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👋 Good morning! It’s Saturday 18 July 2026. I’m Neil McIntosh, editor of The Early Line, and it’s great to have you here.
📣 There’s been a surge of new readers to The Early Line in recent days: welcome! I’m also grateful to the new paid subscribers, who get the full version of this - the Saturday edition, which is jauntily called The Party Line.
The Party Line follows a different format to its weekday sibling: six miscellaneous but hopefully interesting talking points, the week’s top film and TV releases, and a roundup of sport on TV. It’s intended to help set you up for the weekend.
Thanks to the new paid subscribers. Proceeds go towards the running costs of The Early Line: the (many) subscriptions to news sources, the software and services which power the email and website, and marketing. Without you, it wouldn’t be possible. So thank you! - NM
☀️ The weekend’s weather: There’s been a lot of talk of the heatwave ending this weekend, but the weather’s still going to be beautiful. Glasgow and Edinburgh will have two sunny days, with just scattered cloud. Aberdeen and Inverness will start overcast but will brighten by this afternoon and for the whole weekend. Sunny London cools to low-to-mid 20s. (Here’s the UK forecast).
SIX THINGS TO TALK ABOUT
The AI backlash that has tech bosses fearing for their lives | Britain’s growing economic divide | Scottish pig farmers face crisis | Are we building tunnels the wrong way? | Stellar places to visit across Scotland | Buy a flat… or a small country estate
🍸 A growing AI backlash has tech executives fearing for their lives. Police in San Francisco have responded to several threats against employees of the AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Incidents include the attempted firebombing of the home of Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, and another man who threatened to skin the children of company staff as “punishment” for the alleged theft of his work.
All told, the volume of digital threats against AI bosses - and data centres vital to their work - grew sevenfold between February and May. Threats fell back a bit in June, but there’s still surprise at the severity and scale of the backlash.
What’s driving it? Alex Karp, CEO of the controversial AI company Palantir - which is picking up a lot of UK government business - said it’s fear of unemployment.
“When told “your job is going to disappear,” he told a conference, “people go for the pitchfork.” (WSJ)
Upgrade to read the full Party Line, including:
Fresh data illustrates the UK’s growing economic divide
Why Scottish pig farmers are facing a crisis
Are we building tunnels the wrong (and expensive) way?
Stellar places to visit across Scotland
Decisions, decisions: Buy a flat… or a small country estate?
PLUS: find top TV, film and sporting picks for the weekend, including reviews of the epic new film, The Odyssey - it’s one of the big cinema events of the year.
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