I tend to be cynical of Early Day Motions as having little impact. Not to bore people with complexities of Parliamentary proceess and secondary legislation, but this motion can. If you stand with trans and non-binary individuals please contact your MP to support 1/ edm.parliament.uk/early-day-mo...

You can vote for the hedgehog AND the fox. www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/he...

I think this article is good, and very much worth reading; but I think the critique of UK democracy is exagerrated or at least somewhat misdirected. Hopefully I can explain why I think this, without making lots of people mad at me... 🧵

Blair putting on full display what is in many ways his special ability - to lay out a political argument grounded in his own view of global trends (globalisation in the 2000s, tech in the 2020s). But… institute.global/insights/pol...

Stunned, appalled, shocked etc to see actual tax reform from a politician. This from Wes Streeting today. A thread on why capital gains tax is broken. It's too low AND too high. & why this is a good proposal.

As well as being disappointing, this actually opens the door to another candidate. Burnham starts off as far more popular than any alternative, but a candidate who was prepared to go hard on social liberalism could beat him.

Jews wanted a border and an army and a state in order to protect themselves, which is the same thing that Palestinians want, because like it or not *we live in a world of states.*

I will never stop talking about this: The lovely and profound "If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known" is from an NYT article about the author accidentally being CC'd on an email where his friends were making fun of him for renting goats.

I'm no fan of Burnham but I do find it odd how het up people are getting about the idea that the best Labour option for PM might not be a sitting MP. People do realise that being a big city mayor is a more important and relevant job than being an MP, right? Our system hasn't adapted to that reality.

A problem with a non-populist governing party trying to compete with populists by doing watered down versions of populist policies is that the people who actually want those policies think you are just failing to do them properly. So you end up disliked by the populists and the non-populists.

I wrote about how parasociality invades our political lives, from Trumpism to the KHive to Will Stancil discourse. I hope you’ll give it a read www.liberalcurrents.com/the-parasoci...

A convenient aspect of the Aegean is that you are basically always in sight of land

I see a lot of people dragging Jacobin today for celebrating the notoriously bloodthirsty Robespierre. Which is fair! But perhaps there was already a very subtle sign that they might be sympathetic to *checks notes* the most famous leader of the Jacobins.

I think that because the bullies and trolls in this case see themselves as "leftists" or "progressives" there is a reluctance to see their motivation as being of a piece with other notable perpetrators of online harassment. To oversimplify only a little: it's all just resentment...🧵

Honestly peoples' insane fixation on Stancil is just not ok. You're not going to get to prove your communal might by destroying a man. If you dislike him, don't associate with him. That's what mature adults do.

Shabana Mahmood’s special advisor threatened us with an injunction and two different lawsuits last night in an attempt to block this story linking her to a notorious vote rigging case. I think it’s strongly in the public interest. So here it is. www.birminghamdispatch.co.uk/exclusive-sh...

I feel like the 17th century English space program run by Oliver Cromwell's brother-in-law has the potential to become a history meme

This is an extraordinary, searing interview. In the context of the repulsive new Jackson biopic, it raises questions about why so many people just don’t want to know what he did. FWIW I saw Leaving Neverland before HBO pulled it, and I absolutely believe those kids.

What I always find striking about this is that it's not actually a difficult question to answer. It's an answer that frequently requires nuanced and complex responses appealing to historical or regional contexts, standards, etc, but it's not HARD to give that first answer, whatever it might be.

Clearly this whole process was run in an unacceptable way, and Starmer is ultimately responsible. Take the most plausible version of this story where Starmer is telling the truth. McSweeney persuades him, against FCDO advice (and his own instincts), to replace Pierce with Mandelson.

have British politics nerds properly absorbed the fact that Steve Hilton is going to be the Republican nominee for Governor of California? like, David Cameron's Steve Hilton. Steve "what if we didn't wear shoes to cabinet meetings" Hilton. anyway he's a full-on ethnofascist now. and also Californian

This is indeed really good. I don't so much trust Thornberry as a principled politician, but it doesn't matter if she is doing this for principled or strategic reasons. We should reward politicians for moving in the right direction. This is what we want from Labour.

The US government collected over $1 billion in immigration fees then refused to process the applications. No denials. No refunds. Just silence. This is the largest fee fraud in the history of the American immigration system. Here's what's happening. 🧵

Not to subtweet at all, but it is ok to find some aspects of a person, or their accomplishments, inspirational without thinking that the person is admirable overall or getting upset when they are criticised.

The Jewish News, which I am proud to work for as Deputy Editor, has published an editorial on this week's Iftar prayers in Trafalgar Square www.jewishnews.co.uk/voice-of-the...

"Stochastic Parrots" is wrong

This is a good thread, but I think the argument is not quite as powerful as it seems. It is true that if by consciousness we just mean stuff like getting pain, then sure, there's no good reason to think LLMs have it. But that isn't all we typically do have in mind when we think about consciousness.

This is correct. In the real world creating a progressive welfare state that is politically robust requires allowing some areas where policy is not progressive. So demanding that everything has to be as progressive as possible (all taxes and all spending) is ultimately counterproductive.

I couldn't work out why Reform call this an incendiary practice, since I think CofE people tend to approve of unused churches being converted into mosques etc. But then I realised they mean it literally: their supporters like to burn down mosques.

The US granted visas to Jews but only allowed 30,000 in from Germany a year. You had to wait for your number to come up. Meet Robert Smallbones. An unassuming British diplomat who 'hacked' this system so effectively (saving 48 THOUSAND Jews) the UK government kept his scheme secret for decades /1 🧵

Although there is an element of truth to the idea that Plan 2 is more progressive and the worse for it, surely the reason why the people affected hate it so much is that they are aware of the intergenerational injustice at play.

One of the things which "sensible" immigration sceptics often say is that GDP increases from net immigration are illusory because only GDP per person really matters. But this is actually false, given that fiscal sustainability depends on the ratio of debt to GDP.

Look how Chomsky provides a classic example of how narcissists with persecution complexes are prone to sympathise with (other) bad people who have done unrelated bad things.

There are no interests all white people share, that no not-white people have. There are no [not racist] examples of a British value or cultural practice or identity that must *by definition* exclude Black or Asian people 'Demography' or 'numbers' isn't a counter as there are no different interests

The point this post is making is essentially the positivist one that there can be morally bad laws, and so there can be behaviour that is obviously unobjectionable but nevertheless illegal. That is, of course, correct, which is why it is not so important whether Anne Frank was in Amsterdam legally.

Other folks have already noted much of this, but I think the MAGA 'theory of victory' here is: 1) DHS provocations trigger a riot or attack on agents which 2) Leads to widespread civil unrest in many 'blue' cities so that 3) Trump can invoke the insurrection act and send in the troops...

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out. As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class. Here's what happened:

I agree with the original post, though I don't think it is in any way obviously true, in part because it is not obvious how to imagine the absence of laws.

There's a part of me that thinks there must be many Republicans in Congress who hate their country's international standing being trashed by a President who openly threatens war because he has not been given a Nobel Peace Prize. And they could just...remove him. But they won't.

I see these stories about FIFA (now?!) being embarrassed about giving their "Peace Prize" to Trump, but really it looks like a more and more sensible decision. Their job is to run a football tournament and they don't have a reputation to ruin. Why not give a shiny bauble to the dangerous madman?

"We’ll update with news of resignations as and when it arrives." Chef's kiss.

On the Alaa El-Fattah case, it is possible to hold two thoughts together: (1) that he should not have been granted citizenship; and (2) that his citizenship should not be taken away now.

Look, as everyone knows, the only notable thing that the post-war Labour government ever did was pass the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, which lies at the root of all the country's problems. Were Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald NIMBYs? No, iirc correctly their motto was "Build, baby, build!"

The ****** chutzpah of Stephen Miller to ask for kindness from others. Kudos to the photographer for firing back rather than gaping in incredulity.

It's weird to present things as though the dangerousness of right-wing domination of Twitter doesn't depend on network effects.

This is a wrong and foolish decision by HMDT. Standing Together does very important work in trying to make space for peace-building. Whether or not you agree with their labelling of Israel's conduct in Gaza as genocidal, they should not be cut off in this way from mainstream Jewish organisations.

I saw this initially without reading the context, and was like cool cool cool, Liam thinks the self is an illusion, no biggie.

SKULL OF THOMAS AQUINAS: TAKE A LEFT NOW PRIEST: No, the GPS says we have to keep going— SKULL: I KNOW A SHORTCUT PRIEST: Do you remember the last ti— SKULL: FOR THOSE WITH FAITH, NO EVIDENCE IS NECESSARY; FOR THOSE WITHOUT IT, NO EVIDENCE WILL SUFFICE