Pandora's box

Here is a kind of sign of the times in AI slop studies. Today I was trying to find the best version of a performance Jerry Lee Lewis and Keith Richards did on a TV special in 1983 of Chuck Berry's Little Queenie and when doing that I got served a video of Mick Jagger reminiscing ... 2/ about the people who'd meant most to him over his life. So I clicked. I confess I was taken in by it for two or three minutes. The voice is basically perfect. The recollections are filled with things that Jagger broadly might say. There's a lot of good B roll. I noticed from ... 3/ the beginning that the moments fo Jagger on camera the lips weren't aligned with the audio. But I dismissed this as some editing issue. But while I obviously don't know Jagger I've listened to many, many interviews with him in many contexts over the years ... 4/ and he simply doesn't talk like this. First, he doesn't talk for this long. Never. He doesn't just take a question and go off indefinitely on some disquisition like this. The copy was also much more introspective than Jagger is in interviews and yet also quite hollow and formulaic. 5/ What we often see in AI bait: the bland and platitudinous. So a bit into his memories of Charlie Watts (the first of his five) and I realized: this isn't real. Now, Facebook is absolutely filled these days with phony billboards of non-existent reunion tours and all sorts of ... 6/ really audacious totally made up stuff. But this seemed to take it to another level. So I looked at the video description and noticed it was from something called Golden FilmRetro with 11k subs. This video was uploaded a month ago and has almost a million views. So I got curious. 7/ With AI you can operate at scale. And holy fuck they're really operating at scale. Turns out David Gilmour, Townsend, Mick, Daltrey, Robert Plant, McCartney, Page they've all sat down for the same five people they remember most video. Weird! And they're not just targeting ...

Vier ehemalige Mitglieder der verbotenen Neonazi-Jugendorganisation "Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend" zählen zu den engen Vertrauten von Ulrich Siegmund, der bald der erste Ministerpräsident der AfD werden könnte. Zwei haben an seinem radikalen Wahlprogramm mitgeschrieben, einer wird als möglicher Leiter der Staatskanzlei gehandelt.

Just putting the finishing touches on the first @POLITICO_AUS Canberra Playbook -- you're going to love it Last chance to sign up here before we launch 5.30am local time politico.com/canberra-playbo…

"The WSJ reporting that the long-feared “Google Zero” moment — when Google Search largely stops sending traffic to third-party sites — some publications are seeing traffic drops of more than 40% between mid-2025 and mid-2026. Publishers face a choice: allow Google’s multi-purpose crawlers (which feed both traditional search and AI training) or block them and lose search visibility entirely. Several major outlets, including USA Today, Reddit, Politico, Reuters and others, are now openly considering or preparing to restrict Google’s access, while Cloudflare plans to start blocking multi-purpose crawlers by default from mid-September unless site owners opt out. The old model in which publishers had no real alternative to Google’s rules is cracking" - Goldman TMT note

Book this for your next team building day

First they came for the em dash. Now they want to take "and" away from us too

This week’s POLITICO Mag cover story: politico.com/news/magazine/2…

If Jordan Bardella becomes France’s next president, don’t expect him to be Trump’s man in Europe. The French far-right leader gave @POLITICOEurope a 45-minute exclusive interview in which he discussed Europe, NATO and more Stay tuned for full release politico.eu/article/frances-…

🔴Thrilled to welcome @EvaHartog to our Global Reporters Network! Eva is one of the sharpest reporters I know — her Russia coverage has been essential reading for years. Now she's bringing that same tenacity to Latin America. Can't wait to see what she uncovers. Welcome aboard, Eva!

A little factoid to make you happy.

I mapped population change in Europe in the last 25 years...

"According to a report published by @Politico, German prosecutors believe a Lübeck-based trading firm, Global Trade, functioned as a covert procurement arm for Russian industry after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine." kyivpost.com/post/76382 @J_H_Dobers @stephanfaris

sisqo talking about his inspiration for writing the thong song simply one of the best things i’ve ever heard

This piece by @MarcFelixSerrao catches well key flaws of Merz. I would add that the core of the problem is the lack of a strategy and team that helps him to turn his ideas and instincts into policy. He remains a loner with immense self-confidence but seems unable to exert power.

The incredible shrinking German chancellor – an diesem Mittwoch ist Friedrich Merz ein Jahr im Amt. Hier ist meine Zwischenbilanz für @POLITICOEurope: politico.eu/article/the-incr…

🔴For months, authorities have focused their attention on the threat of Russian sabotage. But a months long investigation by @WELT — which, like @POLITICO, is part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network — suggests the more significant threat is domestic. politico.eu/article/blackout…

Deep red Rome

Very interesting new study finding that *even in large European cities*, in most places it is easier to access opportunities by car than by public transport arxiv.org/pdf/2604.01019 The exceptions are Paris, Zurich and the innermost parts of Milan and Barcelona