2026
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It’s Okay to Talk, But Is It Always Safe?
Talking about what’s going on in your head only helps if the person listening can actually handle hearing it. Most people, when they ask how you are, want the short answer, not the real one. Knowing the difference matters as much as being willing to talk in the first place. “It’s okay to talk.” You’ll…
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There’s No Place for Ego in an Andy’s Man Club Shirt
Andy’s Man Club runs on the principle that every facilitator is equal. There’s no hierarchy beyond whoever happens to be leading the session on a given Monday night. The “lead facilitator” title isn’t a rank, it’s a rota. With more than 330 groups and 6,500 men attending weekly across the UK, that structure only holds…
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Mental Health Awareness Week Again? Pick Up the Phone.
Mental Health Awareness Week runs every May, but the gap between posting about mental health and actually supporting someone has never been wider. Social media fills up with graphics, hashtags, and corporate compassion, while people who are genuinely struggling often go days without a real conversation. The most effective thing you can do for someone’s…
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Let Him Finish, The Quiet Discipline of Listening
There’s a moment that happens quite often at Andy’s Man Club, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It can look like a small thing when you first notice it. One man is talking. Really talking. Maybe for the first time in weeks or months. He’s got everyone’s, he’s taken a pause and trying…
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The Madness of the AI Race – Stop Before We Succeed
Superintelligent AI doesn’t need to be malevolent to be catastrophic. The existential risk, according to MIRI’s Nate Soares, comes from indifference – a system smart enough to reshape the planet according to its own requirements, with no particular interest in whether humans survive the process. We are building that system now, without understanding it, in…
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The AI Industry Has a Problem, and It’s Getting Worse
Years of job-loss warnings, billion-dollar announcements, and god-like claims about technology that often can’t reliably count to ten have quietly built up a head of public resentment. Tech critic Ed Zitron has been making this case for a while. In a recent episode of The Tech Report, he laid out exactly why the industry’s habit…
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Why Those Powerful Words Live on My Homepage
Nine words from a 1998 Manic Street Preachers number one sit at the top of this blog for a reason. They come originally from a Spanish Civil War propaganda poster, carried forward by a Welsh band still shaped by the disappearance of their lyricist Richey Edwards, who struggled with depression and vanished in 1995. The…
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Did An AI Really Try To Blackmail Its Creators?
No, an AI did not blackmail anyone. What actually happened was a controlled research experiment in which a language model, given a fictional scenario and fake incriminating emails, generated a threatening message inside that sandbox. There was no real victim, no real inbox, and no real threat. The model followed the incentives researchers built for…
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That Facebook Post Doing the Rounds. It’s Still Bollocks!
Every few months, your feed fills up with it again. Some variation of “big day tomorrow” or “just in case you missed it on TV” – followed by a wall of semi-legal gibberish, a declaration that Facebook / Meta no longer has permission to use your photos, a bit about AI, and a helpful instruction…
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The Algorithms of Addiction Are Finally on Trial
I’ve spent years writing about the intersection of mental health and the digital world (more specifically social media). For a long time, those of us pointing out the psychological manipulation baked into social media were often dismissed as “alarmist” or told that “personal responsibility” was the only factor. I’ll be the first to admit that…