"The Course of the Heart" by M. John Harrison Wafting dreamlike, beautifully written.

"But its rapid spread is outpacing public rules, and could embed errors and bias deep within the criminal justice system."

OK but what if

www.programmablemutter.com/p/my-favouri... My favorite posts from 2025.

Another way of putting it is that if you had an LLM and RAG-ed in the complete text of Albert Hirschman's Rhetoric of Reaction as a how-to for explainers of current events, the outputs would approximate Megan McArdle columns, +/- some acceptable amount of slop.

"Until there is substantial and repeated evidence otherwise, assume counterintuitive findings to be false, and second-order effects to be dwarfed by first-order ones in magnitude." x.com/zeynep/statu...

"I developed a kind of grudging admiration for the skill with which the USTR bound the entire world to a system of trade that conferred parochial advantages to America and its tech firms, giving them free rein to loot the world's data and economies. …

this is indeed a really good piece, and gets at some of the logic of supply chains that state-focused accounts like weaponized interdependence can easily overlook.

Largely a remix of other people's ideas, but the best damn thing I wrote this year www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-lang...

The rumors about daycare centers are extremely "fit" for virality: having both novelty & familiarity (drawing on anti-immigrant tropes of criminality & exploitation); making emotional/identity appeals; are *participatory* in that ppl can create their own “evidence” by investigating local centers.

Elizabeth Hand's debut novel Winterlong is set in a ruined DC which has been renamed "The City of Trees," with feral plants surrounding the golden dome of the old Riggs bank on M St. As it turns out, not the post-apocalyptic future we are in for.

Most read from Tech Policy Press in 2025: "We must never confuse function for purpose. We must not mistake what AI can do with whom AI should serve. The purpose of this power should be to benefit humanity." — Alondra Nelson.

Toby Young is quite literally the meritocracy's failson share.google/w1mQaBJWnf0k...

Supporting evidence for the @donmoyn.bsky.social argument that social media and its consequences are a big part of the story share.google/Kg8KihAhUWKl...

One piece of writing that’s stayed with me this year is this @himself.bsky.social post on social media and how publics are shaped, not merely reflected (I think it’s got broad applicability to shaping by elites and institutions, not just tech platforms) www.programmablemutter.com/p/were-getti...

Double confirm

Good news; a judge has blocked the detention of a technology researcher that the State Department had slated to deport. However, this is just the start of what will certainly be a longer-term challenge. What can we do about this? A thread. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/u...

I liked this essay very much.

I should be clear that this piece is basically a riff on Sergey's arguments about Putin.

Really perceptive piece, by two of my brilliant @jhu.edu colleagues, @himself.bsky.social and @radchenko.bsky.social.

Happy Christmas from Ireland and the world's most rotund Christmas tree.

In contrast, I think these measures are ineffective showboating that are more about publicity than consequences. We may see more serious and effective measures in future. We may not.

Sanctioning individuals is a long-standing policy instrument for the U.S. — it’s just that the Trumpniks are no longer applying it to the likes of genocidaires or arms smugglers but instead are using it to harass human rights activists, climate campaigners, etc. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/t...

"Trump boasts in ... the strategy that, at last, ‘America is strong and respected again”. The problem is that this obviously isn’t true. Countries ... treat it like an angry, incoherent drunk with a bazooka. You say whatever you hope might calm them down, but you certainly don’t respect them."

Worth it for the last line alone

American presidents who've had things named after them en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverv...

YouTube just took it down.

rats and ships ain't in it.

Never been a huge fan of the 'if you lose ...' genre. But Hans von Spakovsky.

Big FT Investigation - Binance allowed suspicious accounts to operate even after 2023 US plea agreement. Details of the transactions come after Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in Oct. The Trump family has since expanded business ties with Zhao’s exchange www.ft.com/content/5d8a...

One of the things I have not seen anyone take up, either to praise or criticize, is that the Abundance book has a vision of the good life that is explicitly anti-consumerist.

"Field detects a strain of decadence underlying the fanaticism, with soft, comfortable men mistaking cruel titillation for insight and trying their mightiest to look tough: “It is unseemly, and it is unmanly, and some of you will miss your liberalism when it’s gone.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/b...

All these worlds are yours – except Europa. Attempt no landing there.

putting the arse back into arsenal

In principle, the EU has an "Anti-Coercion Mechanism" on its books ...

New job at Cambridge! Professorship of Public Policy www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/profess...

noyb WIN: The Austrian Supreme Court has ruled that Meta must give users full access to their data. All of Meta's claims of trade secrets or other limitations were rejected, leading to unprecedented access to the inner workings of Meta. noyb.eu/en/austrian-...

solving the calculation debate by jailbreaking the chatbot

unbeknownst to ourselves, we are all living in Philip K. Dick's head.

the original is a list for babies. here's a real one 1 CUNEIFORM 2 ORACLE BONES 3 THE SPIRIT TALKERS 4 OLD JEB AND HIS WAYS 5 DR MORTEN'S ETHERIC TRANSMORGIFIER 6 THE DARK ARTS OF THESSALY 7 EROTIC IVORY CARVINGS 8 SONGS, SONGS OF THE VERY DEEP 9 HAEMOMANCY 10 'THEM IN THE HILLS'

"Classy" is the one adjective that has never been used to describe Donald Trump" www.programmablemutter.com/p/classy-is-...

Good analysis from @himself.bsky.social as usual: open.substack.com/pub/programm...

I think of AI and LLMs as a new kind of archival access in the sense of @himself.bsky.social and @alisongopnik.bsky.socials take of AI as cultural technology www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

"There is a famous Mario Cuomo dictum that a politician should campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Donald Trump both campaigns and governs in the language of shitposts. His great tragedy is that this is all that he is capable of doing." www.programmablemutter.com/p/classy-is-...

New, from me: Recently Marc Dunkelman wrote "What the Left Could Learn From Trump’s Brutal Efficiency" in the Times. I respond here, not to dunk on Dunkelman, but because it represents a mistaken view of governance that progressives are tempted to embrace. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/democrats-...

It sounds like the most deranged Latin American caricature of yankee imperialism come to life. It would be comical if it weren’t serious.

this by @himself.bsky.social is good www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

My review for @lawfaremedia.org www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

My version of this is that the one adjective no-one has ever applied to Donald Trump is "classy." That is strength and weakness both.