Thomas D. Lee
Sunday Times bestselling author
Buy PERILOUS TIMES, it has a talking squirrel
Visiting Lecturer at City St George's University London
Worried about climate stuff
Repped by Harry Illingworth at @dhhlitagency
Linktree: t.co/psdOEXpR3h
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- My favorite thing about Andor is the Rebellion doesn't text its supporters 10+ times a day.
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- In huge news, the UK government was just defeated in the House of Lords for a second time over AI & copyright. The government had removed amendments to the Data Bill that would require AI companies to disclose their training data. The Lords have now reinserted them. 🧵 1/2
- OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/
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View full threadFor 9 days, the whole of our planet rang like a bell. BONG BONG BONG. We are all connected by bongs! (No, I don't mean....ok, I might try to disable the replies on this bit.) And when the paper on all this was published a year later... 9/
- ...it concluded since the landslide was triggered by the melting glacier, and since *that* happened due to rising global temperatures... This was a signal - and a warning - from our rapidly changing world, heard in every single part of it. Best we listen up. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 10/
- A comprehensive comms success.
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- After due consideration, having weighed up the relevant evidence, assessed the balance of arguments and gamed the likely implications, I have reached the conclusion that Keir Starmer can fuck off from a great height.
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- On reflection, I realise my post might have come across as disrespectful. What I should have said is that *Sir* Keir Starmer can fuck off from a great height. My apologies for any offence caused.
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- You know, as suspense-creating teaser questions go, this somehow isn't quite there.
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- christ, what a day to be an immigrant cursed with the ability to read
- "oh but they don't mean you" - sure, yeah, because I have a job and I'm physically fit, yeah? what if I were to become one of those immigrants who has to be on the dole? what if I end up disabled for whatever reason? what if I end up having a ton of kids with another immigrant? what if? what if?
- a society where "bad immigrants" are demonised is a society where no immigrant can truly feel welcome, because aren't we all just one wrong turn or accident away from being unemployed? on disability benefits? unable to care for our children without state help? just no such thing as a safe immigrant
- Our response to this government white paper on immigration
- A David Lynch quote for every creative person who may need it today. It resonated with me when I came across it reading it in Lynch on Lynch.
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- All of us.... every single last one of us... are descended from immigrants. And without it, this country would just be a bunch of uninhabited islands on the edge of the world. Everything that built this country... and everything it is... springs from that. And we should embrace it, not decry it.
- I tried...
- Perhaps more significant, the revolting word here - "squalid" - used in Starmer's speech today seems as provocative and as significant as Thatcher's notorious comment about Britain being "rather swamped" by migrants in 1978. Then, as now, it was a Powellite dog whistle. We are truly in hell.
- Tomorrow! OLIVER K. LANGMEAD @oliverklangmead.bsky.social and ALIYA WHITELEY will be talking about all their work, and especially their ground-breaking new collaboration City of All Seasons Do come! 7pm, 13th May, Star of Kings, nr Kings Cross stn
- Lovely to hear from the Prime Minister that the historical policies which allowed my Mum to remain in the UK after studying here, thus enabling my existence, was a “squalid experiment in open borders”.
- Update: the owlet is now on the ground, doing Owl Stuff
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- Wonderful to see a bunch of people who earn a minimum of £93,904 a year and who are supposed to represent their constituent's interests refusing to enforce the legal rights of UK writers, who on average earn £7000 a year from their writing work. Real heartening stuff
- GCSE-doing son: [lengthy thoughtful discourse on Lady Macbeth's "turn my milk to gall" speech touching on gender assumption and trans issues] A-Level daughter: Can I give you some advice on writing this theme? Son: Sure. Daughter: Instead of 'breasts', you should definitely write 'tits'.
- The Labour party just voted for a future in which writers and artists can't make a living from their work, in which the quality of art and information is locked into a downward spiral of regurgitated slop, and in which data centres make the planet increasingly uninhabitable.
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View full thread2025 has been the driest year for over 90 years. Temperatures are soaring. Reservoirs are dwindling. I'm expecting hosepipe bans this summer. And AI requires millions of litres of fresh water to keep data centres cool. Are we expected to prioritise AI over our gardens, our pets, human thirst?
- “Let me just ask ChatGPT” *cries dry tears*
- A glorious and wonderfully said truth in an uncomfortably, all too prescient thread.
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- Creative industries are so inaccessible to working class people and generative AI is only going to make this worse. Great thread here:
- Labour's insistence on giving everything to the tech-bros on this, shows how disingenuous they are on both supporting the creative sector in the UK (which is massive across the board, writing, film, theatre, video games) and on the environment. As a writer, my works are to be read, to be shared
- Fucking hell. I know nobody’s in greasy overalls for you to fetishise, Labour, but this is still an industry full of working people on marginal incomes that you are voluntarily destroying, you dumb tech-fetishising goons. You just sold us for corporate strip-mining. Up the workers.
- ICYMI: An amendment backed by creatives that would ensure AI models obey copyright law has been defeated in parliament as the contentious Data Bill proceeds towards its final stages 👇 #BookSky
- I'm still going to write my artisanal human books with artisanal human-made cover art. If AI-generated covers are your thing, I'm not your guy. I will pick cover art drawn in crayon by a three-year-old over AI covers anytime.
