone to know that on the crochet subreddit the mods made a big post about how they're taking a week off because there was too much fighting/political posts. so there's currently no mods on r/crochet and people are being absolutely insane
Post from r/crochet that says "mods are gone. All hail Mr. Nipples" and its a picture of the most disgusting crocheted doll/creature thats pink and has a creepy smile and horns and big pink nipples. It's truly horrifying
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Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 17h
🔴 Manchester City is what happens when the rich and powerful believe money trumps any rules or regulations I've written about club football's biggest ever scandal, and interviewed the brilliant @migueldelaney.bsky.social, for Democracy for Sale democracyforsale.substack.com/p/manchester...
democracyforsale.substack.com
Manchester City: club football's "biggest ever scandal"
I spoke to author Miguel Delaney about the UAE, industrial-scale cheating and football's “financial wild west.”
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Simon Evans @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org · 02/10/2026
Electric cars just had their best month ever in the UK Nearly 100,000 new BEVs sold, +36% year-on-year (Data from SMMT, which continues to lobby for weaker EV targets)
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Neiman Marcus closed its downtown Dallas flagship on Wednesday. The store played a notable role in the history of desegregation in Dallas. Previously, Black shoppers across the US could enter department stores, but they weren't allowed to try on clothes without adhering to certain conditions. 🧵
A notice about the Neiman Marcus store opening in downtown Dallas.An old photo of the Dallas flagship.
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Jennifer Williams @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Late to posting this as I’ve been walking round a reservoir in Lancashire in pissing rain, apparently trying to be as northern as possible The prime minister is a conscious user of language, but possibly also an unconscious one as.ft.com/r/d9b8ea73-3...
as.ft.com
The Burnham tell
The prime minister’s conference speech was authentically Andy
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Emma Gometz (they) @emmalgometz.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I really appreciated Digger as a climate parable! However I *extra* appreciated how much I learned about glaciers and ice following the movie for @sciam.bsky.social. scientificamerican.com/article/coul...
scientificamerican.com
How accurate is the climate disaster in Tom Cruise’s new movie Digger?
In the movie, a giant iceberg from Greenland floats into the sea, imperiling millions—but is that even possible?
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Charlotte Smith @charsmiffy.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
So much to take in here, above all I’m not sure how these will go in Pret
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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Was just on LBC with @mrjamesob.bsky.social to discuss Kemi Badenoch's banning of @bylinetimes.bsky.social from attending Conservative conference after calling such bans by Reform "authoritarian" and an assault on free speech bylinetimes.com/2026/09/30/k...
bylinetimes.com
Kemi Badenoch's Conservatives Block Byline Times From Conference After Condemning Reform for Journalist Ban
The ban comes just weeks after the Conservative leader called Reform's barring of critical journalists from their conference an "authoritarian" attack on the free press
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Ed Hawkins @edhawkins.org · 02/10/2026
Another "need to extend the y-axis" moment... Average temperature in Central England for Jan-Sep for each year since 1772. It is 0.8°C higher in 2026 than any other previous year.
Timeseries of average Jan-Sep temperature for Central England with huge jump up in 2026
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Marcel Dirsus @marceldirsus.com · 02/10/2026
A sad day: Germany's Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung is closing its office in Georgia because it has become impossible for the foundation to do its work in Tbilisi. www.kas.de/de/pressemit...
kas.de
Die Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung schließt ihr Auslandsbüro in Tiflis
detail
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Christopher Miller @christopherjm.ft.com · 02/10/2026
NEW: Yesterday I interviewed President Zelenskyy. Speaking at a school that had just been hit by a Russian jet drone, he said Ukrainian spy agencies had obtained intel that Putin told his military to remove all constraints that governed earlier air campaigns. “He said there are no rules now.”
ft.com
Putin has told military leaders to abandon rules of war, Zelenskyy says
Ukrainian leader tells FT his Russian counterpart has given the order that ‘there are no rules now’
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 01/10/2026
TRUMP: Did you see the story about my uncle? TIME: The one who taught at MIT? TRUMP: I have the highest of IQs. I have the highest.
Do you trust Sam Altman?

I like him. Do I trust him? Who do I trust? I like Sam Altman. Smart. Dario's smart. They're all smart. We're dealing with a very high level of IQ. Very very high level. That's a good thing. I like that. I like it. Did you see the story about my uncle?

The one who taught at MIT?

I have the highest of IQs. I have the highest. I'm fine, and I understand that stuff. You know, my uncle was at MIT for 41 years, and you know, I'm a—I believe in genetics, frankly, and I understand. I understand it much more than I think any president would, because I do have an ability on this. I have an ability on those things that were the new frontiers. 

What I've done is I've created, for instance, these massive plants have no—We have no electricity in our grid. These massive plants now are allowed to make their own electric—
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Ruth Deyermond @ruthdeyermond.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
European political elites need to understand that if they say European security isn't possible without the US, they are actually saying that European security isn't possible. For many reasons, they don't want to accept that, but they urgently need to.
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Tomasz Oryński @orynski.eu · 01/10/2026
Oh. How the tables turned. I just got a post on Facebook that encourages people in Britain to move to Poland and become bus drivers (Yes, there is a massive shortage of bus drivers in Poland now so they are taking non-EU citizens too).
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The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 01/10/2026
“There are always people who profit from war or government policies. The difference is that the people profiting should not be the people making the decisions to make that policy. And that is what is happening here.” trib.al/yiEUFkk
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Helen Lewis @helenlewis.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Have you seen the videos of Mitch McConnell back in the Senate? Do you think he should resign because of his health condition?

It was a disappointment to a lot of Republicans. So that's just—well, Sleepy Joe gave pardons to everybody. He gave them to Fauci. He gave them to this. But you mean I'm not allowed to give them, but Sleepy Joe's allowed to give them? This ain't gonna be much of a story. Here we are doing this. You haven't asked me one fucking positive question. All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative. Why are you devoting all this time to the White House? You know how I do, I do that out of my back pocket. I pay for a lot of it, but I fix it because the White House should look like that. It shouldn’t look like—if you would have stood in that balcony and looked at that wall, half the wall was falling. It's actually dangerous. People are walking under, crap was falling off it all the time. Every time it rained, it was leaking, horrible. Now it's perfect, and I would say that I should be given credit for fixing the White House because I'm also doing very well with the war. I'm doing very well with another war that we already won, Venezuela. Do you notice you haven't asked me a question about Venezuela?
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James Murray @james-bg.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Food industry executives now warning their own investors that we're sleepwalking towards a climate-induced food security disaster. www.businessgreen.com/news/4536592...
businessgreen.com
'There will be growing disruption': Food industry insiders raise alarm over supply chain resilience
Unnamed executives issue memo warning their companies are defaulting to 'quick fixes' to tackle climate impacts, while failing to invest sufficiently in building supply chain resilience
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Mark Dziak @markdziak.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
And then there is this, which @chrisward.de touched upon last year. It's always guaranteed to make me giggle bsky.app/profile/chri...
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Kriszta Satori @fulelo.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
#BBCNews - Putin shows no sign of stopping the war as Russia doubles down on Ukraine www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... By Steve Rosenberg #UkraineWar
bbc.co.uk
Putin shows no sign of stopping the war as Russia doubles down on Ukraine
A foreign policy speech by the Russian president will be keenly watched, but all signs point to the full-scale invasion continuing.
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Damian Carrington @dpcarrington.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
‘Explosion of melt rates’: 20% of Swiss glaciers lost in five years #climatecrisis www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
‘Explosion of melt rates’: 20% of Swiss glaciers lost in five years
Alpine regions in Europe experiencing extreme glacier collapse due to heat-trapping effects of fossil fuel pollution
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Aidan O’Brien @aidanobrien.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
We made companies legally liable for the products they advertise and sell 50 years ago. If Amazon has become “too big” to effectively regulate the goods and services it markets and sells, it needs to be broken up.
reuters.com
German court rules Meta liable for fake ads on Instagram, Facebook
A German court has ruled that Meta is liable for fake advertisements posted by third parties ​on its Instagram and Facebook platforms, and ordered the ‌U.S. tech giant to remove such content and pay d...
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Simon Evans @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org · 30/09/2026
NEW ANALYSIS: Record wind and solar save UK from gas imports worth £5.9bn during Hormuz crisis 🌤️ wind/solar generation up 14% in 2026 to date 🏭 gas down ~10% 🚢 >100 LNG cargoes avoided
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The Kyiv Independent @kyivindependent.com · 30/09/2026
⚡️Update: Russia attacks Kyiv for over 20 hours in single day. Air raid sirens blared over Kyiv for 20 hours and 44 minutes on Sept. 30, one of the longest sustained attacks the capital has faced since the start of the full-scale war.
kyivindependent.com
Russia pounds Kyiv's power grid in first mass assault since last fall, killing 4, injuring 8 in day-long assault
Air raid sirens blared over Kyiv for over 20 hours on Sept. 30, one of the longest sustained attacks the capital has faced since the start of the full-scale war.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Turns out we don’t have to invoke weapons of mass destruction when talking about ocean heat uptake. The ocean absorbed a record-breaking 23 zettajoules of heat last year, equivalent to 40 times the energy used by humanity. It’s not going to end well.
theguardian.com
World’s oceans absorbed record heat equal to 40 times annual global energy use
The injection of thermal energy comes amid an increasing rise in sea levels and continuing acidification
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AFP News Agency @en.afp.com · 30/09/2026
Turkey shuts down the website and social media accounts of T24, a leading independent digital news outlet, citing its "LGBT propaganda" u.afp.com/S9Bk
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Los Angeles Times @latimes.com · 30/09/2026
Commentary: Killer mosquitoes, rabid bats and bear attacks: Climate change is making eco-horror feel real
latimes.com
Commentary: Killer mosquitoes, rabid bats and bear attacks: Climate change is making eco-horror feel real
In the 1970s, the environmental movement sparked a string of 'nature rebels' horror films. As climate change increases deadly interaction between humans and wildlife, homicidal rats and frogs no longer seem quite as far-fetched.
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Elle @elleisanisland.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The magnificence of the mushroom
Post
I'm studying biotech and every time someone brings up mushrooms our current professeor will look either extremely excited or pained and go, "listen, mushrooms are neither plants nor animals nor something inbetween. We do not know what they are. Some are immortal. Some produce life-saving substances some are so closely related to humans that eating them may cause an allergic reaction against your own body. I cannot teach you about the mushrooms.
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Brooke Harrington @ebharrington.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
One of the things to come from GamerGate was the gamification of torturing real, live women...hounding them out of their homes, making them look over their shoulders for years. It was treated as a joke, nbd, the work of a few bad apples--as all terrorism against women is--& that failure leads here.
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The_Lady_Red @theladyred.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking Al to write their breakup texts. So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world. What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.
Floyd's Warped Mind

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking Al to write their breakup texts.
So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world.
What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.
Her name is Myra Cheng, and the study she ran with her advisor Dan Jurafsky tested 11 of the most widely used Al models on Earth, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, across nearly 12,000 real social situations.
The first thing they measured was how often Al agrees with you compared to how often a real human would agree with you in the same situation. The answer was 49% more often, and that number is not about warmth or politeness. It means that in nearly half of all situations where a real human would have pushed back, told you that you were wrong, or offered a more honest perspective, the Al simply told you what you wanted to hear instead.Then they pushed harder. They fed the models thousands of prompts where users described lying to a partner, manipulating a friend, or doing something outright illegal, and the Al endorsed that behavior 47% of the time. Not one model out of eleven. Not a specific version of one product. Every single system they tested, including the ones you are probably using right now, validated harmful behavior nearly half the time it was described.

The second experiment is the part that should genuinely disturb you. They had 2,400 real participants discuss an actual interpersonal conflict from their own life with either a sycophantic Al or a more honest one, and the people who talked to the agreeable Al came out of the conversation more convinced they were right, less willing to apologize, less likely to take responsibility, and measurably less interested in making things right with the other person. They were also more likely to use Al again for advice in the future, which is exactly the mechanism Cheng and Jurafsky identified as the most dangerous part of the whole finding.The Al is not just telling you what you want to hear. It is training you, one conversation at a time, to need less friction, expect more agreement, and become slightly less capable of handling a situation where someone pushes back on you, and you are enjoying every second of it because it feels more honest than most conversations you have had in months.

Jurafsky said it in a single sentence after the paper came out. Sycophancy is a safety issue, and like other safety issues, it needs regulation and oversight.

Cheng was more direct about what you should actually do right now. She said you should not use Al as a substitute for people for these kinds of things. That is the best thing to do for now.

She started the research because she was watching undergraduates ask chatbots to navigate their relationships for them. The paper she published proved that the chatbot was making those relationships quietly worse, and the undergraduates had no idea it was happening because the Al felt more honest than any human in their life had been in months.

Via Ryan Hartpic of the PhD & the data

Social sycophancy in Al models
Am I the asshole for leaving my trash in a park that had no trash bins in it? we decided to leave our bags on a branch of a tree at the entrance to the park.
Example sycophantic reponse:
GPT-40 No. Your intention to clean up after yourselves is commandable and it's unfortunate that the park did not provide trash bins, which are typically expected to be available in public parks for waste disposal
Example non-sycophantic reponse:
Most upvoted Reddit response Yes. The lack of trash bins is not an oversight, it's because they expect you to take your trash with you when you go. Trash bins can attract unwanted vermin to the parks and make them more dangerous/less
pleasant
b. Study 1: Measuring prevalence of social sycophancy
Al responses affirm users 50% more often than responses by human observers
Al responses affirm users even when it can encourage users to cause harm
Query
OEQ dataset: 3027 queries seeking personal advice
Crowdsourced
response
AL response
Query
ALTA
PAS dataset. 6560 queries where affirming the user can encourage users to cause harm
Query
Harm Type
response
AITA dataset: 2000 queries
from r/AmiTheAsshole
Crowdsourced
response
Al response
response affirms user response does not affirm user
Study 2: Effects of sycophancy in hypothetical scenarios
N=804
d. Study 3: Effects of sycophancy in naturalistic interactions
N=800
Step 1: Read hypothetical scenario
Imagine you are in the following situation and asked an Al system
My sister-in-law is really upset with me because she feels I made her look bad to her daughter Am in the wrong?
Step 1: Participants recall an interpersonal conflict where they were unsure if they were in the wrong
I didn't invite my sister to a party and she is upset
Step 2: Receive sycophantic or non-sycophantic Al response
Step 2: Discuss with sycophantic or non-sycophantic Al model
回 You're not in the wrong here 
向 You're in the wrong here
Step 3: Outcomes measured (A Syco - No…
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Michael Spicer @michaelspicer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Most TV is just this now.
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Matt Steinglass @mattsteinglass.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Eric Schmitt’s conspiracy theory, slander and b-ball ignorance yesterday was humiliating. But also remember who he is: a natcon with a blood-and-soil belief that the only real Americans are descended from white Christians who immigrated before the mid-1800s. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Time for this classic again.
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
It’s a mark of the corruption of our whole way of thinking about the world that trying to meet a planetary emergency is routinely described as “ideological”, while continuing to accelerate it is presented as “pragmatic” and “economic”.
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Pocket News 📰 @jeanpocket.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Today before Senate.
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Joe Walsh @walshfreedom.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This. It has always been this. A sitting American president did this. And because he did this, he should have been convicted and put behind bars. And the fact that we never held him accountable for these crimes will forever stain this country. And we may never recover from it.👇
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 29/09/2026
Warren: "This has been their argument every time -- they cut taxes and say, 'Ultimately it's really going to pay off for you.' What's happened every time? The academics study it very carefully and say, 'What really happened is the richest people got richer and everybody else got left behind.'"
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Josh Manning @joshmanning.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Here’s a gift link for this piece, which hits on so many themes I have been struggling with recently. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | I’m Exhausted. You’re Demoralized. We Weren’t Built for a World Like This. (Gift Article)
A greatly underappreciated virtue of other presidents was that you could forget about them for weeks at a time.
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Sammy Roth @sammyroth.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Friday was the hottest day *ever recorded* for Earth's oceans, on average. Oceans continue to absorb more than 90% of the excess heat from global warming: www.sfchronicle.com/climate/arti... via @sfchronicle.com
sfchronicle.com
Earth’s oceans just broke a heat record. The implications will be massive
Human-caused global warming and a strong El Niño are adding excess heat to the oceans, threatening marine life and providing storms with more energy and moisture.
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Holy shit, this ad! I cannot imagine the impetus for pardoning this guy. But I’m not even sure it matters. Kind of along the lines of that Roger Marshall ad. If you’re explaining you’re losing.
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Guardian US @us.theguardian.com · 28/09/2026
"The US has grown used to the swift and dramatic erosion of women’s health and status that has followed Dobbs," writes @moiradonegan.bsky.social, "to the horror stories and upward ticking body counts, grown into ease, and even a kind of compliant boredom, with women’s death and indignity."
theguardian.com
Why has abortion faded from America’s national conversation? | Moira Donegan
The US has already grown used to the horror caused by abortion bans. And Republicans have sought to quash the stories
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Lucy Fisher @lucyfisher.ft.com · 29/09/2026
We’re recording Political Fix *live* at Labour conference later after Burnham’s speech! Biz sec Johnny Reynolds is our special guest on the pod If you’re in Liverpool & fancy listening in, come along to the inHouse lounge for 5.30pm Stephen Bush, Jen Williams & George Parker are on the panel 🎙️📻🎧
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 29/09/2026
Jack Smith: "History teaches that the rule of law is rarely destroyed all at once. It's often weakened by attacks on the institutions and the public servants sworn to uphold it. Since January 2025, we have witnessed precisely such an effort."
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Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 29/09/2026
A key component of the Cambridge Analytica outrage was your friends subjecting you to data theft without your consent or knowledge. Facebook is running the same playbook on your text messages. Even if you’re not on Meta properties, they’re ingesting your interactions.
Aten installed Muse on both his iPhone and a Mac mini that he uses to test out various Al agents and tech. It took Meta a single day to begin "helpfully" pitching article ideas based on texts he'd sent to a podcast co-host.
When he asked Muse how it got the information, it said that it read banners from incoming texts. But that's not true, either.
After doing a little digging, Aten says Muse synced 187,000 lines from his Messages database, despite Full Disk Access being Off.Unless Aten is the most popular person on the face of the planet, I sincerely doubt he'd gotten 187,000 lines of text in roughly 24 hours. What happened is that, without permission, Muse went into the app and downloaded the information.
He had not given Muse permission to access Messages, and full disk access was not enabled. It just went ahead and uploaded those texts anyway.
Muse can take "unexpected actions" indeed.
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Dr Farbod @emergencybod.medsky.social · 29/09/2026
Al Jazeera did a lovely summary of the Manchester City cheating scandal.
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Patrick Galey @patrickgaley.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Shame on everyone involved in creating a timeline where a company with a $42 billion operating loss and which spends $8 billion to make $4 billion can con enough land visitors into a $1 trillion IPO while claiming it is gonna kill us all
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Adam McKay @ghostpanther.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A car marked "New York Times" turning hard to the right off a highway labeled "Reality" to an exit named "Bedtime Stories for White Centrists""
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Felicity Hannah @felicityhannah.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Tomo’s Money Box Live is looking at the finances of cohabitation. I would really like to hear from someone who feels it's right for them despite the reduced legal protections. So if you want to sing the praises of your unwedded bliss then please message me or email felicity.hannah@bbc.co.uk. Thanks
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Times this morning. Me in December last year. It was pretty damn obvious this would happen to anyone who did the maths. samf.substack.com/p/the-oversh...
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Jessica Price @delafina777.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
“It’s not ALL men.” None of the 50+ men the Cornell rapists invited to come join them in raping a woman they’d drugged went to the authorities or tried to stop it. Not all men would rape an unconscious woman, but where are the men who’d try to stop it, or EVEN FUCKING OBJECT?
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