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

UK banks are pushing struggling universities to draw up turnaround plans," including "cost-cutting regimes ... as higher education institutions battle a funding shortfall." on.ft.com/3IpVmKT

Vacuous, generic and scattershot advice for incoming 1st years on the use of AI at university. Especially liking 'Chin recommends giving it class notes and asking it to generate practice exam questions.' Surely we can't be the only programme that supplies students with past & practice exams?

We’re advertising for a 30 month postdoc position in US Politics (very broadly construed). The role is mainly research, but allows the holder to gain experience teaching UK and US undergraduates. Happy to answer any and all questions. Application deadline 27/10. (Start date early 2026.)

Ladies and gentlemen, the wonderful Judi Dench www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8sZ...

Well Mandelson's position is completely untenable. It probably was already this morning. Yet again, truly dreadful judgement from the political operation at No. 10.

'Poland has for the first time shot down drones that came into its airspace during a Russian attack on Ukraine, in what the Nato member said was an “unprecedented violation”.' on.ft.com/4gf2JkO

"[Ghislaine] Maxwell signs off with breezy optimism: 'The next fifty years will be even more wonderful.' She is now serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring to traffic minors." on.ft.com/4mVnOn1

"At 3.47 per cent, France’s benchmark 10-year borrowing costs are above those of longtime Eurozone troubled borrower Greece at 3.35 per cent, and closing in on Italy at 3.51 per cent, two ... deemed riskier by global investors." Still a full percentage point below the UK, though on.ft.com/4miptSE

Here’s a characteristically well sourced @siennarodgers.bsky.social feature on the founding of Corbyn’s new party www.politicshome.com/news/article...

"Is it time for Hollywood to concede that a lot of moviegoers in North America are never coming back? That movie theaters have permanently lost 20 to 25 percent of their customers?" www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Grappling with this excellent essay on Heidegger's thinking of technology... www.thenewatlantis.com/publications...

Do you think that applicants for this fellowship have to _actually_ be virtuous? www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOL710/j...

"Trump’s late-night putsch represents one of the gravest challenges to the Fed since it became independent 74 years ago, & marks a stunning escalation in the president’s attack on the US economic establishment." ‘Unprecedented’: Donald Trump moves on the Federal Reserve - on.ft.com/47Nh1Hc via @FT

"Part memoir, part deep dive... Bloodworth... links the proliferation of [misogynist] ideologies to a wider... context, in the process ascribing due importance to a phenomenon whose dangers often have been woefully underestimated." lareviewofbooks.org/article/only...

"Modern Peru," edited by @paulodrinot.bsky.social & Alberto Vergara, offers a sweeping account of Peru’s history from the wars of independence to the present day. Read the intro for free now: buff.ly/dOSbIpS #History #Peru

True wisdom for the social media era...

When the dust settles, and if universities have meaningfully survived, it will be worth asking how institutions usually so resistant to thoroughgoing change chose to leap with both feet into an untested technology they didn't understand and didn't know how to use.

"The public does not associate [the Brize Norton attack] with terrorism... [Ministers worry that] little information has been provided by the government about what makes Palestine Action a 'terrorist group' rather than a protest group that has engaged in criminal activity."

Seems Covid vaccines probably saved more than 2.5 million lives - put that in your pipe, Mr Kennedy pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40711778/

MS Eventually IYKYK

2. This is a great explanation of how LLMs actually work and why they hallucinate. Bonus for being hilariously funny. garymarcus.substack.com/p/why-do-lar...

THR's 44 most powerful players in podcasting... Michael Barbaro making weird noises on The Daily and Joe Rogan bleating about Atlantis. Is this really the best the format has got to offer? www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/most-p...

Why you should fear the gym again 🤣🤣 youtu.be/qh7JLEbTN1w?...

Jonathan Sperber reviewing Andrew Hartman's new book, _Marxism in America_, for S-USIH s-usih.org/2025/08/jona...

I think this is the most American news story coming out of the 2010s www.youtube.com/watch?v=czq_...

Back in the game. UK is now has the most successful applicant for Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and 2nd most for ERC. To a very significant extent, this success rests on and reflects excellence in researchers & in research in universities. Will we squander or sustain them in the next 12 months?

Latest CBO analysis of the full distributional effects of the Trump budget (the "One Big Bill") just landed. They blew out the budget, see how big of a slice you got. www.cbo.gov/interactive/...

I'm not sure you "learn" very much, but Jemima Kelly's weekend feature on Curtis Yarvin shows him to truly be a Monet of radical right thinking: "up close, it's a big ol' mess..." on.ft.com/3J8WsL9

I would probably say the single most annoying thing about LLMs is that "okily-dokily doo, I goofed when I gave you that ludicrous answer, it's my bad that I said cheese comes from cats, I'll do better next time, would you like to know what sort of cat it comes from?" tone when it gets stuff wrong.

The dead have a right to remain dead. An animated skin put over a computer model and given the same name as the dead son of grieving parents is a cursed golem and a full delusion. By interviewing the computer model, Acosta has asked us to accept this as true or real. Gun control deserves better.

Seriously, why the eff does MS Outlook keep adding new unhelpful "functions" and make them more or less impossible to remove? As well as foisting idiot copilot on me I'm now getting autofill and autocomplete suggestions that are just wrong. It's like being constantly interrupted by an idiot 🤦‍♂️

According to a Microsoft-sponsored study (make of that what you will), the occupations find AI will most significantly impact are translators and interpreters - then historians ... 😳 arxiv.org/pdf/2507.07935

Ozzy is one of like 3 people in Decline of Western Civilization Part 2 that comes off as a decent human being and I always love the scene where Penelope Spheeris interviews him making breakfast while he explains the ups and downs of the business.

Scientists have observed that every time Reform goes above four MPs, one of them has to leave the party, a phenomenon known as the Farage Equilibrium.

This is odd

This looks fantastic! www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLrl...

Honestly, this whole "bond slump because Reeves cried" story is utterly ridiculous. Why in God's name does anyone think a person being emotional about their work is discrediting? I'd have thought it was evidence they cared about their job... on.ft.com/3IbiEDV

This new website by @edhawkins.org and @roostweather.bsky.social is brilliant. It shows how the current temperatures compare to average. The latest map shows how widely the temperatures at the moment are above average across the UK. For some they are 10-11C above average.

Amazing news! Congratulations--I love this collection.

What a wonderful tribute by Carlos F. Chamorro to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the first female president of Nicaragua and an admirable leader and human being who passed away earlier this month confidencial.digital/en/english/m...

Violeta Chamorro, Nicaragua’s president, 1929-2025 - on.ft.com/446oWNF via @FT

We all have a lot of questions about this. It seems to apply only to NARA II at College Park, as none of the many other NARA facilities have the same notice on their websites. Someone should ask Marco Rubio about it since he is the Acting Archivist and has nothing else going on right now.

A Boston University professor of global health has done the math and created a website to visualize and track the effects of the Trump/DOGE dismantling of USAID. "As of June 15, the death toll for adults and children from aid funding cuts topped 340,000 and came out to 103 deaths per hour."