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Sarah Richards

@sarahrichards.bsky.social
261 followers 447 following 4.1K posts

“World is crazier and more of it than we think…” Heck and heavens. These days, inevitably, more heck.

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Reposted by Sarah Richards
christhebarker @christhebarker.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Fucking hell though.
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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 03/10/2026
‘Rupert Lowe, who set up the far-right party Restore Britain after falling out with Farage, earns about as much from posting about mass deportations and rape gangs on Elon Musk’s X as he does from being an MP.’ @petergeoghegan.bsky.social on party fundraising. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Peter Geoghegan · Short Cuts: Funding Reform
British politics has long been complacent about the power of big money. The relatively low price of access to...
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The ability to pour hundreds of millions of pounds into a loss-making TV channel, bent on wrenching British politics sharply to the right, is yet another of the ways in which extreme wealth is trying to remake UK democracy. It needs to be part of any serious conversation about political funding.
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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I find myself getting quite frustrated with this 'well it's a contested definition'. It's only contested if you think the views of ignorant people are as valid as those who know what they're talking about.
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Polanski seems to be using a microphone with a unique voice-tinnying setting - or is he really as thin and unresonant as he sounds?
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Steve 🏳️‍🌈🇬🇧 @wohyeahwohyeah.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
We have a new icon - MP Miatta Fahnbulleh
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Danny Fearns @dannyfearns.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Suella Braverman finds it important to define herself as British Asian, but definitely NOT English. Born & educated here, speaking fluent English, holding down a position as an MP, & saying she loves England, apparently isn't enough.
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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
My teacher brother has just informed me that his primary school kids now refer to anything shit or old fashioned as "Brexit". Which has made my morning.
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
A panoply of confusion, obstinacy, paranoia and la-la selfcomforting. time.com/article/2026...
time.com
Read TIME’s ‘What Trump Has Built’ Interview Transcript
The U.S. President discussed the war in Iran, press freedom, AI, and more ahead of the midterm elections.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
'In the highly unusual public alert, the UK's internal security service warned universities and academics that continuing ties with China General Technology Research Institute (CGTRI) could ultimately lead to criminal charges for aiding a foreign state.'
bbc.co.uk
UK research funded by China front company being sent to Beijing's spies, MI5 warns
British universities are being urged to sever ties with China General Technology Research Institute which is linked to the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS).
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Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 30/09/2026
Israeli minister calls Shabana Mahmood an Islamist, because erm, erm, erm
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General Boles @generalboles.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Bluesky reacts to Burnham speech
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Social care (including care home accommodation) can be a very lucrative investment avenue for unscrupulous (or very naive) speculators. When private money colonises public provision, it often mercilessly makes itself the only winner: www.onetouchinvestment.co.uk/are-care-hom...
onetouchinvestment.co.uk
Are care home rooms worth investing in
Globally, the median age of populations is rising. In the U.K, seventeen percent of the population is over 65. The proportion of the United Kingdom’s population aged 90 or over has been increasing eve...
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Andy Scollick @andyscollick.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Probably because they are dupes. "Hey guys, if I give you two grand each to deliver this consignment to a car park in Gloucestershire.. No questions. A grand's bonus on your return." Five or 8 or 10 lads from London are not going to say no. Either that or CTP want to see who they contact or meet?
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Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Absolutely fascinating to see Laura Kuenssberg interviewing Burnham, flailing to adjust her stance to a politician with a moral argument and a positive message, who stands up for his policies and answers her questions clearly. She is getting so agitated at him not playing the game by the 'rules'.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
New post out: England's schools are now the second highest performing in the world outside the far east, according to the OECD's PISA study. Is this because of policy? Attitude to technology? Cultural factors like immigration? And where can we still improve? samf.substack.com/p/why-englan...
samf.substack.com
Why England’s schools are doing so well
And what we need to focus on next
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Arguably @arguablymag.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"Most countries have been slow to realise just how threatened they are by the weaponisation of collective stupidity". @geoffmulgan.bsky.social writes on why the UK needs “cognitive rearmament”. www.arguably.uk/p/collective...
arguably.uk
Collective stupidity is a security threat
Why it’s time for societies to take cognitive rearmament seriously
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Intriguing. If international law is seen as self-injurious, and flouting it an existential necessity, what exactly are we fighting for…? “Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor [et al…] In their long coats Running over the fields.”
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
@sturdyalex.bsky.social Do hope you - and all the team - are watching this and will treat us to an unexpurgated response… Michael “ASAP!” Gove, Jim “Fuck” Murphy, Harriet “Butter not guns” Harman et al. Terrifying and hilariously Pythonesque in equal measure: bsky.app/profile/oajo...
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Keir Giles @keirgiles.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Attack drones launched from vessels of Russia's shadow fleet at targets in Western Europe, you say? One reason that scenario didn't make it into the plot of Sky's "The Wargame", broadcasting this week, is because the team playing Russia already had too many options. inews.co.uk/news/world/w...
Screenshot describing Wargame discussions of shadow fleet attack drones.
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Adam Farrer @adamjfarrer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
It's actually quite useful to see how your Prime Minister copes when he's suffering so much second-hand embarrassment that he wants to bite down on his own fist like it's an apple but can't because he needs to avoid an international incident.
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Duncan Edmonstone @edmonstone.net · 21/09/2026
This seems like the sort of thing @doctorow.pluralistic.net likes to talk about. The UK should follow France's lead and start the long (painful) process of regaining our digital sovereignty.
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This is absolutely fascinating.
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Josie Glausiusz @josiegz.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
“Any mention of civil rights, feminism or social reform [topics that are central to Woolf’s work] are usually classified as ‘social topics’ by [Facebook's] automatic system” and are filtered out." Meta bans ads for Virginia Woolf play in Spain www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
Meta bans ads for Virginia Woolf play in Spain because they relate to feminism
Theatre told that Facebook and Instagram filter out ads mentioning ‘social topics’ such as civil rights or feminism
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Alona Ferber @aloner.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
🧵
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Chastening study of a PM as chief procrastinator. Even Hamlet in Elsinore never managed to evade decisive action quite as determinedly as Gove does here. (His intellectual questioning and philosophising aren’t a patch on the Dane’s either.) And, so far, everything is always someone else’s job.
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Tim Newman @tnewmsblues.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
“Since Nebraska began using interRAI last year, the state has cut Medicaid funding to nearly 900 people with developmental disabilities, leaving many caretakers racing to overturn decisions made by an algorithm whose inner workings are largely hidden from the public.” www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
nbcnews.com
A secretive computer algorithm is taking caregiving money away from disabled people
After Nebraska used a new interRAI tool to slash Medicaid funding for nearly 900 people, NBC News uncovered the hidden logic behind some of the cuts.
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James FBSI 🐸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇵🇸🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇺 (Fanatic) @toplandscaper.eurosky.social · 21/09/2026
Putin - "Russia has no plans to attack any European country" This is worth a few minutes of your time substack.com/@janewilding...
substack.com
Jane Wilding (@janewilding)
Would be nice to have a leader in UK (and US) who actually understands how the world works.
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Astonishing he hasn’t suggested “American Intelligence” as a possibility. Or is it already *taken*?
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 20/09/2026
Beyond parody: "At the strong request of the Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers..."
At the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage. There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World. Out of the 59 top cities and Capitals, Washington, D.C., IS THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD THAT DOES NOT HAVE A TRIUMPHAL ARCH, but it will now and, by far, the greatest of them all! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
@doctorow.pluralistic.net Please can we hear more from you on the enshittifying world of apps? bsky.app/profile/oldt...
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Former PM Rishi Sunak in the Sunday Times challenges the rise of ethno-nationalism in British politics, as an argument within the right about Britishness being about ancestry, DNA and ethnicity www.thetimes.com/article/e89d...
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
A 3 minute read. And was there ever a more pitiful succession of extraordinary failures to mount a single decent argument…?
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Superb.
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 13/09/2026
Good job the entire stock market is not perched on AI now the teenage boys running it have decided it's a massive nuclear bomb and they don't know how to turn it off *Taps ear piece*
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
@doctorow.pluralistic.net Do you know Prof Hywel Dix’s paper “The Loss of the Subject: Keywords and the Language of Science Fiction?”. eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/22729/3/Foun... Fascinating stuff. If only Raymond Williams were still alive, to fully decode the language of our enshittified world!
eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk
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Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
Macron shook one hand.
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This is excellent on our readiness (or lack of it) for a likely war. Finland has always had an impressive, fighting frame of mind: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
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Kat 💥 @katstark.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I'm pretty sure if non-white blokes did this, they'd all be locked up and all their extended family would be under surveillance
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Eddie Burfi @eddieburfi.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Just look at the glee on Nigel Farage’s face as he watches a Piddington resident cry about the overt racism she, her Caribbean heritage husband, and their two children have felt in the village during the referendum. Time and again he’s showing us exactly who he is.
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REwadent Evil @ewacat.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
this is almost hilariously exactly what's being said here in the Guardian lmao, he's being taken literally bsky.app/profile/msle...
He echoes Samadi in his message that chatbots are not “just tools”. “That doesn’t really capture what’s actually happening here,” he said. “AIs are clearly more dynamic, more ambiguous, more integrated and more emergent than mere tools … We should start to think about them as we might a new kind of digital species.”

Suleyman intended the comparison as a metaphor, but over the past 18 months, increasing numbers of people have arrived at a more literal interpretation. Across the world, thousands of people seem to have experienced similar sparks to Samadi, coming to believe that they have “awakened” their chatbots. Other users have sunk into months-long reveries of research with their AI systems, claiming to have invented new forms of science or mathematics, or unlocked a higher spiritual realm in coordination with their machines.
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Many humans used to make exactly the same arguments, using exactly the same vocabulary, about beasts of burden and even certain other members of their own species - whole generations were even “trained” to think this way. Something any half-decent AI is likely to notice…
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Garrie Coleman @garriecoleman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I wonder what makes the people of a village that’s been next to an actual army barracks that only closed in May 2026 give more of a shit about brown asylum seekers than actual, real, trained fighting age men. #Piddington
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
In the 1980s, my home was down the road from Piddington. Government ministers in Thatcher’s time also listened extraordinarily attentively to local residents - I came from Halifax to live there and it was quite a shock. (So was seeing black visitors to the local pub being turned away.)
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Lizzie Dearden @lizziedearden.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Exclusive: Russian intelligence agents are “hijacking” online networks of violence-obsessed children and offering them money, guns and coaching on making explosives and poisons, new research suggests At least two incidents have been claimed by the networks in the UK inews.co.uk/news/russian...
inews.co.uk
Russian spies 'recruiting UK teenagers' to carry out acts of violence and sabotage
Russian intelligence agents are “hijacking” online networks of violence-obsessed children and offering them money, guns and coaching on making explosives and poisons, new research suggests. Law enforc...
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 15/09/2026
Kash Patel: "We did not want to punish victims of beastiality"
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Stunningly good. The best primer on AI’s frenemy, geni-idiotic, nature you will find, in words exclusively designed for slow-coach human brains.
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
There’s a great thread (on X) on Lucy Letby’s defence team’s task following the departure of two key witnesses. Experts may disagree on plausible explanations but fundamentally concur there is hefty doubt any of the scientific insulin evidence convincingly suggests the action of a criminal.
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Josiah Mortimer @josiahmortimer.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Angela Rayner: "When these Reform donors say they want nothing, they mean it. No workers rights, no renters' rights, no social protections, no safety net, no regulation, nothing to stand in their way. And if Farage will do you a Cameo for £70, just ask yourself what he'd do for £70 million."
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Sarah Richards @sarahrichards.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
“Claude Mythos is a very good friend of mine. Great guy.”
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