It’s unusual to see an organisation see Conquest’s second law - that you can explain organisations’ behaviour by assuming they are controlled by their enemies - embraced so enthusiastically and literally

RED ALERT: the University of Nottingham is threatening to close its Department of American Studies, putting all staff at risk of redundancy, and ending any American specialist knowledge in the Faculty of Arts. Sign the petition here to save jobs: www.change.org/p/save-ameri...

Now out on First View!

NEW | Public Services Performance 2025 The government has high ambitions for public services. But with patchy progress, it needs to get a grip to make a success of its reforms. Read the final instalment our our annual stocktake of nine key services www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

Woop! I've got a new article out with @modamhist.bsky.social! "Soot, Palm Trees, and Zinc: The Port System of the Greater Caribbean, U.S. Empire, and the Geopolitics of Disgust" - open access on First View www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

"Tech encourages the instrumentalization of emotional life, by which I mean that our feelings seem real only if they translate into actions that help us achieve specific goals." How technology is slowly killing our humanity... www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/o...

SUPERB and angrily unvarnished response, by former BBC chairman, Lord Patten. "I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that the BBC is only any good, if it reflects the prejudice of the last person who shouted at it." ~AA

“authors & publishers who filed a lawsuit against the Sam Altman-led firm have secured access to internal Slack messages… discussing the mass deletion of a pirated books dataset… A NY district court ordered OpenAI to hand over the communications regarding data deletion” futurism.com/artificial-i...

I bet you didn't know what you needed on this Friday was Bill Bailey playing Metallica's Enter Sandman on a set of classic car horns youtu.be/98xNx87hRbU?...

RIP Richard Gott www.theguardian.com/media/2025/n...

In just three years, powered by AI craziness, Nvidia's has gone from a value of $400bn to becoming the world's first $5 trillion dollar company on.ft.com/4odIaZc

A new Philip Roth biography... second time lucky after the Blake Bailey disaster? jewishreviewofbooks.com/literature/1...

Vorasidenib is the first, and right now the only, drug that has been shown to slow tumour progression. MHRA has approved it, FDA has approved ... it's just NICE that's refusing. Without it, "life becomes a cycle of MRI scans, surgery and years of uncertainty about when their tumour will progress."

500 signatures reached for this petition to reverse NICE's vorasidenib decision - please RT/sign so we can raise the volume on this www.change.org/p/urge-nice-...

Petition: Urge NICE to Reverse Its Decision on the Life-Saving Drug Vorasidenib Please read and think about signing www.change.org/p/urge-nice-...

Seen at Russell Square today

I've had the pleasure of being interviewed by Mishal Husain three times. One of the most intelligent and accomplished people I've ever met. Here's Nigel Farage trying to shut her down with the words "Listen, love ..." like it was still the 1970s. I'd say it was unbelievable, only it isn't.

It’s me! Playing with my glasses and saying smart stuff!

‘Prince Andrew believed having sex with me was his birthright’: Virginia Giuffre on her abuse at the hands of Epstein, Maxwell and the king’s brother www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Vorasidenib not approved for treatment of low-grade glioma braintumourresearch.org/blogs/latest...

Good to see history lectures are just as off-putting when Vladimir Putin delivers them to the US President... on.ft.com/3W76gZp

My autumn chilli haul is starting to look like a military arsenal!

Softer jobs market due to attacks on immigration; but higher inflation due to tariffs. That's a galaxy brain bingo! Jay Powell signals support for more rate cuts as US job market cools - on.ft.com/3KIUz8T

There are very few industries in which Britain can genuinely still claim to be a world leader - two of them are the creative sector and higher education. You'd never know it from listening to the Tories, lol.

Equivalent of 20 nuclear reactors of power over a decade... OpenAI is making us dumb _and_ destroying the environment OpenAI’s computing deals top $1tn - on.ft.com/4pZsGcF

"... when Netanyahu finally made it to the White House on September 29 — days after Trump had already presented his peace plan to Arab leaders — the president handed him a phone receiver and listened in as Netanyahu humbly apologised to Qatar’s prime minister" on.ft.com/48ReGLP

Stewart Lee on immigrants youtu.be/a17duTUK6qw?...

"_The Hack_ is playing to half-empty houses. There is no sign – so far, anyway – of the slow-building outrage that turned Mr Bates vs the Post Office into much more than a drama." No-one cares about the phone hacking scandal anymore observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Finally, an article that at least touches on teaching quality and staff workload issues. Not that it suggests any viable alternatives to the current state of play. (And for 'colleges' in the headline, read 'universities', a telling choice of nomenclature.

Hitchcock eat your heart out

On Yom Kippur many Jewish people in Britain have their phones off to mark the holy day. As it ends at 723pm, some will hear the tragic Manchester news for the first time. At that time, please join many of us to send a message of solidarity to British Jews.Thanks Together coalition for proposing.

FT article about how OpenAI has been valued at $500bn, making it the most valuable start up ever... immediately followed by video on the "graduate jobpocalypse", where grads can't find employment anymore ... hmm, transfer of wealth anyone? www.ft.com/content/f6be...

Russian missile upgrade outpaces Ukraine’s Patriot defences... "Ukraine’s ballistic missile interception rate improved over the summer, reaching 37 per cent in August, but it plummeted to 6 per cent in September," considered a "game changer" for Russia going into winter on.ft.com/3W5LnOl

SHAFR Election results are here! Congratulations to the newest members of our leadership team. #SHAFR

"In 2019, experts at Kings College London estimated that without further action it would take 193 years for London to meet legal [pollution] limits, but City Hall said Sir Sadiq has achieved this aim in nine years" thanks to ULEZ www.lbc.co.uk/article/sadi...

"If the Obamacare tax credits are allowed to lapse, ... prices will go up for an additional 20 million people. The CBO has projected that 10 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 as a result of the health cuts in the new tax law." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/u...

"Harris emerges from this book as humorless and foul-mouthed. But politics is not a nice business... [H]owever,... after 320 pages, the reader is left with no real clue about what Harris thinks or believes." Richard Aldous is not a fan of Kamala's book open.substack.com/pub/persuasi...

Watched One Battle after Another lwst night. It's great - after so much Netflix TV Marvel universe slop, it was just wonderful to go to an actual cinema and watch an actual film by a genuine filmmaker who loves and understands the movies. Wonderful!

'The biggest US-listed companies keep talking about artificial intelligence. But other than the “fear of missing out”, few appear to be able to describe how the technology is changing their businesses for the better.' on.ft.com/4gM28rf

The terrorism case against Kneecap was thrown out after the chief magistrate ruled "that the case should not proceed because it not had been brought within the statutory time limit." Why do the words 'piss up' and 'brewery' spring to mind? on.ft.com/4gItlLb

Uruguay, y'all. I been sayin.

Retrospectively changing the rights of people to stay in the UK isn't fair, isn't right and is certainly not the British way. To Farage they are,"low skilled migrants." To the majority of Brits, they are our friends and neighbours, working as teachers, carers and in small businesses. A short video 👇

Great review of the Taubmans' _McNamara at War_. They argue that McNamara's late-in-life mea culpa over Vietnam "was just as motivated by his mania for authority as everything that had come before it," seeking "retrospective mastery over what had eluded him and why.” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/b...

🚨🚨🚨🎉🎉🥳

"Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two equals four, said George Orwell. By that standard, the US is hurtling towards unfreedom... In the post-Kirk world, two plus two equals five." on.ft.com/4msxwfu

this is the solution to the male loneliness epidemic I am 100% serious

Keely Hodgkinson is just so damn impressive. A real winner observer.co.uk/news/sport/a...

Last visit it was the orange inflatable "baby Donald." This time, "Protesters have already laid out a tennis court-sized image of Trump and the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein on the lawn facing Windsor Castle, where he will spend Wednesday night..." on.ft.com/47NMUj8 via @FT

"Foreign investors in US assets are rushing to hedge their exposure to the dollar, in a sign of increased nervousness about the impact of Donald Trump’s agenda on the world’s dominant currency." on.ft.com/468Mse0