"The development of AI increases the risks — making it easier for countries, or even non-state actors, to build the world’s deadliest weapons. There is also growing...risk that nuclear-weapons command and control systems could be hacked or disabled by cyber attacks" www.ft.com/content/3c30...

"If the two peoples cannot be more generous, the eventual solution to their conflict may be zero states for zero people”. www.ft.com/content/0407...

“All that’s left is shame.” Also, the mutilated corpses of tens of thousands of civilians www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

"one of the boldest urban experiments in modern history — an attempt to build a metropolis from scratch, unconstrained by geography or precedent — is now in danger of joining the ranks of the world’s grandest follies" ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-l...

Why write? Join me on 27 November for what may be a deep dive, and should at least be fun www.kellogg.ox.ac.uk/events/creat...

13. Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. But also, long live Sodom and Gomarrah.

"How convincing does the illusion of understanding have to be before you stop calling it an illusion?" www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

ACTUAL GOOD NEWS WARNING 65% of the planned coal capacity from 2015 ended up not existing, thanks almost entirely to climate policy and renewable energy construction China is an outlier - but maybe not for long @e3g.bsky.social www.e3g.org/publications...

* Largest single year jump in CO2 we've ever seen * Carbon sinks less effective * We've probably hit the first tipping point (warm water coral ecosystems), and are closer to others... @simonoxfphys.com youtu.be/4zBoXY5YeVo

“In a free society, all are involved in what some are doing. Some are guilty; all are responsible.” Abraham Joshua Heschel www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/o...

Hobbled around in the Chilterns because it was too painful to run. Good to be alive, though 🙃

"You have your life behind you at this point, so it's easier to love each other" www.sadlerswells.com/digital-stag...

Spec-cat-ular

"Behind each number is a frightened child who will already have experienced egregious human rights abuses before arriving in the UK seeking safety." www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

This is so good from Cory Doctorow on all the tricks Amazon uses to get both consumers to pay more, and how businesses on the platform end up paying it 45-51 cents on every dollar. Plus he rightly calls for regulatory change, not just individual consumer action www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Gaza Health Ministry reports 226 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since the three-week cease-fire began, with another 594 wounded and 499 bodies recovered from war rubble during that period www.haaretz.com/gaza/2025-11...

“…sometimes even basing loans on the estimated worth of children as yet unborn to enslaved women…”

“More religious societies and cultures where there was a preference for faith over science showed high levels of nature connection.” Great that faith can connect people with nature. I’m sure better understanding of science can do so too www.theguardian.com/environment/...

“‘Pattern of Extreme Brutality’ — Tear gas, pepper balls among weapons used by federal agents at Illinois immigration protests.” Bellingcat documents the modus operandi of Trump's secret police, which focus on extreme violence against peaceful citizens. The model appears to be Putin's OMON.

Our recent report warnst that unregulated and understudied cocktails of chemical pollutants in UK rivers, lakes and coastal environments can have harmful effects on aquatic ecosystems even when their individual components are present at ‘safe’ levels: royalsociety.org/news/2025/10...

"Kant challenges us to critically examine the most important questions for ourselves and form our own judgment. Perhaps the Kantian idea hardest to accept today is his confidence that humanity is able to do such difficult things, and wants to." www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

"building a meaningful life is much less about discovering the right set of practices or habits than it is about cultivating the willingness to step up moment after moment & just *do* more of the things that matter for the projects & people & causes you care about most" ckarchive.com/b/k0umh6h56x...

“I have moments when I don’t know how to survive this any further, but you find that the idea of justice, the idea of the country, the idea of dignity, prevails.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

New post out: "The worst social policy ever" Today we have a guest post from @ruthpatrick0.bsky.social on the abomination that is the two-child limit and why Labour need to scrap it ASAP. Lots of data but also powerful testimony. (Free to read) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

Somebody has helpfully painted the leaves the same colour as the visibility strips on these steps

“The destruction to lives and livelihoods will continue to escalate until we end our fossil fuel addiction.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

What we're witnessing with #Melissa is ultra rare in the history of known hurricanes in the Atlantic. This level of sustained intensity and feasting on every joule of ocean heat content without any real disruption is incredible. Not hyperbole: Jamaica is facing a generational catastrophic event.

“Free for all means that there will be a small privileged elite, people and companies that will be able to always protect themselves, even if disasters will spread” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

"For Mr. Trump, the common thread weaving together so much of what he doe...is his personal aggrandizement and the empowerment of his presidency... Far from resolving conflicts, he is simply embracing the victory of the stronger parties." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/o...

Shadow bridge

"Children make up half of Gaza’s population. They will suffer the consequences [of starvation] their whole life.” www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Liking these sessions recorded inside Niemeyer’s dome in Tripoli. Poignant to read that the site of the unfinished (now crumbling?) building was once orange groves. "All you could see were the orchards [of fragrant orange blossom] and the sea.” in-resonancecollective.bandcamp.com/album/the-do...

Yes, solutions for nature are also solutions for health! This new analysis finds urban greening is "associated with a wide range of positive health outcomes including improved physical and mental health, increased physical activity, improved childhood development, and reduced exposure to harms."

Mark Steel on good form www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Aryan imagery

Fragments of Gaza’s rich and diverse history will survive despite Israeli ethno-nationalists and their Hamas dance partners www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Just when honest and truthful reporting on climate change is most urgently needed, Ofcom under its current chair has effectively suspended its accuracy rules on this life-and-death issue. /1 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

“China isn’t just an analytical problem. It is the master key to understanding modernity; the biggest laboratory of organized modernizations there has ever been or ever will be at this level [of] organization.” Adam Tooze talking to Kaiser Kuo www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-gr...

"...there's England, right there. Patois, Winehouse, custard; golden owls, brews and gurdwaras, and Betjeman keeping watch over the whole thing..."

Good & detailed analysis of the US campaign in Venezuela, including the prospect of a war. "The risks of violence in any post-Maduro scenario should not be downplayed. Many senior military officers could resist regime change." www.crisisgroup.org/latin-americ...

“In a moment a gigantic Ugandan xylophone made from logs played by many people at once and on this occasion being mixed live by a Japanese master of dub.” As Radio 3 as it gets www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Today in the Sheldonian Curtis Yarvin said meritocracy in the West is to blame for COVID & Ukraine invasion, & argued monarchy should replace liberal democracy. The sovereign CEO would be accountable, but also, somehow, above the law. Alluded to Carl Schmitt. Made light of murder of Jamal Khashoggi

“Our solidarity with Palestinians is not a betrayal of Judaism but a fulfillment of it. When our sages taught that to destroy one life is to destroy an entire world, they did not carve exceptions for Palestinians.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

“the United States is cutting off the kind of foreign aid that keeps children alive for 12 cents a day, but it’s willing to invest far larger sums in a dubious effort to prop up a distant economy — while effectively subsidizing tycoons who made bad investments.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/o...

"If you want to see something new, walk the same path everyday." A Chinese proverb, according to Alva Noë, who uses it as an epigraph to The Entanglement: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are. (ht JB, but not an easy read)

The 2050 goal is increasingly meaningless. 1.5 is gone. The warmer it gets, the more damage & destruction climate change will produce. The more people will die. Climate risks are v likely strongly non-linear, e.g. tipping points and derailment risks. 5/6 esd.copernicus.org/articles/14/...

Half of Gaza's population remains displaced among 61 million tons of rubble as reconstruction is expected to cost tens of billions and take decades www.haaretz.com/middle-east-...

“the fury over the mass killings in Sweida is threatening Mr. al-Shara’s control over parts of the country” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/w...

Just one of the monstrous and terrifying creatures recently released in Ennerdale. Where will the rampage and madness end? www.wildennerdale.co.uk