Mick Yates

Photographer, Curator, Educator, Marketeer
Visiting Professor, Ethics, University of Leeds
Co-Founder, Photo|Frome Festival

[Mick Yates @mickyates]

Some Sunday thinking - time, knowledge, complexity and … AI.

https://t.co/AI99auqLlN

[U2 @U2]

On this Ash Wednesday, Days Of Ash is released as a self-contained collection of five new songs and a selected poem - American Obituary, The Tears Of Things, Song Of The Future, Wildpeace, One Life At A Time and Yours Eternally (ft. Ed Sheeran & Taras Topolia). This new EP is a response to current events, inspired by the many extraordinary and courageous people fighting on the frontlines of freedom. Four of the five tracks are about individuals – a mother, a father, a teenage girl whose lives were brutally cut short - and a soldier who’d rather be singing but is ready to die for the freedom of his country.

Days of Ash EP available now. Listen here: https://t.co/OB3mVe69vu

[Mick Yates @mickyates]

Key ideas in this paper were shared at the Biennial Conference of IDEA, ‘The Future of Practical Ethics’, University of Leeds, last week. It blends a bit of philosophy with a bit of technology :-) #AI

https://t.co/ycoRjCCyPU

[Mick Yates @mickyates]

@HistPhilosophy loving the Africana Philosophy book .. great addition to the series. I know you are super busy, but is a volume (s) planned on Chinese / Japanese philosophy?

[Mick Yates @mickyates]

I might have the numbers a bit off, but when I joined Twitter in March 2009, there were around 15 million users worldwide. At the end of 2009, that was 75 million.

#BlueskySocial yesterday hit 18 million, fuelled by X-edos. What’s the betting for Bsky users 6 months from now?

[Arnold Schwarzenegger @Schwarzenegger]

I don’t really do endorsements. I’m not shy about sharing my views, but I hate politics and don’t trust most politicians.

I also understand that people want to hear from me because I am not just a celebrity, I am a former Republican Governor.

My time as Governor taught me to love policy and ignore politics. I’m proud of the work I did to help clean up our air, create jobs, balance the budget, make the biggest infrastructure investment in state history, and take power from the politicians and give it back to the people when it comes to our redistricting process and our primaries in California.

That’s policy. It requires working with the other side, not insulting them to win your next election, and I know it isn’t sexy to most people, but I love it when I can help make people’s lives better with policies, like I still do through my institute at USC, where we fight for clean air and stripping the power from the politicians who rig the system against the people.

Let me be honest with you: I don’t like either party right now. My Republicans have forgotten the beauty of the free market, driven up deficits, and rejected election results. Democrats aren’t any better at dealing with deficits, and I worry about their local policies hurting our cities with increased crime.

It is probably not a surprise that I hate politics more than ever, which, if you are a normal person who isn’t addicted to this crap, you probably understand.

I want to tune out.

But I can’t. Because rejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets. To someone like me who talks to people all over the world and still knows America is the shining city on a hill, calling America is a trash can for the world is so unpatriotic, it makes me furious.

And I will always be an American before I am a Republican.

That’s why, this week, I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

I’m sharing it with all of you because I think there are a lot of you who feel like I do. You don’t recognize our country. And you are right to be furious.

For decades, we’ve talked about the national debt. For decades, we’ve talked about comprehensive immigration reform that secures the border while fixing our broken immigration system. And Washington does nothing.

The problems just keep rolling, and we all keep getting angrier, because the only people that benefit from problems aren’t you, the people. The only people that benefit from this crap are the politicians who prefer having talking points to win elections to the public service that will make Americans’ lives better.

It is a just game to them. But it is life for my fellow Americans. We should be pissed!

But a candidate who won’t respect your vote unless it is for him, a candidate who will send his followers to storm the Capitol while he watches with a Diet Coke, a candidate who has shown no ability to work to pass any policy besides a tax cut that helped his donors and other rich people like me but helped no one else else, a candidate who thinks Americans who disagree with him are the bigger enemies than China, Russia, or North Korea - that won’t solve our problems.

It will just be four more years of bullshit with no results that makes us angrier and angrier, more divided, and more hateful.

We need to close the door on this chapter of American history, and I know that former President Trump won’t do that. He will divide, he will insult, he will find new ways to be more un-American than he already has been, and we, the people, will get nothing but more anger.

That’s enough reason for me to share my vote with all of you. I want to move forward as a country, and even though I have plenty of disagreements with their platform, I think the only way to do that is with Harris and Walz.

Vote this week. Turn the page and put this junk behind us.

And even if you disagree with me, vote, because that’s what we do as Americans. https://t.co/eHFZ723I4H

[DJLawman @Djlawman]

I WAS a life-long Republican. I went to the 1976 GOP Convention in Kansas City. In 1978, I helped run a GOP Congressional campaign. In law school, I worked for the GOP members of the NJ State Assembly. From 1981-1987, I worked in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department. 1/3

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

British people should be proud that they have a journalist, working on their behalf, attempting to hold Putin to account. Americans might reflect on how the Presidential candidates might respond to this question being asked.

[Andrea Junker @Strandjunker]

Wealth of Elon Musk
2012: $2,000,000,000
2024: $273,000,000,000

Wealth of Jeff Bezos
2012: $18,400,000,000
2024: $207,100,000,000

Wealth of Mark Zuckerberg
2012: $17,500,000,000
2024: $200,000,000,000

Federal Minimum Wage
2012: $7.25
2024: $7.25

Three words: tax the rich.

[Mick Yates @mickyates]

Brave, Steve, thank you, a credit to you and the BBC

[Steve Rosenberg @BBCSteveR]

My first opportunity to ask Vladimir Putin a question since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It came at the end of the BRICS summit in Kazan. Producer @LizaShuvalova

[Brian Barrett @brbarrett]

This might cost me billions in government contracts but just to be clear, WIRED endorses Kamala Harris.

[Grant Stern  @grantstern]

Bob Woodward is one of America's greatest journalists whose career was born in the bile of nefarious dealings by the White House.

He's as skeptical as a journalist can be because he knows that what the White House hides is monstrous.

Only Joe Biden could make him report THIS:

[John Pavlovitz @johnpavlovitz]

Wow, this isn't just an endorsement of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz by Bruce Springsteen, it's a sermon, a song, and a love letter to America!

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

Holy shit! Bruce Springsteen, with one of the most eloquent endorsements for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz you'll hear. The Boss also delivered one of the strongest repudiations of the loathsome piece of shit I've heard from anyone. Let's fucking go‼️🙌🌊🇺🇸

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

The eloquence and righteous indignation of this Boomer woman from North Carolina makes my eyes well up with tears. Her outrage over degenerate Nazi Mark Robinson is palpable. 🥺🥺🥺🔥🔥🔥🙌🙏👏👊🌊🇺🇸

[Yann LeCun @ylecun]

Timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentēs.

[Lewis Goodall @lewis_goodall]

Some of responses to the UK govt's decision on Israel arms licences are fevered.

1) The previous government made clear licences were always under review. There has been a review and clear legal advice. The new government is acting accordingly. If HMG ignored it that would be tantamount to the UK saying it was unconcerned about potential IHL breaches and potentially break the law itself.
2) The idea that this is a great insult to the people of Israel is questionable, at best. It ignores the actual politics of Israel right now, including the substantial number of people in Israel who want a ceasefire/hostage agreement (and have just had a general strike to that effect) and/or disagree with the Netanyahu position. That includes the hostage families. To argue that somehow this makes the UK opposed to Israel itself, or is abandoning Israel given UK's wider strategic support is absurd.
3) The argument about timing is understandable. But there is a bloody war going in Gaza. The timing would never be ideal. Palestinians/Israeli soldiers are dying every day. Again, suggesting it shouldn't happen because it was the day of the hostages' funerals is to elide those families with the Israeli's government, to suggest they are one and the same. That is especially darkly ironic when we remember it is those families who have spearheaded the opposition to BN.

[RS Archer @archer_rs]

Reports that film of Angela Rayner enjoying herself on holiday has resulted in several members of the Reform and Conservative parties exploding with indignation and anger while the editor of the Daily Mail has been forced to have a long lay down.

[Rory Stewart @RoryStewartUK]

This - from Private Eye - illustrates why it was reasonable to question the sentence lengths given to the Stop Oil protestors @RestIsPolitics

[Parody Nigel Farage @Parody_PM]

Liz Truss: “That’s not funny”
The Entire UK: “Yes it fucking is!”