Punching Upwards

After the Graham Linehan debacle, London’s Metropolitan Police is now set to stop arresting people for non-crime hate incidents. This policy obviously was a bad idea in the first place.

Punching Upwards, Episode 16 for 28 December 2025

Topics: Politics / Free Speech

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Credits

Thanks to Michael Mullan-Jensen, Fadi Mansour and Evgeny Kuznetsov for subscribing to the podcast on Substack and supporting it financially! Additional thanks to Sir Galteran who continues to provide financial backing via Fountain.fm!

See Also

* Punching Upwards 1: The Arrest of Graham Linehan

Sources

* Met Police says it will no longer investigate “non-crime hate incidents”, ITV News, 20 October 2025

* Former Conservative Adviser Lauren McEvatt shares her view on the Home Secretary’s new “common sense” system, which will aim to scrap non-crime hate incidents, GB News, 23 December 2025

* Non-crime hate incidents to be scrapped, The Telegraph, 22 December 2025

* Scrap non-crime hate incidents, police leaders to recommend, The BBC, 23 December 2025

* Non-crime hate incidents should be scrapped, police leaders say, Sky News, 23 December 2025

The theme music for the podcast is a track called Fight or Fall by Def Lev. Find out more about the show at fab.industries/podcast — new media, new rules!

A recent patent application that made the news in Germany looks suspiciously like someone with chatbot delusion tried to vibe code a threat to NATO’s nuclear deterrence strategy.

Punching Upwards, Episode 15 for 21 December 2025

Topic: Technology / Artificial Intelligence

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Credits

Thanks to Michael Mullan-Jensen, Fadi Mansour and Evgeny Kuznetsov for subscribing to the podcast on Substack and supporting it financially! Additional thanks to Sir Galteran who continues to provide financial backing via Fountain.fm!

Sources

* Plötzlich Staatsgeheimnis, ARD Tagesschau, 15 December 2025

* Privatmann meldet Patent an: Plötzlich Staatsgeheimnis, Reddit thread (r/de), 15 December 2025

* Das staatsgeheime Patent, Hadmut Danisch, 15 December 2025

* Vibe Physics, Angela Collier, 24 July 2025

* Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Chatbots Are Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries, Gizmodo, 15 July 2025

The theme music for the podcast is a track called Fight or Fall by Def Lev. Find out more about the show at fab.industries/podcast — new media, new rules!

The EU still wants to read through every digital message every one of its citizens ever sends. After some pushback, the newest idea is that platforms should now do the dirty work for the police.

Punching Upwards, Episode 14 for 14 December 2025

Topic: Privacy / Crypto Wars

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Credits

Thanks to Michael Mullan-Jensen, Fadi Mansour and Evgeny Kuznetsov for subscribing to the podcast on Substack and supporting it financially! Additional thanks to Sir Galteran who continues to provide financial backing via Fountain.fm!

Sources

* Reality Check: EU Council Chat Control Vote is Not a Retreat, But a Green Light for Indiscriminate Mass Surveillance and the End of Right to Communicate Anonymously, Patrick Breyer, 26 November 2025

* EU “Chat Control” Twist: Commissioner Sides with Parliament Over Governments – Boost for European Parlament’s Strong Mandate, Patrick Breyer, 4 December 2025

* EU countries reach long-awaited deal on online child abuse detection, Euronews, 27 November 2025

* Trilogue, European Union EUR-Lex

The theme music for the podcast is a track called Fight or Fall by Def Lev. Find out more about the show at fab.industries/podcast — new media, new rules!

How a programming mistake in an avionics software update combined with a stray neutron from outer space to take down the best-selling passenger jet in the world. And no, it wasn’t a solar flare!

Punching Upwards, Episode 13 for 7 December 2025

Topic: Aviation

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Credits

Thanks to Michael Mullan-Jensen, Fadi Mansour and Evgeny Kuznetsov for subscribing to the podcast on Substack and supporting it financially! Additional thanks to Sir Galteran who continues to provide financial backing via Fountain.fm!

Sources

* Emergency Airworthiness Directive 2025-24-51, FAA, 28 November 2025

* Emergency Airworthiness Directive 2025-0268-E, EASA, 28 November 2025

* Accident: Jetblue A320 near Tampa on Oct 30th 2025, inflight upset causes injuries, The Aviation Herald, 31 October 2025

* Airbus rush to update A320 software after plane’s sudden altitude drop, France 24, 29 November 2025

* Should every computer chip have a cosmic ray detector? (archive.org copy), New Scientist, 7 March 2008

* Critical vulnerability in Airbus A320: downgrade or replace a Thales ELAC “before next flight” ✈️👊🌞🛬💥, Eye on Cyber, 29 November 2025

The theme music for the podcast is a track called Fight or Fall by Def Lev. Find out more about the show at fab.industries/podcast — new media, new rules!

There is a big difference between the German freedom to have an opinion and actual freedom of speech in the American sense, as a new report on the German state’s speech crackdown clearly illuminates.

Punching Upwards, Episode 12 for 30 November 2025

Topic: Politics / Free Speech

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Credits

Thanks to Michael Mullan-Jensen and Fadi Mansour for subscribing to the podcast on Substack and supporting it financially! Additional thanks to Sir Galteran who continues to provide hefty financial backing via Fountain.fm!

Sources

* The Censorship Network: Regulation and Repression in Germany Today, liber-net, 19 November 2025

* Policing the internet in Germany, where hate speech, insults are a crime, CBS 60 Minutes, 17 February 2025

* The New Priests of Truth - Inside Germany’s Censorship Ecosystem (interview with Andrew Lowenthal of liber-net), Jasmin Kosubek, 27 November 2025

The theme music for the podcast is a track called Fight or Fall by Def Lev. Find out more about the show at fab.industries/podcast — new media, new rules!

On 4 November, an MD-11 cargo plane operated by UPS crashed in Louisville, Kentucky, killing fourteen people. We know that the airplane lost its left engine on take-off. But why did that happen?

Punching Upwards, Episode 11 for 23 November 2025

Topic: Aviation / UPS Flight 2976

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Credits

Thanks to Michael Mullan-Jensen and Fadi Mansour for subscribing to the podcast on Substack and supporting it financially! Additional thanks to Sir Galteran who continues to provide hefty financial backing via Fountain.fm!

Sources

* Aviation Investigation Preliminary Report DCA26MA024 (UPS Flight 2976), NTSB, November 2025

* Crash: UPS MD11 at Louisville on Nov 4th 2025, burst into flames on takeoff, The Aviation Herald, 5 November 2025

* NTSB releases new images and preliminary report on UPS cargo plane crash, NBC News, 21 November 2025

* Aircraft Accident Report AAR-79-17 (American Airlines Flight 191), NTSB, December 1979

* Gyroscopic Precession, AOPA Foundation, 29 January 2012

* Extended Diversion Time Operations (EDTO) Manual, ICAO, 2017

* Owner’s & Operator’s Guide: MD-11 Family, Aircraft Commerce, Issue 47, August 2006

The theme music for the podcast is a track called Fight or Fall by Def Lev. Find out more about the show at fab.industries/podcast — new media, new rules!

Canadian officials killed over 300 ostriches, a full year after they recovered from the avian flu they had suffered from. Out of pure bureaucratic spite. And the media did its best to cover it up.

Punching Upwards, Episode 10 for 16 November 2025

Topic: Science / H5N1

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Credits

Thanks to Michael Mullan-Jensen and Fadi Mansour for subscribing to the podcast on Substack and supporting it financially! Additional thanks to Sir Galteran who continues to provide hefty financial backing via Fountain.fm!

Sources

* Shooting at B.C. ostrich farm as cull gets underway, The Canadian Press, 6 November 2025

* Denmark to cull 17 million mink over COVID-19 mutation fears, ABC News, 6 November 2020

* Orwell Watch: The Great Canadian “Ostrich Cull”, Racket News, 10 November 2025

* B.C. ostrich cull started a ‘new kind of war’ after birds gunned down, family says, Global News, 10 November 2025

* Gunshots end months-long Canadian ostrich cull saga that captivated RFK Jr, The BBC, 7 November 2025

* The global H5N1 influenza panzootic in mammals, Peacock et al., Nature, 2024

* Finding the real case-fatality rate of H5N1 avian influenza, Li et al., Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 2008 (Sci-Hub mirror)

* Evolution of Influenza A Virus by Mutation and Re-Assortment, Shao et al., International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2017

* The ecology and adaptive evolution of influenza A interspecies transmission, Joseph et al., Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses, 2016

The theme music for the podcast is a track called Fight or Fall by Def Lev. Find out more about the show at fab.industries/podcast — new media, new rules!

Norwegian public transport authority Ruter has discovered undocumented cell modems in electric buses built by Chinese company Yutong, which enable the manufacturer to turn the buses off remotely.

Punching Upwards, Episode 9 for 9 November 2025

Topic: Infosec

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Credits

Thanks to Michael Mullan-Jensen for being the first paying subscriber to the show! I appreciate this immensely.

Thanks to Sir Galteran for supporting the show via Fountain.fm

Sources

* Norway transport firm steps up controls after tests show Chinese-made buses can be halted remotely, The Associated Press, 5 November 2025

* Show notes for Security Now! episode 1050, GRC.com, 4 November 2025

* The interoperable EU-wide eCall, The European Commission

The theme music for the podcast is a track called Fight or Fall by Def Lev. Find out more about the show at fab.industries/podcast — new media, new rules!

According to the Wall Street Journal, the 1X NEO is a $20,000 robot that does your chores. The problem is that NEO is really bad at it. And the thing actually isn’t a robot, either.

Punching Upwards, Episode 8 for 2 November 2025

Topic: Technology / Artificial Intelligence

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Credits

Thanks to Sir Galteran for supporting the show via Fountain.fm

Sources

* I Tried the First Humanoid Home Robot. It Got Weird, The Wall Street Journal, 28 October 2025

* NEO Home Robot, 1X Technologies

* I Tried the Robot That’s Coming to Live With You. It’s Still Part Human, The Wall Street Journal, 28 October 2025

* Cambridge Dictionary definition of the word “robot”

* R.U.R., Wikipedia

The theme music for the podcast is a track called Fight or Fall by Def Lev. Find out more about the show at fab.industries/podcast — new media, new rules!

The story of how European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s plane was allegedly attacked by GPS jamming is a particularly egregious example of journalists not doing their job properly.

Punching Upwards, Episode 7, for 26 October 2025

Topic: Aviation / War in Ukraine

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Credits

Thanks to Sir Galteran for supporting the show via Fountain.fm!

Sources

* Russia accused of sabotaging EU chief’s plane by jamming GPS, BBC News, 2 September 2025

* THIS Just makes Me So ANGRY and Frustrated!, Mentour Now!, 12 September 2025

* GPS jamming of leader’s plane puts Putin’s hybrid warfare on Europe’s radar, NBC News, 2 September 2025

* Bulgaria U-turns on claim Moscow jammed GPS of von der Leyen’s plane, Euro News, 4 September 2025

* Ursula von der Leyen’s flight to Plovdiv: what the data tells us, Flightradar24, 5 September 2025

* Electronic Flight Bag, the new standard, Airbus FAST Magazine, 2021

* Aeronautical charts for flight simulation: ChartFox

* Aeronautical Chart Users’ Guide, FAA, 20 February 2025

The theme music for the podcast is a track called Fight or Fall by Def Lev. Find out more about the show at fab.industries/podcast — new media, new rules!