The UK government is "largely run by WhatsApp," according to Boris Johnson's former comms chief, the BBC reports.

This is the same UK gov't that's pushing for the Online Safety Bill, which if passed into law would compel tech companies — including WhatsApp — to weaken their encryption in order to scan users' messages.

WhatsApp itself has said it'd rather be blocked in the UK than undermine its security.

The absolute self-owning stupidity of the UK gov't is astounding.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-65776560

New York Times seems really hell-bent on publishing as many absolutely shit hot-takes before the year ends as possible. Or more.

First the Signal one, now this:

> Hard-Line Positions by Russia and Ukraine Dim Hope for Peace Talks

https://web.archive.org/web/20221229072005/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/world/europe/ukraine-russia-peace-talks.html

Demanding a violent invader leaves your house is not a "hard-line position." "Russian forces need to stop invading our land and killing us" is not a "hard-line position."

What the fsck is wrong with these people.

Found an incredibly useful app for finding people to follow on Mastodon. It crawls your social graph then finds the people who your followers follow the most that you don't follow.

https://followgraph.vercel.app/