Really enjoyed this clever essay by @maiamindel.bsky.social which pulls together so many different things in a very smart and fun way someunpleasant.substack.com/p/a-claude-o...
I know it's a silly jokey joke, but people REALLY need to stop anthropomorphizing their boyfriends. "My boyfriend told me" your boyfriend didn't "tell" you anything. "My boyfriend thinks..." your boyfriend can't actually think or feel; just output a convincing simulation of it based on probability 🙄
Difficult to emphasize just how much a generation of kids has been taught that being dishonest, superficial, and narcissistic is the pathway to attention and therefore success
Remember guys, you can’t afford a gas rig, or a coal mine, or a nuclear power station, but you can afford to put some cheap solar panels on your roof.
That’s why the fossil fuel industry has spent billions trying to kill renewable energy.
The dealer needs to keep you addicted.
Even if oil prices get back to “normal,” the disruption should be a wake-up call to move faster on alternative energy sources. If blocking one sea lane is all it takes to send gas prices soaring, then we need to move away from fossil fuels — fast.
And even beside that, who was in power for the best part of the last decade and a half! The Tories can hardly blame anyone else for the underlying state of the country.
So, Johnson, Farage, Badenoch, the Telegraph… howl about the UK being “an irrelevance on the world stage”.
Remind me again who decided to isolate us with a strategically and economically idiotic Brexit, relying on a trade deal with the US to save us from exactly the kind of weakness they now bemoan.
During the Second Reading of the Representation of the People Bill, MP after MP got up to point out what's missing from it: fixing the voting system.
The problems with FPTP can no longer be ignored - and neither can the growing calls for PR. 📣
Here are just a few highlights:
People are no longing objecting to PR because they thought it would allow the far right to win - Reason: The far right are winning under FPTP and could become the government on less than 30% of the vote. They are already in control of many councils. People have had a reality check!
If I was @zackpolanski.bsky.social, I would be pointing out to the BBC that whatever model they use to justify giving Farage & his boot-lickers season tickets for every BBC show under the sun must surely now treat Green Party politicians in exactly the same way. Might even be one for the lawyers...
“The FPTP voting system was the fortress sustaining the old parties, but “small” parties have stormed the walls. YouGov finds that Farage could become PM on a 23% vote. Voting has become a fruit machine with random results when tiny shifts bring cascading seats”
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The two-party system is dead. How long can first past the post survive?
5 political parties separated by only 9 percentage points. An election under FPTP would be a complete lottery. It’s time to upgrade our democracy, the current electoral system is not fit for purpose. #PR
Britain's water companies paid out billions in dividends while the pipes rotted. Now we're told we can't afford to fix them.
The engineers exist. The materials exist. The need is real.
What's missing isn't money.
Britain isn't broke. It's blocked.
😎3 Things That Went Right This Week😎
💬Google has launched a data set in 21 African languages—existing AI chatbots don’t “speak” any now—in an attempt to include the continent in the AI boom.
2026: Chairman of Reform UK says the Green party issuing leaflets in Urdu is appalling
2016: In 2016 Vote Leave published leaflets in Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi
Labour MP Clive Lewis doesn’t hold back on the Gorton and Denton result in this interview with ITV
Hope this series does for water what the Post Office drama did for Horizon victims.
The scandal of privatised water is even bigger because it affects everyone.
The common theme is clear: powerful corporate entities are exploiting us all.
Time to bring water back into public ownership.
Good blog post 👍
One tiny detail about the 2013 paper / graph you highlighted is that it assumes that management / business / finance and computing and engineering will not be automated
Of course, (re: Jevons paradox) some automation of these might not lead to less jobs, but still a pre-LLM view 🙂
Given we're all looking again at what might happen if AI wipes out firms and areas of employment, re-upping this blog I wrote back in 2015 looking at fiscal and monetary policymaker options.
principlesandinterest.wordpress.com/2015/11/12/p...
ICE Whistleblower Ryan Schwank.
"ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution"
The BBC just remade Lord of the Flies — the story that taught generations humans are fundamentally savage.
But when it ACTUALLY happened in real life? Six boys shipwrecked for over a year built a functioning society.
Chakrabarti: We’ve basically created a federal jobs program to terrorize people through ICE. What if we used that instead to actually develop things — to build things people want?
It’s the same with foreign policy. We’re spending all this money dropping bombs in other countries—no one wants that.
Whoever wins in Gorton & Denton will do so on a small minority of the vote.
Thousands of voters will be left unrepresented - and thousands will know they didn't even vote how they wanted in the first place.
In 2029, this could be the case in most seats. Scrap First Past the Post now.
Obama: "The rogue behavior of agents of the federal government is deeply concerning and dangerous ... the sort of behavior that we've seen in authoritarian countries and we've seen in dictatorships, but we have not seen in America."
This is why electrification means more energy security:
In 2024, ~81% of EU electricity came from locally sourced fuels (57% excluding nuclear). Just 19% relied on imported fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels are mostly imported.
Source @ember-energy.org
An utter tragedy. Science solved this problem, but a bunch of charlatans fucked everything up and brought it back
Once again, a reminder that the "free speech" crusaders were always cynics operating in bad faith
Palantir, a US spy-tech firm, has been given access to millions of NHS patient records.
Its founder has said the NHS should be 'ripped up'.
Join me in calling on the government to end the dangerous Palantir contract.
you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...
