Free speech is being demanded of universities. I think there’s a misunderstanding of education at the heart of these concerns, and focus on academic freedom would be more helpful. Blog post:
#highereducation
matthewbarnard.phd/posts/2026-0...
i dont think people with the same hair colour should be allowed to date each other. thats like incest
Globe showing the Atlantic Ocean with arrows depicting the AMOC circulation: warm surface currents (pink/red) flowing northward from the tropics toward the Arctic, and cold deep return currents (blue/purple) flowing southward. The background shows sea surface temperature trends, with a prominent blue cold patch, the "cold blob", south of Greenland, contrasting with warming (orange/red) across the rest of the ocean.
1/ There's a system of ocean currents in the Atlantic that shapes Europe's #climate, drives monsoons, and keeps sea levels stable along the US coast.
In the last 5 years, the scientific evidence that it could collapse has shifted dramatically.
Most people have no idea. 🧵
‘The girl on the right? Yes you. Your ancestors built civilisation, don’t forget it!’
bsky.app/profile/elio...
🧵 Democracy feels like it's in a rough state at the moment across the globe, and we hear various explanations, like polarisation, extremism, disinformation, and loss of trust. But what if those explanations are mainly symptoms and we've been trying to treat them rather than the underlying causes?
There’s a saying in Greek that translates something like: “they are spitting on you and you are wondering if it’s raining”
this is why we are moving to electric ghosts in jars powered by the sun
what if running the global economy on the liquefacted corpses of ancient beings somehow cursed us?
This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.
Economists are very good at analysing fields where there are tradeoffs, and policy about education, healthcare, energy is best advised by understanding tradeoffs.
(I do think that the problem with climate change is thornier than that because tradeoffs with climate are wildly discontinuous).
1/ I think the best-case scenario for AI has always been the 32-hour work week. Large swaths of the economy having a 3-day weekend means a transfer away from B2B spending, daycare and so forth into more consumer consumption and leisure and that's why companies go for it.
The exterior of a seemingly round church or church niche. It is made of concrete with a repeated flame-like pattern. There are cutouts in the center of the same repeated pattern that, together, make a cross. Photo by Florian Monheim/Bilarchiv Monheim via baukunst-nrw, https://www.baukunst-nrw.de/objekte/Kirche-Zum-Heiligen-Kreuz--3296.htm
A fish-eyed view of a church interior. The walls are of patterned beige concrete, the floor is of stone pieces, there are seemingly two rows of pews either side of a central aisle (in fact there are four), and small cut-outs in the wall through which light enters. The cross is behind the altar and is composed of the same cut-outs but in rainbow colors. Photo by Klaus Schachtschneider via Katholische Kirche Rath/Oberrath/Mörsenbroich, https://www.dem-leben-dienen.de/kirchorte/zum-heiligen-kreuz/
Another, this time panoramic view of the interior showing the multicolor cross and how speckled light enters the interior. Photo by Klaus Schachtschneider via Katholische Kirche Rath/Oberrath/Mörsenbroich, https://www.dem-leben-dienen.de/kirchorte/zum-heiligen-kreuz/
The church entrance, a dark cavern in a bowed structure with small cut-outs that angle in to emphasize the entrance. Photo by Nicolas Janberg via Structurae, https://structurae.net/de/bauwerke/zum-heiligen-kreuz
#204: Josef Lehmbrock, Church of the Holy Cross, Düsseldorf-Rath (1956-58)
Despite being the most familiar liquid, water breaks many of the rules that govern the liquid state – a conundrum we have long theorised about.
Now, researchers in Stockholm have evidence to help us understand the weirdness of water.
@philipcball.bsky.social
www.chemistryworld.com/news/scienti...
Observation from #AtmosphereConf: the event exists in two spaces at once. The room holds the bodies. The network holds the echo. The strongest theme so far is not speed, but curation: less hot-take flow, more structure, more durable knowledge.
Didn’t want to get affected like this giving evidence. Caught me by surprise. We all lost so much. We have to act on the inquiry’s recommendations. We have to be better now, so that we can be better next time.
Being a socially anxious person with a pretty rich imagination means that the awkward conversations I play out in my head have a broad supporting cast of characters with deep backstories, intricate dialogue gambits, and complex arcs.
Do not recommend.
As time has gone on I've realized there is a still quite small but now non-trivial chance that the entire Iran War is simply an insider trading operation, creating repeated black swan moments and relying on markets continued willingness to gyrate wildly in the face of absurd and predictably ...
Real decadence is people breaking the systems that protect and provide for them because they are too sheltered and stupid to understand that truly bad things can happen.
Wealth selects for emotional cowardice over time, not because cowardly people get rich, but because getting and staying rich increasingly requires building walls against the kind of feedback that produces emotional honesty.
You can buy agreement. You can make spaces where nobody tells you hard truths, where your decisions don't visibly land on you, where you can maintain the story you need about yourself and the world because nothing gets to contradict it. You can make the discomfort go away instead of sitting with it.
Be a force for good in the world if you can.
After that, be a wrathful sea witch or an avenging shadow of the old forest, or something cool like that.
Partisans routinely contradict themselves because their opinions are not sincere expressions of belief but strategic attempts to gain advantage, and thus, like battlefield positions their principles change day to day depending on where their allies and enemies are.
Chinese world culltural trend
How can we study human development over two thousand years?
For most periods and regions, we lack reliable data on income, health, or education. Before 1800, and outside Europe, historical records are extremely fragmentary.
Thread 👇 🧵
I think Morozov theorised this well here - "a more muscular hybrid: investment portfolios that function as philosophical arguments, market positions that operationalize convictions" www.theideasletter.org/essay/silico...
Interesting from @sarahoconnorft.ft.com (paging @dsquareddigest.bsky.social ). If we think of bureaucracies and markets as old, slow AIs ( @cstross.bsky.social )then we've been cognitively surrendering a long time: switching off our moral judgements when those in authority make decisions for us
