Rowena Vaughan

In 1918, shortly before his own death, Wilfred Owen distilled the entire absurdity of war into this devastating short poem. ‘The Last Laugh’, performed by Sean Bean.

Pachelbel's Canon in D, P 37 played by countless trains, the sounds of which were recorded and assembled by the Czech machinist Pavel Jirásek.

Do you ever look at Rotherhithe and Canary Wharf and think that's not a very dense area, considering all the high-paying jobs just across the river? If so, may I interest YOU in a PROPOSAL?

Britain now has a speech kill switch, and as of Monday it’s armed. Large platforms must keep a crisis censorship plan they don’t have to publish, ready to fire the moment speech regulator Ofcom’s definition of a crisis is merely “likely.” That definition covers local events, regional events, and even events overseas. The content in scope includes “foreign interference,” which can apply to information that is entirely true if it’s presented the wrong way. Ofcom admits political speech will get caught and calls the extra false positives “proportionate.” Police get a dedicated line to the platforms, and they don’t need a court order to use it. The reviews afterwards happen in private too... reclaimthenet.org/britains-o…

Whats happening right now is probably way worse than the Hugging Face incident. AI-powered attacks are hitting real organizations while major platforms disclose breaches and critical flaws. - Microsoft reports AI agents targeting hundreds of organizations, reaching privileged cloud access in under three hours in multiple cases. It attributes the ConnectWise compromise to the same group. - CrowdStrike documented four operators running successful AI-agent campaigns. One compromised at least 15 Argentine healthcare organizations. - PHP2Shell: AI helped turn longstanding PHP flaws into working exploits. Cloudflare’s CEO reports millions of exploitation attempts. Their AI involvement is unknown. - Railway disclosed possible access to customer secrets. LiteLLM shipped a backdoored release. Zeabur confirmed another breach and is shutting down. - GitLab patched a maximum-severity flaw affecting 12 years of releases. Node.js patched a serious code-execution vulnerability, with Vercel deploying firewall protections. Feels like a turningpoint.

So basically, today PHP got two critical bugs that let anyone run code on your server without even logging in, which is bad, and then the details leaked before the patch was even out, which is worse, and it works on WordPress and MediaWiki and Magento and Joomla and Laravel, and Censys says like 1.5 million servers are running a version with no fix, so the NSA was like "take your system offline," and the FBI was like "take your system offline," and CISA and the UK and CERT-EU were all like "take your system offline," and then the Prime Minister of Japan, the actual Prime Minister, posted at 5:55 in the morning telling 48.8 million people to take their system offline, so everyone took their system offline, like the Dutch cybersecurity agency took its own website offline, and the Dutch parliament went offline, and the Port of Rotterdam went offline, and Finland and France and Denmark started pulling government sites, and Wikipedia went down, and Archive.org went down, and Asana and GOG and Something Awful went down, and the University of Vienna's webmail went down for some reason, and that's just PHP. Because GitLab also dropped a CVSS 10.0, which is the highest score they give out, for a bug that's been there since 2014, so that's every self-hosted GitLab for twelve years, and then LiteLLM 1.107.0 got hijacked and shipped a credential stealer and a remote access trojan in every single wheel and the Docker images, including latest, and you didn't even have to import it, just installing it was enough, and it's the second time this year, and then Railway paused every deployment on the entire platform because someone got into the environment variables, so now everyone has to rotate every secret they've ever stored there, and TiDB Cloud said someone was walking around inside with stolen credentials for basically a month and an extortion group says they took 10.6 terabytes, and Zeabur got breached for the second time in two months and is just shutting down, like the whole company, and Node.js patched remote code execution and a TLS bypass, and CISA says Plex is being actively exploited, and someone took over 300 Tor exit relays to steal SSH passwords, and SafePay ransomware has hit over 600 critical infrastructure orgs, and India's biggest bank filed a data loss incident, and Japan has been in an official state of emergency in cyberspace since October 9, which honestly explains the 5:55 AM post. Oh, and eMudhra, a certificate authority that's issued over 60 million certificates, whose entire job is proving websites are who they say they are, was supposed to be using private keys that are random numbers over a hundred digits long, and one of them was 4. Just 4. And the others were like 66 and 237. Anyway, it's Wednesday.

English glass owed its crystal clarity to Hungarian potash. And to get that potash, we burned down roughly a fifth of present-day Hungary. 🔥 In the Bükk hills of northern Hungary there is a valley called Szalajka: a string of trout ponds, pine forests, springs, a waterfall, a little forest railway, and barely a building in sight. You eat grilled trout there and think you couldn't find a more untouched place in the whole country if you tried. Then you walk up the valley and read the information boards. They tell you that in the 1800s the village of Szalajka, right there in the valley, had more inhabitants than nearby Miskolc. So where is it? There are three buildings in the entire valley. Gone. Torn down, carted off, leaving nothing but its name. And the village got that name from the stuff it produced: sal alkali, which the locals couldn't quite pronounce. It became "szalakáli", then Szalajka. Sal alkali is potash, potassium carbonate, and you get it from wood ash. So two hundred years ago this lovely valley sat among smoking kilns, stripped hillsides and mountains of ash. It wasn't a beauty spot. It was a chemical plant. And not just here. In the mid-18th century the price of potash shot up in England and France, because the glass, soap and textile industries couldn't get enough of it. So it shot up here too, and anything made of wood started to burn. In 1756, in just 11 villages of the Bakony hills, 44 kilns were devouring the forest. The law, in theory, only allowed burning trees that had already fallen. But a tree falls over remarkably easily once someone tickles it with an axe. 😏 The village of Szentgál banned ash-burning outright in 1791, fed up with the abuse and the destruction. By 1764 close to two hundred kilns were producing ash and potash, and the peak was still a long way off. Most Hungarian potash went to England, where people believed English glass owed its crystal clarity to it. By the early 19th century, the wood ash for all that potash had cost four million cadastral acres of forest, roughly a fifth of today's Hungary. Later this was politely described as the forests becoming "exhausted". They were cut down and burned. WE BURNED A FIFTH OF THE COUNTRY FOR A WHITE POWDER! When the wood ran out at home, potash-making moved on to Transylvania: the forests of Avas, Szilágyság and Bihar, later the mountains around Brașov and Sibiu. My wife and I go mushroom hunting there every summer, and once a biology professor told me that the huge pine forests we walk through aren't native at all. They were planted. Beech and oak should be standing there. Back then I had no idea who planted all those pines, or why. Two years later I ran into the potash craze, and it clicked: the original forest had been burned down to the last tree in the 18th century and replanted with faster-growing pine. The madness was finally stopped by a French chemist, Nicolas Leblanc, who started making natron from common salt. Natron is potash's sodium relative (sodium instead of potassium), and it makes glass just as well. Overnight, nobody needed wood ash anymore. By then, though, the same fire had swept through most of Europe and North America. And here's the twist. 💡 Egypt never needed any of this, thousands of years earlier, because on the shores of the salt lakes of Wadi el-Natrun, natron simply bloomed out of the ground. You just had to sweep it up. What we burned forests for, its close alkaline relative was lying around there for free, probably until it was mined out to the last gram. It's gone there too now. Now dissolve that natron in wood-ash lye and add burnt lime, and you get an alkaline mix that eats into stone at just 168 °C, about what a kitchen oven can do. I don't think it's a coincidence that the biggest stone monuments rose exactly where natron once lay around for free. The official explanation is different, of course: copper chisels, dolerite balls and a few thousand enthusiastic workers. A people with one of the best stone-etching chemicals in the world lying at their feet, and they chose to keep hammering. They must have really loved the workout. 😏 So next time you're sitting over grilled trout at a waterfall in a Hungarian valley, remember: you're having lunch in the ruins of a chemical plant. Do you know any other place name that comes from potash or ash-burning? Tell me in the comments, because I'm sure Szalajka isn't the only one. If you want the full story, my book is on Amazon: amazon.com/dp/B0DG3JT2N5 @SciHistoryOrg @ceramicreview @MuseumofGlass @XoloElvis @mazzenilsson

What happened to me: I was invited by the Israeli embassy to Israel because of my advocacy and went from 8-15 June last year. A prevent referral was made because I was “over identified” with Israel (bought bagels and hummus that week) The paperwork sent with my redacted SAR shows that they had rightly said there was no legal reason to investigate me since going to Israel isn’t a terrorist act and caring about Jews isn’t worthy of investigation. On 23 June my NHS records were changed to declare me a vulnerable adult which is someone with cognitive impairment who by virtue of their severe impairments is at risk of coercion and exploitation. The implication being that the Israelis were exploiting me. This was done without my knowledge and with no assessment or evaluation. My NHS GP records were then made unavailable to me. This label was removed on 18 May this year also without my knowledge or any assessment. The prevent people came to my door and asked me about my trip to Israel and whether I’d ever visited Auschwitz, they asked who I knew in Israel and whether I’d ever return. The reason they could do that and look into me is because they’d designated me an incompetent and the reason they could do that is because I have what used to be known as Asperger’s and (real, not the modern variant) ADHD. They used my health issues to make me medically vulnerable in order to investigate me for legally travelling to Israel on an embassy visit because I thought killing 1200 innocent people in the name of a KGB inspired propaganda creation “Operation SIG” was wrong. The fact I had longstanding friendships with Jewish people and would help anyone didn’t matter. I have been labelled an incompetent by the state in order to allow monitoring by prevent because I support Israel. When I did the 7.10 speech at the JSOC at Durham University two uniformed police attended to monitor the event for hate speech. It was a memorial to murdered people, I was honouring THEM. I find it all disturbing and terrifying. It wouldn’t be so bad if I had not for my entire life been treated like scum by teachers, doctors, midwives and the state because I have Asperger’s and a chronic pain condition. The truth is I’m a highly competent woman who has always managed genuine health challenges with resilience and determination and I am affronted by the state thinking they can just label me mentally incompetent because I’m a Zionist. I found this out by accident. As I said my GP notes have been made unavailable to me but I’ve put in requests and complaints to all the relevant organisations because you cannot use my personal data maliciously in order to target me for caring about Jews and Israel. Zionism is a protected philosophical belief and I am a Holocaust scholar. You cannot on one hand have psychological reports from 2021 showing I have verbal reasoning and logical reasoning in the gifted range and call me a mental incompetent. This is political targeting and I will not go quietly into that good night and eat my paste like a placid subject. You’ve done me dirty and I’m deeply aggrieved. The harm that has been done to me over decades by the services meant to protect citizens is a disgrace. I am a good woman. I am never hateful, I am not incompetent and I will not stop using facts to counter lies. If you want me to go away then pay for me to leave the country

The UK taxpayer has footed the bill due to government mismanagement. Over 10 years here are some of the worst cases: 🧵

This is the most important video I have made to date. This is how they do it to us. I caught them red handed this time. Watch. (Update — Part 2 addresses how I got this wrong)

BURNHAM'S "BACK DOOR" DIGITAL ID? "We will be the first in the world to introduce a comprehensive social media ban for children" - Nandy @andyburnham @lisanandy you have NO democratic mandate to usher us towards "papers please" for the internet We should not have to digitally verify to participate in everyday life @DCMS #dontidtheinternet

I don’t know who said this but I agree 100 per cent.

STATEMENT FROM FREEDOM WATCH GB Today, Freedom Watch GB founder Montgomery Toms and our team travelled to Bristol University to debate students and engage directly with people who disagree with us. We managed to hold one debate before being surrounded by a huge, organised mob. We were not surrounded by hundreds. We were surrounded by thousands! Our tent was completely swarmed, our gazebo was ripped apart and collapsed, microphones and other equipment were stomped on, and one of our cameras was knocked over. Masked individuals were among those surrounding and obstructing our team, while our attempts to continue recording were constantly disrupted, making it extremely difficult to properly document the endless assaults. The situation became so serious that the police closed off the road and brought in riot horses, yet despite the enormous crowd surrounding us, there was no effective dispersal and no meaningful effort to protect our team or our property. The police simply did not have the capacity to get us out while protecting us from the mob, leaving our team effectively trapped and forced to work out how to escape with our people and equipment. This is an extraordinary situation to find ourselves in while attempting to exercise the most basic democratic right: speaking to the public and debating political ideas. We are not asking everyone to agree with Montgomery Toms or Freedom Watch GB. In fact, we actively encourage people to challenge us, criticise us and debate us. What is completely unacceptable is attempting to prevent those conversations from happening through intimidation, obstruction and the destruction or interference with our equipment. Students wanted to approach us, ask questions and debate. They were prevented from doing so by the atmosphere created around our team. That is not free speech. That is the suppression of free speech. The events at Bristol demonstrate exactly why Freedom Watch GB exists. Political debate cannot be reserved for comfortable rooms where everyone already agrees. If our views are controversial, then challenge them. If our arguments are wrong, defeat them in debate. But do not send masked thugs to swarm people, destroy their equipment and intimidate members of the public into silence. We have extensive footage from today and we will publish it. We will show what happened to our equipment, the scale of the crowd, the disruption to our filming and the response of the police. The public can then judge the events for themselves. Freedom Watch GB will not be intimidated into silence. We will continue going into universities, we will continue debating students, and we will continue putting our arguments directly to the public. You can shout over us, surround us and attempt to shut us down, but you will not stop us from turning up. We will keep debating. We will keep exposing what is happening. And we will keep fighting for freedom. Freedom Watch GB

Told you this would happen when the law was first being debated. There's no way to ban under 16s without draconian state overreach taking in EVERY social media user in the UK. Just wait until a hacker breaks the database of collected IDs...

“For Creasy, free speech means state-regulated speech. Only people with approved views can speak, and anyone who steps out of line must be silenced and, if necessary, punished. Think it’s ridiculous to suggest that a person with a penis is a woman? In Creasy’s world, where we must ‘recognise various identities’, you must either self-censor and keep schtum or face changes to the law designed to shut you up. This week, Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, waded into the free speech debate at a fringe event at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, bringing her familiar brand of student politics with her. Creasy told the audience that free speech must be curtailed when it “stops somebody else’s view from being heard”. She elaborated, saying we should recognise “the impact and the context in which people have conversation and debate”. What she is saying, essentially, is that because everyone has a different identity and unique personal circumstances, free speech is impossible without state regulation. Creasy believes we must tackle “the barriers that stop people being heard at all”. This is absurd. Freedom of speech is a fundamental pillar of any self-respecting democracy. It is non-negotiable and, most importantly, a universal right. Fortunately, Jonathan Hinder, the Labour MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, was at the event to restore some common sense. “If you don’t believe in free speech for your opponents, you don’t believe in free speech,” he said. As Joanna Williams points out, Stella appears as hopeless at understanding free speech as she is at distinguishing between parrots and parakeets. Read more in @spectator 👇

🚨 BREAKING: FAIRFORD TERROR SUSPECTS TO BE RELEASED ON BAIL This is a major development. Five men arrested near RAF Fairford on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act — and later on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act — are now to be released on bail, according to counter-terrorism police. These were not minor allegations. Police were investigating suspected explosives. Army bomb-disposal teams were deployed. Homes were evacuated. A major counter-terror operation was launched around a strategically important US-used airbase. And now the suspects are being bailed. That immediately raises serious questions: Why are men arrested on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act being released? What evidence was found in the vehicles? What restrictions will apply to them? Are police satisfied there is no immediate risk? And crucially: Does this mean the investigation has weakened — or are investigators still pursuing a larger network or foreign connection? The Prime Minister has called a COBRA meeting on Fairford. So this story is clearly not over. The public deserves a full explanation.

Does Britain have a free-speech crisis? Between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2025, 62,199 people were arrested in the UK on suspicion of committing just three communications offences. This is a shocking figure, but it is an underestimate, as several police forces did not respond to Big Brother Watch’s report. The true figure will therefore be much higher. Big Brother Watch estimates that the true figure is 73,023. So, on a conservative estimate, the police are arresting an average of 34 people a day for things they have said—most of them online. The true figure is closer to 40 a day. Russia, incidentally, is thought to arrest around 400 people a year for similar offences. Of those 62,199 people, 18,520 were charged and 12,292 were convicted. That means more than 12,000 people received criminal records for speech offences in just five years. There is a clear trend: the number of people being arrested for speech and communication offences, both on and offline, is increasing. Between 2019 and 2023, the number of arrests rose by 58 per cent, and since 2017 it has more than doubled. The 2023 figure equates to an average of 33 arrests a day. What is truly sinister is that, even if someone is not charged, they could still end up with a black mark against their name in the form of a non-crime hate incident (NCHI)—despite the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council recommending that they be scrapped. The most pernicious aspect of an NCHI is that it can appear on an enhanced criminal-records check and prevent you from getting a job as a teacher or carer. In 2023, 90 per cent of all crimes went unsolved, yet the police appear more interested in policing ‘hurty’ words and comments online. The Online Safety Act has also ushered in a new era of online censorship, infringing not only British citizens’ right to free speech, but also the First Amendment rights of US citizens and the interests of US businesses. What sort of content is being removed? If you think it is ‘just’ hate speech, that is not much comfort. Who decides what is and is not hate speech? Are we happy to let Meta, X and Google make that call? What about Ofcom? To give you an idea of what gets flagged as ‘hate speech’, in April 2020 Change.org took down a petition by Kellie-Jay Keen urging the Oxford English Dictionary not to change its definition of ‘woman’ from “adult human female”. Another alarming consequence of the Act is that it saw the speech of a democratically elected MP, Katie Lam, about the grooming-gangs scandal in the House of Commons removed as ‘harmful content’. But this already dire situation is about to get worse. A couple of months ago, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport published a Green Paper called Watch This Space. It proposes giving Ofcom the power to compel social-media platforms, including YouTube, to give greater prominence in their algorithms to content produced by the BBC, ITV, STV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and S4C, along with other ‘trusted news providers’. This would, in turn, demote more critical outlets such as GB News and independent journalists. Why should the Government get to decide what constitutes ‘trustworthy’ news and dictate what its citizens can and cannot see? Burnham has also launched a new government organisation called the ‘National Centre for Information Defence’, which is being presented as a tool to tackle Russian efforts to sow division, peddle certain narratives and interfere in our elections. What it will inevitably do is clamp down on British citizens’ right to criticise the Government and discuss issues such as the scale of mass, uncontrolled migration into Britain. Read more from FSU General Secretary Lord Young of Acton in his speech from Croatia 👇

Digital proof of age for alcohol sales is no longer merely a proposal. It came into force across England and Wales last week. For now, the Government says both sides retain a choice: businesses do not have to accept it, customers do not have to use it, and physical ID remains valid. But this is a significant new everyday use of the Government-regulated digital-verification system - and GOV UK Wallet is expected to join it later. That choice must remain real as adoption spreads: no penalty, no poorer service and no digital ID by default. gov.uk/government/news/new-r…