BREAKING: Senator Mark Kelly sues Pete Hegseth, DOD, and others over Hegseth's censure of Kelly and effort to reduce his retirement grade, alleging violations of the First Amendment, due process, Speech & Debate Clause, and federal laws.
BREAKING: Senator Mark Kelly sues Pete Hegseth, DOD, and others over Hegseth's censure of Kelly and effort to reduce his retirement grade, alleging violations of the First Amendment, due process, Speech & Debate Clause, and federal laws.
Apologies if I missed this earlier, however a fairly decisive move on Musk / Grok and similar. A provision from the OSA may come into force as soon as this week. *
The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.
Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not "harmless images" but "weapons of abuse". ... It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but until now legislation which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced, despite passing in June 2025.
* This is I think normal. There are provisions from the Equality Act 2010 which are still not in force in England, unlike Wales and Scotland.
That's good, but are these tools specific enough to be banned? Tools can generally be used to create more things than one.
They will need to completely ban image editing. Deepfakes started with Photoshop, after all.
It's very, very difficult to prevent an image editing AI from creating images of people 'in states of undress'. My favourite image AI model, FLUX2, was claimed by its creators to be locked down so as not to be able to produce nude images. Took me less than half an hour to prove them wrong.
The end result will probably be image editing functions on cloud AI being geoblocked in the UK. Nobody's training a specific puritanical AI just because Labour want them to, training models is hugely expensive.
And as usual there's little or nothing the government can do about locally hosted AI. Plenty of those, in particular the Chinese produced models, will happily generate nude celebs or take a picture of your next door neighbour and put her in thigh boots and a corset...
And even the most Puritanical model can be subverted. Because these systems are not really thinking.
even if you could lock them down to the point of being no use for this, the open source models are out there. And there are no controls on them.
Though doesn't the legal risk fall on the person using it, not just the software distributor?
So anyone using it in the way you describe to make nudies of their neighbour without consent is potentially putting themselves on the sex offenders register.
Only if they share them or get searched for something else.
Well obviously. Nothing is a crime until you get caught.
China is to build a hidden chamber alongside Britain’s most sensitive communication cables as part of a network of 208 secret rooms beneath its new London “super-embassy”, The Telegraph can reveal. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/36fe649f2ac94cfc
Excellent progress for Kemi especially in regard to Farage
May she continue her progress
It is suggesting in those numbers, those who tell pollsters they will vote Reform, actually prefer Kemi as PM, that’s important if “party support” in mid term is protest vote and preferred PM more indicative of what happens in May 29.
However ultimately we have to confess, Kemi’s Achilles Heel right now, unless it can be mitigated, is, as far as she has one, the party’s policy platform. “Cavemen done just fine without a welfare state” for example.
A Conservative Rise at expense of Reform may move everything towards a 1983 result, a split tribe cancels itself out allowing “majority unliked” government a landslide.
Predicting the next GE becomes even more uncertain.
I think a window is plausibly opening for the Badenoch Tories to essentially present themselves as the radical small-state, deregulating, low tax, free enterprise brooms. If they can sound plausible on immigration and asylum matters too, then they essentially inhabit a decent ground on the political spectrum to win back traditional centre-right voters, some of the professional classes and those for whom a Reform vote is possible but who cannot bring themselves to vote for Farage when the crunch point comes.
Now that coalition in and of itself probably wouldn’t win them more than 35% of the electorate absolute tops, but that would be more than enough to keep them relevant and on current fragmentation could even win them an election (no laughing at the back).
This is admittedly an overly-optimistic scenario but losing some of the old guard to Reform likely helps them in this situation. The two main problems they have are (a) infighting and leadership - if they’re going to go in on this, they have to look credible and to look credible they are going to have to stick with Badenoch as leader - anything else undermines the narrative of stability etc (b) any sensible reform of benefits in this country requires a discussion around the triple lock and the oldies are one part of their voter coalition they will find it hard to lose.
I know what you are saying, but there’s a reason for being reduced to just 120 MPs, how quickly will that be forgotten?
Reform keep banging on about “Boris Wave” the Conservative Government record on immigration, securing the borders, and assimilation of migrants to UK values, whilst Labour keep banging on about the last Conservative governments records on NHS, public services, cost of living - it’s possible that improvements in coming years on those things the, sitting government gets credit for.
To what extent does the May, Boris, Truss, Sunak government record still hurt the Conservatives not just in 2029, but the 2030’s elections too?
In the bigger picture to this, psephological comparisons with today and the 2 party past, just cannot be made anymore imo - it’s two different things now so comparing can’t neatly read across - same with “worst satisfaction ratings ever” questions.
However, correct me where wrong, what interests me is the current governments “true comparison” - and how, as explained above, lot of pebble counting stats don’t read across so leaves us with “psychological hunch’s” - with Lady Thatchers turbulent and unpopular first term.
What saved the Conservatives in 1983 General Election was neatly split opposition votes, whilst what delivered a landslide win in 1987 was the improved economy, and concern the opposition would fuck it up. You can be in government through some turbulent and unpopular years, and then as a party get even better results.
And where you say credibility in 2029 can only come from sticking with Kemi, credibility in 2029 would also be the policy platform Kemi is tied to - and if it’s not a popular policy platform across the electorate, is one reason she would be sent to Leadership Graveyard. But, if trying to get the best possible result up from 120 MPs is that a “best way to stop a PM Farage is Vote Conservative” message - that would need credibility in policy platform to back it up. Do Conservatives junk Kemi to junk her policies for others with broader appeal across all electorate, or junk Kemi in attempt to out battle Farage with Jenrick?
Do you see what I mean by how precarious Badenoch’s position is? The job simply boils down to put on MPs from historic low of 120 - that’s the only performance measurement really.
Is “cavemen done fine without a welfare state” popular policy across the broader electorate come 2029, whilst option of going toe to toe with Farage on Reforms narrow messaging, to win voters back and put on 120+ MPs, is the slicker Jenrick the better option?
Do you mean is campaigning on welfare reform enough?
No, of course it isn't. But the country is absolutely looking for someone to articulate an alternative, and there is an opening for a party to move to offer that alternative without resorting to the extremes of Reform or the Greens.
Plausibly, the Tories can move into that ground. Badenoch isn't the finished article, but she was flailing hopelessly 12 months ago and has measurably improved. There are cautious signs that she has some understanding of some of the things that need to be fixed* - over-regulation, lack of dynamism, a rigid and complex tax system, an over-powerful process state and civil service bureaucracy, disincentives to investment and enterprise etc. Whether she can continue in that vein, the jury is still out. I have always thought she has potential - I'm not wholly convinced it's enough to turn her into a true leader, but we will see.
*but as a counterpoint, so too does Starmer and Labour at times - they just don't seem to have any kind of plan to resolve them.
“{Kemi} has measurably improved”
How are you measuring Kemi’s improvement?
To some extent I have PM and LOTO (gov and opp) linked on popularity like a seesaw, one down the other up and vice versa, with no actual substance or logic to it. As example, how Labour shot up after the Truss budget in similar measure to how Con sank - but Labours own economic policies were broadly in line with the Truss budget, not just Starmer’s growth growth growth catchphrase, but the thing the markets hated most and main reason for market response, £250B of government handouts, not from growth but from borrowing, to everyone to help with inflation pain, was what Starmer had been bragging all summer he would do - TSE even wrote “Starmer has shot the Tory fox” type header supporting Starmer’s proposal, a plan Truss lifted and stole for her budget.
My point being you can have a surge upwards in popularity, whilst simultaneously talking gibberish and proposing the very worst and ruinous of policy.
So which of Kemi’s policy idea’s do you think underpin the measurable improvement? Do you foresee the manifesto proposals from “cavemen managed fine without a welfare state” being widely popular with the electorate in the 2029 GE?
I think I responded quite fundamentally to those points in my earlier reply, I'm not quite sure what point you are making.
You stated “measurably improved” but no, you didn’t detail how.
Bottom line - what is Kemi actually gaining attention with, in the wider electorate? What do the wider electorate outside party members actually like? I can quickly reel off four measurements here, that are clearly showing bad measures still.
Popular policy announcements - that wrong foot government, who have no choice but steal and implement the policy? Nope.
Strong Rebuttal? When challenged by public or interviewers about failures of last government, Boris Wave, Covid etc, strong rebuttal responses, other than Sunakesque waffle? Nope. The Russell Crowe/Mandleson answer of “I was so busy delivering my remit, i didn’t have control of rest of government - is what she still uses.
Owning PMQs like Hague did against Blair? {and this follows on from previous measure} pinning Starmer down more regular, and not allowing him to use the record of an old government from two years ago to easily punch back with. Nope. Apart from what is planned and rehearsed, Kemi still can’t ad-lib or think quickly off the cuff just like she couldn’t as government minister. This is why Kemi is so poor in so many of her interviews.
Strategy for getting voters back. Is there anything more to the strategy right now than trying to channel public anger at the Labour government? You know that’s not nearly enough come General election’s, such thing happens mid term anyway, even without a LOTO push, so it’s hard to measure if that strategy is ever a success. Are we going to claim the unpopularity of the government is down to Kemi, that a bad result for Labour this May is down to Kemi and her teams strategy? Do you realise how silly and unrealistic that sounds? Also strategy focussing exclusively on Labour is the key to the Conservatives comeback? Well, how many Con seats switched to LibDem, and the party still Below 20% in polling, where are those traditional, lifetime, Con voters now? We know where our voters are, and it’s not with Labour. So what is the strategy for getting voters back from Reform and LibDems? What are the idea’s and the policy differentials between Kemi and Farages Reform, and the LibDems, that is winning voters back? becuase only this happening can properly shore up Kemi’s position as leader and save her from the sack. An Apology for hard Brexit is what those lost to Libdem need in order to come back, is this apology coming from Badenoch?
So measurable improvement in strategy after all this time as leader? Nope. There isn’t any. It’s not clear how voters will be won back. Apart from all these continued failures, on the main things to measure not just Kemi, but all LOTO on, I can’t think of important measurable improvements you suggested are there, you certainly didn’t provide any.
At the pub the Friday after the budget, a couple of my mates brought up her response in a positive way, and they’re not the type to talk politics usually
I am reminded of the little ditty ("Nice and Tidy, Tidy and Nice") about Nigel Nice and Terry Tidy from Viv Stanshall's Sir Henry at Rawlinson.
Tice and Nigey, Nigey and Tice.
I remember John Peel having Sir Henry interludes at Christmas, late 70's?
Somewhere I have the DVD with Trevor Howard as Sir Henry. It is supremely over the top.
"English as tuppence, changing yet changeless as canal water, nestling in green nowhere, armoured and effete, bold flag-bearer, lotus-fed Miss Havishambling opsimath and eremite, feudal still, reactionary Rawlinson End."
China is to build a hidden chamber alongside Britain’s most sensitive communication cables as part of a network of 208 secret rooms beneath its new London “super-embassy”, The Telegraph can reveal. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/36fe649f2ac94cfc
I am reminded of the little ditty ("Nice and Tidy, Tidy and Nice") about Nigel Nice and Terry Tidy from Viv Stanshall's Sir Henry at Rawlinson.
Tice and Nigey, Nigey and Tice.
I remember John Peel having Sir Henry interludes at Christmas, late 70's?
Somewhere I have the DVD with Trevor Howard as Sir Henry. It is supremely over the top.
Afair the original Sir Henry sketches were when Peel was on holiday and Viv Stanshall was the caretaker presenter. I think I might still have mp3 copies kicking around.
Also - Trevor Howard said filming Sir Henry was the most fun he ever had as an actor. Certainly looked more fun than Brief Encounter. (I love both! But I know which film set I'd liked to have spent more time on!)
BREAKING: Senator Mark Kelly sues Pete Hegseth, DOD, and others over Hegseth's censure of Kelly and effort to reduce his retirement grade, alleging violations of the First Amendment, due process, Speech & Debate Clause, and federal laws.
Apologies if I missed this earlier, however a fairly decisive move on Musk / Grok and similar. A provision from the OSA may come into force as soon as this week. *
The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.
Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not "harmless images" but "weapons of abuse". ... It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but until now legislation which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced, despite passing in June 2025.
* This is I think normal. There are provisions from the Equality Act 2010 which are still not in force in England, unlike Wales and Scotland.
That's good, but are these tools specific enough to be banned? Tools can generally be used to create more things than one.
They will need to completely ban image editing. Deepfakes started with Photoshop, after all.
It's very, very difficult to prevent an image editing AI from creating images of people 'in states of undress'. My favourite image AI model, FLUX2, was claimed by its creators to be locked down so as not to be able to produce nude images. Took me less than half an hour to prove them wrong.
The end result will probably be image editing functions on cloud AI being geoblocked in the UK. Nobody's training a specific puritanical AI just because Labour want them to, training models is hugely expensive.
And as usual there's little or nothing the government can do about locally hosted AI. Plenty of those, in particular the Chinese produced models, will happily generate nude celebs or take a picture of your next door neighbour and put her in thigh boots and a corset...
And even the most Puritanical model can be subverted. Because these systems are not really thinking.
even if you could lock them down to the point of being no use for this, the open source models are out there. And there are no controls on them.
Though doesn't the legal risk fall on the person using it, not just the software distributor?
So anyone using it in the way you describe to make nudies of their neighbour without consent is potentially putting themselves on the sex offenders register.
Yes. But the legal penalties barely put a dent in it.
Aren't they just Northerners in their "big coats"?
You can tell a Southerner up North by the Harrington jacket and and uncomfortable grimace.
This chart is for 27 January and unlikely to come off. If it does, though, the recent cold spell will be the warm-up act (so to speak).
There are definitely strong hints of a return to much colder conditions later in the month.
Fantasy Island!
By fantasy island do you mean know, worse than seasonal is not going to happen? For many of us use weather forecasting, and if it’s going to turn very cold for a week or more, or have deep snow, that will need thinking about. I am out of action at the moment as I had a flu like virus and afterwards given medicine for vertigo, and lots of tests before I see a consultant in ears.
When I threw up sheep were eating it thinking it was food. It looked a bit like corn. Maybe. But it just kept coming over me.
Mark Kelly: "In 1986, at just 22 years old, I took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. I have fulfilled that oath every day since, but I never expected that I would have to defend it against a Secretary of Defense or President."
Apologies if I missed this earlier, however a fairly decisive move on Musk / Grok and similar. A provision from the OSA may come into force as soon as this week. *
The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.
Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not "harmless images" but "weapons of abuse". ... It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but until now legislation which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced, despite passing in June 2025.
* This is I think normal. There are provisions from the Equality Act 2010 which are still not in force in England, unlike Wales and Scotland.
That's good, but are these tools specific enough to be banned? Tools can generally be used to create more things than one.
They will need to completely ban image editing. Deepfakes started with Photoshop, after all.
It's very, very difficult to prevent an image editing AI from creating images of people 'in states of undress'. My favourite image AI model, FLUX2, was claimed by its creators to be locked down so as not to be able to produce nude images. Took me less than half an hour to prove them wrong.
The end result will probably be image editing functions on cloud AI being geoblocked in the UK. Nobody's training a specific puritanical AI just because Labour want them to, training models is hugely expensive.
And as usual there's little or nothing the government can do about locally hosted AI. Plenty of those, in particular the Chinese produced models, will happily generate nude celebs or take a picture of your next door neighbour and put her in thigh boots and a corset...
And even the most Puritanical model can be subverted. Because these systems are not really thinking.
even if you could lock them down to the point of being no use for this, the open source models are out there. And there are no controls on them.
Though doesn't the legal risk fall on the person using it, not just the software distributor?
So anyone using it in the way you describe to make nudies of their neighbour without consent is potentially putting themselves on the sex offenders register.
Only if they share them or get searched for something else.
Well obviously. Nothing is a crime until you get caught.
For the majority of people the gap between local and remote content is blurring quite quickly.
Aren't they just Northerners in their "big coats"?
You can tell a Southerner up North by the Harrington jacket and and uncomfortable grimace.
This chart is for 27 January and unlikely to come off. If it does, though, the recent cold spell will be the warm-up act (so to speak).
There are definitely strong hints of a return to much colder conditions later in the month.
Fantasy Island!
By fantasy island do you mean know, worse than seasonal is not going to happen? For many of us use weather forecasting, and if it’s going to turn very cold for a week or more, or have deep snow, that will need thinking about. I am out of action at the moment as I had a flu like virus and afterwards given medicine for vertigo, and lots of tests before I see a consultant in ears.
When I threw up sheep were eating it thinking it was food. It looked a bit like corn. Maybe. But it just kept coming over me.
But day job loss, PB gain! You lucky people.
Fantasy island has a “scientific” meaning: more than 180hrs into the future (or these days possibly 240z+)
Going to make it much harder for Reform to condemn Big Angie R's comeback if/when it happens. (it's a when, isn't it?)
It's a when. Starmer feels he needs her by his side, for reasons unfathomable.
She'd be a better fit in dodgy Reform.
1.I can't see Starmer surviving this year. 2.I can see her back in the saddle after Starmer falls. 3. She doesn't seem like any kind of a Reform fit, particularly when a RefCon "scoouum" coalition look like the next administration.
Are you looking forward to a RefCon love-in/bunfight?
And how the Dickens did you get Wordle in two? With a starting word of "adieu" I got it in three, which is my best for a while.
Try "CRATE"...
Hmm. Risky. Only two vowels. If I could find a five letter word with five vowels I'd try that.
T and R are very useful though. RATES is quite good too.
I use SPARE as my starter word. I've got it in two tries 56 times out of 1000 games. 5% My most common result is three tries. 36% of the time.
An interesting challenge is to have a different word every time, ideally related to something happening to you - my wife and I play it that way, and it generally results in a 4, though we've had several scary 6s.
Excellent progress for Kemi especially in regard to Farage
May she continue her progress
It is suggesting in those numbers, those who tell pollsters they will vote Reform, actually prefer Kemi as PM, that’s important if “party support” in mid term is protest vote and preferred PM more indicative of what happens in May 29.
However ultimately we have to confess, Kemi’s Achilles Heel right now, unless it can be mitigated, is, as far as she has one, the party’s policy platform. “Cavemen done just fine without a welfare state” for example.
A Conservative Rise at expense of Reform may move everything towards a 1983 result, a split tribe cancels itself out allowing “majority unliked” government a landslide.
Predicting the next GE becomes even more uncertain.
I think a window is plausibly opening for the Badenoch Tories to essentially present themselves as the radical small-state, deregulating, low tax, free enterprise brooms. If they can sound plausible on immigration and asylum matters too, then they essentially inhabit a decent ground on the political spectrum to win back traditional centre-right voters, some of the professional classes and those for whom a Reform vote is possible but who cannot bring themselves to vote for Farage when the crunch point comes.
Now that coalition in and of itself probably wouldn’t win them more than 35% of the electorate absolute tops, but that would be more than enough to keep them relevant and on current fragmentation could even win them an election (no laughing at the back).
This is admittedly an overly-optimistic scenario but losing some of the old guard to Reform likely helps them in this situation. The two main problems they have are (a) infighting and leadership - if they’re going to go in on this, they have to look credible and to look credible they are going to have to stick with Badenoch as leader - anything else undermines the narrative of stability etc (b) any sensible reform of benefits in this country requires a discussion around the triple lock and the oldies are one part of their voter coalition they will find it hard to lose.
I know what you are saying, but there’s a reason for being reduced to just 120 MPs, how quickly will that be forgotten?
Reform keep banging on about “Boris Wave” the Conservative Government record on immigration, securing the borders, and assimilation of migrants to UK values, whilst Labour keep banging on about the last Conservative governments records on NHS, public services, cost of living - it’s possible that improvements in coming years on those things the, sitting government gets credit for.
To what extent does the May, Boris, Truss, Sunak government record still hurt the Conservatives not just in 2029, but the 2030’s elections too?
In the bigger picture to this, psephological comparisons with today and the 2 party past, just cannot be made anymore imo - it’s two different things now so comparing can’t neatly read across - same with “worst satisfaction ratings ever” questions.
However, correct me where wrong, what interests me is the current governments “true comparison” - and how, as explained above, lot of pebble counting stats don’t read across so leaves us with “psychological hunch’s” - with Lady Thatchers turbulent and unpopular first term.
What saved the Conservatives in 1983 General Election was neatly split opposition votes, whilst what delivered a landslide win in 1987 was the improved economy, and concern the opposition would fuck it up. You can be in government through some turbulent and unpopular years, and then as a party get even better results.
And where you say credibility in 2029 can only come from sticking with Kemi, credibility in 2029 would also be the policy platform Kemi is tied to - and if it’s not a popular policy platform across the electorate, is one reason she would be sent to Leadership Graveyard. But, if trying to get the best possible result up from 120 MPs is that a “best way to stop a PM Farage is Vote Conservative” message - that would need credibility in policy platform to back it up. Do Conservatives junk Kemi to junk her policies for others with broader appeal across all electorate, or junk Kemi in attempt to out battle Farage with Jenrick?
Do you see what I mean by how precarious Badenoch’s position is? The job simply boils down to put on MPs from historic low of 120 - that’s the only performance measurement really.
Is “cavemen done fine without a welfare state” popular policy across the broader electorate come 2029, whilst option of going toe to toe with Farage on Reforms narrow messaging, to win voters back and put on 120+ MPs, is the slicker Jenrick the better option?
Do you mean is campaigning on welfare reform enough?
No, of course it isn't. But the country is absolutely looking for someone to articulate an alternative, and there is an opening for a party to move to offer that alternative without resorting to the extremes of Reform or the Greens.
Plausibly, the Tories can move into that ground. Badenoch isn't the finished article, but she was flailing hopelessly 12 months ago and has measurably improved. There are cautious signs that she has some understanding of some of the things that need to be fixed* - over-regulation, lack of dynamism, a rigid and complex tax system, an over-powerful process state and civil service bureaucracy, disincentives to investment and enterprise etc. Whether she can continue in that vein, the jury is still out. I have always thought she has potential - I'm not wholly convinced it's enough to turn her into a true leader, but we will see.
*but as a counterpoint, so too does Starmer and Labour at times - they just don't seem to have any kind of plan to resolve them.
“{Kemi} has measurably improved”
How are you measuring Kemi’s improvement?
To some extent I have PM and LOTO (gov and opp) linked on popularity like a seesaw, one down the other up and vice versa, with no actual substance or logic to it. As example, how Labour shot up after the Truss budget in similar measure to how Con sank - but Labours own economic policies were broadly in line with the Truss budget, not just Starmer’s growth growth growth catchphrase, but the thing the markets hated most and main reason for market response, £250B of government handouts, not from growth but from borrowing, to everyone to help with inflation pain, was what Starmer had been bragging all summer he would do - TSE even wrote “Starmer has shot the Tory fox” type header supporting Starmer’s proposal, a plan Truss lifted and stole for her budget.
My point being you can have a surge upwards in popularity, whilst simultaneously talking gibberish and proposing the very worst and ruinous of policy.
So which of Kemi’s policy idea’s do you think underpin the measurable improvement? Do you foresee the manifesto proposals from “cavemen managed fine without a welfare state” being widely popular with the electorate in the 2029 GE?
I think I responded quite fundamentally to those points in my earlier reply, I'm not quite sure what point you are making.
You stated “measurably improved” but no, you didn’t detail how.
Bottom line - what is Kemi actually gaining attention with, in the wider electorate? What do the wider electorate outside party members actually like? I can quickly reel off four measurements here, that are clearly showing bad measures still.
Popular policy announcements - that wrong foot government, who have no choice but steal and implement the policy? Nope.
Strong Rebuttal? When challenged by public or interviewers about failures of last government, Boris Wave, Covid etc, strong rebuttal responses, other than Sunakesque waffle? Nope. The Russell Crowe/Mandleson answer of “I was so busy delivering my remit, i didn’t have control of rest of government - is what she still uses.
Owning PMQs like Hague did against Blair? {and this follows on from previous measure} pinning Starmer down more regular, and not allowing him to use the record of an old government from two years ago to easily punch back with. Nope. Apart from what is planned and rehearsed, Kemi still can’t ad-lib or think quickly off the cuff just like she couldn’t as government minister. This is why Kemi is so poor in so many of her interviews.
Strategy for getting voters back. Is there anything more to the strategy right now than trying to channel public anger at the Labour government? You know that’s not nearly enough come General election’s, such thing happens mid term anyway, even without a LOTO push, so it’s hard to measure if that strategy is ever a success. Are we going to claim the unpopularity of the government is down to Kemi, that a bad result for Labour this May is down to Kemi and her teams strategy? Do you realise how silly and unrealistic that sounds? Also strategy focussing exclusively on Labour is the key to the Conservatives comeback? Well, how many Con seats switched to LibDem, and the party still Below 20% in polling, where are those traditional, lifetime, Con voters now? We know where our voters are, and it’s not with Labour. So what is the strategy for getting voters back from Reform and LibDems? What are the idea’s and the policy differentials between Kemi and Farages Reform, and the LibDems, that is winning voters back? becuase only this happening can properly shore up Kemi’s position as leader and save her from the sack. An Apology for hard Brexit is what those lost to Libdem need in order to come back, is this apology coming from Badenoch?
So measurable improvement in strategy after all this time as leader? Nope. There isn’t any. It’s not clear how voters will be won back. Apart from all these continued failures, on the main things to measure not just Kemi, but all LOTO on, I can’t think of important measurable improvements you suggested are there, you certainly didn’t provide any.
OK. So beyond what I said in my previous post around her tentatively looking like she is starting to grapple with some of the issues that the country faces, things she has got right recently - (a) budget response - which provided the first bit of real cut through the Tories have had since the election (b) the stamp duty policy is a start in putting meat on the bones - it needs more work but removing the disincentive to downsizing is a good one (c) thinking more strategically in terms of policies like the social media proposals (d) generally performing better in the Commons (you disagree but watching her now vs a year ago is night and day) (e) tentatively starting to position the party as a party of enterprise again and rejecting welfarism.
But I think more generally you are inviting me to provide a full-throated support of Badenoch, and I made exceptionally clear in my prior post that she is far from the finished article and, while she has potential, she isn’t up to scratch as a strong and principled leader yet and she may never get there. I’m not on board with the Tories, yet. It will take some more convincing to get me there. But there are some reasons why am I at least listening to what she says.
Aren't they just Northerners in their "big coats"?
You can tell a Southerner up North by the Harrington jacket and and uncomfortable grimace.
This chart is for 27 January and unlikely to come off. If it does, though, the recent cold spell will be the warm-up act (so to speak).
There are definitely strong hints of a return to much colder conditions later in the month.
Fantasy Island!
By fantasy island do you mean know, worse than seasonal is not going to happen? For many of us use weather forecasting, and if it’s going to turn very cold for a week or more, or have deep snow, that will need thinking about. I am out of action at the moment as I had a flu like virus and afterwards given medicine for vertigo, and lots of tests before I see a consultant in ears.
When I threw up sheep were eating it thinking it was food. It looked a bit like corn. Maybe. But it just kept coming over me.
But day job loss, PB gain! You lucky people.
There are obsessive weather model watchers (cf polling) that get excited about predictions so far into the future (cf a long way from an election) that there is little likelihood of there being much skill in the output.
Anything more than 7-10 days ahead is mostly fiction, hence the phrase, although sometimes general patterns can be useful.
Aren't they just Northerners in their "big coats"?
You can tell a Southerner up North by the Harrington jacket and and uncomfortable grimace.
This chart is for 27 January and unlikely to come off. If it does, though, the recent cold spell will be the warm-up act (so to speak).
There are definitely strong hints of a return to much colder conditions later in the month.
Fantasy Island!
By fantasy island do you mean know, worse than seasonal is not going to happen? For many of us use weather forecasting, and if it’s going to turn very cold for a week or more, or have deep snow, that will need thinking about. I am out of action at the moment as I had a flu like virus and afterwards given medicine for vertigo, and lots of tests before I see a consultant in ears.
When I threw up sheep were eating it thinking it was food. It looked a bit like corn. Maybe. But it just kept coming over me.
But day job loss, PB gain! You lucky people.
There are obsessive weather model watchers (cf polling) that get excited about predictions so far into the future (cf a long way from an election) that there is little likelihood of there being much skill in the output.
Anything more than 7-10 days ahead is mostly fiction, hence the phrase, although sometimes general patterns can be useful.
I recall the Beast from the East was predicted some weeks out because of weather patterns over India.
China is to build a hidden chamber alongside Britain’s most sensitive communication cables as part of a network of 208 secret rooms beneath its new London “super-embassy”, The Telegraph can reveal. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/36fe649f2ac94cfc
Aren't they just Northerners in their "big coats"?
You can tell a Southerner up North by the Harrington jacket and and uncomfortable grimace.
This chart is for 27 January and unlikely to come off. If it does, though, the recent cold spell will be the warm-up act (so to speak).
There are definitely strong hints of a return to much colder conditions later in the month.
Fantasy Island!
By fantasy island do you mean know, worse than seasonal is not going to happen? For many of us use weather forecasting, and if it’s going to turn very cold for a week or more, or have deep snow, that will need thinking about. I am out of action at the moment as I had a flu like virus and afterwards given medicine for vertigo, and lots of tests before I see a consultant in ears.
When I threw up sheep were eating it thinking it was food. It looked a bit like corn. Maybe. But it just kept coming over me.
But day job loss, PB gain! You lucky people.
There are obsessive weather model watchers (cf polling) that get excited about predictions so far into the future (cf a long way from an election) that there is little likelihood of there being much skill in the output.
Anything more than 7-10 days ahead is mostly fiction, hence the phrase, although sometimes general patterns can be useful.
I recall the Beast from the East was predicted some weeks out because of weather patterns over India.
I will await the Met Office long range using the 's' word rather than the more "it's winter, we can't rule out cold" formulation...
"Temperatures will.probably be near normal overall, though the possibility exists for some colder spells in the north and east, with the potential for associated wintry hazards"
Apologies if I missed this earlier, however a fairly decisive move on Musk / Grok and similar. A provision from the OSA may come into force as soon as this week. *
The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.
Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not "harmless images" but "weapons of abuse". ... It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but until now legislation which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced, despite passing in June 2025.
* This is I think normal. There are provisions from the Equality Act 2010 which are still not in force in England, unlike Wales and Scotland.
I’m surprised that those who hate Musk, Trump, Miller and co haven’t just been flooding the internet with naked fake images of Melania, Ivanka, Mrs Miller, Mrs Vance, Nazi Barbie etc generated by Grok so that those senior politicians have to face what is being enabled and suddenly might not find that it falls under free speech.
Perhaps it's because they aren't horrible people?
The problem that they may or may not recognise is that it's not just Grok.
We are now into the world of local text-to-video "AI". Some can run on your computer. Some will automatically buy compute time on the cloud (Amazon etc). More and more, they are being made easy to setup - I saw a test app (for mobile) that just needs you to setup a cloud account with Amazon, and it does the rest.
So they are going to fall down the rabbit hole of chasing freeware on the internet. See the War On Encryption and the nascent War On VPNs.
There is no clear answer here - stopping this technology is now nearly impossible. Too put meaningful speed bumps out there would require intrusion on a scale that would make the Chinese State giggle - we are talking about the state having full, continuous, access to your devices.
This is the thinking I went through yesterday they made me conclude that this technology will destroy democracy.
The technology is out there now and I don't think you can stop it without very drastic authoritarian steps (either 100% monitoring, or banning men from using any sort of compute device).
The history of porn use on the internet would suggest that the technology will be widely used by men. Its use will be motivated not just to titillate, but to intimidate and punish women. This will provide a backlash from women.
So you either have men using this technology to psychologically subjugate women, or you have the female backlash against this technology imposing authoritarian controls on technology to prevent that.
Democracy dies either way.
I think that's an over-reaction. Word processors are legal, but if I use a word processor to write a terrorist manifesto or CSAM, those actions are illegal. WhatsApp is legal, but if I use it to send unwanted pictures of my genitals, or I send someone dozens of harassing messages an hour, those actions are illegal.
We have generative AI for images. Some people will use them inappropriately, but we can criminalise that behaviour without criminalising the technology. We can ask the technology providers to put in basic safeguards, without expecting those safeguards to be foolproof. We can put in "speed bumps" that stop 95% of inappropriate activity and you use the threat of law for the rest.
Grok have a tool with apparently no safeguards. They had complaints very quickly and they chose to ignore them. Fine, then we take action against Grok/X.
Going to make it much harder for Reform to condemn Big Angie R's comeback if/when it happens. (it's a when, isn't it?)
It's a when. Starmer feels he needs her by his side, for reasons unfathomable.
She'd be a better fit in dodgy Reform.
1.I can't see Starmer surviving this year. 2.I can see her back in the saddle after Starmer falls. 3. She doesn't seem like any kind of a Reform fit, particularly when a RefCon "scoouum" coalition look like the next administration.
Are you looking forward to a RefCon love-in/bunfight?
And how the Dickens did you get Wordle in two? With a starting word of "adieu" I got it in three, which is my best for a while.
Try "CRATE"...
Hmm. Risky. Only two vowels. If I could find a five letter word with five vowels I'd try that.
T and R are very useful though. RATES is quite good too.
I use SPARE as my starter word. I've got it in two tries 56 times out of 1000 games. 5% My most common result is three tries. 36% of the time.
An interesting challenge is to have a different word every time, ideally related to something happening to you - my wife and I play it that way, and it generally results in a 4, though we've had several scary 6s.
I'll often start with a word that appears on the ticker st the bottom of the TV screen on whichever news channel I'm watching.
Shabana Mahmood is prepared to say that she has no confidence in the chief constable of West Midlands police if he is censured by a watchdog over the decision to ban Israeli football fans from a match in Birmingham
Apologies if I missed this earlier, however a fairly decisive move on Musk / Grok and similar. A provision from the OSA may come into force as soon as this week. *
The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.
Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not "harmless images" but "weapons of abuse". ... It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but until now legislation which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced, despite passing in June 2025.
* This is I think normal. There are provisions from the Equality Act 2010 which are still not in force in England, unlike Wales and Scotland.
That's good, but are these tools specific enough to be banned? Tools can generally be used to create more things than one.
They will need to completely ban image editing. Deepfakes started with Photoshop, after all.
It's very, very difficult to prevent an image editing AI from creating images of people 'in states of undress'. My favourite image AI model, FLUX2, was claimed by its creators to be locked down so as not to be able to produce nude images. Took me less than half an hour to prove them wrong.
The end result will probably be image editing functions on cloud AI being geoblocked in the UK. Nobody's training a specific puritanical AI just because Labour want them to, training models is hugely expensive.
And as usual there's little or nothing the government can do about locally hosted AI. Plenty of those, in particular the Chinese produced models, will happily generate nude celebs or take a picture of your next door neighbour and put her in thigh boots and a corset...
And even the most Puritanical model can be subverted. Because these systems are not really thinking.
even if you could lock them down to the point of being no use for this, the open source models are out there. And there are no controls on them.
Though doesn't the legal risk fall on the person using it, not just the software distributor?
So anyone using it in the way you describe to make nudies of their neighbour without consent is potentially putting themselves on the sex offenders register.
Effectively, yes. Creating and possessing such images is already a crime, although one that's extremely difficult to enforce unless plod happens to have some reason to search your files.
But the government seems to want to remove access to any tools capable of creating the images in the first place. Which isn't realistic because AI are pretty stupid and don't actually understand what they're generating. The only remotely feasible course is for the ban to cover all image generation/editing AIs unless they have been strictly trained on images of only fully clothed adults, and are therefore unable to produce naked/semi-naked people or children because it doesn't know they exist.
No AI company is going to do something that idiotic, so I don't know what happens in practice.
Apologies if I missed this earlier, however a fairly decisive move on Musk / Grok and similar. A provision from the OSA may come into force as soon as this week. *
The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.
Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not "harmless images" but "weapons of abuse". ... It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but until now legislation which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced, despite passing in June 2025.
* This is I think normal. There are provisions from the Equality Act 2010 which are still not in force in England, unlike Wales and Scotland.
That's good, but are these tools specific enough to be banned? Tools can generally be used to create more things than one.
They will need to completely ban image editing. Deepfakes started with Photoshop, after all.
It's very, very difficult to prevent an image editing AI from creating images of people 'in states of undress'. My favourite image AI model, FLUX2, was claimed by its creators to be locked down so as not to be able to produce nude images. Took me less than half an hour to prove them wrong.
The end result will probably be image editing functions on cloud AI being geoblocked in the UK. Nobody's training a specific puritanical AI just because Labour want them to, training models is hugely expensive.
And as usual there's little or nothing the government can do about locally hosted AI. Plenty of those, in particular the Chinese produced models, will happily generate nude celebs or take a picture of your next door neighbour and put her in thigh boots and a corset...
And even the most Puritanical model can be subverted. Because these systems are not really thinking.
even if you could lock them down to the point of being no use for this, the open source models are out there. And there are no controls on them.
Though doesn't the legal risk fall on the person using it, not just the software distributor?
So anyone using it in the way you describe to make nudies of their neighbour without consent is potentially putting themselves on the sex offenders register.
Effectively, yes. Creating and possessing such images is already a crime, although one that's extremely difficult to enforce unless plod happens to have some reason to search your files.
But the government seems to want to remove access to any tools capable of creating the images in the first place. Which isn't realistic because AI are pretty stupid and don't actually understand what they're generating. The only remotely feasible course is for the ban to cover all image generation/editing AIs unless they have been strictly trained on images of only fully clothed adults, and are therefore unable to produce naked/semi-naked people or children because it doesn't know they exist.
No AI company is going to do something that idiotic, so I don't know what happens in practice.
And then the open source models move to the fore
Remember the incredible success of the War On Drugs? We could replicate that.
Aren't they just Northerners in their "big coats"?
You can tell a Southerner up North by the Harrington jacket and and uncomfortable grimace.
This chart is for 27 January and unlikely to come off. If it does, though, the recent cold spell will be the warm-up act (so to speak).
There are definitely strong hints of a return to much colder conditions later in the month.
Fantasy Island!
By fantasy island do you mean know, worse than seasonal is not going to happen? For many of us use weather forecasting, and if it’s going to turn very cold for a week or more, or have deep snow, that will need thinking about. I am out of action at the moment as I had a flu like virus and afterwards given medicine for vertigo, and lots of tests before I see a consultant in ears.
When I threw up sheep were eating it thinking it was food. It looked a bit like corn. Maybe. But it just kept coming over me.
Apologies if I missed this earlier, however a fairly decisive move on Musk / Grok and similar. A provision from the OSA may come into force as soon as this week. *
The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.
Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not "harmless images" but "weapons of abuse". ... It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but until now legislation which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced, despite passing in June 2025.
* This is I think normal. There are provisions from the Equality Act 2010 which are still not in force in England, unlike Wales and Scotland.
I’m surprised that those who hate Musk, Trump, Miller and co haven’t just been flooding the internet with naked fake images of Melania, Ivanka, Mrs Miller, Mrs Vance, Nazi Barbie etc generated by Grok so that those senior politicians have to face what is being enabled and suddenly might not find that it falls under free speech.
Perhaps it's because they aren't horrible people?
The problem that they may or may not recognise is that it's not just Grok.
We are now into the world of local text-to-video "AI". Some can run on your computer. Some will automatically buy compute time on the cloud (Amazon etc). More and more, they are being made easy to setup - I saw a test app (for mobile) that just needs you to setup a cloud account with Amazon, and it does the rest.
So they are going to fall down the rabbit hole of chasing freeware on the internet. See the War On Encryption and the nascent War On VPNs.
There is no clear answer here - stopping this technology is now nearly impossible. Too put meaningful speed bumps out there would require intrusion on a scale that would make the Chinese State giggle - we are talking about the state having full, continuous, access to your devices.
This is the thinking I went through yesterday they made me conclude that this technology will destroy democracy.
The technology is out there now and I don't think you can stop it without very drastic authoritarian steps (either 100% monitoring, or banning men from using any sort of compute device).
The history of porn use on the internet would suggest that the technology will be widely used by men. Its use will be motivated not just to titillate, but to intimidate and punish women. This will provide a backlash from women.
So you either have men using this technology to psychologically subjugate women, or you have the female backlash against this technology imposing authoritarian controls on technology to prevent that.
Democracy dies either way.
I think that's an over-reaction. Word processors are legal, but if I use a word processor to write a terrorist manifesto or CSAM, those actions are illegal. WhatsApp is legal, but if I use it to send unwanted pictures of my genitals, or I send someone dozens of harassing messages an hour, those actions are illegal.
We have generative AI for images. Some people will use them inappropriately, but we can criminalise that behaviour without criminalising the technology. We can ask the technology providers to put in basic safeguards, without expecting those safeguards to be foolproof. We can put in "speed bumps" that stop 95% of inappropriate activity and you use the threat of law for the rest.
Grok have a tool with apparently no safeguards. They had complaints very quickly and they chose to ignore them. Fine, then we take action against Grok/X.
So, I think that, for example, unsolicited dick pics is something that every woman experiences. So, although that is a criminal offence it doesn't stop it happening all the time.
Having someone create nude pictures of you without your consent, and then distribute those across the internet, is a lot worse than receiving unsolicited dick pics, but the barrier to creating those images is now lowered to roughly the same level as taking a dick pic.
OSINTdefender @sentdefender · 8m Massive fires burn and thousands of protesters can been seen on the streets in the Central Iranian city of Isfahan, in footage claimed to be from tonight that was received and published by The Independent Persian.
Now we realise why Maduro was taken to New York. To get the detailed plan from a man who managed a 52% "democratic win" in stealing the general election in 2024...
A backbench male Reform MP for South Thanet has popped up as a character on the new series of Industry on BBC1 now asking a question of a female Labour Minister on the Online Safety Act
Tom Homan on Fox: "being nasty to ICE Officers and calling a Federal murderer a murderer under the First Amendment will lead to more murders by Federal murderers. If hateful rhetoric doesn't stop there will be more bloodshed"*
Apologies if I missed this earlier, however a fairly decisive move on Musk / Grok and similar. A provision from the OSA may come into force as soon as this week. *
The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.
Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not "harmless images" but "weapons of abuse". ... It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but until now legislation which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced, despite passing in June 2025.
* This is I think normal. There are provisions from the Equality Act 2010 which are still not in force in England, unlike Wales and Scotland.
I’m surprised that those who hate Musk, Trump, Miller and co haven’t just been flooding the internet with naked fake images of Melania, Ivanka, Mrs Miller, Mrs Vance, Nazi Barbie etc generated by Grok so that those senior politicians have to face what is being enabled and suddenly might not find that it falls under free speech.
Perhaps it's because they aren't horrible people?
The problem that they may or may not recognise is that it's not just Grok.
We are now into the world of local text-to-video "AI". Some can run on your computer. Some will automatically buy compute time on the cloud (Amazon etc). More and more, they are being made easy to setup - I saw a test app (for mobile) that just needs you to setup a cloud account with Amazon, and it does the rest.
So they are going to fall down the rabbit hole of chasing freeware on the internet. See the War On Encryption and the nascent War On VPNs.
There is no clear answer here - stopping this technology is now nearly impossible. Too put meaningful speed bumps out there would require intrusion on a scale that would make the Chinese State giggle - we are talking about the state having full, continuous, access to your devices.
This is the thinking I went through yesterday they made me conclude that this technology will destroy democracy.
The technology is out there now and I don't think you can stop it without very drastic authoritarian steps (either 100% monitoring, or banning men from using any sort of compute device).
The history of porn use on the internet would suggest that the technology will be widely used by men. Its use will be motivated not just to titillate, but to intimidate and punish women. This will provide a backlash from women.
So you either have men using this technology to psychologically subjugate women, or you have the female backlash against this technology imposing authoritarian controls on technology to prevent that.
Democracy dies either way.
I think that's an over-reaction. Word processors are legal, but if I use a word processor to write a terrorist manifesto or CSAM, those actions are illegal. WhatsApp is legal, but if I use it to send unwanted pictures of my genitals, or I send someone dozens of harassing messages an hour, those actions are illegal.
We have generative AI for images. Some people will use them inappropriately, but we can criminalise that behaviour without criminalising the technology. We can ask the technology providers to put in basic safeguards, without expecting those safeguards to be foolproof. We can put in "speed bumps" that stop 95% of inappropriate activity and you use the threat of law for the rest.
Grok have a tool with apparently no safeguards. They had complaints very quickly and they chose to ignore them. Fine, then we take action against Grok/X.
So, I think that, for example, unsolicited dick pics is something that every woman experiences. So, although that is a criminal offence it doesn't stop it happening all the time.
Having someone create nude pictures of you without your consent, and then distribute those across the internet, is a lot worse than receiving unsolicited dick pics, but the barrier to creating those images is now lowered to roughly the same level as taking a dick pic.
I think this is going to have consequences.
Things don't stop happening just because they're illegal. Drink driving was always illegal, but it took broader societal change to drive down the frequency of it. Likewise, sending unsolicited dick pics may be something that gets rarer over time. The government is currently running an advertising campaign against such behaviour and pointing out it is illegal, as the government ran campaigns against drink driving.
The barrier to creating deepfake porn has been greatly reduced. We can do some things to partly reverse that. We can stop that technology being readily available and widely used on a popular social media platform. We can seek societal change, so that such behaviour is as socially acceptable as domestic abuse.
So, yes, it is going to have consequences, but the government can -- and we can as a society -- shape what happens.
Apologies if I missed this earlier, however a fairly decisive move on Musk / Grok and similar. A provision from the OSA may come into force as soon as this week. *
The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.
Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not "harmless images" but "weapons of abuse". ... It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but until now legislation which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced, despite passing in June 2025.
* This is I think normal. There are provisions from the Equality Act 2010 which are still not in force in England, unlike Wales and Scotland.
I’m surprised that those who hate Musk, Trump, Miller and co haven’t just been flooding the internet with naked fake images of Melania, Ivanka, Mrs Miller, Mrs Vance, Nazi Barbie etc generated by Grok so that those senior politicians have to face what is being enabled and suddenly might not find that it falls under free speech.
Perhaps it's because they aren't horrible people?
The problem that they may or may not recognise is that it's not just Grok.
We are now into the world of local text-to-video "AI". Some can run on your computer. Some will automatically buy compute time on the cloud (Amazon etc). More and more, they are being made easy to setup - I saw a test app (for mobile) that just needs you to setup a cloud account with Amazon, and it does the rest.
So they are going to fall down the rabbit hole of chasing freeware on the internet. See the War On Encryption and the nascent War On VPNs.
There is no clear answer here - stopping this technology is now nearly impossible. Too put meaningful speed bumps out there would require intrusion on a scale that would make the Chinese State giggle - we are talking about the state having full, continuous, access to your devices.
This is the thinking I went through yesterday they made me conclude that this technology will destroy democracy.
The technology is out there now and I don't think you can stop it without very drastic authoritarian steps (either 100% monitoring, or banning men from using any sort of compute device).
The history of porn use on the internet would suggest that the technology will be widely used by men. Its use will be motivated not just to titillate, but to intimidate and punish women. This will provide a backlash from women.
So you either have men using this technology to psychologically subjugate women, or you have the female backlash against this technology imposing authoritarian controls on technology to prevent that.
Democracy dies either way.
I think that's an over-reaction. Word processors are legal, but if I use a word processor to write a terrorist manifesto or CSAM, those actions are illegal. WhatsApp is legal, but if I use it to send unwanted pictures of my genitals, or I send someone dozens of harassing messages an hour, those actions are illegal.
We have generative AI for images. Some people will use them inappropriately, but we can criminalise that behaviour without criminalising the technology. We can ask the technology providers to put in basic safeguards, without expecting those safeguards to be foolproof. We can put in "speed bumps" that stop 95% of inappropriate activity and you use the threat of law for the rest.
Grok have a tool with apparently no safeguards. They had complaints very quickly and they chose to ignore them. Fine, then we take action against Grok/X.
So, I think that, for example, unsolicited dick pics is something that every woman experiences. So, although that is a criminal offence it doesn't stop it happening all the time.
Having someone create nude pictures of you without your consent, and then distribute those across the internet, is a lot worse than receiving unsolicited dick pics, but the barrier to creating those images is now lowered to roughly the same level as taking a dick pic.
I think this is going to have consequences.
Things don't stop happening just because they're illegal. Drink driving was always illegal, but it took broader societal change to drive down the frequency of it. Likewise, sending unsolicited dick pics may be something that gets rarer over time. The government is currently running an advertising campaign against such behaviour and pointing out it is illegal, as the government ran campaigns against drink driving.
The barrier to creating deepfake porn has been greatly reduced. We can do some things to partly reverse that. We can stop that technology being readily available and widely used on a popular social media platform. We can seek societal change, so that such behaviour is as socially acceptable as domestic abuse.
So, yes, it is going to have consequences, but the government can -- and we can as a society -- shape what happens.
The comparison with drink driving is an interesting one.
The thing that caused the massive drop in that was it went from being a joke to deeply uncool. Drinking and driving became deeply socially embarrassing.
I agree that moving the window on this, is the only way to change things.
Apologies if I missed this earlier, however a fairly decisive move on Musk / Grok and similar. A provision from the OSA may come into force as soon as this week. *
The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.
Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not "harmless images" but "weapons of abuse". ... It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but until now legislation which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced, despite passing in June 2025.
* This is I think normal. There are provisions from the Equality Act 2010 which are still not in force in England, unlike Wales and Scotland.
I’m surprised that those who hate Musk, Trump, Miller and co haven’t just been flooding the internet with naked fake images of Melania, Ivanka, Mrs Miller, Mrs Vance, Nazi Barbie etc generated by Grok so that those senior politicians have to face what is being enabled and suddenly might not find that it falls under free speech.
Perhaps it's because they aren't horrible people?
The problem that they may or may not recognise is that it's not just Grok.
We are now into the world of local text-to-video "AI". Some can run on your computer. Some will automatically buy compute time on the cloud (Amazon etc). More and more, they are being made easy to setup - I saw a test app (for mobile) that just needs you to setup a cloud account with Amazon, and it does the rest.
So they are going to fall down the rabbit hole of chasing freeware on the internet. See the War On Encryption and the nascent War On VPNs.
There is no clear answer here - stopping this technology is now nearly impossible. Too put meaningful speed bumps out there would require intrusion on a scale that would make the Chinese State giggle - we are talking about the state having full, continuous, access to your devices.
This is the thinking I went through yesterday they made me conclude that this technology will destroy democracy.
The technology is out there now and I don't think you can stop it without very drastic authoritarian steps (either 100% monitoring, or banning men from using any sort of compute device).
The history of porn use on the internet would suggest that the technology will be widely used by men. Its use will be motivated not just to titillate, but to intimidate and punish women. This will provide a backlash from women.
So you either have men using this technology to psychologically subjugate women, or you have the female backlash against this technology imposing authoritarian controls on technology to prevent that.
Democracy dies either way.
I think that's an over-reaction. Word processors are legal, but if I use a word processor to write a terrorist manifesto or CSAM, those actions are illegal. WhatsApp is legal, but if I use it to send unwanted pictures of my genitals, or I send someone dozens of harassing messages an hour, those actions are illegal.
We have generative AI for images. Some people will use them inappropriately, but we can criminalise that behaviour without criminalising the technology. We can ask the technology providers to put in basic safeguards, without expecting those safeguards to be foolproof. We can put in "speed bumps" that stop 95% of inappropriate activity and you use the threat of law for the rest.
Grok have a tool with apparently no safeguards. They had complaints very quickly and they chose to ignore them. Fine, then we take action against Grok/X.
So, I think that, for example, unsolicited dick pics is something that every woman experiences. So, although that is a criminal offence it doesn't stop it happening all the time.
Having someone create nude pictures of you without your consent, and then distribute those across the internet, is a lot worse than receiving unsolicited dick pics, but the barrier to creating those images is now lowered to roughly the same level as taking a dick pic.
I think this is going to have consequences.
Things don't stop happening just because they're illegal. Drink driving was always illegal, but it took broader societal change to drive down the frequency of it. Likewise, sending unsolicited dick pics may be something that gets rarer over time. The government is currently running an advertising campaign against such behaviour and pointing out it is illegal, as the government ran campaigns against drink driving.
The barrier to creating deepfake porn has been greatly reduced. We can do some things to partly reverse that. We can stop that technology being readily available and widely used on a popular social media platform. We can seek societal change, so that such behaviour is as socially acceptable as domestic abuse.
So, yes, it is going to have consequences, but the government can -- and we can as a society -- shape what happens.
The comparison with drink driving is an interesting one.
The thing that caused the massive drop in that was it went from being a joke to deeply uncool. Drinking and driving became deeply socially embarrassing.
I agree that moving the window on this, is the only way to change things.
I agree on that too, but there's been big attempts to move the window on aggressive misogyny towards women for some time - upskirting, spiked drinks, rape and sexual assault, domestic violence - and I don't see a huge amount of evidence that make behaviour has changed for the better.
What I see evidence for is that changes in technology - such as smartphones - have made it easier for this sort of behaviour to happen (e.g. the sharing of nude photos by schoolkids - and if anything there has been a backlash against feminism by the Andrew Tates of the world that has moved the window amongst young men in the wrong direction.
Aren't they just Northerners in their "big coats"?
You can tell a Southerner up North by the Harrington jacket and and uncomfortable grimace.
This chart is for 27 January and unlikely to come off. If it does, though, the recent cold spell will be the warm-up act (so to speak).
There are definitely strong hints of a return to much colder conditions later in the month.
It's an 850mb chart. What does it tell us about conditions at sea level, I'm not able to interpret directly.
850mb is roughly 1km high, so in dry air you would expect the surface at sea level to be about 10C warmer and in moist air about 5C warmer.
So generally speaking the -5C line at 850mb is the snow line, at which point you would expect precipitation to reach the ground at sea level as snow - though obviously this can be modified by various details.
The chart shown was from the 0Z run, but the latest forecast from the 12Z run is a lot warmer, with a surface warm front crossing Britain.
I really want to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it's based on a Saxon cross rather than an Iron cross, but it looks like a combination of the two, really.
I'm actually pretty excited about the prospect of photo and video editing powered by Gemini on the iPhone. If it brings it up to the same standard as Pixel phones then the iPhone becomes the complete device again, I think it's the only area where Pixels are better than iPhones even though the raw output from the iPhone cameras is a few steps above the Pixels, the Pixel image processing and AI editing suite are really quite brilliant.
Now we realise why Maduro was taken to New York. To get the detailed plan from a man who managed a 52% "democratic win" in stealing the general election in 2024...
Trump doesn't want voting machines at all, as the US and Venezuela now have, never mind just seizing them.
In any case it is Congress who calls up the National Guard. The President can only call up the National Guard overruling State Governors if Congress has sanctioned national emergency or war
Now we realise why Maduro was taken to New York. To get the detailed plan from a man who managed a 52% "democratic win" in stealing the general election in 2024...
Trump doesn't want voting machines at all, as the US and Venezuela now have, never mind seizing them.
In any case it is Congress who calls up the National Guard. The President can only call up the National Guard overruling State Governors if Congress has sanctioned national emergency or war
I'm not sure he's keen on 'voting' more generally.
Now we realise why Maduro was taken to New York. To get the detailed plan from a man who managed a 52% "democratic win" in stealing the general election in 2024...
Trump doesn't want voting machines at all, as the US and Venezuela now have, never mind just seizing them.
In any case it is Congress who calls up the National Guard. The President can only call up the National Guard overruling State Governors if Congress has sanctioned national emergency or war
Yes, and that is what he will do. Congress is seldom troubled by Trump.
Now we realise why Maduro was taken to New York. To get the detailed plan from a man who managed a 52% "democratic win" in stealing the general election in 2024...
Trump doesn't want voting machines at all, as the US and Venezuela now have, never mind just seizing them.
In any case it is Congress who calls up the National Guard. The President can only call up the National Guard overruling State Governors if Congress has sanctioned national emergency or war
Yes, and that is what he will do. Congress is seldom troubled by Trump.
GOP Senators like Paul and Collins and Murkowski and McConnell would not vote for that and with the Democrats would be enough to give a Congress majority to block seizure of voting machines
Now we realise why Maduro was taken to New York. To get the detailed plan from a man who managed a 52% "democratic win" in stealing the general election in 2024...
Trump doesn't want voting machines at all, as the US and Venezuela now have, never mind seizing them.
In any case it is Congress who calls up the National Guard. The President can only call up the National Guard overruling State Governors if Congress has sanctioned national emergency or war
I'm not sure he's keen on 'voting' more generally.
Well to be fair to Trump he did win 2/3 of the presidential elections he fought, including the US popular vote in 2024.
He has not come to power by military coup but by the votes of most voters in most US states
Now we realise why Maduro was taken to New York. To get the detailed plan from a man who managed a 52% "democratic win" in stealing the general election in 2024...
Trump doesn't want voting machines at all, as the US and Venezuela now have, never mind seizing them.
In any case it is Congress who calls up the National Guard. The President can only call up the National Guard overruling State Governors if Congress has sanctioned national emergency or war
I'm not sure he's keen on 'voting' more generally.
Well to be fair to Trump he did win 2/3 of the presidential elections he fought, including the US popular vote in 2024.
He has not come to power by military coup but by the votes of most voters in most US states
Many authoritarians start that way, then prefer not to take the chance later. Given the nature of his comments on elections and how he believes himself to be cheated - at times suggesting he won every single state in 2020, though even for him that was probably hyperbole - plus his inflated view of his powers which the Supreme Court has essentially endorsed, being wary seems reasonable.
Now we realise why Maduro was taken to New York. To get the detailed plan from a man who managed a 52% "democratic win" in stealing the general election in 2024...
Trump doesn't want voting machines at all, as the US and Venezuela now have, never mind seizing them.
In any case it is Congress who calls up the National Guard. The President can only call up the National Guard overruling State Governors if Congress has sanctioned national emergency or war
I'm not sure he's keen on 'voting' more generally.
Well to be fair to Trump he did win 2/3 of the presidential elections he fought, including the US popular vote in 2024.
He has not come to power by military coup but by the votes of most voters in most US states
And you know who else came to power by getting a plurailty of voters?
I really want to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it's based on a Saxon cross rather than an Iron cross, but it looks like a combination of the two, really.
Why don’t they use something cute? Like a pretty cornflower or something? 🤷♀️
Apologies if I missed this earlier, however a fairly decisive move on Musk / Grok and similar. A provision from the OSA may come into force as soon as this week. *
The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.
Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not "harmless images" but "weapons of abuse". ... It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but until now legislation which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced, despite passing in June 2025.
* This is I think normal. There are provisions from the Equality Act 2010 which are still not in force in England, unlike Wales and Scotland.
I’m surprised that those who hate Musk, Trump, Miller and co haven’t just been flooding the internet with naked fake images of Melania, Ivanka, Mrs Miller, Mrs Vance, Nazi Barbie etc generated by Grok so that those senior politicians have to face what is being enabled and suddenly might not find that it falls under free speech.
Perhaps it's because they aren't horrible people?
The problem that they may or may not recognise is that it's not just Grok.
We are now into the world of local text-to-video "AI". Some can run on your computer. Some will automatically buy compute time on the cloud (Amazon etc). More and more, they are being made easy to setup - I saw a test app (for mobile) that just needs you to setup a cloud account with Amazon, and it does the rest.
So they are going to fall down the rabbit hole of chasing freeware on the internet. See the War On Encryption and the nascent War On VPNs.
There is no clear answer here - stopping this technology is now nearly impossible. Too put meaningful speed bumps out there would require intrusion on a scale that would make the Chinese State giggle - we are talking about the state having full, continuous, access to your devices.
This is the thinking I went through yesterday they made me conclude that this technology will destroy democracy.
The technology is out there now and I don't think you can stop it without very drastic authoritarian steps (either 100% monitoring, or banning men from using any sort of compute device).
The history of porn use on the internet would suggest that the technology will be widely used by men. Its use will be motivated not just to titillate, but to intimidate and punish women. This will provide a backlash from women.
So you either have men using this technology to psychologically subjugate women, or you have the female backlash against this technology imposing authoritarian controls on technology to prevent that.
Democracy dies either way.
I think that's an over-reaction. Word processors are legal, but if I use a word processor to write a terrorist manifesto or CSAM, those actions are illegal. WhatsApp is legal, but if I use it to send unwanted pictures of my genitals, or I send someone dozens of harassing messages an hour, those actions are illegal.
We have generative AI for images. Some people will use them inappropriately, but we can criminalise that behaviour without criminalising the technology. We can ask the technology providers to put in basic safeguards, without expecting those safeguards to be foolproof. We can put in "speed bumps" that stop 95% of inappropriate activity and you use the threat of law for the rest.
Grok have a tool with apparently no safeguards. They had complaints very quickly and they chose to ignore them. Fine, then we take action against Grok/X.
Isn't there a bit of a subtle difference? If I use Word to write CSAM text stories, it's probably illegal (I assume it is), but then either share it with others, at which point I'm quite likely to get caught, or I keep it for myself, in which case I'd be very unlikely to be nicked, but I only get to read back my own unpleasant fantasies, which probably doesn't give much more gratification than just having them in the first place.
The difference with the local AI is that I give it a innocent picture of a kid, tell it I what I want it to do to them, and it produces original filth for my gratification, all held only in memory on the device. The AI does the "creativity", so it's way more than just a fantasy, and virtually the minute I'm done with it, it's gone forever (slightly more technically complex than that, but it lingers way less than anything written to disk).
It's going to be very hard to police this, given with a system built as I describe, you've pretty much got to be caught in the act of viewing to be nicked.
Of course, this does all presume that we think dirty men viewing virtual versions of their dirtiest illegal fantasies is actually a problem for society, as well as their own consciences. There is a side to me that thinks whilst all this material is repugnant, if it's result is to *reduce* the production of real CSAM, because it's so much easier and less risky to go for the virtual option, a few less real kids raped isn't such a bad outcome.
I suppose at least part of the jigsaw is answering the question, is this the probable effect of turning a blind eye to virtual CSAM, or instead would effectively normalising it just drive demand for real, "authentic", CSAM from the pervert class? I somehow don't think I fancy signing off on the ethics approval for that particular study.
Apologies if I missed this earlier, however a fairly decisive move on Musk / Grok and similar. A provision from the OSA may come into force as soon as this week. *
The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.
Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not "harmless images" but "weapons of abuse". ... It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but until now legislation which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced, despite passing in June 2025.
* This is I think normal. There are provisions from the Equality Act 2010 which are still not in force in England, unlike Wales and Scotland.
I’m surprised that those who hate Musk, Trump, Miller and co haven’t just been flooding the internet with naked fake images of Melania, Ivanka, Mrs Miller, Mrs Vance, Nazi Barbie etc generated by Grok so that those senior politicians have to face what is being enabled and suddenly might not find that it falls under free speech.
Perhaps it's because they aren't horrible people?
The problem that they may or may not recognise is that it's not just Grok.
We are now into the world of local text-to-video "AI". Some can run on your computer. Some will automatically buy compute time on the cloud (Amazon etc). More and more, they are being made easy to setup - I saw a test app (for mobile) that just needs you to setup a cloud account with Amazon, and it does the rest.
So they are going to fall down the rabbit hole of chasing freeware on the internet. See the War On Encryption and the nascent War On VPNs.
There is no clear answer here - stopping this technology is now nearly impossible. Too put meaningful speed bumps out there would require intrusion on a scale that would make the Chinese State giggle - we are talking about the state having full, continuous, access to your devices.
This is the thinking I went through yesterday they made me conclude that this technology will destroy democracy.
The technology is out there now and I don't think you can stop it without very drastic authoritarian steps (either 100% monitoring, or banning men from using any sort of compute device).
The history of porn use on the internet would suggest that the technology will be widely used by men. Its use will be motivated not just to titillate, but to intimidate and punish women. This will provide a backlash from women.
So you either have men using this technology to psychologically subjugate women, or you have the female backlash against this technology imposing authoritarian controls on technology to prevent that.
Democracy dies either way.
I think that's an over-reaction. Word processors are legal, but if I use a word processor to write a terrorist manifesto or CSAM, those actions are illegal. WhatsApp is legal, but if I use it to send unwanted pictures of my genitals, or I send someone dozens of harassing messages an hour, those actions are illegal.
We have generative AI for images. Some people will use them inappropriately, but we can criminalise that behaviour without criminalising the technology. We can ask the technology providers to put in basic safeguards, without expecting those safeguards to be foolproof. We can put in "speed bumps" that stop 95% of inappropriate activity and you use the threat of law for the rest.
Grok have a tool with apparently no safeguards. They had complaints very quickly and they chose to ignore them. Fine, then we take action against Grok/X.
Isn't there a bit of a subtle difference? If I use Word to write CSAM text stories, it's probably illegal (I assume it is), but then either share it with others, at which point I'm quite likely to get caught, or I keep it for myself, in which case I'd be very unlikely to be nicked, but I only get to read back my own unpleasant fantasies, which probably doesn't give much more gratification than just having them in the first place.
The difference with the local AI is that I give it a innocent picture of a kid, tell it I what I want it to do to them, and it produces original filth for my gratification, all held only in memory on the device. The AI does the "creativity", so it's way more than just a fantasy, and virtually the minute I'm done with it, it's gone forever (slightly more technically complex than that, but it lingers way less than anything written to disk).
It's going to be very hard to police this, given with a system built as I describe, you've pretty much got to be caught in the act of viewing to be nicked.
Of course, this does all presume that we think dirty men viewing virtual versions of their dirtiest illegal fantasies is actually a problem for society, as well as their own consciences. There is a side to me that thinks whilst all this material is repugnant, if it's result is to *reduce* the production of real CSAM, because it's so much easier and less risky to go for the virtual option, a few less real kids raped isn't such a bad outcome.
I suppose at least part of the jigsaw is answering the question, is this the probable effect of turning a blind eye to virtual CSAM, or instead would effectively normalising it just drive demand for real, "authentic", CSAM from the pervert class? I somehow don't think I fancy signing off on the ethics approval for that particular study.
The reality is that we can't prevent people from producing AI generated naked images of others.
But we can criminalize the sharing of such images. If you share pictures of person [x] that have them artificially nudified, then that could be treated the same as you sharing naked images of them. That would mean that -sure- you could use technology to nudify a kid - but if that image got off your computer, you would become responsible for distributing child pornography.
Apologies if I missed this earlier, however a fairly decisive move on Musk / Grok and similar. A provision from the OSA may come into force as soon as this week. *
The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.
Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not "harmless images" but "weapons of abuse". ... It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but until now legislation which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced, despite passing in June 2025.
* This is I think normal. There are provisions from the Equality Act 2010 which are still not in force in England, unlike Wales and Scotland.
I’m surprised that those who hate Musk, Trump, Miller and co haven’t just been flooding the internet with naked fake images of Melania, Ivanka, Mrs Miller, Mrs Vance, Nazi Barbie etc generated by Grok so that those senior politicians have to face what is being enabled and suddenly might not find that it falls under free speech.
Perhaps it's because they aren't horrible people?
The problem that they may or may not recognise is that it's not just Grok.
We are now into the world of local text-to-video "AI". Some can run on your computer. Some will automatically buy compute time on the cloud (Amazon etc). More and more, they are being made easy to setup - I saw a test app (for mobile) that just needs you to setup a cloud account with Amazon, and it does the rest.
So they are going to fall down the rabbit hole of chasing freeware on the internet. See the War On Encryption and the nascent War On VPNs.
There is no clear answer here - stopping this technology is now nearly impossible. Too put meaningful speed bumps out there would require intrusion on a scale that would make the Chinese State giggle - we are talking about the state having full, continuous, access to your devices.
This is the thinking I went through yesterday they made me conclude that this technology will destroy democracy.
The technology is out there now and I don't think you can stop it without very drastic authoritarian steps (either 100% monitoring, or banning men from using any sort of compute device).
The history of porn use on the internet would suggest that the technology will be widely used by men. Its use will be motivated not just to titillate, but to intimidate and punish women. This will provide a backlash from women.
So you either have men using this technology to psychologically subjugate women, or you have the female backlash against this technology imposing authoritarian controls on technology to prevent that.
Democracy dies either way.
I think that's an over-reaction. Word processors are legal, but if I use a word processor to write a terrorist manifesto or CSAM, those actions are illegal. WhatsApp is legal, but if I use it to send unwanted pictures of my genitals, or I send someone dozens of harassing messages an hour, those actions are illegal.
We have generative AI for images. Some people will use them inappropriately, but we can criminalise that behaviour without criminalising the technology. We can ask the technology providers to put in basic safeguards, without expecting those safeguards to be foolproof. We can put in "speed bumps" that stop 95% of inappropriate activity and you use the threat of law for the rest.
Grok have a tool with apparently no safeguards. They had complaints very quickly and they chose to ignore them. Fine, then we take action against Grok/X.
Isn't there a bit of a subtle difference? If I use Word to write CSAM text stories, it's probably illegal (I assume it is), but then either share it with others, at which point I'm quite likely to get caught, or I keep it for myself, in which case I'd be very unlikely to be nicked, but I only get to read back my own unpleasant fantasies, which probably doesn't give much more gratification than just having them in the first place.
The difference with the local AI is that I give it a innocent picture of a kid, tell it I what I want it to do to them, and it produces original filth for my gratification, all held only in memory on the device. The AI does the "creativity", so it's way more than just a fantasy, and virtually the minute I'm done with it, it's gone forever (slightly more technically complex than that, but it lingers way less than anything written to disk).
It's going to be very hard to police this, given with a system built as I describe, you've pretty much got to be caught in the act of viewing to be nicked.
Of course, this does all presume that we think dirty men viewing virtual versions of their dirtiest illegal fantasies is actually a problem for society, as well as their own consciences. There is a side to me that thinks whilst all this material is repugnant, if it's result is to *reduce* the production of real CSAM, because it's so much easier and less risky to go for the virtual option, a few less real kids raped isn't such a bad outcome.
I suppose at least part of the jigsaw is answering the question, is this the probable effect of turning a blind eye to virtual CSAM, or instead would effectively normalising it just drive demand for real, "authentic", CSAM from the pervert class? I somehow don't think I fancy signing off on the ethics approval for that particular study.
I think text stories are not illegal. I recall a controversy around the "Extreme Pornography" (bestiality portrayed etc) part of an act when it was taken through Parliament *, the Govt of the time attempted to include text alongside photos and pseudo-photos, and iirc it was prevented.
It would be problematic around things like Usenet Archives, and various sites of which Literotica is perhaps the best known - which has the name of the genre.
Checking, it was a 2008 act expanded a decade later to cover "rape porn".
Unbelievably, it appears to be real not a deepfake/AI. people saying it's from the Templars/Crusaders is like saying the swastika is a Hindu sign: technically true but HOLY SHIT IT'S AN IRON CROSS
Comments
* Poetic licence. Although Kelly does run the Purple Heart Foundation.
https://x.com/FrenchResponse/status/2010429570076594647
JUST IN: Minnesota sues Trump administration to block surge of federal immigration agents
https://x.com/ReutersLegal/status/2010826019817832494?s=20
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/36fe649f2ac94cfc
Also - Trevor Howard said filming Sir Henry was the most fun he ever had as an actor. Certainly looked more fun than Brief Encounter. (I love both! But I know which film set I'd liked to have spent more time on!)
Also, the pull ups.
I am out of action at the moment as I had a flu like virus and afterwards given medicine for vertigo, and lots of tests before I see a consultant in ears.
When I threw up sheep were eating it thinking it was food. It looked a bit like corn. Maybe. But it just kept coming over me.
But day job loss, PB gain! You lucky people.
Yes to revolution in China
Yes to revolution in Cuba
Yes to revolution in Russia
But I think more generally you are inviting me to provide a full-throated support of Badenoch, and I made exceptionally clear in my prior post that she is far from the finished article and, while she has potential, she isn’t up to scratch as a strong and principled leader yet and she may never get there. I’m not on board with the Tories, yet. It will take some more convincing to get me there. But there are some reasons why am I at least listening to what she says.
Anything more than 7-10 days ahead is mostly fiction, hence the phrase, although sometimes general patterns can be useful.
"Temperatures will.probably be near normal overall, though the possibility exists for some colder spells in the north and east, with the potential for associated wintry hazards"
We have generative AI for images. Some people will use them inappropriately, but we can criminalise that behaviour without criminalising the technology. We can ask the technology providers to put in basic safeguards, without expecting those safeguards to be foolproof. We can put in "speed bumps" that stop 95% of inappropriate activity and you use the threat of law for the rest.
Grok have a tool with apparently no safeguards. They had complaints very quickly and they chose to ignore them. Fine, then we take action against Grok/X.
Looking up now, I see the word "Trump".
The USA has its ICE-atollahs.
Steven Swinford
@Steven_Swinford
Exclusive:
Shabana Mahmood is prepared to say that she has no confidence in the chief constable of West Midlands police if he is censured by a watchdog over the decision to ban Israeli football fans from a match in Birmingham
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/12/why-londons-lowest-rate-in-more-than-a-decade-is-drawing-attention
But the government seems to want to remove access to any tools capable of creating the images in the first place. Which isn't realistic because AI are pretty stupid and don't actually understand what they're generating. The only remotely feasible course is for the ban to cover all image generation/editing AIs unless they have been strictly trained on images of only fully clothed adults, and are therefore unable to produce naked/semi-naked people or children because it doesn't know they exist.
No AI company is going to do something that idiotic, so I don't know what happens in practice.
Remember the incredible success of the War On Drugs? We could replicate that.
Get well soon.
Having someone create nude pictures of you without your consent, and then distribute those across the internet, is a lot worse than receiving unsolicited dick pics, but the barrier to creating those images is now lowered to roughly the same level as taking a dick pic.
I think this is going to have consequences.
Trump is to use Federal law enforcement to collect state voting machines. Something he is furious he didn't do in 2020.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/trump-voting-machines-2020-election.html
OSINTdefender
@sentdefender
·
8m
Massive fires burn and thousands of protesters can been seen on the streets in the Central Iranian city of Isfahan, in footage claimed to be from tonight that was received and published by The Independent Persian.
https://x.com/sentdefender
A series of killings in parallel with the Ripper murders. What a place London was then.
If only they had Mayor Khan in the late 1800's...
Reckon they are losing their iron grip on strategy and events.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Venezuelan_presidential_election
* My precis.
The barrier to creating deepfake porn has been greatly reduced. We can do some things to partly reverse that. We can stop that technology being readily available and widely used on a popular social media platform. We can seek societal change, so that such behaviour is as socially acceptable as domestic abuse.
So, yes, it is going to have consequences, but the government can -- and we can as a society -- shape what happens.
The thing that caused the massive drop in that was it went from being a joke to deeply uncool. Drinking and driving became deeply socially embarrassing.
I agree that moving the window on this, is the only way to change things.
What I see evidence for is that changes in technology - such as smartphones - have made it easier for this sort of behaviour to happen (e.g. the sharing of nude photos by schoolkids - and if anything there has been a backlash against feminism by the Andrew Tates of the world that has moved the window amongst young men in the wrong direction.
Its 39% who haven't heard of him rather than 95% so a tad beyond hyperbolic there. But he is only popular with 10%.
So generally speaking the -5C line at 850mb is the snow line, at which point you would expect precipitation to reach the ground at sea level as snow - though obviously this can be modified by various details.
The chart shown was from the 0Z run, but the latest forecast from the 12Z run is a lot warmer, with a surface warm front crossing Britain.
And it’s ever so slightly concerning… 👀
https://x.com/anguswyatt/status/2010769157898322150?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
In any case it is Congress who calls up the National Guard. The President can only call up the National Guard overruling State Governors if Congress has sanctioned national emergency or war
He has not come to power by military coup but by the votes of most voters in most US states
The difference with the local AI is that I give it a innocent picture of a kid, tell it I what I want it to do to them, and it produces original filth for my gratification, all held only in memory on the device. The AI does the "creativity", so it's way more than just a fantasy, and virtually the minute I'm done with it, it's gone forever (slightly more technically complex than that, but it lingers way less than anything written to disk).
It's going to be very hard to police this, given with a system built as I describe, you've pretty much got to be caught in the act of viewing to be nicked.
Of course, this does all presume that we think dirty men viewing virtual versions of their dirtiest illegal fantasies is actually a problem for society, as well as their own consciences. There is a side to me that thinks whilst all this material is repugnant, if it's result is to *reduce* the production of real CSAM, because it's so much easier and less risky to go for the virtual option, a few less real kids raped isn't such a bad outcome.
I suppose at least part of the jigsaw is answering the question, is this the probable effect of turning a blind eye to virtual CSAM, or instead would effectively normalising it just drive demand for real, "authentic", CSAM from the pervert class? I somehow don't think I fancy signing off on the ethics approval for that particular study.
But we can criminalize the sharing of such images. If you share pictures of person [x] that have them artificially nudified, then that could be treated the same as you sharing naked images of them. That would mean that -sure- you could use technology to nudify a kid - but if that image got off your computer, you would become responsible for distributing child pornography.
It would be problematic around things like Usenet Archives, and various sites of which Literotica is perhaps the best known - which has the name of the genre.
Checking, it was a 2008 act expanded a decade later to cover "rape porn".
* Referenced here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_63_of_the_Criminal_Justice_and_Immigration_Act_2008