That's helpful, thanks. I suppose I was wondering if "wilfully neglecting to seek the facts" might go beyond "accidental" but it's clearly not exactly "deliberate" either (and of course highly subjective/difficult to prove).
Could scenarios 1 and 2 also entail that Starmer misled Parliament — in that he claimed to have sought out the relevant facts about the vetting process, and repeatedly made statements about the process on that basis, when it now seems clear he hadn't? Or is the bar for "misleading" higher than that?
AI rose in salience more than any other issue for US voters last year, with backlash from creatives, X-risk activists, parents, workers, environmentalists and more
We expect pressure to build in 2026 as AI gets even more capable, and @ippr.org we argue governments need to urgently spread the upside
BREAKING: Crowds gathering in Trafalgar Square to oppose the unlawful ban on Palestine Action.
Despite the High Court ruling that the ban is unlawful, the Met police decided to continue making arrests following an embarrassing u-turn on their policy not to.
This has not been discussed in parliament. If the British military are aiding and abetting war crimes in Lebanon, and our politicians have not even explained to us why this is happening, in what sense are we living in a genuinely democratic society any more?
"The [US] government is increasingly reliant on commercial AI technology developed by the private sector; at the same time, AI firms are prioritizing defense applications. From a business perspective, this is called synergy. From a political economy perspective, this is called codependency."
One of the best jobs in UK social science, research & policy.
"Ontology, a term popularized by Palantir..."
BlackRock said it was “incredibly excited” to “partner with GMPF to accelerate the availability of private capital for these essential assets”.
Okay but I’m *not* excited to accelerate the availability of essential public assets to private capital.
www.ft.com/content/1cdc...
“We’re sold this idea that this is going to be the key to rebuilding Britain, when in fact it looks more like the key to making some fund managers quite a nice profit.”
@hettieobrien.bsky.social joins us to discuss the billionaire machine of private equity.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HOm...
This is interesting, not least because it shows the ridiculous sensitivity of over-valued tech stocks giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
Loved this conversation between @piercepenniless.bsky.social and @sarahsteinlubrano.bsky.social on (among other things) the importance of social relationships in political organising, what cognitive science has to offer left-wing movements, and how we can begin to rebuild the public sphere
it's like they read Ned Beauman's "Venomous Lumpsucker" and thought "gee, what a great business strategy"...
one of my favorite Sohn-Rethel texts is all about how in Napoli technical objects can be repurposed in weird and liberating ways when they break down
hardcrackers.com/ideal-broken...
a thing historians will marvel about when they study this era is the extent to which the "war is a thing that happens to poorer, browner people" class went about systematically dismantling every aspect of the global political order that confined the costs of war to poorer and browner people
As we’ve all been saying for many years 👇.
The first set of postdocs for our ERC project on popular government have just been advertised. These 3 postdocs will be based at UC Louvain with my co-PI Pierre-Etienne Vandamme and focus on contemporary democratic theory. Apply! jobs.uclouvain.be/Personnelsci...
If flawed and inaccurate LLMs are instrumented in AWS by replacing humans for decision making, then "wars" may as well be indiscriminate lethal campaigns. Anthropic's position also isn't a moral high ground given their AI-DSS uses w/ Palantir, where automation bias may lead to similar outcomes.
I don’t disagree with the general thrust. But this:
“I am realistic enough to know that the argument for free university education no longer wins political traction”
How does this happen? You accept it and normalise it. There is no law of nature separating higher ed. from primary/secondary ed.
An article in the journal Development and Change by Stephanie Wanga. The abstract reads: " ABSTRACT This article examines the compatibility of Ujamaa's conceptualization of freedom with the limits of the sovereign state. This is done by examining popular enactments of Ujamaa in Tanzania in the 1960s, which resulted in what, for a moment, was a quasi-utopian realization of post-colonial freedom. It analyses the ways in which Julius Nyerere, in turn, was inspired by these popular practices and attempted to codify and advance their spread. Viewing this back-and-forth communication as a multidirectional means of theorizing the ideals of Ujamaa, including its radical conceptions of freedom, the article examines how such imaginations were eventually interfered with and restricted by the state, and how they might be revisited today."
Another day another article by a former LSE student! This one by @stephaniewanga.bsky.social ! I really learned a lot seeing her work through these ideas, and basically came to see the story of Ujamaa as a somewhat tragic tale. Check it out! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
While I'm glad that Dario is standing up to Hegseth here, as a person who studies tech regulation for a living, I'll just point out that the difference between "medium responsible usage" and "The Full Orwell" being the moral backbone of One Guy is not a governance system we should feel good about
I wrote on the fall of Peter Mandelson for the next issue of the @lrb.co.uk
Online early now:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
OpenSAFELY is open from today! Huge thanks to all who supported this vast collaboration: whole population GP data; in a productive platform; innovative privacy protections; unprecedented support from professions, privacy campaigners; &c
Now it's over to users!
www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/blog/2026/02...
NEW: Meta’s director of AI safety, supposedly the person at the company who is working to make sure that powerful AI tools don’t go rogue and act against human interests, had to scramble to stop an AI agent from deleting her inbox against her wishes...
NEW
How Palantir captured the Ministry of Defence
How a close read of public domain documents show how MoD was commercially colonised by Palantir
By me, at FT
www.ft.com/content/5207...
"American executives worry that competitors, especially in China, could emulate their scientific and technological achievements. They can probably afford to fret less about threats to America’s exceptionalism in the field of financial engineering."
“it turns out that the engine of Musk’s X — its algorithmic ‘For You’ page — is an ideological ratchet.” - @jwherrman.bsky.social
nymag.com/intelligence...
I’ve written this lengthy FT analysis overnight about the multiple multi-thousand pound Epstein payments to Mandelson’s husband
these particular paragraphs are worth reading slowly
www.ft.com/content/608a...
orange catholic bible incoming
I would take a pay cut to not have an email address.
