Glad to say that BBS is now accepting commentary proposal our target article "Egalitarianism is Not Equality". The deadline is the 27th of January. If you are interested in submitting a commentary, please feel free to shoot me a message for instructions.

Wait, one third of British people DO use a library every year? Awesome article, via @fionaccharles.bsky.social

What a loss - her work has been deeply informative.

In case you are looking for some kind of strength from Europe, this story probably matters. www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-at... No one wants to be here, but we found out where we were in January 2025 so. (and quite a bunch of us knew for years the chance of being here was big and important)

Applications for our upcoming Summer School have been extended until January 15! 🤝 Apply now: www.tse-fr.eu/toulouse-sum... @olkcampbell.bsky.social @maximederex.bsky.social @lfitouchi.bsky.social @cmolho.bsky.social @ccavaille.bsky.social

NEW RECORD: Africa imports 2GW of solar panels for the first time in a month. And this is happening EVERYWHERE in Africa...

Come influence from the EU! SDU is in the middle of nowhere but (otherwise?) awesome. Extremely high quality of life in Denmark, great for families! Tho fiendishly hard language despite a relatively strong relationship to English. It's like the French of Scandinavian – a lot doesn't get pronounced.

Remember… this stuff doesn't have to be petulance. The more insane or petty his (apparent) motivations, the more he projects power, in fact, demonstrates it.

Launching "The Small Signal" – a Substack newsletter on human-scale digital economies. Each week: 2-3 signals (new research, policies, etc) that tell us something deeper about decentralizing tech power. Issue #1 this afternoon, then weekly Fridays. Subscripe: anselmkuesters.substack.com/subscribe

In case you are looking for some kind of strength from Europe, this story probably matters. www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-at... No one wants to be here, but we found out where we were in January 2025 so. (and quite a bunch of us knew for years the chance of being here was big and important)

Trump was crystal clear about his intentions to exploit Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. But exactly what does that entail — and are U.S. oil companies even interested? The smartest piece you’ll read on the subject (while 2/3 of media ignores the whole “oil thing” altogether) from @mollytaft.com

Under the latest plans, immigrants could wait 15, 20, and even 30 years to obtain citizenship. This will effect everyone from refugees, to healthcare workers, to parents of British citizens, and many more. Sign this petition to stop this change.

Look at this CFP for a Topical Collection of Synthese: link.springer.com/journal/1122... Deadline: July,31, 2026

It's amazing how much knowledge we all have at our fingertips (all of us with internet, toilets etc so no more than half of us, but still.) Great responsibility.

#giftarticle #technologyEthics #digitalgovernance #aiethics #cybersecurity #transnationalutilities New in the 1990s, GPS was only cool and easy to use, now EVERYONE is leaning on something not particularly robust or well defended. https://wapo.st/44QnrmS

Best thing I’ve read this morning, from a human rights lawyer in Mexico. Translation is in the ALT-text.

So over the past year while the US government was fingerpointing/complaining about China's Volt Typhoon actors being inside US grid networks doing pre-positioning for an attack on Taiwan, the US Cyber Command was inside Venezuela's grid networks pre-positioning for an attack on Venezuela?

Worth going to see several other recent Conway RTs, including 2 from Kamala Harris. via @mattgraham.bsky.social

“Venezuela has become the laboratory for the new US security strategy. It is an experiment based on the economic control that the United States exerts over the region.” From the @wired en Espanol team, who’ll be covering this story from the region.

In other news, a fire, suspected be to caused by an act of sabotage has taken out power to around 45,000 homes in Berlin, and the damage is so extensive/difficult to repair, that the blackout will continue for almost a week. www.rbb24.de/panorama/bei...

apropos today's news

There's too much to read in the world to bother with arxiv drafts, but Gill Pratt on FB ( @gillpratt here?) just (re)posted arxiv.org/abs/2512.24497 so it might be important. ( @yann-lecun.bsky.social is an author, too.)

Not the biggest news, but I did my annual update of my social media policy joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2024/10/guid... Note in particular – @joinmastodon.org.web.brid.gy 's edit policy allows you to EDIT a toot if you learn something from its replies, & anyone who's interacted with it gets notified!

A defining moment for Europe. If it endorses/fails to condemn this flagrant breach of international law, it will have surrendered its core justification for opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Great reminder – it's not really about Trump. Via @bwyble.bsky.social

Just in case you need a visual: xkcd.com/1379/

I will buy 10 copies of this as a 45, AND a record player, if someone records it. (I need a record player anyway, but also a surface to put it on.)

We should get Monika Sus on bluesky. And also, the centre for digital governance of course :-) @hertieschool.bsky.social @hertiesecurity.bsky.social

Here’s some good news on your timeline.

Personally I prefer the Hobbesian definition of war, because it also encompasses non-kinetic and grey zone operations.

Latest preprint where I analyze a simple coevolutionary model of somatic mutation rate and fitness lifespan. Evolution is mediated by disease, notably cancers. The model can explain the non-linear empirical relationship between somatic mutation and lifespan, and more. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I love these guys, had a very cute picture of them on my desktop for years. IMO they map to human "other regarding tendencies." So note: there are contexts where evolutionary dynamics favour cooperation / public goods building, as well as ones that favour competition, and just ignoring others.

He does not approve…

We can use the date when Justin Sun funded Trump's crypto scam as the date (November 25, 2024) after which all Trump actions must be reversed.

Under Irish law Musk can be jailed for 12 months for being a director of a company distributing CSAM. Section 9 of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998. 'X' is a company registered in Ireland.

So much stupid stuff happens when your institutions are motivated by the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is getting something they don't deserve.

"Economic shocks may be more likely to impact human capital investments and mobility decisions of young workers, family formation & fertility decisions of midcareer, & labor force exit & retirement decisions of older. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.... cc or via @vheddesheimer.bsky.social 1/2

Me explaining how Musk broke Grok that one time #2025

Some progress in #AIEthics – just ran into the first below from January 2021 in some of my project notes; the second is from today. (Der is masculine & die is feminine in German; yes, I misspelt inoculate 5 years ago, es tut mir leid!) Though note the doctor's gender leaks to the patient both times.

You laugh, but this was literally the headlines after the #brexit ADVISORY referendum "the haters were wrong" because it took a while for the markets to tank, and then the UK wasn't actually out of the EU and fully damaging its economy until 2021.

Just published my annual predictions update, tracking from Jan 1st 2018, with new commentary and new ten year predictions. It is long. rodneybrooks.com/predictions-...

Here's my enormous round-up of everything we learned about LLMs in 2025 - the third in my annual series of reviews of the past twelve months https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/31/the-year-in-llms/ This year it's divided into 26 sections! This is the table of contents

this is indeed a really good piece, and gets at some of the logic of supply chains that state-focused accounts like weaponized interdependence can easily overlook.

2. This is the tricky part--What are you *not* going to do, so that you can write? While I was writing my 2nd book, I didn't cook a single dinner. I am a slow email replier. I write very few grants and admit few students. Writing more usually requires tolerating being worse at other things.

Oh look, a machine for false advertising designed to defeat any class treatment even without arbitration clauses!

They're going to *throw out* one-of-a-kind NASA archives?! Not even a year since the Inauguration & we're already at the 2nd-time-as-farce version of the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

In one move, Cloudflare gave publishers back something they’ve been desperately trying to reclaim in the age of AI: control, consent, and compensation. But it also reminds us that consent isn’t enough: the stewards of that consent need accountability, writes Courtney C. Radsch.