What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s Private Retreat For the richest men on Earth, everything is free and nothing matters.

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Insightful.

The question "is thinking at all actually a good idea" maybe?

Senior NHS officials warned staff over criticising rollout of Palantir platform Ethical objections and uneven adoption have made the tech group’s contract a divisive issue within English health service

“If you criticise Palantir’s platform one more time, you are going to lose your job.”

Solidarity to all NHS workers opposing this toxic corporation. Shame on those bullying them. But they won’t stop us. We’re going to ditch Palantir.

www.ft.com/content/ff70...

Switched to Qobuz for music and really loving it. Very different experience, what with the suggestions I'm getting from them, and (as I'm using it anyway) a much more mindful usage. Like I don't turn on the slop-fountain, I'll at least pick some interesting-looking album. Getting way more variation.

Very good interview. Gift link.

What the 'Project Hail Mary' Directors Learned From a Firing
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/mo...

Labour have been smearing the Greens on our evidenced-based approach to drugs. If the PM won’t listen to us, and he won’t listen to the experts, will he listen to the families at @anyoneschild.bsky.social, who have lost loved ones under the UK’s current negligent drug policies?

Great Vowel Shift - Wikipedia

What a Wikipedia find. Thanks for bringing this to my attention
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_V...

Death in Mind | BJPS Short Reads What does the opossum’s playing dead tell us about animal minds? By Susana Monsó and Laura Danón Read the essay here: https://www.thebsps.org/short-reads/monso-danon-death-in-mind/ #philsci

We now have a brand new youtube channel, where we'll be sharing BJPS Short Reads (new episodes as they are released; back catalogue whenever we can...). And we're starting with a banger...
youtu.be/VTE87PDMNuc

#philsci #philsky #hpbio

Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here's How to Use It. 40 Google features to find exactly what you need, the alternative search engines that do things Google won't, and the reference desk framework underneath all of it.

This is a great list of techniques for getting real information out of a Google search and avoiding AI slop and paid results.
(One thing not included is that if you add "-ai" to a search, you block the AI summary) cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/google-has...

Just saw Project Hail Mary - loved it.

Very opaque spoiler comments

-

it's another thoroughly positive film, like Superman 2025. I feel like there's maybe a shift away from edgy, grimdark cynicism, thank goodness.

Increasingly convinced that the key text to understanding our current state of affairs is King Lear

Saw | ContraPoints YouTube video by ContraPoints

NEW VIDEO
youtu.be/uiGIbdrQjbI?...

a four-panel stick-figure cartoon panel one: three standing figures. from left to right, a guy wearing a necktie looking at his phone, an angry MAGA guy yelling FUCK YOUR FUCKIN POST FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU, and a rando just standing there like an NPC. panel two: the guy looking at his phone shows MAGA guy his hand, causing MAGA to vanish. the word Block hangs in the air where fuckface once was. a green-bordered in-game message appears, reading "+2 Mental Health." now the rando is suddenly interested. panel three: as our man continues doom-scrolling, a sly grin on his face, the rando on the right puts on a punch-me face and snarls: "Typical lefty, blocking everyone who disagrees with-" panel four phone guy shows the hand to punch-me face, causing the rando to vanish. the word Block hangs in the air where that dickhead was. a green-bordered in-game message appears again, reading "+2 Mental Health."

How black slaves were routinely sold as ‘specimens’ to ambitious white doctors The horrors of slavery also spread to research: black bodies provided easy targets for medical experiments.

⚠️WOKE CONTENT⚠️

🧵 The only thing that is shocking about this is that we weren't taught about it. Cruel medical experiments on slaves in the South were common.

Black "specimens" were subjected to (cont)

#ProudBlue
#ResistanceRoots
#USDemocracy
#Voices4Victory

theconversation.com/how-black-sl...

Meet three scientists who said no to Epstein The warning signs included a web search, a mother’s doubts, and inklings of a “sexist attitude”

This is a nice contrast to all the awful behavior confirmed through the Epstein files. Proud of @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social & @seanmcarroll.bsky.social for picking up on the sexism & charlatanism right away.

what do you mean they didn't realize this before

Starmer 2.0: could a more authentic PM revive Labour’s appeal? After surviving a coup, and with his critics chastened, No 10 insiders say a more combative PM is up for taking the fight to Reform UK

For this weekend’s long read

The fights Starmer has started to pick with billionaires and and the hard right - and whether a brutally honest, wholesale revaluation of why Labour won in 2024 is the thing that could revive their fortunes.

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

Really interesting, although if I could have the moon on a stick I'd still like to see whether there's an *interaction* between the medication and those "non-directive" not-psychotherapy sessions; or a dependence on the psychological context. (Was once my speculation for a failed tDCS attempt.)

Just saw The Secret Agent, very cool, culturally different from the usual fare here of course but also a brilliant story from title to end - if I understood it - if not, it was still entertaining, I was just even more confused than I realized :D

#TheSecretAgent

Labour’s migration doom loop The Starmer government risks trapping the United Kingdom in a spiral of discontent and decline

Immigration and the limits of "control": me in @prospectmagazine.co.uk on why, and how, Labour has got both the economics *and* politics of migration so wrong.

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/724...

tl:dr we've automated "crit burn," the known tendency of over-workshopped stories to have all voice and character smoothed away.

h/t @johnchu.bsky.social

Exclusive: Key US infectious-diseases centre to drop pandemic preparation Staff members have been instructed to scrub this topic and ‘biodefense’ from the agency’s website.

The pandemic preparedness programme at NIAD is to be cut in yet another inexplicable decision by Bhattacharya. Without the research that was done by institutes such as the NIAD that was already looking at coronaviruses we would not have had such speedy vaccine development 🧪🧵 #HealthPolicy

"Palestine Action’s campaign and pursuit of criminal damage is designed to intimidate the persons and businesses targeted so they end their commercial relationships with Elbit. Palestine Action is not engaged in any exercise of persuasion, or at least not the type of persuasion that is consistent with democratic values and the rule of law."

Significant that the High Court ruling is still, in places, quite damning of Palestine Action. It emphatically rejects that the group is engaged in "civil disobediance", for example.

It just finds (compellingly) that proscription was still wrong, despite that.

We have received numerous credible reports of torture, killing, and inhumane treatment of detained individuals at the Camp East Montana migrant detention facility, located within Fort Bliss. #txlege

Making Democracy Safe for Busines Cambridge Core - Political Economy - Making Democracy Safe for Busines

People are primed to think about authoritarian movements that succeeded, but there are plenty fail--including the Tunisian party Nidaa Tounes that I wrote my book on.

www.cambridge.org/core/books/m...

Pizza Hut Has Quietly Undertaken a Campaign to Return to Sit-Down Restaurants. I Can See Why People Are Obsessed. People travel from all over for the gleeful novelty of chain pizza ordered from real menus, served by real people, and eaten off checkered tablecloths.

Pizza Hut Classic, the viral vintage sensation of sitting down for a pizza that the company doesn't seem to want to talk about. But social media means people are making the pilgrimage -- slate.com/life/2026/01...

Just saw #TheBoneTemple, loved it, violent but "nice" violence, and they let it be cathartic. I am a bit sad they didn't release it as a double feature with the previous one as that would have been an amazing event.

(Still don't like that post-credit ending of the previous movie though.)

I Study Male Caregivers. I Recognized Something in Alex Pretti. And his fellow nurses did, too.

I study male caregivers. We can learn a lot from Alex Pretti. slate.trib.al/dgy59QA