A DOGE staffer assigned to the National Endowment for the Humanities to flag grants for "DEI" tries to explain what "DEI" is. This deposition is part of a lawsuit by the @acls1919.bsky.social, @historians.org and @modernlanguage.bsky.social.
This administration……🤦♂️
fascinating FT piece on how Monday was the most volatile oil trading session in history:
"Over the next 23 hours, the benchmark Brent crude price surged to as high as $119 a barrel before plunging to $84, the biggest intraday swing in dollar terms on record...."
www.ft.com/content/6b0a...
One in four minority ethnic school students who took part in a survey on racism said they experienced racism at least once a month, and most experienced it once a week or more. The ISSU has called for clear and accessible reporting mechanisms in schools for racist incidents when they occur
Incredible, awful bloodshed - and for what? To possible find the remains of someone who went missing 40 years ago?
41 killed in pursuit of an ultranationalist hallucination
A sickening society is clear in these statistics
So why is it not in the news?
Powerful wake-up call from @chakrabortty.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
From FT comments
Vance is trying to keep the war at arms length too, it’s a difficult time to be an anti-interventionist politicians currently involved in multiple wars.
Denis Staunton’s newsletter in the IT is great, he’s looking at the war between Rwanda and DRC & US sanctions
view.comms.irishtimes.com?vawpToken=WW...
‘The plane flew and started spraying’: Israel accused of poisoning Syrian farmland with chemicals
Yoav Gallant X.com @yoavgallant The coming weeks will shape the coming decades in the Middle East. 9:01 AM • 2/27/26 • 611K Views
The Board Has Changed. The Next Move Matters. During the current war, I believed from the first hours that Israel would prevail because I knew the determination of our soldiers and the strength of the systems supporting them. Military success, however, must always be followed by strategic foresight. Winning one contest does not end the game. It changes the board. The weakening of Iran is a significant achievement. But the structure replacing it will define the next generation of regional order. Turkey is already positioning itself at the center of that structure, with the military capacity, the institutional reach, and the ambition to shape what comes next.
Two distinct challenges require two distinct responses. Toward Iran, the free world must act decisively and without delay to eliminate its remaining nuclear and missile capabilities while the window is open. Toward Turkey, the task is different: to channel its growing activism into directions that are productive for the Middle East, rather than allowing it to harden into a new source of friction. The choices made in the coming weeks will determine whether the post-Iran Middle East is more stable or simply differently dangerous. Those who wait for the new order to harden before responding will find they are no longer shaping it. They are living inside it.
⚠️ Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, writes:
“The coming weeks will shape the coming decades in the Middle East.”
In his Substack, he refers to a “post-Iran Middle East” (generalyoavgallant.substack.com/p/the-next-s...).
Wow. Josh Simons has resigned as govt minister
Follows weeks of reporting by Democracy for Sale and others about how he paid PR firm to smear journalists investigating Labour Together
Huge thanks to all our supporters. Couldn’t have done it without you
democracyforsale.substack.com/p/starmer-al...
What this does to military A.I. capabilities is beyond the brief of this newsletter, except to say that I think it’s “bad” for Grok, the pedophile mechahitler A.I., to be involved with weapons in really any way. What I am interested in, here, is what this reveals about the state of politics in Silicon Valley. In a sentence, I think what’s happening is (1) basic (i.e. normal) cutthroat competition between rival firms for government contracts, which is both driving and being driven by (2) an open and ongoing political-ideological dispute between two factions of Silicon Valley capital, which is in turn informing and being informed by (3) an almost religious disagreement about the nature of the god being built on the computer.
To start, it seems quite obvious that the Tech Right--a bloc of right-wing, Trump-aligned executives, investors, podcasters, Twitter personalities, firms, and companies, among them Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale and Alex Karp, Anduril’s Palmer Luckey, and, of course, xAI’s Elon Musk--with its extensive links to the administration, has been exerting behind-the-scenes pressure on Hegseth and the Pentagon to sever ties with or otherwise punish Anthropic. It was a Palantir executive, after all, who snitched on Anthropic to the D.o.D., and Hegseth’s speech in January about “objectively truthful AI capabilities” was a close echo of Musk’s ramblings about his “maximally truth-seeking” model Grok. The Tech Right’s contempt for Anthropic is first and foremost financial in nature. Musk, obviously, would like xAI to be first in line for any government contracts. (Indeed, Hegseth announced a deal with xAI this week to use Grok under the Pentagon’s preferred “all lawful use” terms.) And I suspect Palantir, Anthropic client though it may be, has the same existential fear of Claude as McKinsey or Salesforce or any other consultancy or software-as-a-service provider. If Anthropic is aggressively courting the D.o.D. to contract directly, and if Claude is as good as every thinks, what does Palantir’s future as a data-analytics-in-camo platform actually look like?
This doesn’t necessarily separate him from any other Silicon Valley liberal. But I think it’s good to attend to the valence of his liberalism. Amodei, like most of the Anthropic executives and many people in the A.I. in general, has long been associated with the worlds of Bay Area Rationalism and Effective Altruism--wonkily utilitarian philosophical and philanthropic practices focused on self-described rationalist inquiry and self-improvement. Bay Area Rationalism is a loose and diverse movement, containing a host of political perspectives, but it’s always had a particular concern with moral philosophy as it relates to the expected development of artificial superintelligence. To be a Rationalist liberal democrat (small-L small-D), e.g., might mean orienting your liberal democrat-ness toward its practical applications around the eschatological scenario of hard-takeoff A.G.I.
I don’t mean to suggest that Amodei’s commitments to liberal democracy are inauthentic. More that, as far he is concerned the stakes of this commitment go well beyond his own moral or ethical culpability. The decisions he makes now, and his consistent practice to his espoused beliefs, could mean the difference between a benevolent computer god and a wrathful one. X avatar for @hlntnr Helen Toner @hlntnr One thing the Pentagon is very likely underestimating: how much Anthropic cares about what *future Claudes* will make of this situation. Because of how Claude is trained, what principles/values/priorities the company demonstrate here could shape its "character" for a long time. Andrew Curran @AndrewCurran_ Update on the meeting; according to Axios Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Dario Amodei until Friday night to give the military unfettered access to Claude or face the consequences, which may even include invoking the Defense Production Act to force the training of a WarClaude 4:26 PM · Feb 25, 2026 · 227K Views 41 Replies · 122 Reposts · 1.96K Likes And this has placed him, and Anthropic, on a collision course with the Tech Right. Musk, too, believes he is bringing superintelligence into existence at xAI. But for him the urgenct imp
one way of seeing anthropic vs. the pentagon is as a fissure between the two silicon valley tribes most enthusiastic about ai: "rationalists" and "accelerationists"
maxread.substack.com/p/what-anthr...
Country’s largest wastewater plant finally working as intended after €550m improvements
www.irishtimes.com/environment/...
Idk much about the constituency etc. but it seems to me that Lib Dem voters could lend votes to Greens and shore up their vote?
Daily Mail seem to think it’s the greens they have to worry about anyway.
Interesting poll by byline times for UK byelection. Good data on tactical voting etc.
The UK press are obsessed with Reform considering they’re 3rd in a shoot out, (I accept it’s extremely tight)
bylinetimes.com/2026/02/24/e...
I thought this was great, not everyone who’s sceptical of AI is a Luddite, but it feels like every booster is a bit dim/ strange.
Tei Shi was great in dublin tonight. Really love bellobar as a venue too.
Great piece on Andrew and imagery.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Cliff Taylor: what does the court decision on Trump tariffs mean in practice?
& gambling on traffic
People gambling on other gambling
It’s a well made point but the ‘everything’s gambling now’ vibe was stong this week.
People blogging via/ with gambling
I didn’t think modern cameras could give you red eye
#BBCNews - Climber on trial for leaving girlfriend to die on Austria's highest mountain
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Another good album from Willow today.
Kind of feel the family connection hindered more than helped her
open.spotify.com/album/055CZX...
Slightly interesting how Ben Lerner was an award winning debater too. Idk - good training for a culture where everything is an argument to be won.
harpers.org/archive/2012...
Very interesting interview with sean Scully on Brendan o Connor this morning.
www.rte.ie/radio/radio1...
