Gilles Villeneuve Fan

12 Followers
37 Following
179 Posts
Mastodon newbie so apologies for any screw-ups.
Formula 1 addict and biker. Passionate about some things, particularly calling out injustice and misinformation. I don’t spend all my time here so will only comment sporadically on topics that touch a nerve.

Spain is the best placed European country to ride out the energy crisis after investing heavily in domestic renewables.
https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/11/spains-renewables-revolution-likely-to-keep-energy-bills-low-even-as-gas-prices-soar

Spain also seems to be the most confident in telling the US to fuck off, I wonder if it's connected

Ending online harms isn't a game of whack-a-mole.

The only way is to bust the business model that rewards harmful results.

Nothing changes until we break the spell that keeps us on platforms; the harvesting of our data to maximise engagement and fuel advertising.

We need to get off the regulatory treadmill and #BreakBigTech.

Sign the petition ⬇️

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/break-big-tech

#OnlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #bigtech #meta #x #musk #zuckerberg #ukpolitics #ukpol

Break Big Tech: Dismantle the root cause of online harms

Platforms like X, Facebook and Instagram harvest our personal data so that they can target us with ads. Their platforms are designed to keep us online, pushing out content that will keep us engaged. Their power to shape and control what we see online is not only harming children and adults but democracy itself.  But we often feel locked in, not wanting to leave the spaces where we still have friends, family and followers.   The Government says it’s holding Big Tech to account over online...

38 Degrees

just READ THIS.

"So how does a sophisticated data intelligence company respond to well-sourced investigative journalism based on official government documents?

By suing the journalists, of course.

But here’s the thing that makes this even more absurd: Palantir isn’t even claiming the articles are false. The company isn’t suing for defamation. It isn’t seeking damages. Instead, it’s invoking a Swiss “right of reply” statute, alleging that Republik didn’t give the company a sufficient opportunity to respond. Palantir wants the court to force the magazine to publish lengthy counter-statements to each article.

(....)

Now, thanks to the lawsuit, the story has gone international. The Financial Times is covering it. The European Federation of Journalists is covering it. A UK member of parliament has already cited the Republik investigation during a debate on British defense contracts with Palantir, using the story to suggest that the British government “pivot away” from Palantir.

The Republik investigation itself is genuinely worth reading, and not just because Palantir desperately doesn’t want you to.

It paints a picture of a company that spent seven years working every angle to get Swiss federal agencies to buy its products—approaching the Federal Chancellery during COVID, pitching the Federal Office of Public Health on contact tracing, presenting anti-money laundering software to financial regulators, making repeated runs at the military—and getting turned away at every door. Sometimes embarrassingly, such as the Federal Statistical Office director apparently just ignoring Palantir’s outreach entirely.

For a company that brags about its ability to “optimize the kill chain” and whose CEO once told investors that “Palantir is here to disrupt… and, when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and occasionally kill them,” getting politely rejected by the Swiss statistical office has to sting a little.

But suing the journalists who reported on it? When the entire basis of your lawsuit is “we want you to publish our talking points” rather than “anything you published was wrong,” it makes pretty clear you don’t actually have a substantive response to the reporting. If Palantir thinks the picture is false, the remedy is to demonstrate that the documents are wrong—not to drag a small magazine through expensive litigation until it capitulates or goes broke."

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/27/palantir-sues-swiss-magazine-for-accurately-reporting-that-the-swiss-government-didnt-want-palantir/

Palantir Sues Swiss Magazine For Accurately Reporting That The Swiss Government Didn’t Want Palantir

If you run a company whose entire value proposition is the ability to see patterns, predict outcomes, and connect dots that others miss, you’d think someone in the building might have flagged…

Techdirt

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Stand with us for a social web where kindness and freedom of expression thrive together. Donate to power the change. #SupportMastodon

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Question: many Western leaders keep trotting out “Israel has a right to defend itself” but why doesn’t Iran or Syria have that same right when attacked by another country? As a follow-on question: what aspect of international law or moral position supports the stance adopted by the British and US governments to urge Iran not to retaliate to Israel’s strikes this morning?
The London Economic (@LondonEconomic) on X

Feels like it's time for a quick refresher 👇 https://t.co/xNmD2Khalz

X (formerly Twitter)
James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) on X

Tony Benn’s five key questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you? And if you can’t get rid of the people who govern you, you don’t live in a democratic system.”

X (formerly Twitter)
Alon Mizrahi (@alon_mizrahi) on X

In June of 1967, at the same time as Israel was starting to enact its military dictatorship over the West Bank and Gaza, the biggest athlete of his time and one of the most famous and recognizable icons of his era, Muhammad Ali, was sentenced to five years in prison for his

X (formerly Twitter)
This speech by Rowsn Atkinson is 12 years old but is probably more relevant today than it has ever been. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHyPRnrLnzA
1 HOUR AGO: Rowan Atkinson JUST OBLITERATED The UK Government “He Refuses To Listen”

YouTube
Private Eye on the money as always!