Policy Soup stir the pot ALPHA

This is fine as a snapshot of how things are in the place, but...what do we do? Whatever it is will almost certainly need spending not tax cuts. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Alex Hern@hern.bsky.socialFeb 18(source)

Today’s weird offshoot of the AI backlash is people pretending that they think no-one would ever need a personal assistant

Alex Hern@hern.bsky.socialFeb 18(source)

The video didn’t load so all I could see was this and I was still like “yeah me too”

Self driving cars are almost the worst thing you can have on the road but unfortunately the worst thing is human driven cars and have you seen how many of those there are

Oh this is what it feels like to be a reactionary

Luke Tryl

@luketryl.bsky.social

Pancake Day reveals a new, highly divisive intergenerational split - while older generations are loyal to traditional lemon and sugar pancake topping, younger adults are more likely to say they prefer Nutella or chocolate spread on their pancakes.

We’ve got some real nice BYD fully electric on the streets round us

There’s a particular variety of podcast that claims to be about a topic - idk Gardening or something - and then you download the episode called “poinsettias” and it begins with a 15 minute news section where the hosts discuss all the arguments they had about politics on Twitter this week

The legal requirement to place these adverts is a meaningful chunk of local government budgets. It was a big driver behind the 00s trend of councils running their own papers, until Eric Pickles - underrated villain of the coalition - banned it

Oh no, that means no-one local read the notices, a thing that definitely would have been avoided if they’d been put in a different local paper

Press Gazette

@pressgazette.co.uk

Reform UK-led North Northamptonshire Council has had to halt planning projects after publishing consultation notices in the wrong paper - the Northamptonshire Telegraph, which doesn’t circulate locally, instead of the Peterborough Telegraph www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2026/news/pl...

Where are you staying? They roll out route-by-route so it’s easy to find one if you know where to head

Has anyone who works at a self-driving car company actually called for action to keep pedestrians off the road in the UK?

Actually I, the protagonist of reality, am playing a game where it gets sunny every time I leave. You’re just the b plot provided as a comic foil, sorry

Interesting that this is close to how UK tabloids used to function.

Molly White

@molly.wiki

Their "more efficient" process than having writers write: • AI identifies possible stories • Reporters do further reporting and produce notes • Another person uses AI to generate a story from the notes, then rewrites/"tweaks" • Another person fact-checks/edits • Reporter reviews

Unknown

@unknown

Reposted byAlex Hern

Will Jennings📉🗳️@drjennings.bsky.socialFeb 16(source)

As Ronald Reagan said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and have you considered bobsleigh."

Alex Hern

@hern.bsky.social

really enjoy that the bloke who won two golds on the luge is someone who was a national level taekwondo fighter until he got injured and then a government figure stepped out the shadows and said "let me tell you about project going down a hill really fast"

not quite as funny as the british rowing strategy which afaict is literally just going up to tall women and saying "wanna row?"