Dan McCrum
LightNews LightNews
banner
mccrum.bsky.social
Dan McCrum
@mccrum.bsky.social
22K followers 750 following 1.6K posts
Do investigations for the FT, into dubious accounting and dodgy characters mainly. Wrote a book called Money Men about a spectacular fraud
Posts Replies Media Videos
mccrum.bsky.social
I had a stab back in 2014
In the US the middle class has a blue-collar connotation, whereas in the UK it seems to refer to the rich but not quite richest section of society. For instance, while both might be seen as middle class signifiers, the BBC’s Radio 4 claims a weekly audience of just under 11m, or about a fifth of the UK population, while a smaller segment of the latter (about 7 or 8 per cent) were educated at fee paying schools. Taking the official ONS data, we might say that a broad middle section of the UK is the 4th through 7th deciles of households, so excluding the bottom and top 30 per cent. To be in that range is to have a gross household income somewhere between £20,000 and £40,000 – the average of the 4th decile was £21,676 in 2011/12, and for the 7th decile it was £38,763.
November 10, 2025 at 9:43 PM
mccrum.bsky.social
For more on the Cascadia Subduction zone, and the advice that everyone in the Northwest should plan to be self-sufficient for two weeks after any disaster, see here
survivingcascadia.com/how-often-do...
Overall, 27 of the 41 intervals were less than 300 years in length. So when we tell ourselves the story of how often these earthquakes occur in the Pacific Northwest, it may be more accurate to say: *picture of time frequencies with us on the wrong side of the distribution.
October 13, 2025 at 3:01 PM
mccrum.bsky.social
Unsolicited wick pic
Photo of a candle
October 11, 2025 at 12:08 PM
mccrum.bsky.social
A handy tool to have in your bag or car should you need to quickly and safely cut a line is a hooked box/strapping cutter.

Just thought I'd flag it.
Picture of the Hook Knife Film/Tape/Strapping Cutter with keyring JF07631 available for 83 pence from euroffice
September 12, 2025 at 10:02 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
Joel Pashcow, a real-estate executive and Mar-a-Lago Club member, offered a drawing of Epstein giving a lollipop to a group of young girls in 1983, juxtaposed with another drawing of Epstein in 2003 being fellated and massaged by another gaggle of women. The implication is that Epstein has groomed them from an early age. Paschow did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But his most startling contribution is a photo of him holding a novelty check bearing what appears to be a doctored or rendered version of Trump’s signature. The photo appears alongside a handwritten note suggesting Epstein sold him a “fully depreciated” woman for $22,500. The New York Times reports that the check was a stunt meant as a joke about a woman in her 20s who dated both Trump and Epstein. But this is remarkable enough that it bears repeating: Inside the 50th-birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein—a man charged with sex trafficking—is a photo of a massive, novelty size check, seeming to reference the sale of a human being from one powerful man to another. The man whose supposed signature is on the check is the current president of the United States.
September 10, 2025 at 1:46 PM
mccrum.bsky.social
Regardless of who the dead were in this specific case, he added, history shows that a policy of using force against drug smugglers risks disasters based on faulty intelligence. For example, in a 2001 incident, the C.I.A. told the Peruvian government that a plane was smuggling drugs, and its air force shot it down, only to find out that it had instead killed American missionaries.
September 4, 2025 at 8:14 PM
mccrum.bsky.social
Turns out "thanks for watching" is the YouTube version of the Enigma Machine's "Heil Hitler"
There's also a phenomenon called "overfitting" in AI models where information (in this case, text found in audio transcriptions) encountered more frequently in the training data is more likely to be reproduced in an output. In cases where Whisper encounters poor-quality audio in medical notes, the AI model will produce what its neural network predicts is the most likely output, even if it is incorrect. And the most likely output for any given YouTube video, since so many people say it, is "Thanks for watching."
September 2, 2025 at 10:22 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
This is bad
The research found that if carbon emissions continued to rise, 70% of the model runs led to collapse, while an intermediate level of emissions resulted in collapse in 37% of the models. Even in the case of low future emissions, an Amoc shutdown happened in 25% of the models. Scientists have warned previously that Amoc collapse must be avoided “at all costs”. It would shift the tropical rainfall belt on which many millions of people rely to grow their food, plunge western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, and add 50cm to already rising sea levels.
August 29, 2025 at 10:30 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
Trying, indeed.
The Man United zero here makes me laugh every time.
Athletic chart of transfer fees spent and received. Man United's fees received is £0.0, versus £188.5mn at liverpool, £7,m at Arsenal, £227mn Chelsea...
August 27, 2025 at 7:46 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
Judged purely by the number of times I've been surprised by people taking trips to Ilfracombe in recent years (which doesn't break the top ten nicest places in North Devon) I would guess there is an AirBnB oversupply
www.ft.com/content/7c3f...
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/7c3fea66-6525-4a65-84f0-cb6c4249154e Properties on the market in Ilfracombe, North Devon, increased 86 per cent in the first half of this year compared with the first six months of 2021; Hayle, in Cornwall, was up 85 per cent, according to Hamptons.
July 25, 2025 at 1:05 PM
mccrum.bsky.social
There's some assumptions in this report that I'm not sure about. Here it's conflating a permanent change in the value of the asset, with the position of the rich person.
Take someone who owns a £100m company, now subject to a 2% wealth tax. If they expect an 8% return on their holdings, the wealth tax has reduced the value of the company by £25m (i.e. because their return from the £100m company, net of wealth tax, is the same as what their return would have been from a £75m company before the wealth tax).
July 22, 2025 at 9:59 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
The appropriate technical term is bullshit
Cohere’s Frosst warned that even the term hallucination was misleading. “It sounds too much like [the model] working the way a human brain works, and it does not,” he said. “It works in a completely different way.”
July 22, 2025 at 7:50 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
The intrinsic bullshit problem

on.ft.com/4nWq8v3
Hallucinations are a very hard problem to fix because of the probabilistic nature of how these models work,” said Amr Awadallah, a former Google executive and founder of Vectara, a generative AI agent start-up. “You will never get them to not hallucinate.”
July 22, 2025 at 7:37 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
Sadly doesn’t include this astonishing Madonna by Dali
Salvador Dali pointillist self portrait of an ear and the Madonna and child with astonishingly rendered notes on it that appear as if they could peel off
July 18, 2025 at 12:57 PM
mccrum.bsky.social
Evergreen xkcd
xkcd panel. Lady holding microphone: They say they've fixed it with something called "blockchain" Guy 1: AAAAAAA!!! guy 2: Whatever they sold you, don't touch it. Guy 1: Bury it in the desert. Guy 2: wear gloves.
July 17, 2025 at 12:35 PM
mccrum.bsky.social
register, not subscribe
FT Alphaville is free, register to keep reading. Also shows an amusing picture of a rally monkey and a dead cat.
July 17, 2025 at 12:20 PM
mccrum.bsky.social
FT readers having fun in the comments
Comment reads: The only reason I like Brewdog is because it's made drinking 6%+ beers vaguely acceptable, whereas before they had the whiff of the park bench dweller about them. All other traditional brands have had the voltage reduced to <5% which means they are not worth bothering with, other than for an extended session or as breakfast beers.
July 17, 2025 at 10:07 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
The suit alleges detainees are kept in unconstitutional conditions, prevented from meeting with legal representatives and that on one occasion a chemical agent was deployed against family members and lawyers at the notorious B-18 processing centre
When they returned to B-18 the next morning, attorneys identified a handwritten notice on the door of the family and attorney entrance at B-18 indicating that they would not permit any visits that day. Federal officers then deployed an unknown chemical agent against family members, attorneys, and representatives, including CHIRLA and ImmDef legal staff, who were peacefully requesting access to detained individuals. The chemical agent that federal agents sprayed caused everyone to cough and inflicted a burning sensation in the eyes, nose, and throat.
July 10, 2025 at 11:24 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
text: Additionally, more recently, Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen, was being dropped off at work in downtown Los Angeles when federal agents grabbed her without explanation. Her mother, who witnessed the incident, described it as looking like “they’e kidnapping [her].” Witnesses said agents never asked Andrea for identification. No justification was provided. Her mother remarked, “the only thing wrong with her . . . was the color of her skin.”
July 10, 2025 at 11:10 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
quote from lawsuit: agents surrounded the man and prevented him from walking away before they knew who he was. There were several people at nearby residences who appeared Caucasian and were also working outside in their yards, but on information and belief, they were not questioned or detained.
July 10, 2025 at 11:05 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
Cover of the book
July 7, 2025 at 11:50 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
From the 1981 Children’s Book of Questions and Answers
In Britain a billion is a million times a million, or 12 zeros. In France, America and most other countries a billion is only one thousand million, or nine zeros. The French and American way of counting seems far more practical and being used more often in Britain.
July 7, 2025 at 11:47 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
Vandalism is terrorism, in the view of this government
Screen grab: The definition of terrorism in section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 covers “serious damage to property” that is “designed to influence the government” and is “made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”. Because the definition includes serious damage that does not involve violence against any person, endanger life or create a risk to health or safety, Chamberlain observed that it was wider than the colloquial meaning of “terrorism”. As the judge explained, it was not his job to say whether the government had acted wisely when using its proscription power in this case.
July 7, 2025 at 8:45 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
If only there was some other option
New Statesman magazine cover: JUST RAISE TAX!
July 2, 2025 at 9:53 AM
mccrum.bsky.social
Slightly old numbers in ppp terms
June 23, 2025 at 10:06 AM