Tom Ough
@tomough
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Writer (forthcoming book on averting doom), researcher, yeoman podcaster (Anglofuturism). In the Bay Area for a few months
King Charles III Space Station
Joined April 2009
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Presenting: episode 4 of the Anglofuturism podcast.
Calum and I interview
@Sam_Dumitriu
, touching on:
- the most expensive nuclear power in the world
- the viability of British maglev
- the swashbuckling spirit of our Victorian forebears, and how to revive it
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Poundbury, 2030
- You wake up
- Lab-grown full English for breakfast, served by robot butler
- Walk your children (which you can afford, because the housing crisis has been solved) to school
- HS22 takes you direct to Spaceport Cornwall, which can sustain heavy-lift launches
-
San Francisco, 2030
- You wake up
- You walk 2m to Cafe Reveille to get breakfast
- You overhear a convo about AGI
- You notice it's people you know from Twitter
- You join the conversation, a new relationship starts
- You walk 10m to work
- You're stuck and need to make a key
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I don't know the context of this 10-second clip, but the more I think about it, the bleaker it gets.
- 'But it would take 10 years' being enough to dismiss a project
- Patronising body language
- Lack of visible interest in getting to the root of the problem
- Deputy PM sat at a
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I hear what you're saying, and I am in total agreement that there should be a massive nuclear power plant there instead
I am utterly appalled that less than one week into his role,
@Ed_Miliband
has approved the Mallard Pass Solar Plant for construction.
This shows a complete disregard community consent, contempt for human rights, and a complete failure to understand food security is a national
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Under Anglofuturism, gleaming maglev trains will soar across rewilded countryside that was once the Astroturfed gardens of suburban Nimbys
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1/5 I'm in the new issue of the Spectator to make the case for the British super spaceport.
The argument: the space economy is expanding rapidly. We currently have a chance to host up to 1/3 of launches.
(Might as well mock it up in Scottish Baronial style while we're at it)
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Average British high street if we go the way we’re going
v. Average British high street under Anglofuturism
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@thebritafilter
One of these days you, me and
@JoannaLumleyUK
will get together and chuckle about this over a cool jug of BRITA-filtered water
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It was fascinating to learn about why different kinds of housing looks the way it does (and how things might chance in the future).
With apologies to anyone who lives in a newbuild:
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It's hard not to read The Case for Keto without getting angry about the wrong-headedness of nutritional advice from the '50s onward. High-carb diets are, for millions of people, slow-acting poison.
My interview with the book's author,
@garytaubes
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🚨 Some professional news! 🚨
Today, after seven years, is my last day at the Telegraph. To everyone who's contributed to, edited or read my work: thank you.
I'll end my time at the paper in a way befitting my career here: roistering on company time.
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This 'dainty little pixie boy' is...
@louistheroux
!
Interview in which we discuss what his younger self would make of his life (and whether he would wear an ironic Louis Theroux T-shirt if he wasn't himself Louis Theroux)
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The closest I've got to weeping while conducting an interview. A conversation with
@raymond_blanc
about his late mother and the orchard she loved
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Just before he left, I spoke to a UK-based Ukranian expat who's now driving home to take up arms.
He didn't want the West's sympathy; he wanted weaponry. "Our people will die. But give us guns. That’s it."
The courage of normal Ukrainians is astonishing.
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🗞️Some meta-news🗞️
I'm moving... but not very far. On Monday I begin a job in the Telegraph's news department.
I'll be writing news features: colour and longform. It's an exciting brief. Hurrah!
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The chance of the war in Ukraine prompting nuclear conflict remains small. Paul Ingram, of Cambridge's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, puts it at 1 in 80.
But, he told me, the gov't should now be making contingency plans.
A key concern: food.
🧵
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🇬🇧 🚀 Presenting: the Anglofuturism podcast, with me and
@CalumDrysdale
With each episode, we explore a big idea that will help make Britain the greatest country in the galaxy.
Here's the first! Links below⬇️
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Train carriages should be so brutally policed for noise that passengers feel like they're in A Quiet Place. The briefest snatch of audio and you're torn to shreds by a British Transport Police demogorgon
The quiet carriage on LNER trains has been renamed ‘the quieter carriage’, which feels like an admission of defeat on a societal scale
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Cannot believe the arrogance of my gym login page, asking for a seven-character password with a capital letter, number and special character. You're a squash booking service, not the secret KFC recipe safe
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I'm writing about familects: the unique or idiosyncratic words and phrases used within families or households. Anyone got any fun ones to share?
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I've moved house and my new room has this unmitigatedly hideous feature wall. I'm allowed to obscure it but not mark it. Any ideas? Some hanging hessian? Send help and pest control
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This car has been in the family 48 years. Let's see if I can make it to 50...
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Am I going to get to try opium for an article or aren't I
@DannyBoyle87
Meanwhile, Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart has controversially revealed he smoked opium in Iran
Read more:
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Under Anglofuturism, low-earth orbit will be populated by thatched pubs. Because sound does not carry across the void of space, there will be no reason for restrictive licensing laws, and visitors will be able to drink for as long as they wish to
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Makes one wonder what we’ve lost in the modern era thanks to our near-total elimination of boredom
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Flinching every time I get a new email, dreading the inevitable commission to inject myself with Cillit Bang
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So she pivoted to longevity – the science of long life – and is now, at 23, in charge of one of the biggest grantmaking endeavours in the field.
We chatted about her career and about the big questions with which longevity confronts humanity
@LNuzhna
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I'm thrilled to be sharing my first essay (a year in the making) for
@WorksInProgMag
.
This one's for everyone who loves lasers, clean energy and *extremely* deep holes.
Herewith: the future of geothermal power & the genius idea that might get us there
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I promise this piece is more nuanced than it looks!
Thanks to
@anderssandberg
and
@tobyordoxford
for their wise contributions.
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The Tempsford blueprints are majestic
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Big thanks to whichever editor titled it "the worst haircut ever"
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A mere 3% of English and Welsh river length is open to the public. Bankside landowners' plots extend to the halfway point. A kayak trip can involve dozens of trespasses.
@nickhayesillus1
and I spent an afternoon cocking a snook at these silly laws
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Any reasonable analysis of the new royal portrait must conclude: We are going to Mars
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- the artificial island on Dogger Bank
- the King Athelstan super space port
- the King Charles III thatched space station
We talk a lot about decline in the UK - but what are some things that give you hope or remind you how good things could be if only the country was governed properly? 🇬🇧
For me:
- Battersea Power Station
- Victoria Line at rush hour (a train every 2 mins!)
- Elizabeth Line
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'If anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart.'
— the Buddha
My day imitating Orlando Bloom
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3/5 We're great at satellite components, but we don't join it all up in projects of our own. Doing so could encourage private investment to pile in.
Hence
@peterrhague
's suggestion that we build what we might call a super spaceport, big enough to accommodate Starship.
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2/5 Some background. Britain, ignominiously, is the only country in the world to have relinquished vertical launch capability. We contribute to Europe's Ariane programme, which musters only a few launches per year. Meanwhile, the space economy is projected to hit $1trn by 2030.
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Under Anglofuturism, the stump at Sycamore Gap will be replaced with an oak tree the size of a redwood
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Under Anglofuturism, those who settle new worlds will have the option of doing so in tailored three-piece spacesuits
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@CristinaCriddle
Joanna Lumley is an ambassador of
@BRITAPRO
, so I asked them if she'd be available for an interview. Alas this particular Brita Filter was not the one I meant
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We’ve broken containment!
Doggerbank brought back from the sea? Spaceports on the Cornish Riviera? Anglofuturism, the people's choice.
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Fantastic. I hope the many ugly buildings of the UK are quaking in fear
A library in Sydney was replaced with an updated student centre in the name of architectural revival, and as a brutalism enjoyer, this makes me very sad
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@tobyordoxford
He also spells out, in this post from a few years ago, that taking care of colleagues "will come back to you 10x."
If anything, he underestimated the 10x
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I came to the World Crazy Golf Championships to mock it. I left humbled. Here's my long read on this strange, hilarious and heartwarming pocket of sport. PS they call golf "big golf"
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Gorgeous, savage writing
Sadly, Johnson was never the vandal of the Westminster system his enemies claimed: just (as they say) a messy bitch who lives for drama. Lazy, distracted & inept, he squandered the sacred gift of power. For the nation's good the party must wield the knife:
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5/5 It could happen in Scotland, where we are regaining our vertical launch capability. Or even in the North Sea.
And space, of course, is about more than economics...
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Excl: 20+ veterans of British special forces operations to join the fray in Ukraine
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today I cradled a five-week-old baby who, moments after this picture was taken, reached out for the lowermost strands of my beard, touched them, and vomited
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Until the
@Telegraph
office provides doggos such as this, I'm never returning. My afternoon at a
#pubdesk
:
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Anglofuturism has been achieved internally
Been to a couple of e/acc / Anglofuturism events recently.
Some things I’ve learnt:
> There is a very strong desire for the UK to take a pioneering role in shaping the future of the world
> There are some super smart and driven people trying to make this happen
🇬🇧/acc
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Just took my 96-year-old nan to see the Independence Day fireworks in SF, she’s registered blind. In a very loud voice she said, “It's never too late to undo independence and accept the rule of the King”, and everyone at the display cheered
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Mine from Sunday: rights for sentient AIs!
Contributions from
@jacyanthis
and other experts.
(and no: the 𝘐, 𝘙𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘵 reference wasn't mine. But at least it wasn't Terminator)
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the shock and thrill of seeing someone else's cursor in your google doc... only to realise that you simply have the doc open in two tabs
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My interview with Neil Parish (the "porn MP") and his wife. Exclusive for
@Telegraph
.
He: "My wife is better than I deserve."
She (chuckling): "That's for sure!"
Portraits by
@GeoffPix
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The quoted tweet probably read as if I was joking, but:
- China and Dubai have made artificial islands
- there’s a super spaceport in the US
- Japan has made a wooden satellite
We can do better than “half an HS2”
- the artificial island on Dogger Bank
- the King Athelstan super space port
- the King Charles III thatched space station
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Here's an
@80000Hours
podcast in which Allfed's David Denkenberger discusses seaweed & other food sources.
Seaweed grows so fast that "we could actually get up to 160% of human calories in less than a year."
(Looks like miso's back on the menu, boys)
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4/5 For the time being, this would involve partnering with SpaceX or Blue Origin.
It would also involve making the most of Britain's latitude. We're poorly-placed for getting stuff into equatorial orbit, but we're in a good position for other orbits.
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God forbid it be desirable to be a senior public servant
Lord Cameron has hired a £42m jet to fly round Central Asia, for 5 days in ridiculous luxury.
When James Cleverly hired the same plane last year it cost you £422,000 a day.
That's 105 people's benefits for an entire year, every single day.
It's crooks that cost you.
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Great British kerosene, derived from petroleum harvested from the British Antarctic territory, will fuel our upgraded space programme
JUST IN: 🇷🇺 🇬🇧 Russia makes HUGE oil discovery in British Antarctic Territory.
The discovery is estimated at 511 BILLION barrels of oil – about 10x the North Sea’s entire 50-year output.
Democracy is coming to the penguins 🐧
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Some say that Britain is at the wrong latitude for a super spaceport.
In the new Anglofuturism podcast, we explain why this view is for declinists.
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Under Anglofuturism, citizens will be trusted with large sash windows on any storey of any building, even when that building is surrounded by toxic Martian CO2
Regulations were recently introduced requiring a minimum window sill or guard height of 1.1 metres. My colleague
@RobertKwolek
at
@createstreets
just spotted this new build, apparently an early example of the small squat windows this will generate. Behold the norm of the future.
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Of course I have some self-respect, what are you talking about
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Whoso pulleth out this sword from this stone, is right wise King born of all England
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As a matter of national urgency we must get Louis XIV's child-king-with-regent years discounted from his record as world's longest-serving monarch
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My special report from Stamford Hill, where strictly-Orthodox Jews are so beset by anti-semitic abuse that they patrol their own streets.
In today's paper and online.
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There's no brotherly kinship like the nods I am sharing with fellow shorts-wearers in an overdressed office. My brothers, with me on the ramparts. I would die for our right to bare calves
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Some of you have kings and queens in your ancestry. TIL, thanks to a reader, that I have a guy who got so obsessed with model-making that he forgot to eat and was hospitalised
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Delighted to make my
@prospect_uk
debut.
Here's my interview with
@AleneAnello
: fearless lawyer, Mother of Chickens, a woman on a mission to rescue hundreds of millions of birds from misery and squalor.
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I'm in the Bay Area for a bit. Always open for ideas of stuff to write about. DM if you want to meet, or know someone I should meet.
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I feel a little sorry for those left unmoved by the past 24 hours. A life free of abstracted communal emotion isn't necessarily a more enlightened one.
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Overrated. Look at that hideous lighting!
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🇬🇧 New Anglofuturism episode! 🇬🇧
The great
@SCP_Hughes
joined us in the King Charles to talk about the British built environment & how it might be made more beautiful.
In this excerpt we talk about challenging v. easy forms of art.
🎙️ Links to full episode below
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The Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (Allfed) has done a lot of analysis here. One of their suggestions is... seaweed.
It happily grows in low light and cold water.
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Charlie did a stint in the Telegraph office and umpteen colleagues said we looked the same. We awkwardly complimented each other's beards. Now we are friends. And stunt doubles!
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🇬🇧 New Anglofuturism podcast just dropped 🇬🇧
Build the super spaceport! 🏗️
🚀 How should Britain take advantage of the booming space economy? 🚀
The answer is simple: construct a super spaceport.
Presenting Episode 2 of Anglofuturism, with
@peterrhague
and
@tomough
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If you liked this tweet and are crying out for more,
@CalumDrysdale
and I are hosting an Anglofuturist party . Subscribe to our s*bst*ck
@anglofuturism2074
to keep up to date with our other projects.
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Read the full piece in the Spectator.
And listen to my and
@CalumDrysdale
's interview with
@peterrhague
, author of the spaceport idea, on the Anglofuturism podcast.
Spotify:
Apple:
New episode next week!
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The Anglofuturism podcast is excellent. And don't just take our word for it. Take it from the notable cultural sage "Fastdog2024"
🏚️From thatch to cast stone, new technologies have the potential to make traditional materials cheap and commonplace again 🏡
Anglofuturism Episode 3 with
@SCP_Hughes
and
@tomough
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Greggs. Costa. KFC. McDonalds. Pret. Pizza Express. Subway.
@h_chandlerwilde
and I spent two hours eating seven lunches. Don't EVER accuse lifestyle journalism of being soft
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Announcing Cheemsford College
Curriculum:
- learning how to force rail planners to dig tunnels at great expense rather than lay track in fields
- devising specious arguments for binning off nuclear
- lecture series from legends of the game, the Great Crested Newt Alliance
- case
Perfect grift because if it doesn't lead to increased earnings I don't think you get to complain
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The Anglofuturism podcast = the bleeding edge of policy ideation
The more I think about the obviously nutty idea of building an artificial island in the North Sea, the more it actually makes a tonne of sense.
Aside from the good location for a polar space port. Aside from the possibility of a high speed rail link from East Anglia to the
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This is a pleasing map of the UK's geothermal resources, not least because they're nicely distributed around parts of the country that could do with some industry.
Dig down to level up?
The UK boasts a diverse range of geothermal resources, from direct heating applications to power generation.
There is particular potential in places like the South-West, North-East, and Northern Ireland.
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It's a ship... with a theatre on it! And a bar! (And I helped refit it, so I'd love it if a few of you came to see it)
Thanks
@TimeOutLondon
for this lovely article about the project. We can't wait to share what we've been doing with people! Come visit! 24th January onwards.
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One year since the OceanGate implosion, my piece on the submersibles industry, feat.:
- What went wrong with Titan
- How regulators might wade in (currently, there's little stopping you from e.g. trying to take a banana boat down to the wreck of Titanic)
- Brief account of my
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Gastronomes will be relieved to learn that more conventional foods might also be possible. Potatoes, canola and sugar beet are typically grown in low-light environments. As such, they'd probably be viable in a nuclear winter.
Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew...
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Interestingly, it was via this piece that my absent housemate learnt I've repurposed her bedroom as my personal brewery
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