Great piece by @georginaq.bsky.social on the cottage industry that's grown up around UK universities, which are paying agents to recruit international students for them www.ft.com/content/3f49...

A cool use of AI in newsgathering, this. US companies are talking more and more about the risks rather than the benefits of AI in their SEC filings (while still being super-optimistic in earnings calls). By @melissahei.bsky.social @chriscook.news & @claradoodle.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/e93e...

Cool cool, all sounds very normal in a very normal competitive market-based economy www.ft.com/content/be8d...

I don’t know if it’s the tone or the frequency of these messages from Microsoft, but whenever they pop up I hear Regina George in my head saying “stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen”

Why do some names get "second winds" like Sarah in the 80s? Why are the most popular names today waaay less popular than the most popular names of the past? I "fell into the onomastic rabbit hole" (as one academic researcher I spoke to so charmingly put it) www.ft.com/content/f929...

Yeah good luck with that. Humans are hard-wired to anthropomorphise, and kids especially. My kid is friends with a pair of chopsticks. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Check out this scatterplot of health spending per capita (x axis) & life expectancy (y axis) in OECD countries (lines = averages). The United States sits alone in the bottom right area due to its very high spending rate and below-average life expectancy. More www.oecd.org/en/publicati... 🧪

A reminder of what Mandelson said to the FT's questions about Epstein in February this year

Very cool sentiment analysis using FT articles by @joelsuss.ft.com. Also brings home how precisely I missed the Good Times. www.ft.com/content/9a99...

On time and on budget? Whaaat? Make this man prime minister immediately www.ft.com/content/639a...

Oh man, why did Apple go for "thinner" when all I want is "smaller"? My iPhone mini isn't going to last forever... www.ft.com/content/07ff...

Argh, not now, Atlantic meridional overturning circulation tipping point... www.theguardian.com/environment/...

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

I'm a bit shocked by this quote from Acas's chief executive. The work Acas does is about procedural justice as much as anything else: giving both parties a chance to feel heard, & negotiated with. www.ft.com/content/7d98...

When AI meets subtitles… (Amazon Prime - I assume AI, since no human professional would have hallucinated this!)

This piece by @jemima.bsky.social is so damn good. If you read nothing else all weekend, read this - trust me! www.ft.com/content/0e24...

What if you took dynamic prices - algorithms that change prices in real-time based on supply, demand, and other factors - but applied it to people's wages? This is not a hypothetical. It's the latest development in the gig economy. www.ft.com/content/c10d...

Wanna see a crazy chart? Of course you do. Spending on constructing datacenters and manufacturing facilities for computers & electronic products in the US now exceeds the entire retail and wholesale industry and almost as much as the rest of the office and manufacturing sectors combined.

Really interesting piece by Patti Waldmeir about fireflies. Sadly, we don't have them in the UK (that I know of?) but I used to love watching them on humid summer nights when I lived in DC. www.ft.com/content/c4f2...

If you’re looking for a murder mystery thriller set in the near future with a tech/AI twist (and who isn’t!) I can highly recommend this new novel by my friend @salmanshaheen.bsky.social. I just tore through it on holiday - a definite page-turner. Available to pre-order now! amzn.eu/d/gUlh3Kr

One of those headlines that make you wonder if you're having a stroke

FT Editorial: "Unless the Israeli government agrees to an immediate end to the war and a surge of aid into Gaza, western countries should be sanctioning Netanyahu and his government." www.ft.com/content/69d5...

Welcome to FT Edit! When the news is overwhelming, we bring you eight stories a day, chosen by editors, offering clarity, fresh perspectives, insight and inspiration — plus some extra treats! Explore more at www.ft.com/ftedit or, if you're reading on iOS, find us on the FT app: on.ft.com/44SHfGA

I've now written a piece about why the internet hates my apostrophe, which you can read here: www.ft.com/content/48d4... Huge thanks to everyone who replied to me about it!

It’s almost too perfect that the billboard behind these two confused Waymos says STOP HIRING HUMANS

Hard to express how annoying this is - surely after 30 years of the internet, people who make online forms should have figured out that some people’s names (as recorded in their passports) do have special characters?? (Solidarity with my fellow apostrophe owners!)

Wow, 327% you say?! Spurious precision - always a red flag

Great piece by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com on why Europe needs to get serious about air-con www.ft.com/content/50f6...

This is an excellent essay by @pilitaclark.bsky.social about the links between climate change, property values, insurance and the financial system www.ft.com/content/9e5d...

The loud drumbeat that companies should "embrace AI now or be left behind" has more in common with high-pressure sales techniques than biz strategy. And that's fine - tech firms have something to sell. But the rest of us needn’t confuse it with anything more profound. www.ft.com/content/4688...

Hmm. Allowing a big tech company to scan your eyeball definitely sounds like a way to preserve your anonymity... (from this v interesting piece on LLMs and Reddit by @danielthomasldn.bsky.social)

There's something very...visceral about the idea of Anthropic ripping books from their bindings and feeding them to the machine. Also makes me wonder: who did this physical ripping and chopping work for millions of books? Where do they live? how much were they paid?

Amazing pics in this piece by our chief photographer Charlie Bibby about all the people who work in St Paul's cathedral www.ft.com/content/4d19...

Why is their table so big?? What a waste of space...

Oh man, ChatGPT doesn't want to do my tedious manual task for me because it will be too tedious and time-consuming. Suggesting I do it instead. I feel like this isn't what I was promised??!

Martin Wolf going hard on the chart title on.ft.com/4636MO1

Hell of a chart, this, from @financialtimes.com. Spot the JCPOA. on.ft.com/4kSuQYO

No, sorry. If you're a historian, don't outsource the reading of the sources to an LLM. Who knows what amazong ideas your would have had, insights you might have gained, which you might bring to bear later in the project, if you'd actually read them?

Oh good, a soundproof screaming chamber has appeared at work

Not content with bringing back child labour, Florida is now bringing in FOUR YEAR non-compete clauses. None of this is going to be good for human capital/growth in the long-term, even if it pleases some employers in the short-term. www.ft.com/content/0c9e...

Although everyone is talking about it and worrying about it, the labour market is telling us there's no sign of AI hitting demand for junior lawyers yet... www.ft.com/content/ff54...

Calling #ukemplaw experts: whatever happened to the UK government's announcement in 2023 it would ban non-competes lasting longer than 3 months? Did it fall by the wayside/did Labour not take it up post-election?

Some interesting hype-busting experiments from Apple on the latest Large Reasoning Models... ml-site.cdn-apple.com/papers/the-i...

Stop believing that your brain peaked in your 20s... it's not true but it might become a self-fulfilling prophecy if you stop challenging it www.ft.com/content/5d47...

Why yes, Meta AI, I DO want to know more about abandoned garden brooms #nobodywantsthis

It’s publication day. Available from wherever you prefer to buy your books/ebooks/audiobooks.

My column this week is about my adventures in "vibe coding", plus a defence of the Luddites, who just didn't want to be undercut by "vibe knitters". www.ft.com/content/f4f3...

This piece also introduced me to this term: "tianwei nance" = the dark art of guessing what one’s superiors want to happen. I reckon that exists in most workplaces in the world!

There was a lovely piece in the weekend FT about Hu Anyan, a warehouse worker & courier in China who has emerged as one of the country's new literary talents. www.ft.com/content/0350...

The UN's humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, says 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in the next 48 hours if more aid doesn't reach them www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cq...