An accurate assessment of AI generally.

Since around 2016 the world has been a series of images that are to all intents and purposes re-creations of terrible moments from the 1930s but anytime someone points it out someone else says “oh come on”, “don’t worry about it”, or “get real”.

Please. I’m begging you. Socrates didn’t say reading will destroy our minds. Stop this. Someone stop this.

There’s a possible world in which Labour cannily used defence spending to wriggle out of their silly fiscal constraints and justified an increase in the basic rate.

It is really important to understand that the asylum hotel chaos of 2022-24 is a *failed experiment in closed borders* (in contrast to the liberal visa policy) The hotel chaos comes from passing multiple laws that all claims will be refused & to stop processing claims bsky.app/profile/pete...

My friend extended the metaphor used by Stephen Bush to explain disproportionate anger directed at govt. Not only is it that we’ve had a series of cowboy builders, but the bathroom we asked them to build was a basement swimming pool extension in clay soil that can also sometimes fly.

I don’t really get it. Reform are just the Tories with same shitheads from the last government now?

Is Thames Water’s plan just to dig up the whole of London until the government bails them out?

Not unusual at all? Everyone loves a wealth tax because the assumption is someone else is paying.

I feel like there are decades of research and work done on how to respond to toxic behaviour and collectively we’re just ignoring it?

Just got around to listening to FT Politics. Makes me melancholy that Labour wouldn’t quite be in the terrible place they are if they’d (a) reversed the NI cuts as soon as they got in (b) made the security/defence spending case for increasing basic income tax last year.

"The Dad Roar You scream the word “ACHOO” at ninety decibels. You add vowels that aren’t there. Apparently, you want everyone at Safeway to know you possess a diaphragm and a failing marriage." buff.ly/kMQkAmF

Saturday on Bluesky is when all the careful, witty discourse of smart and thoughtful people is suspended to make room for football bullshit.

Hey they do look like that Dürer woodcut after all.

Trying to engage with family members who’ve gone Reform, the problem is it comes with a certain intellectual and discursive closure. It is incredibly hard to get them back. The opinions they suddenly acquire on things like vaccines, Russia and gunboats on migrants aren’t reconcilable with reason.

There is a wealth tax that is incredibly unpopular but should nevertheless be levied…

I think the counterfactual to this BlueSky consensus for empowered local government is the experience of devolution in Scotland and Wales. I think the problem is these areas are governed by huge and still powerless local governments. They’re also a warning to the govt’s plans…

This too: there’s a talent and policy cost to reducing local government. We are denied talented politicians e.g. building local consensus for change (even, dare I say it, development projects and tax increases) and the benefits that would flow from policy experimentation.

I think Bob (as per, you should follow him if you don't already) is completely right here. Think weakening local government has both directly harmed the effectiveness of the government by creating an overburdened and flabby centre, but also has had a negative consequence on MP candidate quality.

One civil servant said to me we gave them what you wanted and it didn’t do anything (referring to finally granting local authorities a power of general competence in 2010s). As if simultaneously reducing their funding by 45% was a nonconsequential triviality.

Fun fact: state capacity is indeed broken and it's mainly because of well-intentioned people thinking that all decisions in this country need to be made by civil servants working in offices within 250 yards of Horseferry Road

This seems quite a lazy and confused article. First the elision btwn tax and public ownership is odd. If we’re talking about income then we already do tax higher incomes. If we’re talking about a wealth tax then there is no magical tax that produces these billions … tribunemag.co.uk/2026/01/tax-...

This year is beginning to seem endless.

Very famously the Indian takeaway is British.

I mean choose any other country for this to work. Everything is made of corn syrup.

At least with the Iraq casus belli they used their imaginations.

Amen.

Kafka designed Birmingham New Street station.

Nice of them to lay on an authentic Victorian railways experience for those of us trying to travel north today

There is no general principle in conservatism beyond, I get to do what I want, and you get to shut the fuck up.

Gender affirming interventions come in many forms.

100% this.

I know it’s old fashioned but I think there are inbuilt constraints on public reason which put certain topics off the menu of public discourse. Depriving someone of their citizenship is definitely one of those.

Ngl “election-night hook up” quite neatly captures what I find appealing about a liberal polity.

In other reading, just got past the Dr Who reference in Satanic Verses. Such a curious thing for him to namecheck.

Not sure how I ended up doing it, but I’ve been reading Harry Potter. (Don’t worry, secondhand from a charity shop.) I’d only read the last one previously. There’s something a bit ethically iffy about them, but they are surprisingly humane. It’s a little tragic what’s become of JKR.

You can tell that LotR was written by an academic because Gandalf disappears for like 20 years doing research to answer a single question.

Yes! Hard agree!

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO MATILDA’S VOICE THIS IS UNBEARABLE

He LITERALLY doesn’t though, in fact the opposite?

Merry Christmas! 🎄🎄 ∀x God bless x

The Guardian is so thoughtlessly edited these days it has a story about the US on a page headed “National”.

Not to sound too illiberal and Blue Labour but the idea of raising the age of criminal responsibility without *any* sort of statutory court order that can be used for those under the age is *bonkers*.

A 50 minute wait for the bus lol

How common to open your presents before midday.

They should invent tiny speakers that can fit inside a person’s ear so that person can watch videos without other people having to hear everything.

What is it with non-London cities and cycling on the pavement? Bristolians what’s wrong with you??

Oh dear.

Back in my hometown for Christmas and North Somerset council have thoughtfully consolidated all bus stops. This is amazingly convenient because once you’ve walked to it, you have also reached the stop you get off at.