Opening text of a thread by Palantir from X Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different.
twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...

'Dystopian'? Smart glasses may be watching (and recording) you Advocacy groups issued a letter saying wearable tech like Meta's smart glasses represents a “dystopian privacy invasion.”

“‘Even though people often say there’s no such thing as privacy in public, the truth is a lot more complicated,’ said [Woodrow] Hartzog, who works in privacy and technology law.”

Zack Polanski holding the NION women sign WILL YOU SIGN THE LETTER? Not In Our Name: Women in support of the trans+ community notinourname.org.uk NI QN

A reminder that @zackpolanski.bsky.social is one of the few politicians in the UK to be solid in his support for trans people.

If you paid even a penny in federal income tax last year, you paid more than:

Tesla
Southwest
Disney
Live Nation
HP
United
PayPal
CVS Health
Palantir
Citigroup
PG&E
3M

That's right. They paid $0 in federal income tax.

It's time for big corporations to pay their fair share.

The book cover for Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life before Gay Liberation. It shows two men sat on a bench in the 1930s.

"Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life before Gay Liberation" is published TODAY by @cornellupress.bsky.social! I tell the story of how queer men didn't just exist in Belfast but could be accepted by friends, family & colleagues... at least until a moral panic about homosexuality in the 1950s. 🧵

Victor with another banger — they’re creating programming no students want. 1 person signed up! They had to run it with just 8 students!!

It’d be funny if it wasn’t also deadly

this is why there’s been mass revolt and opposition to data centers being built in communities. it is genuinely a health hazard to live this close to something emitting this much sound. these need to stop being built

Screenshot of a tweet by Rep. Ted Lieu stating that U.S. military law prohibits war crimes, including strikes on civilian infrastructure that cause disproportionate harm. The tweet warns that service members must disobey illegal orders and could face prosecution by a future administration if they commit war crimes.

Rep. Ted Lieu isn't backing down.

25th amendment. Impeachment. I will support any avenue to remove Donald Trump from office. We cannot leave this man in charge of America’s nuclear weapons as he threatens to end an entire civilization. And Congress must not fund this reckless administration.

Screenshot of slides for Who Governs Outer Commons? Private Power and the New Politics of Orbital Regulation.

Wrapping up my slides for the Critical Narratives of Outer Space Workshop later this week at Oxford, very excited and looking forward! @alinau27.bsky.social

This looks very exciting -- cannot wait!

"total staff spend per FTE employee has seen a marked decline when adjusted for inflation. As compared to 2019-20, real-terms pay is roughly £2,700 (or 7%) lower."

This figure shows weekly advertised jobs in politics in UK HEPs from 2012-2025. It reveals a clear decline in advertising from 2024 onwards: the average weekly number of advertised jobs is currently around half what it was in 2021. Note that in this figure a point represents an observation of a captured url and the trend line is estimated using a generalised additive model.

This figure presents the same data but allows for easier comparison across years by presenting the cumulative jobs advertised for each calendar year in our sample. This indicates again that both 2024 and 2025 have seen significantly fewer Politics and Government jobs advertised, with 2025 being the worst year on record with only 469 jobs advertised, compared to a mean of 836 jobs advertised a year between 2012 and 2024.

2025 was the worst on record in terms of new advertised jobs. Using jobs.ac.uk email alert data courtesy of @peterallen.bsky.social, we found 469 jobs compared to a mean of 836 between 2012-24.

Academic Job Market Trends in Politics and International Relations - Political Studies Association Academic Job Market Trends in Politics and International Relations: Evidence from the UK, 2012-25 Authored by: Dr Ralph Scott, Dr Lawrence McKay, and Dr William Allen Read the full report here   Execu...

🚨 NEW REPORT! 🚨

What is the state of the UK academic job market in politics, and what does this mean for the field and #highered?

In a new @psaecn.bsky.social report, @lawrencemckay.bsky.social @williamlallen.bsky.social and I find worrying trends in job adverts and HESA data from 2012-25

#PSA26

We published a report that used web archives, email digests, and university staff statistics to track the UK academic job market in political science and IR since 2012. It’s part of a broader problem we need to address w/ structural solutions without losing sight of its personal impacts. #polisky

CBP Facility Codes Sure Seem to Have Leaked Via Online Flashcards The Quizlet flashcards, which WIRED found through basic Google searches, seem to include sensitive information about gate security at Customs and Border Protection locations.

And another truly beautiful headline

www.wired.com/story/cbp-fa...

A screenshot of a post on X (formerly Twitter) by Ben Appel (@benappel) with a verified blue checkmark. ​The text of the post reads: "'I was gay, I had faced discrimination, and I had fought for my rights. But now that gay rights had become “LGBTQ” rights, I found myself force-teamed with a lot of people whose values were nothing like mine.' My latest op-ed for The Wall Street Journal:" ​Below the text is a link preview for an article from wsj.com. The image in the preview shows a large rainbow pride flag waving prominently in the sun, with a crowd and other flags, including a transgender pride flag, slightly visible in the background under bare trees. Text superimposed over the bottom of the preview image reads, "Opinion | I’m Gay, but That Doesn’t Make Me ‘Queer’".

One of the stated goals of the ADF, Heritage, and Family policy council was to drive a wedge between the LGBTQ community to divide and conquer it.

This pick me is willingly doing that work for them and is constantly being platformed by major media like the Atlantic and the WSJ.

Even Artemis II Astronauts Have Microsoft Outlook Problems The mission commander’s email inbox failed during the journey to the moon. Have they tried turning the computer off and back on again?

This is the funniest headline about space I have read, and the only type of news I want to hear about Artemis.

www.wired.com/story/artemi...

NYTimes Headline: The Women Who Believe That Women Should Lose the Right to Vote Subhead: Adherents to biblical patriarchy support household voting: One household, one vote--the husband's. They say the idea is catching on.

The New York Times rolling up its sleeves to do the hard work of normalizing the idea that women should not have the right to vote.

Why has he written this piece for Pink News? Its readership will know it plumbs new depths of dishonesty and will be enraged. Is he writing it to try and pretend to a cis audience that he cares? Totally bizarre.

This is very sensible and the UK should be recommending this now to ease the shock. But the government won't.

‘The tide is turning’, Green party leader tells crowd at march against far right – as it happened Organisers claim half a million people are marching through central London, protesting against the rise of the far right

How can the BBC justify how much coverage they give other marches which are significantly smaller in size?

The bias is so obviously blatant.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live...

Again, the first Tea Party rallies in April 2009 -- heavily promoted in advance by Fox News -- only had about 300,000 attendees across 750 cities, but the media treated it like the Second American Revolution.

There will be multiple *individual* No Kings rallies today that have more people at them.

Explore live radio by rotating the globe Explore live radio by rotating the globe.

Your periodic reminder that there is a website that lets you listen to local radio stations anywhere in the world

This is honestly one of the coolest inventions ever, imo. Global access to hyper-local imagined communities

Detained by ICE, he missed multiple cancer treatments. Now he’s in hospice. Some immigrants with chronic health problems were swept up by ICE in Minnesota, leading to missed medications and, for one man, missed chemotherapy sessions.

Some immigrants with chronic health problems were swept up by ICE in Minnesota, leading to missed medications and, for one man, missed chemotherapy sessions.

The production and management of anxiety (usually mediated by consumption) has been a major business model of some of the largest companies that exist today, little surprise that AI goes there, too

Hong Kong: It is now criminal offense to refuse to give Hong Kong police passwords/decryption assistance to access all personal electronic devices incl cellphones & laptops. This legal change applies to everyone, incl US citizens, in Hong Kong, arriving or just transiting HK International Airport.

Edinburgh staff urge university to ditch OpenAI deal Academics raise concerns over ChatGPT owner’s links to US military and claim tools are ‘looking to replace knowledge workers’

Edinburgh staff urge university to ditch OpenAI deal: www.timeshighereducation.com/news/edinbur...