Yeah this is unhinged behaviour, if someone did this to a relative I’d be pushing to have their contact cut off.

Dinner has survived the night…

Going to be cooking Xmas dinner for 11 people in one of these, and I’ll be honest there are some raised eyebrows.

Can't believe @mjrobbins.com's Bedfordshire supremacist views have cost us a listener.

It’s here! We were joined by @andrewhunterm.bsky.social, @stejormur.bsky.social and YouTuber CityEd for The Abundance Agenda Christmas Quiz! Go have a listen as it is super fun! www.abundancepod.com/p/the-abunda...

Go big or home

If we are banning cell phones for kids we need to be talking about banning chatbots for boomers www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...

Just seen the video of Ahmed al Ahmed tackling the gunman and BLOODY HELL, what a hero!

“People are not adults and should not be held to adult standards” is starting to feel like the endgame of 21st century American culture.

Still laughing at this. Cannot imagine a more self-discrediting argument for socialism than “under socialism, you should be able to gesture to your crotch, tell a customer to suck it and keep your job”.

BIG new episode of The Abundance Agenda! - Could Crossrail 2 be back on the menu? - Oxfordshire's rubbish mountain - And can new national "Lovelace" help Britain invent disruptive new technologies? Listen/subscribe wherever you get your pods! www.abundancepod.com/p/crossrail-...

Rodney Brooks (Roomba founder) has a good rule of thumb which is never to be lower down than a humanoid robot, and ideally be above them, because they are heavy and prone to falling over.

Basically every humanoid robot demo since the year dot has been some version of the "Look! The King is in full command of his faculties!!" playbook. Limited, heavily-scripted appearances with intense stage-management, dozens of frantic people behind the scenes and the inevitable bed-shitting moment.

They literally did, but apparently your reading comprehension is below that of ChatGPT.

The government can’t afford to clear up the gigantic waste mountain because it would have to pay millions of pounds to the government.

If the EA ever get round removing the waste they will have to pay £m in landfill tax to do so.

My latest, exploring the singular inability of the British state to deal with a gigantic pile of waste illegally dumped in the heart of Oxfordshire - and other piles like it. martinrobbins.substack.com/p/rubbish-mo...

My latest, exploring the singular inability of the British state to deal with a gigantic pile of waste illegally dumped in the heart of Oxfordshire - and other piles like it. martinrobbins.substack.com/p/rubbish-mo...

This by @mjrobbins.com is great. There's a pervasive sense across Britain that someone will tell you to Stop That if you start trying to fix things, so people daren't try. In many cases they've forgotten how to try. martinrobbins.substack.com/p/rubbish-mo...

It was interesting to read this after recently finishing “American Ground” by William Langewiesche, a book about how the World Trade Center site was cleared within a year of 9/11.

Omg I can’t believe they’re going to ruin Manhattan by putting a skyscraper on it.

Worth reading this one!

ICYMI, why the ‘rubbish mountain’ will likely be there for years.

And in a continuing experiment that many are calling 'ill-advised' and 'undignified' you can check out a short film accompanying the Substack post here. www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlIp...

Suffering from low blood-pressure? This excellent digest of the whole rage-inducing saga of the Kidlington Crudpile will keep it nice and high. 🤬 (With some great drone footage tho.)

My latest: in which I visit Oxfordshire's 'Rubbish Mountain', buy a Twirl in the country's most violent Sainsbury's, and explore the absolutely dismal response of the Environment Agency.

Good piece here from Martin on what the response to that fly tip tells us about Britain’s bureaucracy… …although the UK is such an unaccountable* bureaucracy that I’m not sure the last word is necessary 🤔 (* see also @dsquareddigest.bsky.social’s book The Unaccountability Machine!)

This is such a good piece from @mjrobbins.com. Am absolutely captivated by this story and how the hell it was allowed to happen. martinrobbins.substack.com/p/rubbish-mo...

Brilliant piece by @mjrobbins.com on the Oxfordshire rubbish dump - and what it says about the failure of state institutions and rising sense of lawlessness. martinrobbins.substack.com/p/rubbish-mo...

A brilliant, infuriating piece on the feckless Environment Agency and TVP which also introduced me to the risks of going to my local Sainsbury’s.

Another excellent and infuriating post and accompanying video from Martin, who has taken the Jag to Oxfordshire in search of Trash Mountain.

My latest: in which I visit Oxfordshire's 'Rubbish Mountain', buy a Twirl in the country's most violent Sainsbury's, and explore the absolutely dismal response of the Environment Agency.

I am once more asking what is the point of local government if they cannot even manage to protect a play park that has massive public support from three nimbys. What kind of democracy is this? capx.co/nimby-watch-...

Tensions rising already on The Rest is Science

I don’t know how many ways there are to say “Manchester’s economy is growing, so if we’re not going to do much proactive on infrastructure, can we at least not do stuff that’s actively damaging” www.theguardian.com/business/202...

A significant chunk of Britain’s problems can be summed up as ‘bureaucracy makes smart decisions based on flawless internal logic that is totally misaligned with the public’s user experience’

The language of NIMBYism is increasingly unhinged as well, especially on Facebook - talk of ‘blight’ ‘defiled’ ‘desecrated’ etc about… homes? Nice homes that families live in?

This nonsense is how radical YIMBYs are made. Objections to a new town on a former RAF base because it might impact the *view from a historic garden 2km away*. www.countrylife.co.uk/gardens/one-...

Again, I would advise people to go read the media from 50 years ago. Sure, there was absolutely an awkward stiffness that the death of deference got rid of and I prefer it but they talked to you like adults in a way that very few newspapers do today.

It's such a bizarre framing. Labour MPs think taking 450k kids out of poverty is putting the country first! That's why they wanted it to happen! It's not because they personally benefit.

I was expecting The Rest is Science to be bad because IMO the Goalhanger premise just doesn’t work for ‘science facts’ and ‘science’ isn’t a real subject; but holy crap what a festival of midwittery. (Of course it’ll do numbers.)

Every version of this story is some version of ‘well you couldn’t expect me to be able to afford to buy the house I currently own’ and yes that is the point welcome to the housing crisis.

You’d sort of understand it if it were politically or economically effective but it’s not even that, largely due to the lack of any positive vision or coherent set of values underscoring it that could be communicated.

Not since the Corn Laws have we had a government this committed to keeping food prices high.

No, Danny Kruger, humans aren’t pack animals. This isn’t what “pack animal” means

This does feel like a major crossing of the Rubicon – the world's best-funded and in many ways most powerful public health agency is now actively pushing disinformation. I know there's a *lot* going on to care about at the moment, but this one really is significant, and matters well beyond the US.

Home schooling is a disaster for the majority of children it is inflicted on. It’s recent rise in large part due to modern parenting techniques (particularly “playful parenting”) that basically make it impossible for parents to tell their children to ever do anything ever.

Said this a lot before, but there is no politician conveying any sense of what they think the country should look in 2040 or 2050, so no sense they are taking steps to get there.

At some point, for the love of God, will someone ANYONE at long last take the council funding crisis seriously?!? Because THIS is what will break down a society, not some poor soul escaping incredible dangers, arriving on our shores.