Peter Apps

‘I can’t grieve my dad properly, can’t go for a pint after the match’
 Andy Burnham explains to @danielhewittitv how his life has changed since becoming PM Watch our ITV Tonight Special, 'Burnham: Inside The First 100 Days' at 1915 on Tuesday 3rd November, ITV 1, ITVX and STV

Gene Roddenberry had a rule that drove the writers of Star Trek The Next Generation absolutely crazy: there can't be any interpersonal conflict amongst the crew. The result was a cultural product I consider almost unique: a story about good people trying to do the right thing that isn't boring. These days, moral ambiguity, twisted anti-heros and an apocalyptic vision of the future practially comes standard in our stories. Dark and complicated is synonymous with "smart," but in fact it's probably ten times harder to write a compelling story about principled, competent and psychologically healthy people. Star Trek TNG dared to imagine a future for humanity where we outgrew our petty squabbles and became our highest selves, where we travel the stars fulfilling our curiosity and genuinely making the universe a better place. Patrick Stewart's Captain Jean-Luc Picard was the indispensable anchor to this vision. Instead of William Shatner's campy swagger as James T. Kirk, Stewart's Picard made "tea, Earl Grey, hot" iconic. His depth and gravitas as a thespian specializing in Shakespeare sold the moral dilemmas that were so often at the heart of the best TNG episodes. The dramatic tension in TNG comes from people sharing the same ethical framework as a group facing difficult problems. The buck stops with the Captain. He listens to and respects his crew, but ultimately it is up to him to "make it so." For TNG to work as a show, Stewart had to take those very internal struggles between a man and his conscience and make it dramatic. He made Captain Picard's very moral seriousness charismatic. He made you believe that...yeah...of course there is a moral arc to the universe and it bends towards justice. Of course it is worth paying the price to stay true to our principles. And of course, the struggle to discern what is right action is actually much more interesting than wallowing in how broken everything and everyone is. Bon Voyage, mon Capitaine

Since I am fed up of people treating Israel as exceptional, when I went on reporting trips to Pakistan as a foreign journalist, my visa was limited to Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. >>

WaPo - An AI start-up founded by ex-DOGE staffers quickly broke into Anthropic. wapo.st/4smNlsC flipboard.social/@newsguyusa…

'Watching developments in China’s emergency management offers a rare window into the military’s potential future,' write Michael Kolton and Winston Chang. aspistrategist.org.au/ai-ena…

Impressively delusional: "Putin will probably demand that NATO’s footprint in Europe be reduced to its 1997 level, before former Eastern bloc countries began joining the alliance." telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…

In Myanmar, gold provides a livelihood to hundreds of thousands of subsistence miners, a source of revenue for business elites and armed groups, and a safe store of value for ordinary citizens at times of financial turmoil. This case study traces Myanmar’s gold supply chain from mine to market, and reveals how the precious metal empowers armed actors, poisons the environment and divides communities whose livelihood options are shrinking. Find out more: go.iiss.org/4yPFIgL

If done by a human, this would be a federal crime. Wait. It was done by a human. His picture is right there in the article.

Threat of AI to our daily lives is the white walkers beyond the wall in Game of Thrones. Everyone is focused on the wrong things, when the real doom is talked about as stories and anecdotes and nobody in power is willing (or has the ability) to understand the problem. Add mountains of money to this equation and its the ultimate cocktail of fucked.