“If you want to know how it feels to have slaves, in the modern world – and not be blamed openly for this desire – visit Dubai.”
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
For anyone who doubts these processes -- or humanity's power to alter our planet -- consider this dispatch from the poles: Human-caused warming has already melted so much ice in Greenland and Antarctica that Earth's rotation has slowed and its axis has shifted, slightly altering the length of the day and disrupting the precision of satellite tracking, global positioning systems and timekeeping.
oh my god
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/o...
Genuinely shocked to read about proposals at Galway (an amazing university with world-class humanities departments) to axe the broad-based arts degree. Really grim reading. www.irishtimes.com/ireland/educ...
is everyone ready for the eternal panopticon
The Musk family are actively endorsing Restore Britain, a party the racist Reform UK considers excessively racist, whose slogan is “millions must go” and whose leaders call for the expulsion of Britons of darker skin or Jewish, Muslim or otherwise non-Christian faith
Now THAT's a headline.
"The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents"
fortune.com/2026/02/21/l...
But do yearly reading goals actually help us read better, or do they risk hollowing out the very activity they claim to protect? As reading is increasingly tracked and performed online there is a growing sense that a solitary pleasure is being reshaped by the logic of metrics and visibility. In a culture that counts steps, optimises sleep and gamifies meditation, the pressure to quantify reading may say less about books than about a wider urge to turn even our leisure into something measurable and, ultimately, competitive.
The world we have made for ourselves
What are our instituitons still doing on that website? Are they all just addicted? bsky.app/profile/eliz...
Fascinating article by @laurenleek.eu on the decline in UK pubs, a loss of over 14,000 from 2009-2022.
laurenleek.substack.com/p/britain-lo...
Links loss to private equity control over social life: "the map of pub death is a map of where extraction was profitable and reinvestment wasn't".
It’s almost verbatim Nazi propaganda at this point.
Valentine’s Day is often seen as a celebration of timeless, universal love, but in fifteenth-century Ireland love could also be treated as a medical condition. Evidence of this survives in a manuscript called the Book of the O’Lees (RIA MS 23 P 10 (ii)).
A small German state’s quiet revolt against Microsoft – and what it means for Europe
Someone told me lately "Bluesky is just like Twitter." I argued that was untrue on the basis that last time I had a Twitter account most times I got a new follower their bio said "single & looking for fun" & here when I get a new follower it tends to say something like "professor of rare moths".
This is incredible. "A consumer is a person whose preëxisting tastes you strive to satisfy over and over; a reader is someone you hope to change, convince, and surprise."
When AI was added to a tool for sinus surgery: “Cerebrospinal fluid leaked from one patient’s nose. In another… a surgeon mistakenly punctured the base of a patient’s skull. In two other cases, patients suffered strokes after a major artery was accidentally injured”
www.reuters.com/investigatio...
kind of funny that an olympian said they are here to represent "compassion, respect, and love for others" and some people automatically knew that was a statement against them
We used to fund USAID, which saved millions, but Elon Musk said it was a government propaganda front and so he shut it. Millions will die and the US govt is now funding actual MAGA propaganda.
Ian McKellen performs “The Strangers’ Case” speech from “Sir Thomas More” on Colbert.
Person: say, i am alive. Computer: I am alive. Person: oh my god.
It's rare to see how lobbyists operate. But the Epstein-Mandelson correspondence shows us what happens all the time: plutocrats and government ministers conspiring against the public interest. This is why all lobbying should be in the public domain, but despite Labour and Con promises, it's not. 🧵
EXCLUSIVE: Epstein didn’t just prey on children. He helped bankroll and embed a worldview of race science, climate “culling” and eugenics inside Silicon Valley’s elite AI networks. Tonight we publish the final part of my
@bylinetimes.bsky.social investigation bylinetimes.com/2025/12/05/h...
Protest sign from MN that says, “DEARLY BELOVED. WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY TODISMANTLE THIS THING CALLED ICE.” with a picture of Prince in the left hand lower corner.
10/10 ICE protest sign
very fun to think that there are at least four votes for "the president can unilaterally rewrite a constitutional amendment"
Absolutely damning from @aaronschaffer.com, @willoremus.com, & @nitasha.bsky.social.
To get more data, Anthropic:
* "destructively scanned" millions of books
* downloaded the shadow library LibGen
* hailed another shadow library's arrival as "just in time!!!"
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
Hello? Cassandra here. Remember all those times we AI-resistant educators were warning about this exact thing?
Amazing sob story: "ChatGPT deleted all the work I hadn't done"
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
We set out to determine how many images of women and girls Grok created during its nudifying spree. What we found was “industrial-scale abuse,” experts said. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/t...
The whole thing feels automated from top to bottom, with the sole purpose being to collect revenue. Our democracies have not even begun to adequately regulate these spaces.
The tech industry #enshittification continues at pace. I recently reported another outright scam that was appearing above legitimate results (as a sponsored ad) but Google replied to say that it did not breach their policies. www.rte.ie/news/primeti...
