i will concede that if you want to influence other people addicted to X, X is worth using. but if you want to influence the actual public, text-based social media is a fool's errand.

Recommended, not in a „worthy initiative” way but because it’s proper interesting and informative journalism about London and nobody else really does it.

Lol. How well did the last govt insulting load-bearing parts of their electoral coalition work out for them? Like they watched what the Lib Dems did to the home counties and wondered what it'd be like if the Greens did that to the two dozen largest university towns.

Tony Blair used to talk about the difference between the 3-second, 30-second & 3-minute conversation - the point being that simplistic policies, that poll well, collapse under the more sustained scrutiny of an election or time in govt. So what happens when there is *only* the 3-second conversation?

This is incredibly sharp on TikTok, distraction and politics. Current UK government is communicating on terms that no longer exist

Trump's use of the attention economy, by Peter Hyman peterhyman21.substack.com/p/trump-the-...

Strongly agree. The days of just getting to the end with lines to take are over

We should also probably avoid basing our politics on information systems that reward outrage and where the truth has zero value.

This is outstanding. And, while research doesn’t get much of a hearing these days on identity issues, everything in it is consistent with piles of research. Anti-racism norms don’t drop from the sky. They are built and buttressed by elites drawing red lines. They can be eroded when elites don’t.

Bear with me, I anticipate your disagreement. There is a clear pattern to the advice given to those who want to press back against rising racism. What it boils down to is that if you point out that racism is often being dressed up as “legitimate concerns” you will alienate people. /1

Time for the world to install a gigawatt of solar power capacity 2004: A year 2010: ~ a month 2015: ~ a week Now: A day ourworldindata.org/data-insight... 🧪

it's so miserable

Not that anyone in politics listens to research, but there is a bucket of research (including some excellent recent studies) which show exactly this. Voters listen to leaders and respond to what they say.

Dublin photography: A city that has vanished yet feels strangely familiar

this didn’t happen at the height of the Brexit referendum. I don’t *think* it’s happened since National Front were at their peak in 1970s. This is organised racist intimidation & movement building, and it’s happening because Labour Party leaders have not opposed that campaign.

The core problem for Starmer is that what made him Labour leader and prime minister was his ability to judge what the audience in front of him wanted to hear - to work out which narrative would get him to the next step on the board. But you can't run a country on storytelling.

There are very, VERY few people who are equipped to talk about this shooter correctly given the brainrot written on the shell casing. You have to understand so much of online culture to get it and also understand how that culture is both connected to and separate from real world ideological spaces

Pet parrots which typically live alone (whilst those in the wild live in large flocks) were given the technology to call each other. They would use it for up to three hours a day, and developed favourite friends 💔 on.ft.com/3K05vhS

5 parties on more than 12%, winner gains seat with under 30%. Results like this used to be rare, freak outliers. Now they are routine (there was a second just like this yesterday). Electoral chaos.

The DUP’s support for Brexit, then hard Brexit, then Johnson (who betrayed them as he betrays everyone), and now ECHR-exit is perhaps the most obviously self-harming run of decisions that any democratic political party has ever taken.

Brilliant writing

Breaking: Irish broadcaster RTE says that Ireland will not participate in Eurovision next year if Israel does. "RTÉ feels that Ireland’s participation would be unconscionable given the ongoing and appalling loss of lives in Gaza." about.rte.ie/2025/09/11/r...

There's @samfr.bsky.social chatting to @nicolasturgeon.bsky.social and Mark Drakeford

my hot take is that i do not care if you post on twitter but i do think that monitoring it is essential to understanding who is running the country right now and where they are directing their sentiments

@stephenkb.bsky.social enjoyed your piece on the reshuffle. On "warnings that he would find Cooper hard to work, but impossible to dispense with" - why the latter?

Will the polls narrow? We don't know. There's a possibility that public opinion won't shift, and a possibility that things could get even worse for the government, but Reform aren't inevitable. 2029 is a long way off.

What a quote...

This is a great bit tbf

The failure of the government to denounce these thugs is completely fucking sickening.

www.economist.com/science-and-... come work with me

Astonishing archive, the episodes about the planets are so good.

Fascinated that In Our Time is one of the BBC’s most popular podcasts among under 35s. The young people demand three academics and a peer discussing Demosthenes, apparently. And they’re right to do so.

they’ll just move him to a different parish and he’ll do it again

This is good. Next let's do 'core funding for supporting and rolling out what works' www.nesta.org.uk/blog/in-prai...

It shows such a basic lack of political understanding that Labour didn't go straight on the attack over this. Just because most people are worried about immigration being too high it doesn't mean they're psychopaths.

Yellen not at all pulling her punches in this op-ed for the FT www.ft.com/content/d2ea...

My piece on racism for @theobserveruk.bsky.social observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

Pretty day in Bury St Edmunds

Genuinely baffled as to what Bertie Jenrick would have to do for any of the one in ten Tory MPs from an ethnic minority to go “steady on”. Turn up at their house in a Klan robe?

Compare with the tarmac swathed local streets in the UK.

What (if anything) happens when you go after the old elite?

What do governments spend money on? via ourworldindata.org/government-s...

Are Pingles crisps or cakes? Pringles said cakes (because they'd be VAT exempt), the courts said crisps. One example among many of our strange and mercurial VAT system, in an interesting piece on tax reform from my clever colleague @timleunig.bsky.social www.nesta.org.uk/blog/fiscal-...

Here’s the perfect job to cut your teeth in public policy

The government seems unbothered by the effects of all this poison being mainlined to a voter base that is already pissed off. If optimising for survival over the medium term, the information environment is going to matter a lot (and it is not looking pretty).

Increasingly of the view that British democracy is straightforwardly doomed because we have given politicised tech platforms total impunity to promote libel, conspiracy, violence, and race hatred

This is all becoming very dangerous and the Government's failure to show any kind of resistance to it is a disgrace www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

The Cameron-Osborne years offer an important reminder that it is possible to excel at the theatre of politics - to "look prime ministerial", to dominate the "media narrative", to project "competence" and to communicate a clear political "story" - while being strikingly inept at governing.

you rarely encounter a perfect intro..........but when you do

Destination X, no.