It’s the September round of @alcs.co.uk payments - always a welcome email to get, and enough for a little autumn treat. Authors, I cannot stress how it’s something you should definitely sign up to!

And all at once, summer collapsed into fall. —Oscar Wilde

AI medical tools downplay symptoms in women and ethnic minorities on.ft.com/4n8Y3Q2

Trail cam spots chihuahua with pack of coyotes… Little did anyone realize, he was their leader

Idiocracy is fundamentally a movie in soft praise of eugenics but holy fuck if it didn't predict some of these really shitty values, behaviors, and aesthetics.

in this week's newsletter! if you would like to know how my trip to Oslo went, please know I've titled the piece "notes on a Scandisaster": youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/continenta... [free to read!]

AI is interesting to me because it has mainstreamed “what does it mean to be human” and “what is the value of creativity and labor?” Unfortunately it’s also mainstreamed a lot of really dumb responses to those questions

UK gender pay gap underestimated for two decades due to data collection anomalies. Gender discrimination is institutionalized. Women lose most when govts impose real cuts in public sector pay, benefits; two-child benefit cap; don't value carers. Despite laws equality is a long way off.

This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.

“If you want to actually do something... leave the Refugee Convention… leave the ECHR… abolish the Human Rights Act” "That's not a country that I'd feel very comfortable about" Poppy Coburn and Shami Chakrabarti clash over human rights and the UK asylum system. #Newsnight

Palestine Action co-founder accuses ministers of making defamatory claims www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Crime rates in all three cities have gone down, and in Baltimore at astounding levels, in part by treating crime as a public health crisis, rather than a "need more cops" crisis. popular.info/p/the-secret...

Somebody on LinkedIn said what we're all thinking.

This is an incredible tweet for someone of his influence to make, and even more so as a direct question to UEFA

on.ft.com/4mg4KPO Inside the AI race: can data centres ever truly be green?

Nothing she posted was a lie, but cops arrested her because she hurt one of their boys fee fees by telling the truth.

Israeli public figures call for ‘crippling sanctions’ on Israel over Gaza starvation www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

We don't have to push children into poverty. We don't have to make life harder for the sick and disabled. We don't have to aid and abet genocide. For too long, people have been denied a real political choice. Not anymore. Join us at yourparty.uk

In response to Mercedes's decision to incorporate Microsoft Teams, and in response to BMW that has taken the initiative to integrate JIRA into its infotainment system. AUDI is integrating ZOTERO/ @altmetric.com into its infotainement system.

We have spent millions in taxpayer dollars to send this sad old fool to Europe and give him an opportunity to make an ass of himself. Which he immediately did.

What out of touch sounds like

My judgement is this: You can’t automate your way out of the responsibility for knowing and understanding how the world works

🚨 RIGHT NOW opposite Labour Party HQ in London. We’ve turned their street into Jabaliya camp in Gaza. A genocide is happening, but the Labour government is supplying weapons, intelligence and diplomatic cover to the perpetrator. Protesting this is not terrorism.

- Plato

I actually can and will judge people who are using environmentally devastating technology built on mass theft to create a fictional partner who does nothing but tell how great they are.

This "vibe coding" shit'll get your database deleted. No but seriously stop relying on "generative AI". Its current formulation is not trustworthy, and, paradoxically, the more you trust it, the less incentive they have to test it, and the less trustworthy it'll be. Just fucking Stop it.

In 1290, Edward I issued an edict expelling all Jews from England, becoming the first European state in history to do so. The law was issued on the ninth of Ab, just to be an extra asshole about it, and land and property were forfeited to the crown. judeo-christian, my ass

As CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman wants everyone to have their own AI assistant. But MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle warns about forming emotional connections with AI. This is part 2 of TED Radio Hour's "Prophets of Technology," featuring conversations with those crafting our digital world.

i've had enough signs in my lifetime to stop saving for retirement. it's time to buy a boat.

Immigrants, under this regime, are more frequently targeted for biometric data collection because they are mostly powerless politically, unable to resist being cast as test subjects in surveillance programs that, once embedded, rarely retain their original scope.

UK tech minister negotiated nothing with Google. He may get even less than that

Well, well... MEP claims the @ec.europa.eu gave the green light to Greece for suspending the right to asylum. If true, where is the written proof? And can @magnusbrunner.bsky.social @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu @michaelmcgratheu.bsky.social explain the legal basis? www.ekathimerini.com/politics/127...

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

Decades of mechanistic talk about university degrees as if they were bundles of 'skills' and 'prep' are about to be proved completely wrong (obviously). Want to get a real boost? Do History or English.

The life swap dream – or a marketing gimmick? The Italian towns selling houses for €1 www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

now that i think of it, with claude, grok and chatgpt, they basically stopped making them woman-coded like siri as soon as they wanted them to act like topic based authorities

We are calling on the UK Government to not introduce a levy on higher education provider income from international students, reduce visa costs to attract global talent, and to review higher education funding to create a sustainable model www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/58...

“Instead of recidivism algorithms, imagine developing something that helps people rehabilitate into society when they come out of prison. But you can’t make money from that, so we don’t have such tools.“ thebulletin.org/2025/07/ai-f...

NO. AI. FOR. WAR. CRIMES!!!

a couple of hours before my keynote, I went through an intense negotiation with the organisers (for over a hour) where we went through my slides and had to remove anything that mentions 'Palestine' 'Israel' and replace 'genocide' with 'war crimes' 1/

Save the Date: #UKAIS2026 will be held in the University of Sheffield on the 9th/10th of April 2026. This years theme is "Make the world a better place: The Future of Intelligent Technology". The call for papers and track descriptions with more details to follow at: www.ukais.org/2026-confere...

"It is shocking to see a government minister grabbing the steering wheel of a supposedly autonomous research institute,” says @scurry.bsky.social. Turing directive creates ‘new world’ in research policy: www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-p...

Instead of using your tax dollars to actually provide help and prevention, we used them to create a god office that will pray for you.

Tony Blair’s staff took part in ‘Gaza Riviera’ project with BCG https://on.ft.com/40Akc0s

“No one knows what will come to replace the international system that is currently collapsing around us, but any political system that prioritizes punishing those who protest genocide rather than stopping the killing has clearly exhausted itself.”