Sampson

Failed. Was close but just couldn’t quite get that blue category together, was a couple of red herrings in there. Connections Puzzle #981 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟦 🟦🟦🟨🟦 🟦🟨🟨🟨 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟪🟦🟦

Wordle 1 703 4/6 ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜🟨🟩 🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Very similar result to the poster above

I think there’d be way too much uproar and families broken up for even Boris or Farage to ever dare touch the common travel area and not allow British and Irish people to live in each other countries. Something like 1/3 of people from England, Wales and Scotland have at least one Irish parent or grandparent, and that’s before you even mention the hard-fought peace in Northern Ireland. Apropos the EU, I’ve actually seen a couple of articles of how quite a few British-EU families have ended up moving to Ireland together after they either couldn’t get or couldn’t bare the hassle or months or years long waiting times to get visas to live in each other’s country. Kind of a weird quirk of the whole thing.

Completely agree with you, but couldn’t resist the pedantry of technically 2 tbf, as you can still live in Ireland on a UK passport and Irish passport holders can still live in the UK.

I wouldn’t say we’re isolationists at all. I think bovrik had it right though - some still romanticise too much of the commonwealth and the empire and so see the US as our “baby” - that’s what a lot of the Leave campaign focused on and that’s what Farage still focuses on in the way he romanticises the US even over the UK in many places. But we’re not in that world anymore countries like the US and India have long since stopped caring about us and are actively hostile to us these days.

We hate the Scots, Irish and Welsh too - Londoners and non-Londeners hate each other and constantly complain about each other. Then we united as a country, but we still kept our unique cultures and maintain a friendly rivalry with devolved powers, then most of 1 of those countries got independence - part of modern day France (Brittany) also used to be part of England… Bavarians also hate Prussians and Austrians. Venetians hated those from Piedmont-Sardinia - national borders in Europe have change historically all the time. If you lived to 100 years in Europe at any point over the past 1,000 years, you’re probably in the minority (or Portuguese) if you’re national borders haven’t changed with people you were supposedly previously cynical of. This is what I find weird about our opposition to the EU, given the UK itself is a federation of countries and cultures with devolved governments.

Yes it’s the same groups and colours for everyone. Purple is almost always a word one - they do that type of word one once every couple of weeks or so

Connections Puzzle #980 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟪🟦🟦 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟩🟩🟩🟩

Wordle 1 702 3/6 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩⬜⬜⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

To an extent, but I also think we just don’t know how new technologies affect human brains over multiple decades until it’s often too late. I don’t think many would’ve predicted that this internet which opens up the world to social communication around the world would actually make it much more difficult to be social and make friends - and that itself then affects peoples outlooks and has 1,000 knock on effects on people’s mental health, culture, society, politics etc. Even now - just look how much of the discussion over AI is about how it affects the job market in the next 5 years, it’s not about how it will affect our governance system, the birth rate or justice system or people’s mental health or ability to socialise and make friends in 30 years time and how those things are often all connected.

Partly agree, partly disagree. Having Elon Musk types at the top who want to smash regulations because they have weird corporate libertarian dreams certainly doesn’t help, but unlike all other technology in human history, the point is we have no idea how AI works or what’s going on behind the scenes. Most of the problems with the internet also came from weird unintended consequences of content recommendation algorithms or forums and social sites that were designed to connect us that we had no real way to predict the issues they’d cause years later rather than deliberate bad faith decisions, it will be the same with AI - a lot of it’s biggest threats will come from weird unintended and unknowable consequences of unrelated stuff over bad faith human decisions

'Europe must stand on our own two feet'published at 10:36 10:36 Europe, the UK prime minister says, must stand on our own two feet. He says this can be achieved by putting an end to "petty concerns" and building a more European Nato, underpinned by "deeper links". He says that part of this foundation can be built by showing that "people who look different than each other can live peacefully together". "We are not the Britain of the Brexit years anymore," he says to loud applause. "Because we know that in a dangerous world, we would not take control by turning inward, we would surrender it," he says, adding: "And I won't let that happen."

I think Starmer’s speech now is definitely a tone shift. Never heard him so openly anti-US and pro-Europe in his time as PM. That last line here from the bbc is the strongest I’ve heard from him. Europe is a sleeping giant when it comes to defence - Starmerpublished at 10:44 10:44 The Nato alliance is a phenomenon in human history, he says hailing the alliance, but notes that we need to create a more European version. "Europe is a sleeping giant," Starmer says, highlight how their economies "dwarf Russia's more than ten times over". But, he notes, those have huge defence capabilities also suffer from fragmentation and duplication, which has made them "wildly inefficient", harming their collective security. The US security umbrella has allowed us to develop these bad habits, he says, "but we must break them".

Or the Ukrainian border around the Crimea and the Donbass which Europe are trying to defend but the US wants to give up so they don’t have to spend money any more for that matter…

Like the Danish borders around Greenland?

Congrats! You’ll probably do it more often now you’ve got roughly what type of things are there!

Failed. Got 2 and 1 away on the last at the end. Connections Puzzle #979 🟨🟪🟦🟦 🟩🟨🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟪🟦🟪 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟦🟦🟦

No idea what I was doing here Wordle 1 701 5/6 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟨 ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟨 ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I mean, no one thinks AI will kill us tomorrow. People are scared of the path it will lead us over a lifetime. The internet within the space of about 25 years certainly has led us down a way scarier path where a major world war that seemed unthinkable a generation ago certainly feels far from unthinkable anymore and the head of MI6 is actively telling British people that they have to start coming to terms with their children might have to prepare to go to war. AI is certainly going to accelerate this path. In fact a lot of this political upheaval is caused by social media algorithms from the past 10 years which are sort of proto-AI anyway

I mean… the internet has caused division, war, democratic backsliding, untold economic inequality, political upheaval, driven age of authoritarian populism, created and mass spread worldwide political movements, destroyed the international world order, ruined people’s attention spans, changed our relationships, how and where we live, our language and our culture, ruined many people’s mental health, addicted just about every person on the planet, meant humans have less friends and less sex, affected culture, demographics and brain chemistry and affected every single job on the planet within the space of a single generation. So that one definitely did take over the world.

He’s completely right about the Americanisation of European politics and his take on JD Vance’s comments and MAGA shouldn’t be our fight as Europeans. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4wpv0wx43o World's rules-based order 'no longer exists', Germany's Merz warns 1 hour ago Jaroslav Lukiv The rules-based world order "no longer exists", the German Chancellor has warned at a major security summit. Opening the annual Munich Security Conference, Friedrich Merz told other world leaders that "our freedom is not guaranteed" in an era of big power politics, and that Europeans must be ready to make "sacrifice". He also admitted that "a deep divide has opened between Europe and the United States". The conference is taking place on the backdrop of US President Donald Trump threatening Denmark's sovereignty over Greenland by pledging to annex the Arctic territory and his tariffs on imports from European nations. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was listening to Merz and will deliver his own speech on Saturday, earlier spoke of a "new era in geopolitics". Some 50 world leaders are expected to attend this year's conference, where European defence and the future of the transatlantic relationship will be discussed. It comes at a time when US commitments to the Nato military alliance have been called into question. Trump's ambition to acquire Greenland has also been viewed by many European leaders as a watershed moment that has eroded trust with its biggest ally. The Russia-Ukraine war, tensions between the West and China, as well as a potential Iran-US nuclear deal are also on the agenda at the annual gathering. Referring to multiple warnings that the rules-based order was collapsing, Merz told the conference: "I fear we must put it even more bluntly: this order, however imperfect it was even at its best, no longer exists in that form." He also said that "a rift, a deep divide has opened between Europe and the United States. Vice-President JD Vance said this very openly here in Munich a year ago". Merz continued: "He was right. The culture war of the Maga [Make America Great Again] movement is not ours. Freedom of speech ends here with us when that speech goes against human dignity and the constitution. We do not believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade." Last year, Vance attacked Europe, including the UK, for policies on free speech and immigration. His speech triggered a year of unprecedented transatlantic tension. But Merz did not write off the decades-long partnership, instead appealing directly to the US by saying "let's repair and revive transatlantic trust". The German leader also revealed that "confidential talks" were ongoing with French President Emmanuel Macron on creating a joint European nuclear deterrent. He gave no further details. France and the UK are the only two nuclear powers in Europe - but Germany and many other European nations have traditionally relied on the US nuclear umbrella within the Nato alliance for deterrence. Ahead of the Munich conference, Rubio warned that "the world is changing very fast right in front of us" after being asked whether his message to Europeans would be more conciliatory than Vance's a year ago. "We live in a new era in geopolitics, and it's going to require all of us to sort of re-examine what that looks like and what our role is going to be," he said. Tensions have been heightened in recent months as Trump has repeatedly said that Greenland is vital to US national security, stating without evidence that it was "covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place". Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Friday that she planned to meet Rubio to discuss the US threats to seize Greenland from its Nato ally.

People say the same about Europe and Trump atm, but I’m just not confident we are actually rearming and building up behind the scenes and are instead just burying our head in the sand and convincing ourselves “the US will come back to the flock, it’s just a teenage phase they’re going through”

One of the worst things about the internet and social media is it doesn’t allow people to make mistakes anymore. This will be 100 times worse in the near future when there’s AI algorithms data scraping the internet and AI cctv cameras which directly send fines to your post, no humans needed

To follow on from the above. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62dlvdq3e3o AI safety leader says 'world is in peril' and quits to study poetry 2 hours ago Liv McMahon,Technology reporterand Ottilie Mitchell An AI safety researcher has quit US firm Anthropic with a cryptic warning that the "world is in peril". In his resignation letter shared on X, Mrinank Sharma told the firm he was leaving amid concerns about AI, bioweapons and the state of the wider world. He said he would instead look to pursue writing and studying poetry, and move back to the UK to "become invisible". It comes in the same week that an OpenAI researcher said she had resigned, sharing concerns about the ChatGPT maker's decision to deploy adverts in its chatbot. Anthropic, best known for its Claude chatbot, had released a series of commercials aimed at OpenAI, criticising the company's move to include adverts for some users. The company, which was formed in 2021 by a breakaway team of early OpenAI employees, has positioned itself as having a more safety-orientated approach to AI research compared with its rivals. Sharma led a team there which researched AI safeguards. He said in his resignation letter his contributions included investigating why generative AI systems suck up to users, combatting AI-assisted bioterrorism risks and researching "how AI assistants could make us less human". But he said despite enjoying his time at the company, it was clear "the time has come to move on". "The world is in peril. And not just from AI, or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment," Sharma wrote. He said he had "repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions" - including at Anthropic which he said "constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most". Sharma said he would instead look to pursue a poetry degree and writing. He added in a reply: "I'll be moving back to the UK and letting myself become invisible for a period of time." Those departing AI firms which have loomed large in the latest generative AI boom - and sought to retain talent with huge salaries or compensation offers - often do so with plenty of shares and benefits intact. Eroding principles Anthropic calls itself a "public benefit corporation dedicated to securing [AI's] benefits and mitigating its risks". In particular, it has focused on preventing those it believes are posed by more advanced frontier systems, such as them becoming misaligned with human values, misused in areas such as conflict or too powerful. It has released reports on the safety of its own products, including when it said its technology had been "weaponised" by hackers to carry out sophisticated cyber attacks. But it has also come under scrutiny over its practices. In 2025, it agreed to pay $1.5bn (£1.1bn) to settle a class action lawsuit filed by authors who said the company stole their work to train its AI models. Like OpenAI, the firm also seeks to seize on the technology's benefits, including through its own AI products such as its ChatGPT rival Claude. It recently released a commercial that criticised OpenAI's move to start running ads in ChatGPT. OpenAI boss Sam Altman had previously said he hated ads and would use them as a "last resort". Last week, he hit back at the advert's description of this as a "betrayal" - but was mocked for his lengthy post criticising Anthropic. 1:38 Watch: Zoe Hitzig on why she quit A former OpenAI researcher who resigned this week, in part due to fears of the use of advertising on ChatGPT, has told BBC Newsnight she feels "really nervous about working in the industry". Zoe Hitzig said her concerns stemmed from the possible psychosocial impacts of a "new type of social interaction" that were not yet understood. She noted "early warning signs" that dependence on AI tools were "worrisome" and could "reinforce certain kinds of delusions" as well as negatively impacting users' mental health in other ways. "Creating an economic engine that profits from encouraging these kinds of new relationships before we understand them is really dangerous," she continued. "We saw what happened with social media" she said, noting "there's still time to set up the social institutions, the forms of regulation that can actually govern this". It was, she said, a "critical moment". Responding to BBC News, a spokesperson for OpenAI pointed to the firm's principles which state: "Our mission is to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity; our pursuit of advertising is always in support of that mission and making AI more accessible." They add: "We keep your conversations with ChatGPT private from advertisers, and we never sell your data to advertisers."

Connections Puzzle #978 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟦🟩🟦 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟪🟪🟪 Bit of a semi-lucky guess on blue. Felt they were a group but couldn’t say why, when I saw the group reason it wasn’t what I was thinking of