Quite the chart

She spent four years at Meta & more than seven at Palantir, & became concerned about OpenAI’s ethics! A real CV of yikes!

Asking for a PHD student...what is some useful secondary literature on Hobbes to prepare teaching Leviathan. Self-nominations fine.

Thousands laid off across the UK by senior university management. Management who keep getting richer & who never suffer insecurity, who never have to worry about their mortgages or about finding another job. Management who so often got their own jobs because they went to the right private school.

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

No, and I cannot say this firmly enough, they do not. Mucking about with a chatbot raises precisely zero questions about selfhood. I swear to god the tech-bros have discovered a chemical that makes journalists super credulous & put it in the water coolers at their offices.

Buy my book. Also some other people’s books. Just buy books, OK? Books are good.

I can’t believe I’ve managed two Samuel Johnson-related posts today! From pistachio milk to metaphysics.

”I refute it thus!”

He’s not doing his reputation as an incredibly horrible man who constantly punches down on the vulnerable any favours. The richest man in the UK, who hides his wealth abroad so he doesn’t have to support his fellow citizens, complaining about foreigners. Better the immigrants than Ratcliffe.

After too much time reading & thinking about Nussbaum's capabilities approach I've decided I'm just annoyed. I'm developing a theory of justice as beneficence. It feels like I'm on the same page as Nussbaum, because she talks about the benevolence - the attitude that corresponds to the principle.

I am really struggling with my work's internal newsletter. We get emailed regular stories about all the great things going on - effectively marketing the university to its employees. It just feels so strange during an extended period of mass redundancies & poisonous industrial relations.

Are the staff at Palanatir having doubts about the motives of a guy who memorised & the speeches of a famous fascist? Or the evangelical techno-authoritarian alongside him? Or the chap who thinks hanging people is manly. Did the name of the company really give them no clue as to what it was about?

A lot of food politics makes more sense if you understand it as an ongoing set of battles between incumbent and emergent interest groups trying to shape the market to their advantage.

The meaning of words is to be decided not by their use, usefulness, or history, but by their commercial benefit to the most powerful lobby groups. I have a recipe for almond milk in a cookbook from 1226. It has been used as a term in English for hundreds of years. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

I would like, just for a little bit, not to constantly feel like I'm just writing what Martha Nussbaum has written, but in more detail.

This, as my recent report shows, is because Reform supporters are more likely to live in areas where the high street is run down.

The NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program is thrilled to be hosting an event on how cities can manage human-wildlife conflict! Join us for a preview of our upcoming report and discussion with Colin Jerolmack and Adalene Minelli. Feb 23, 4pm ET, followed by a reception. sites.google.com/nyu.edu/wild...

The Henry Jackson Society supposedly exists to promote: 'rule of law, liberal democracy, civil rights, environmental responsibility & the market economy'. Which makes their consistent support of authoritarians against liberals strange.

I’m sorry, a guy who sang Hitler Youth songs, goose-stepped through a village throwing Seig Heil‘s, said ’Hitler was right’ & bullied Jews with antisemitic hate, does not get to launch a ‘Jewish alliance’. The affront of this man.

Excited to be joining Bluesky! 👋 We’re the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience, an interdisciplinary research centre at LSE. Our work is guided by ethical moonshots - ambitious, long‑term goals aimed at restoring a harmonious relationship between humans and other species. 🌐 lse.ac.uk/sentience

Six (more) historians in my department have taken (been pressured into) voluntary redundancy. Since we cross teach, supervise, & tutor, politics staff now have more work to do. The solution? Pressure staff (those with the biggest caring & teaching commitments) to move onto teaching only contracts.

'secret'

Why are vegans, drivers of electric vehicles, peaceniks etc hated so much by reactionaries? Because their mere existence is a (justified) criticism of the behaviour of those who would prefer just to carry on unthinkingly.

Ange out. Levy out. Frank out. Reminds me of a modification of that Brecht quip: that it would be easier, next time, just to get rid of the supporters. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

One of the teams at work has been asking for more staff for *ages*. Instead of granting their request, they were given an extra Copilot licence and a list of prompts.

I agree with this. It’s really quite distinctive from my perspective. And I’m not sure it goes the other way. France and Gaullism (defined broadly) in particular are framed as the incorrect / unhelpful opposites of what might be consider ‘traditional’ UK foreign policy and economic norms.

This is really, really bad - a public university turning to a private university provider for cash because the government won't fund the sector.

Nick Ferrari on LBC is running a story about sexual crimes committed by asylum seekers. He spends *vastly* more time talking about asylum seekers committing these crimes than he does on white British people who do. The reason for this is because it’s not the sexual assault he cares about.

Martin Wolf absolutely on the money here. Declining fertility rates are about structural changes in society- more equal opportunities. Reform and voices on the right want to turn back the clock on women's opportunity. Progressives should give it short shrift. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Farage has contributed to a parliamentary debate 34 times since his election. He's voted 161 times. By comparison (contributions/votes): Ed Davey: 53/195; Ellie Chowns (Grn): 230/342; Stephen Flynn (SNP): 76/110; Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid): 167/229.

ICYMI: Who Makes the Far Right? @booklearning.bsky.social and I used membership application forms for the National Front of Australia (secretly copied by ASIO in 1980/1) to analyse who supported the far right in Australia in 1970s-80s. Open access article! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Sora 2 apparently cost something like $5 billion to run every year and so far made OpenAI around $1.4 million.

“I have serious questions about the…usefulness of the REF,” Ivison also said, pointing to the fact that Australia scrapped its equivalent programme after a 2020 review'. Such a role model for UK HE, Australian HE. So very flourishing. 1/2

That has to be it for Frank. I don’t think I blame him for the mess, but I‘d be astonished if the owners don’t sack him given circumstances.

I parsed through some of the emails in the Epstein files, and it’s very clear that Epstein was a eugenicist weirdo. Something he very much had in common with the billionaire class à la Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Donald Trump. New for @motherjones.com. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Is this a lot? It sounds like a lot...

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

The big consciousness conference in Tucson/Arizona is cancelled. Philosophy & Cognitive Science are fields long known to be largely inside-handshake dudebro clubs, something which I said out loud (it's not that they'd hired me), and now revealed to be disproportionally present in the Epstein files.

If I explode from pent-up rage tonight, let it be known that it was because Glenn Hoddle was commentating on the Spurs match. I don’t know that there’s anyone on any profession that’s worse at their job. He’s the Cecilia Giménez of football commentary.

The Real Cost of the UK’s ‘Free AI Training for All’ is Democracy via @elinorcarmi.bsky.social and co. Thank you for writing this. www.techpolicy.press/the-real-cos...

Hello. Former Index On Censorship staffer here. To be very clear, having your request to speak at a society of which you are not a member does not count, in any sense whatsoever, as censorship. nation.cymru/news/uproar-...

Yes, if I have a choice of books I can assign to my students I use the author‘s character to inform my decision-making. If I think someone’s a terrible person, I’m unlikely to direct our library budget to earning them royalty payments.

No-one seems to have noticed, but many of the core developments in the Mandelson/Epstein story these last few days have been broken on this website. @pickardje.bsky.social and @petergeoghegan.bsky.social are both posting each breaking development on BlueSky, not X.

These jokers need to have their bluff called: let them do their audit with an LLM and see how much it ends up costing them.

Does she really work from home though, or is she paid to do as Nigel does - absolutely nothing. Pretty shaky ground for a man who is famous for never turning up to Parliament or his constituency to occupy.

Off-the-charts corruption. Billions. www.forbes.com/sites/zachev...

just a fucking weird statement on it's face but also highlights how filthy rich and completely out of touch trump's whole cabinet is. a private boat for a family vacation? stopping by a billionaire's island for lunch? nannies, plural?? the epstein class, indeed.

Do you know who has footed a higher proportion of the bill for the immigration system & contributed more to the tax system than the average Brit? Yup, it's migrants. The immigration system is definitely unfair, but only to migrants. Shabana Mahmood is a disgrace.