This is also completely true haha. Whatever people say about New Labour, and there’s a lot you can say, Blair et al were really good at politics, the opposite of this bunch

Which was no secret. The political classes were fine that he spent years lying as Labour leader - so long as that lying was in service of brutalising the Labour Left. It was celebrated as ‘ruthlessness.’ But now that it’s in service of desperately clinging to power? He’s fucked. 2/2

There are many reasons Starmer is profoundly unsuited to being PM. But perhaps foremost among them is his dishonesty. The chief case for Starmer was that, despite his blandness, he represented the opposite of Boris and the rot of the Tories. But his integrity was always a facade. 1/2

It’s looking more and more like there’s actually been underinvestment in AI infrastructure, particularly from Anthropic

I’m sure the replies to this will be incredibly normal…

This man just shouldn’t be PM

Zack Polanski says Greens would ditch GDP targets and focus on wellbeing instead Leader uses first major economic speech to prioritise public services and reduction of inequality over growth

When our root malaise is economic, you can’t get away with the economic knowledge and outlook of the average Twitter lefty liberal.

Corbyn’s vision was far more coherent - at a time of low interest rates, large investment in infrastructure and services.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Are we really framing a *Korean* film as a victory of representation when basically no country globally punches above its weight more when it comes to culture than Korea?

Biographies of Beethoven often note that he sometimes "engaged in sharp business practices." Translation: he wasn't averse to ripping people off. Take that most spiritual of his works, his "Missa Solemnis"; "exclusive" rights to the piece were sold to no fewer than 5 publishers.

Very good moment to be a superpower that has established a lead across a whole host of renewable technologies…

He’s basically right, and it’s true of classical music too. At the heart of the classical tradition was a long line of extraordinary composers that ended with Shostakovich, and will never again be reborn. The historical energy is no longer w classical music. Hopefully this doesn’t happen to film.

Mamdani continually playing Trump in order to get things done rather than screaming about how he’s a fascist - he’s all I’ve wanted in a left wing politician for a decade.

Kore-eda with more films in the letterboxd 500 than Nolan is a victory for humanity

Ppl who keep track of what’s cancelled the same way football fans follow the transfer window…

That’s all Starmer’s Labour was ever truly based on. Plus, of course, a remarkably hated Tory Party.

Unless these foundational issues are remedied, and we get a Labour leader with a personality and an interesting vision, it’s Reform come the next election. 2/2

This gets to the root malaise of the Starmer government. You can’t govern, least of all in these times, if your foundation is basically factional - if your ascent to power was built not on ideas, or even personality, but instead an incredibly effective purge of the left within the Labour Party. 1/2

Corbyn is currently up in his allotment with the biggest grin on his face

The money isn’t really in individual users/chatbots anymore - it’s in the API/corporate use, and that’s also where there’s greatest technological uncertainty. Returning to the initial point, technological advances substantially change the API/corporate side of things.

then the valuations that are at the core of the ‘bubble’ then look rather more justified.

If with each successive new model, returns don’t increase sufficiently rapidly, and eg openAI defaults on one of its many v large circular loans, we’re all fucked.

IMO wastage of investment is much less important re the bubble than the returns on investment. If with each successive wave of investment - not just in infrastructure but also pretraining - we see v rapidly rising returns such that the large companies get ever closer to breaking even…

Oh defo, I just think with AI the extent to which there’s been overbuilding is unclear because it’s unclear exactly how useful the technology will be economically in 6, 12 months. So the bubble isn’t something that’s fixed, it’s something that exists in dialogue w this constantly changing technology

Think powerful economic use cases are v tied to whether it’s a bubble - if AI automates a large swathe of coding, the investment in AI infrastructure is much more likely to pay off. And that’s before getting to other use cases that will grow as AI’s jagged frontier expands

And it’s incredibly difficult to predict what precisely AI’s jagged frontier will look like in 6 months, let alone a year. 3 months ago, all I heard was talk of stagnation.

We inhabit a profoundly unstable technological conjuncture, and that’s something to be embraced.

This is a key reason why I don’t trust anyone who confidently asserts AI is a bubble or not - so much depends on how rapidly the technology advances. Quick progress in economically useful areas like coding could substantially alter the financial equation.

If you’re gonna recommend a first foreign film to someone, it’s gotta be The 400 Blows - immediately disabuses anyone of the notion that B&W French films must be cold, inaccessible and pretentious. It’s somehow fresher, funnier, and more devastating than any 21st century movie I’ve seen.

Seeing ppl debate whether Sinners or One Battle After Another will be discussed in decades… the clear answer is neither. 2025 was not a good year for film - at least in America. I’m waiting on the foreign releases

Should be of significant interest to the left, the latter less so though perhaps more now in the era of AI. The former represent imo a key node in the argument over the abundance agenda.

So I would personally propose that...
- Huge state backed infrastructure development
- Huge partly state fueled housing boom
- Significantly state-backed investment in renewable technologies and key industries
- Large state sector partly to ensure large-scale employment...

No new American frontier AI labs have emerged this year, so cue Moonshot AI. And apparently there are several other Chinese labs in the mix beyond Alibaba and DeepSeek. China’s unique blend of innovation - produce things to roughly the same quality as the West at a fraction of the cost

There is of course one great exception to this: China.