This is a great thread… “We don't need to keep reinventing the wheel We need to do the process stuff consistently for more people in more places more of the time And better capacity in community heath, primary and social care” I see little/no capability anywhere for this sort of detailed work.

Wall Street’s biggest banks made more money financing green projects than they did from working with fossil fuel companies for a fourth straight year, even as they faced ongoing pressure to pull back from the business

This really makes me wonder about the degree to which people are able to judge interiority or sentience. Is there an opposite of solipsism? Automatically ascribing selfhood even where it doesn't exist? Just because something quacks like a duck, doesn't mean you can just accept that it's a duck.

An AI chatbot does not have PERSONHOOD. It has no agency. It cannot meaningfully apologise. It cannot speak on behalf of another. It cannot speak for itself; it has no self. Stop asking it for quotes for articles. Stop printing its quotes.

This is brilliant! Mojoptix 001: Digital Sundial www.mojoptix.com/2015/10/25/m...

“…failing to include batteries was a “missed opportunity … installing a battery at the point of construction is cheaper and less disruptive than retrofitting later”.” @janrosenow.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...

This report in Nature on the costs of competing for & administering scientific grants is shocking: "In other words, European taxpayers will have spent more on the funding process than on the funding itself, and the scientific ecosystem has been drained." www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

Before it was all on our phones “If we want to know if it is going to rain or whether the rain is likely to stop, we look up at the clouds” Artist: Robert Ayton The Weather (1962)

Thx @financialtimes.com and @foreignpolicy.com, @bentarnoff.com and I are also anticipating

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/c.... Please science community, find a new home for this collection! Gift Article.

This story reminds us that: a) Not everything has been digitized b) Not everything digitized is accessible to the public Also: What's happening at NASA is part of a broader trend of library closures in government & industry. (Even university libraries are moving away from physical books & journals)

Meta created ‘playbook’ to fend off pressure to crack down on scammers - www.reuters.com/investigatio...

“Red lines are often unhelpful when negotiating with a much bigger partner.” Unhelpful? More like complete nonsense. Free access to this article for first 5 readers… economist.com/leaders/2025...

Reading highlights and recommendations of 2025

The Trump administration is getting ready to close NASA's largest research library, at GSFC. The library holds tens of thousands of books and documents, many of them unique, not digitized or available elsewhere. Some will be warehoused, the rest destroyed. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/c...

As one would hope for from one of the world's finest vaccinology journals, Vaccine, this piece on RFK Jr by me & my boss, Chris Beyrer, went through tough & rigorous peer review, but made it in "The dismantling of the U.S. vaccine regulatory framework" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 7/n

Reading highlights and recommendations of 2025

A recent experiment confirms the quantum principle of complementarity, supporting Bohr’s view that certain particle properties cannot be measured simultaneously, as predicted by quantum mechanics. doi.org/qhc9

I dug behind the industry paywall to find out, what *are* the geniusly clever things that AI can predict will increase NHS A&E pressures? You’ll never guess - Flu - Winter - Icy weather - Friday nights - Christmas - New Years Eve Jeez, Dom’s old mates at Faculty AI (o yes) really saw Wes coming

This is interesting. Patriotism tests loom for big business economist.com/internationa... from The Economist

Hong Kong’s newest anti-scam technology is over-the-counter banking

“…initially built for use by Octopus but has since picked up a raft of other utilities clients, including EDF, E.On Next, TalkTalk and National Grid US. It now serves 70 million household and business accounts around the world.” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Problem Structuring : Methodology in Practice “Current perspectives on approaches to problem structuring in operational research and engineering and prospects for problem structuring methods applicable to a wide range of practice.” Book, e-book, pdf download… www.grounded.systems/2024/03/prob...

“…one can experience without thinking, but one cannot think without experiencing. Experiences come to the surface of being through the body, and not through the minds…” @annaciaunica.bsky.social aeon.co/essays/why-y...

Curious about how encryption works? This guide walks you through some of the, ahem, key concepts. ssd.eff.org/module/key-...

“Eurostar has cancelled all services on Tuesday due to "major disruption" in the Channel Tunnel It says there is a problem with the overhead power supply "and a subsequent failed Le Shuttle train"” www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9...

Poverty is a moral failing of those making and guiding policy choices, to be sure. It's a moral failing of billionaires. It's a moral failing of those who fail to stop corporations from asset-stripping the commons. It isn't a moral failing at all to be poor, or sick, or disabled.

What if thinking doesn’t begin in the brain, but in the ceaseless labour of our cells? Today’s essay rethinks the question of how we become minds, arguing that cognition begins not in the mind but in the collective processes that keep a body alive @annaciaunica.bsky.social

“…one can experience without thinking, but one cannot think without experiencing. Experiences come to the surface of being through the body, and not through the minds…” @annaciaunica.bsky.social aeon.co/essays/why-y...

The winner of the 2025 Enlightened Economist book prize (ie. my top choice among the econ and econ-adjacent books I read this past 12 months): www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.p...

Problem Structuring : Methodology in Practice “Current perspectives on approaches to problem structuring in operational research and engineering and prospects for problem structuring methods applicable to a wide range of practice.” Book, e-book, pdf download… www.grounded.systems/2024/03/prob...

Problem Structuring in Anti-Corruption Policies doi.org/10.1080/1099...

Group model building: problem structuring, policy simulation and decision support by D F Andersen & J A M Vennix & G P Richardson & E A J A Rouwette (2007)

Nice to see this oldie back in circulation. It's probably due an update with some kind of magic sprinkle of AI

The UK’s largest planned data centre—a project by US firm QTS—is understating its true water consumption by a factor of 50, says new analysis by @watershed-i.bsky.social & @aiarmsracebook.bsky.social @digiconomist.bsky.social No mistake; AI is a heavy, polluting industry. shorturl.at/KXQxJ

A wonderful collection of historic films on London - personal favourites on Thamesmead and The Changing Face of Camberwell (good on the Sceaux Gardens estate) ... alondoninheritance.com/london-histo...

“…installing power sources such as aeroderivative turbines and generators next to their data centres, developers can power the training and running of their artificial intelligence models without the immediate need for a grid connection.” www.ft.com/content/8deb...

📚 Now reading: Elgin, Catherine Z. (2017) True enough. Will be compiling some quotes and thoughts over time. Pin📍or bookmark this thread if you want to follow along. 1/🧵

“For both realist and radical critics, fighting the populist far right with Habermas’s rational liberalism is like taking a typewriter to a knife fight.” www.ft.com/content/9f89...

Some Habermas for the nearly new year, with a sharing link for 3 non-subscribers.

“You want to have some bright people work through scenarios of how [AMOC collapse] could interact & cascade across society... we’re only just starting to, with minimal trust foundation kind of financial support, no public money... which is a bit odd.” - Prof. Tim Lenton @gsiexeter.bsky.social

Just so I'm clear on this, computer memory has tripled in price because a bunch of it that hasn't been produced yet has been ordered to populate GPUs that aren't installed in data centers that aren't built yet in order to service a demand that doesn't exist to make profits that don't happen.

Put another way - perhaps the skills of planning, transforming and strategising have atrophied when the only response to dealing with complex problems is to let the markets decide?

Don’t you think that the ideas of planning and transforming in an organisation context, with all their inherent complexities, are anathema to a political class that can only think in terms of markets?

When I did appraisals I’d ask people: what do you want to have achieved in three years time and what are you planning to do next year to make it more likely to happen? Thinking now, we also ought to plan this way about politics.

Eat them? Why couldn’t this be a cheap source of food? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

'When you ask an AI model to write you a joke or generate a video of a puppy, that query comes with a small but measurable energy toll and an associated amount of emissions spewed into the atmosphere.' www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

Trying out different social platforms? Be sure to follow EFF so you see the latest digital rights updates wherever you go: www.eff.org/pages/where...