Links
Beautiful work by Julian Fell and Simon Elvery with this visual storytelling:
Over five decades, here’s how voters have shifted away from the major parties - ABC
Fascinating Bandcanp Daily post on the pioneers of computer music via Bruce Sterling
Turmoil has engulfed the Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying nations is in dispute.
We argue instead that populism must be understood as a specific political discourse, a way to articulate all kinds of policies – liberal or protectionist, left-wing or right-wing – as a clash between the virtuous, downtrodden “people” and an unresponsive corrupt “elite”. In this way, one can identify a consistent populist logic in how trade policies are presented regardless of the content of actual policies followed. In our analysis we show that, despite their very opposing trade preferences, the discourses of both protectionist Trump and strongly pro-free trade Conservative Brexiteers in the second half of the 2010s followed very similar articulatory modes flowing from their populism.
The populist logic behind Trump’s tariffs - LSE Blogs
How people (on reddit) are using A.I. in 2025
I’m always surprised, given its influence, that HBR remains an evidence-free zone. For example this article makes expansive pronouncements about how A.I. Is being used in 2025. The methodology:
I looked at online forums (Reddit, Quora), as well as articles that included explicit, specific applications of the technology. Perhaps owing to its inherent pseudonymity, Reddit again yielded the richest insights. I read through them myself, and added each relevant post to the tally for that category. Several days later, I emerged with the count and the quotes for each of the new 100 use cases.
The 2025 Top-100 Gen AI Use Case Report lists the top 100 applications now, in 2025, rated according to perceived usefulness and scale of impact (assessed qualitatively by expert review), and includes a quote or several for each.
Seriously?
An interesting discussion about the pitfalls Big Tech geopolitics and alternate futures that might be possible
Looking ahead, the AI Iron Curtain appears likely to extend into space. For instance, China’s Chang’e 6 Lunar Exploration Mission returned first-ever samples from the far side of the moon in June 2024, but US research scientists cannot view the samples because of the restrictive 2011 Wolf Amendment, which forbids NASA from collaborating directly with China without security approval. Although China invited international scientists to study the samples, the US has erected a self-imposed barrier, stifling beneficial cooperation and hindering progress in this and other critical areas of common interests.
Moving Towards Local and People-Centered Artificial Intelligence - Bot Populi
“It’s one part of a very cruel puzzle.”
Inhumane prison hulks return from Australia’s past to its present.
Outstanding work from The Continent. Its arrival is the most welcome message I get each week.
I rewatched V for Vendetta for the first time since it was in cinemas. I wondered “what did old mate Roger Ebert’s make of it”. Not quite what I was expecting.
Technical and lengthy but super-interesting:
The point here is that the artificial intelligentsia is dragging us into an archaic future where intelligence is quantified, fixed, and ranked, and smartness is fetishized. We would do well to remember that IQ is, above all, a eugenic concept, concocted to sort winners from losers and to justify the rules of the game. Eugenics … in the 21st century … among those who fancy themselves futurists?
This was mooted but the detail seems even worse than feared. It’s not really about DEI per se - it’s really about any research that recognises any health inequalities at all.
NIH to terminate hundreds of active research grants - Nature
"What’s the Matter with Abundance?" Malcolm Harris' worthwhile critique of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's "Abundance"
Cutaway view of a toroidal colony, by Rick Guidice. Source: NASA Ames Research CenterAbundance is the prefab, catch-all alternative to these forms of scarcity-thinking on “both the socialist left and the populist authoritarian right.” Large increases in material output, we are assured, can save liberalism from the civilizational choice between socialism and barbarism. I disagree; refusing to be forthright about society’s structural antagonisms opens the door to demagogues who peddle false conflicts that still ring truer than the liberals’ false peace.
The Abundance authors are hesitant to enumerate the tradeoffs their agenda will require. Prompted by the work of degrowth advocate Jason Hickel, they consider whether we should shut off or scale down destructive sectors of production, such as military investment, meat and dairy production, advertising, and fast fashion. “There is some appeal to this,” they write. “All of us can identify some aspect of the global production system that seems wasteful, unnecessary, or harmful. The problem is that few of us identify the same aspects of the global production system.” Hamburgers, they inform us, are popular in America. As is advertising, I suppose, insofar as we see a lot of it. But why can’t decent liberals like Klein and Thompson bring themselves to interrogate America’s trillion-dollar defense budget? It can’t just be an issue of popularity; after all, there’s nothing Americans like better than living in single-family homes, and the authors aren’t too afraid to call for the return of boarding houses. This country’s bombs don’t merely “seem” wasteful, unnecessary, or harmful. And disarmament is not scarcity—on the contrary.
The two-lane road to hell is paved with good intentions: why an all-or-none approach to generative AI, integrity, and assessment is insupportable
Unlimited genAI use (Lane 2/All), if applied to students in their early stages of higher education, is akin to handing a teenager the keys to a high-powered sports car and saying ‘have fun’. This approach ignores the fundamental need to educate students to build skills incrementally within sensible limits.
A helpful, considered article by Guy Curtis on the limitations of the two-lanes for AI use and higher ed assessment heuristic.