A Profile of the Top-Ranked Podcasts in the U.S.: True crime is the most popular genre.

New Scientist Live: The “festival of ideas and discoveries” is back in London later this month.

Digital Content Piracy Is on the Rise: Not very surprising given ‘legitimate’ services are raising prices, reducing libraries, adding adverts and generally making the experience of using them worse.

Amazon will “ramp up” Prime Video ads in 2025: Ugh, in a further recreation of cable TV, we’re likely to be subjected to yet more ads, including in the middle of shows, from Amazon’s paid service.

MPs to get historic vote on the legalisation of assisted dying: Almost certainly a good idea as long as done alongside a huge improvement in later-life social and medical care.

Labour to commit almost £22bn to carbon capture and storage projects: Glad to see them putting serious investment into something ‘environmental’, tho I don’t know enough about the technology to know if this is is the best option.

The Riddle of Ambition: Don’t commoditise your ambition - use it to know yourself.

Keir Starmer pays back £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality: Oh boy, Taylor Swift tickets are real expensive.

Melania Trump passionately defends abortion rights in upcoming memoir: Must make for some interesting conversation around the family dinner table, if they ever speak to each other.

Apple is Silently Removing VPN Apps from Russia’s App Store: Presumably at government request, limiting the ability to access uncensored information and privacy of Russian internet users.

Exposing The Flaw In Our Phone System: Mildly terrifying episode of Veritasium showing how easy it is to hack almost any phone via exploiting the SS7 system.

Spy companies using Channel Islands to track phones around the world: The Channel Islands are a hotspot for the SS7 attacks that may allow hackers to track almost any phone’s location as well as intercepting calls and SMS.

Nope, the Pandemic Did Not Make Us All Gain Weight:: NHANES data suggests that, contrary to earlier speculation, the Covid-19 pandemic didn’t cause everyone (well, Americans) to gain weight.

Tory gasps as Robert Jenrick reveals daughter’s middle name is Thatcher: New level of weird Conservative obsession with Margaret Thatcher achieved.

Cannabis legalisation could be worth £9.5 billion per year to the UK: It’s astonishing and absurd to me that you can still go to jail for cannabis possession here in the UK.

Is UK maternity pay excessive and how much does it cost the taxpayer?: No, it’s nowhere near ‘excessive’.

Maternity pay is ‘excessive’, says Tory leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch: No, ‘personal responsibility’ is not a substitute for statutory maternity pay (tbf she’s subsequently backtracked a bit on this).

‘Not all cultures equally valid’ when it comes to immigration, says Badenoch: I hope this was just bad phrasing, (but I’m not optimistic on that front).

The Forever Plague and its enemies: A reminder to put Covid in the context of other illnesses and the external events it’s associated with before assigning it uniquely nightmarish properties.

Iran vows vengeance after assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah: Israel’s assassination of Nasrallah seems destined to be another step on the path of an increasingly terrifying escalation of the conflict.

Rosie Duffield resigns as Labour MP: Furious both at Keir Starmer’s political style and the ‘cruel and unnecessary’ policies that he supports.

Moving to Pika: In which a post about changing blog hosts turns out to be full of commentary on coping with the exhausting conditions of modern existence.

The True Story of “Hidden Figures,” the Forgotten Women Who Helped Win the Space Race: Not all 1960s NASA brainiacs were bespectacled White men.

Reducing Food Cravings: Pratik shares 4 things that research suggests can diminish food cravings: visualising nature, diverting your focus, physical creativity and (certain?) smells.

NIST proposes barring some of the most nonsensical password rules: The US National Institute of Standards and Technology advises that it’s counterproductive to make users set passwords with specific composition rules or change them regularly.