merely rhys

Fascinating read on a former marine and NYPD officer who got radicalised by Trump into assaulting a police officer during the January 6th insurrection attempt.

Spoiler alert: he's still radicalised.

Gifted link, free for fourteen days.

#jan6 #jan6th #january6 #january6th #insurrection #MAGA #USPolitics #USpol

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/02/jan-6-ex-nypd-officer-capitol-police-attack/685325/?gift=y-oC1QlmgLOUZVvlEoH84xi92v_G0shyxFHQCDQ_udQ&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Excellent. Full acceptance of all the recommendations from the Fingleton review of the regulatory landscape surrounding nuclear power.

This should've been done years, even a decade or more ago.

#UKPolitics #UKPol

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/overhaul-of-nuclear-system-to-speed-up-building-and-cut-costs

It's such a joy getting accused of using AI for my writing because I use em-dashes.

I'll never stop — I'm not surrendering my writing style to reddit-brained morons.

Dear god, no. Please don't let this be a part of our new reality.

#UKPolitics #UKPol #BBC

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/12/matt-brittin-google-former-europe-boss-close-to-becoming-head-of-bbc-sources-say

Quite right.

There are people with who one may disagree on political subjects while retaining a friendship — but not populists intent on tearing the country apart and destroying our politics.

#UKPolitics #UKPol

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyxqdnvx9qo

Man, working on cross-org working groups sucks nowadays.

"Here's CoPilot's definition of X."

"This is what Claude said a good Y looks like."

I'm not as averse to LLMs as many others are, but when you're doing something based on your expertise — like working on a frigging industry standard — what's the point in even being there if you substitute all your experience and insight for that of a chat bot?

New poll from Focaldata out including Restore and Your Party.

https://www.focaldata.com/blog/westminster-voting-intention-greens-surge-after-by-election-win

Your Party on 0% with only a single respondent in the sample supporting them — 1 more than George Galloway's Workers Party, also on 0%.

In a random sample of the UK, in which Wales only has something like 4% of the population, Plaid Cymru gets 6 respondents.

The joys Your Party provide might be the only thing keeping me from being entirely forlorn by our present politics.

#UKPolitics #UKPol

On Wilson's 60th birthday — 11th March 1976 — he suffered a rebellion on his proposed cuts to public expenditure.

He immediately challenged the left of Labour to depose him, and in the ensuing debate Tony Benn described his as a right wing government. Chancellor Denis Healey, responding to jibes from left wing backbenchers, famously shouted, "Go and fuck yourselves you fuckers!"

Wilson won the vote but resigned a few days after. Thatcher came to power 3 years later.

#UKPolitics #UKPol

CAR Hoare has passed. Damn.

#tech #Compsci

https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2026/03/tony-hoare-1934-2026.html?m=1

Finally.

We need a legitimate and strong second chamber, and every inch of ground we gain modernising it is worth the agonising and glacially slow fight to win it.

Here the last ~90 or so hereditary members will lose their seats — some of who can trace their family's presence in the chamber back ~900 years — after a compromise to offer peerages to *some* of them in order to get the Tories to drop their opposition.

#UKPolitics #UKPol

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7o

Incidentally, since HMS Dragon is in the news a lot at the moment for deeply stupid reasons, It's perhaps worth noting that she's affiliated with both Cardiff and Wrexham and is adorned with Y Ddraig Goch on each side of her bow.

I can't find any examples of any other Royal Navy ships with similar adornments. I think she's the only one.

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/welsh-dragon-returns-bows-cardiff-11351214

#Dragon #Wales #Cardiff

I can't disagree with these people.

I could perhaps support an actual humanitarian intervention specifically aiming for regime change to impose democracy, true to my warmongery liberal hawk side, but nothing about this conflict is even remotely close to that.

Instead, an aimless bombing campaign, weeks too late to support a popular uprising.

Starmer's taken exactly the right tack in my view, albeit while pissing off absolutely everybody.

#UKPolitics #UKPol #Iran

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/10/iranians-living-in-uk-warn-starmer-war-nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe-letter

RE: @merill@infosec.exchange

I'm curious if this'll impact use on Graphene. Not actually jailbreaking/rooting, but many anti-jailbreak/root security solutions treat alternative OSes the same.

For my part, my org lets users unable or unwilling to use Microsoft Authenticator to use hardware tokens instead — even one's own personal ones, so I don't have to carry around multiple keys — so I won't be impacted.

Yet more evidence that the so-called 'lab leak theory' is utterly absurd, an entirely confected piece of nonsense born of the same anti-intellectual regressive populism that's poisoned every part of every political discourse over the last decade.

#covid #LabLeak #LabLeakTheory #LabLeakConspiracy

https://today.ucsd.edu/story/recent-pandemic-viruses-jumped-to-humans-without-prior-adaptation-uc-san-diego-study-finds

I have mixed feelings on this. I have my affection for the constitutional principle, but also concur with Leveson's report. Plus I have a lot of faith in our judiciary so doubt it'd lead to short term disaster.

Were the Tories (who caused all this in the first place) or Reform doing this though, I'd oppose it, particularly since it'll poison and politicise the judiciary in the long term.

I think on balance then I oppose this.

#UKPolitics #UKPol

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/mar/10/lawyers-urge-keir-starmer-rethink-plans-cut-jury-trials

👀

Apropos nothing, this old article that sprung to mind just now: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/04/us-navy-oceanic-trade-impact-russia-china/673090/?gift=y-oC1QlmgLOUZVvlEoH842y0n_1tcdLjr03J-pKZ7_k&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

#Navy #USNavy #Military #Iran #War #IranWar

Dating someone, falling in love, then discovering they're...

Idk, the older I get, the more liberal I get, and all the shit going on, I just can't fathom the folks willing to jettison liberalism at such a precarious time in favour of whatever the fuck they want instead.

My favourite part of this is former Tory defence minister, chair of the defence select committee, and soldier Tobias Ellwood confusing the Type 45 destroyer for a frigate and mixing up the air defence ship's radar system with its sonar.

God, even this brief little reminder of how hilariously incompetent the Tories were in power sends shivers through me.

#UKPolitics #UKPol

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/royal-navy-six-ships-shoot-down-missiles-uk-waters-4267989

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2026/02/making-webassembly-a-first-class-language-on-the-web/

Trump's speech on the #Iran strikes is terrifying.

This doesn't sound like limited strikes with a specific targeted outcome. It sounds like a massive campaign to cripple the regime and its military to enable the citizenry to overthrow Khameini.

This could be weeks of military operation — though bear in mind I'm usually wrong about everything and early reports in war are rarely correct.

At least this likely marks the end of Shahed deliveries to Russia, I guess.

#Trump #war #USPolitics #USPol

I enjoy the trip to London when it's on personal time rather than work related so I get to use The Fun Laptop.

Some fascinating insight here on Elon Musk's apparent change of heart toward Russia. He seems to have completely thrown his weight behind support for Ukraine.

It's impossible to guess at his motivations, but I'd hazard to guess — given his child-like perspective on things — that he sees the looming Democratic sweep in the midterms and wants to pivot just enough to build some good will.

Gifted link.

#Ukraine #Musk #Starlink

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/02/elon-musk-ukraine-russia-starlink/686155/?gift=y-oC1QlmgLOUZVvlEoH848GlFOKGwJXWQf2puhbLWJI&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

A tragic outcome from an awful misuse of a ministerial power that was never meant to be used this way. Decisions over treatment should live with doctors and their patients, not with ministers inclined to politicise them — as Wes and his Tory predecessor did with this absurd ban that utterly undermines both scientific and medical process.

#UKPolitics #UKPol #trans

https://www.thepinknews.com/2026/02/09/trans-youth-puberty-blockers-ban/