No system beats First Past the Post for creating scenarios in which people inadvertently help their opponents. It's ideal if you want to strongly disincentivise talented, morally motivated people from going into politics (something Britain has successfully done for centuries).

@bexbookaholic.bsky.social Are you aware of this corner of Bloomsbury?

As promised, one aspect of what I do every day this week. I also work on 'gender mainstreaming' which is basically creating better places which are more gender equal. The great thing about this is that great examples of good practice already exist in Europe so I get to be positive.

‪It has a name now 😜 Many thanks to Ken for agreeing to put his good name to my...artwork. The image is in the public domain (CC 0), but citations to the linked documents are warmly welcomed. ✅ zenodo.org/records/1808... ✅ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24452418/

those who predicted authoritarianism were both dismissed, & deeply misunderstood, by the media my latest for @newrepublic.com newrepublic.com/article/2042...

I think the fundamental gap here is that non-creative people think that creative people make things for the end product, when in fact it’s the act of creation and not the end point that makes it worthwhile.

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I try to be the kind of person who remembers taken-for-granted privilege: things being able to turn on a tap and have clean drinking water. But then there are the days when all I can think is: enough, finish the damn bathroom already!

@dannybate.bsky.social I had to delay starting your book but, having at last done so, am already delighted by the Introduction: “there is nothing unmanageable about precise, academic vocabulary, so long as it’s introduced and explained properly.” (Never a better judged contraction.)

Because of course Henry had got the full roll call from Dulwich College and of course Trevor Phillips couldn’t even be bothered to read the stories he’s writing about

@nickeardleybbc.bsky.social Can you do anything about headline on your (good) piece on BBC website? Should surely be: “Government to ban profiteering by taxi companies”. This is weaponised clickbait sub-editing - implying asylum seekers choose to do this. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

On the Expressions of Sheep

@elhammahan.bsky.social Who is the GOAT? 🐐

I know astrology is bunk but… This bird is clearly a Virgo.

So we’re at the point of using a “divided country” to justify doing what one extreme of that division want. Like the time I heard David Wilshire saying Section 28 was needed to prevent “blood on the streets”. Like Powell seeing the Tiber foaming with blood. Point of no return for Labour, I fear.

We are a long way indeed from systematically collecting and acting on the voices of patients. Abolishing Healthwatch and handing responsibility for its work to ICBs (which are themselves undergoing massive reorganisation) is in my own view a very bad move indeed by DHSC.

I wanted to repost every part of this excellent thread. This one will do. Amen.

Qualitative research isn't a consolation prize for when we can't get 'real' numbers. It's a different way of knowing; one that captures complexity, context, and meaning that statistics alone cannot provide.

Well this is very delightful. Went to the bookshop to get this - which is already exciting - and on getting home realised it’s signed by @dannybate.bsky.social himself.

How excited am I? (Clue: more than very.)

All morning R4 has been saying that this will be the first time the head of the Church of England has prayed with the Pope *certainly* since the Reformation and *possibly* ever. I, meanwhile, am screaming at the radio and reaching for the green ink…

Yep

People are not average #532. This train seat has little wings to support your head which are in fact digging into my shoulders.

Is there anything Aristotle *didn't* already think about?

Andy Street is spot on. Birmingham is a brilliant city. Vibrant, diverse, wonderful.

I can think of plenty of places in the UK where Robert Jenrick could go and see *only* white faces; but I doubt he’d complain about a “lack of integration” if he went to them, or worry that that they were “not the kind of country he wants to live in”.

In discussion with a computer scientist from the University of Cambridge last night: Me: "you've described some of the things that AI is good at. How would you describe the category of things it's not good at? **pause** Him: "Anything where it has to be right".

This and this again. Just astonishing to watch parties on all sides of this debate blather on as if no one else in the world had even thought of ID.

Enough already. Those people Reform are gunning for - they’re not the abstract, faceless creatures of fever dreams. They’re your neighbours, your friends, the people who cure and care and carry for you.

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Ahead of the paperback publication of Helen Castor’s fabulous The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, I’ve reposted my interview with her from the top of the year.

“It’s not ‘free speech’ to platform people who are talking nonsense.” 👏

Today is publication day for this beautiful thing. I hope that it will tell a broad audience what historians of science have now long recognized: that alchemy was not a superstitious aberration but rather, an important phase in the history of ideas and of manufacturing.

On a beach halfway through this wonderful book and feeling a bit sad I studied philosophy at a university so diminished by Russellian narrow-mindedness that the better part of the discipline was simply omitted. Still, better late than never. Thanks to @emilyherring.bsky.social for opening my eyes.

My limited understanding is that LLMs are trained not to tell the truth but to *sound plausible*. Which suggests we should think of them not as Artificial Intelligence but as Artificial Oxbridge Graduates.

It's a very rough heuristic, but: if you're a government arresting Quakers, you might want to sit down and have a bit of a think.

Fond memories of Shropshire life. (Clickbait: check the story in the bottom left corner.)

When I think about the fact that huge amounts of money are being made by promoting addictions that destroy lives, the immediate question that springs to mind is not “Who should get all that money?”

when they close it all up, I do believe this will go down as the funniest video on the internet

Had never seen this before but… genius.

Belatedly full of praise for this by @wiringthebrain.bsky.social. Thorough, carefully argued, illuminating, thought-provoking. Even if you’re not convinced by the argument (I was) you’ll benefit from having to think through your counter-arguments! No more sloppy “but everything’s physics” arguments!

This appears to be completely absurd. (The new guidance, not the article about it.)

You don’t have to have had anything to do with HS2 to recognise this.

Seems to me that the process of applying for UK citizenship is designed to crush any inkling of loyalty an individual might feel towards their new home.

Thank you to reddit poster N1ghthood for articulating so succinctly the case against replacing skilled workers with LLMs: "Currently, the only way to reliably use LLMs is to know the answer to the question before you ask it." (which sort of undermines the entire business case)

To read and absorb: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Good to see this being recognized. I'd add that a further component of both scientific racism and eugenics is simplistic ideas about how genotype connects to phenotype. Which for some reason seems to be rarely discussed in this context.

Amen