Tootfinder

London-based PolyAI, which makes call center AI voice assistants, raised an $86M Series D led by Georgian, Hedosophia, and Khosla, after raising $50M in 2024 (John Reynolds/Tech.eu)
https://tech.eu/2025/12/15/polyai-raises-86m/

PolyAI raises $86M
London-based AI startup PolyAI has raised $86m in a Series D funding round.The funding round in the AI assistant developer for call centres was co-led by existing investors Canadian B2B software investor Georgian, London-based investor Hedosophia and US VC firm Khosla Ventures.Additional investors were NVentures (Nvidia’s VC arm), Sands Capital, Squarepoint Ventures, Citi Ventures, Point72 Ventures and the British Business Bank, which invested £15m ($20.1m). The British Business Bank is also…

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino says the company plans to expand its lending to commodities traders "dramatically" after extending ~$1.5B worth of credit to the sector (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11…

Tether Plans ‘Dramatic’ Expansion in Commodity-Trade Lending
Stablecoin giant Tether Holdings SA plans to expand “dramatically” in lending to commodities traders after extending roughly $1.5 billion worth of credit to the sector, Chief Executive Officer Paolo Ardoino said.

One thing that frustrates me with these "crime drops" stories, which feel like press releases, is they wholly attribute changes to direct policy choices, without also questioning if there are other statistical correlations at play.
(For example, cities will see a drop in certain types of crime when their age distribution changes. e.g crimes mostly committed by people aged 20-29 might drop if there's a drop in the proportion of people aged 20-29.)

London’s murder rate drops to lowest in more than a decade
Sadiq Khan says ‘public health’ approach has made the capital one of the safest cities in the western world

NFL Week 16 injuries to monitor for Sunday's games: Falcons WR Drake London expected to play https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-week-16-injuries-to-monitor-for-sunday-s-games-falcons-wr-drake-london-expected-to-play

For Landmark Test of Executive Power, Echoes of a 1930s Supreme Court Battle (Abbie VanSickle/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/us/politics/supreme-court-humphrey-roosevelt.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/251207/p7#a251207p7

Day 26: Emily Short
If you know who Short is, you know exactly why she's on this list. If you don't, you're probably in the majority. She's an absolutely legendary author within the interactive fiction (IF) community, which gets somewhat pigeonholed by stuff like Zork when there's actually a huge range of stuff in the medium some of which isn't even puzzle-focused, and Short has been writing & coding on the bleeding edge of things for decades.
I was lucky enough to be introduced to Short's work in graduate school, where we played "Galatea" as part of an interactive fiction class. Short uses a lot of clever parser tricks to make your conversation with a statue feel very fluid and conversational, giving to contemporary audiences a great example of how vibrant interaction with a well-designed agent can be in contrast to an LLM, if you're willing to put in some work on bespoke parsing & responses (although the user does need to know basic IF conventions). While I didn't explore the full range of Galatea's many possible outcomes, it left a strong impression on me as a vision for what IF could be besides dorky puzzles, and I think that "visionary" is a great term to describe Short.
If you'd like you get a feel for her (very early) work, you can play Galatea here: #30AuthorsNoMen

Just a hut under a tree in the mist ...
I saw this when I was walking back from a location scouting. When I was back at the car, I turned around - already ready to drive away when I noticed this gnarly tree in the field.
The fog was just light enough to create an interesting mood I think.
#photography

Moody Urbanity - Action Required 🧭
情绪化城市 - 行动指南 🧭
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Ilford HP5 Plus 400, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

Heads up Mastodon! I am doing a small European tour with Peter Gordon (Love of Life Orchestra) at the end of November. We'll play Glasgow, London, Cologne, and Brussels. These shows will be great fun, and a very rare chance to catch me playing live music outside the US.
If we know each other here, let me know if there's a possibility to meet up in person at one of these shows?!
Tickets and info here:

The UK FCA sues Justin Sun-linked crypto exchange HTX in London's High Court for alleged illegal promotion of "cryptoasset services" to UK consumers (Lucca De Paoli/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20