a thing historians will marvel about when they study this era is the extent to which the "war is a thing that happens to poorer, browner people" class went about systematically dismantling every aspect of the global political order that confined the costs of war to poorer and browner people
As we’ve all been saying for many years 👇.
The first set of postdocs for our ERC project on popular government have just been advertised. These 3 postdocs will be based at UC Louvain with my co-PI Pierre-Etienne Vandamme and focus on contemporary democratic theory. Apply! jobs.uclouvain.be/Personnelsci...
If flawed and inaccurate LLMs are instrumented in AWS by replacing humans for decision making, then "wars" may as well be indiscriminate lethal campaigns. Anthropic's position also isn't a moral high ground given their AI-DSS uses w/ Palantir, where automation bias may lead to similar outcomes.
I don’t disagree with the general thrust. But this:
“I am realistic enough to know that the argument for free university education no longer wins political traction”
How does this happen? You accept it and normalise it. There is no law of nature separating higher ed. from primary/secondary ed.
An article in the journal Development and Change by Stephanie Wanga. The abstract reads: " ABSTRACT This article examines the compatibility of Ujamaa's conceptualization of freedom with the limits of the sovereign state. This is done by examining popular enactments of Ujamaa in Tanzania in the 1960s, which resulted in what, for a moment, was a quasi-utopian realization of post-colonial freedom. It analyses the ways in which Julius Nyerere, in turn, was inspired by these popular practices and attempted to codify and advance their spread. Viewing this back-and-forth communication as a multidirectional means of theorizing the ideals of Ujamaa, including its radical conceptions of freedom, the article examines how such imaginations were eventually interfered with and restricted by the state, and how they might be revisited today."
Another day another article by a former LSE student! This one by @stephaniewanga.bsky.social ! I really learned a lot seeing her work through these ideas, and basically came to see the story of Ujamaa as a somewhat tragic tale. Check it out! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
While I'm glad that Dario is standing up to Hegseth here, as a person who studies tech regulation for a living, I'll just point out that the difference between "medium responsible usage" and "The Full Orwell" being the moral backbone of One Guy is not a governance system we should feel good about
I wrote on the fall of Peter Mandelson for the next issue of the @lrb.co.uk
Online early now:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
OpenSAFELY is open from today! Huge thanks to all who supported this vast collaboration: whole population GP data; in a productive platform; innovative privacy protections; unprecedented support from professions, privacy campaigners; &c
Now it's over to users!
www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/blog/2026/02...
NEW: Meta’s director of AI safety, supposedly the person at the company who is working to make sure that powerful AI tools don’t go rogue and act against human interests, had to scramble to stop an AI agent from deleting her inbox against her wishes...
NEW
How Palantir captured the Ministry of Defence
How a close read of public domain documents show how MoD was commercially colonised by Palantir
By me, at FT
www.ft.com/content/5207...
"American executives worry that competitors, especially in China, could emulate their scientific and technological achievements. They can probably afford to fret less about threats to America’s exceptionalism in the field of financial engineering."
“it turns out that the engine of Musk’s X — its algorithmic ‘For You’ page — is an ideological ratchet.” - @jwherrman.bsky.social
nymag.com/intelligence...
I’ve written this lengthy FT analysis overnight about the multiple multi-thousand pound Epstein payments to Mandelson’s husband
these particular paragraphs are worth reading slowly
www.ft.com/content/608a...
orange catholic bible incoming
I would take a pay cut to not have an email address.
The Josh Simons story isn't just about one minister commissioning smears on journalists.
It's about a toxic political culture that was built to destroy Corbyn — and then walked straight into government.
My piece for @tribunemagazine.bsky.social
🧵 1/4
This is fantastic, and it's something that we've been saying for years.
When companies say that are using "AI for climate change", they are referring to much smaller models used for doing things like climate modeling.
Massive generative AI models are NOT USEFUL for mitigating climate change.
He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream.
I agree with this and I think one problem is that the two are often presented as mutually exclusive options. IMV for any ban to have a hope of achieving its aims (which are themselves too fuzzily defined) it would need to be accompanied by a broader suite of things, including more robust regulation
"Any claims of AI solving for population scale problems must be matched against the reality of the Global South, in which young boys were applying enamel paint on the railings... with their bare hands to prepare for the arrival of Silicon Valley CEOs." www.techpolicy.press/indias-ai-im...
My point isn't that we should be rushing into a ban; it's rather that debates about our technological environment cannot be resolved by appeals to "the evidence" alone.
These are—partly!—questions about values and politics, and it's good that we are beginning to recognise them as such.
/end
I also wonder if insisting on watertight evidence ahead of regulatory intervention risks baking a status quo bias into the way we do technology policy.
It's not as if the expansion of corporate social media platforms into every area of our lives was preceded by gold-plated empirical research...
3/
Intuitions are no basis for policy, but they aren't irrelevant; we shouldn't dismiss them out-of-hand.
It seems at least possible to me that existing studies might sometimes miss what is at stake in public unease with social media platforms; and that we should take this unease seriously.
2/
Seeing more chatter about the proposed U16 social media ban today. There's clearly a gap between the evidence — which suggests a ban would be likely to have limited efficacy — and the intuitions of those who regularly use these platforms and see their impact on adults and young people alike.
1/
Next week’s India AI Impact Summit is framed around “democratizing AI.” But as India expands AI-driven surveillance, predictive policing, and welfare automation, minorities and marginalized communities are bearing the costs, writes Tavishi.
for clarity: I like Block's picture of the state-capital relationship as a call and response cycle of provocation-discipline over an organized conspiracy idea (one version of "vulgar Marxism") or even a tight interest convergence story (e.g. elite class solidarity)
fredblock.org/wp-content/u...
Some Friday reading for anyone with an interest in AI and public services — a new (and terrifically-named) report on transcription tools in social care by my brilliant @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social colleagues @laragroves.bsky.social and Oliver Bruff:
www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/report/scrib...
Huw Lemmey in a blistering piece written last year: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
The High Court has ruled that the banning of Palestine Action was unlawful.
Bart Cammaerts of @lsemedia.bsky.social previously argued that the ban risked feeding radicalisation and distrust in democracy.
blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...
