Andrea Werner

Crude oil prices, showing a very sharp increase in the last day, from around 65 to 101 dollars per barrel..

Oil prices wouldn't be all over the news today if more of our economy was powered by local, secure renewable energy.

This isn't an "energy crisis". It's a fossil fuel crisis.

44% of UK electricity came from renewables in 2025. More of that plus an electrified economy => no more oil shocks.

‘Study after study shows that students want to develop these critical thinking skills, are not lazy, and large numbers of them would be in favor of banning ChatGPT and similar tools in universities’, says @olivia.science

www.ru.nl/en/research/...

Yes. Absolutely.

'The Morning Ride, Copenhagen.'
Bicycles were the perfect vehicle for a new generation of painters looking for subjects that would express their experience of the modern age. This work (1907) by Erik Ludvig Hennimoder depicts the new leisured classes.

Until someone works out how to get monopoly profits from renewables they are constantly going to be attacked by frightened oligarchs.

I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it won’t be just as bad for those.

One of the worst things about AI, for me, is that it takes away from people the sheer joy of writing. Schools don’t often make this point, but writing should be fun. Putting words together, finding ways to express yourself, the pure pleasure of a well-crafted sentence. 1/5

As a general rule, the very rich don’t become wealthy through hard work & cleverness. They became rich by being lucky & horrible, or by being related to someone lucky & horrible.

Hard agree.

Vatican News No to homilies prepared with Artificial Intelligence The Pope therefore invited the priests to enter into real life and called for vigilance when confronted with artificial intelligence and internet use. He warned against "the temptation to prepare homilies with Artificial Intelligence". "Like all the muscles in the body, if we do not use them, if we do not move them, they die. The brain needs to be used, so our intelligence must also be exercised a little so as not to lose this capacity," he said. Moreover, "to give a true homily is to share faith," and Al "will never be able to share faith," he insisted. "If we can offer a service that is inculturated in the place, in the parish where we are working, people want to see your faith, your experience of having known and loved Christ." vaticannews.va

PAPA LEONE YES

What we need are new rules to force developers to use the permissions they have - new rules to end land banking which is at the heart of our housing crisis.  

Labour need to get tough with Developers, not Nature.

'I nearly died on the streets - then found a new family' Moses was sleeping on the streets after he and his teenage son were evicted from their London home.

In London alone, councils are spending £5m a day on temporary accommodation and support for people experiencing homelessness.

Imagine if that money was spent on housing and helping people avoid homelessness in the first place?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy85klqk14o

Gen A.I. barons want us talkinge alone on our phones to a demon thei created, and not goinge places and being wyth each othir yn art and joy and communitye. Thei want cinemas to shut downe and broadwaye to go darke. Thei want wryteres to stop writinge. Thei want to build hell and have us pay for it.

The state delivers so much we take it all for granted. There's a systemic crisis because this delivery is somehow unaligned from politics and daily life, or isn't spoken about in a way people understand. A complex problem most governments can't crack.

Headline in today's Guardian that reads "Reading and writing can lower dementia risk by almost 40 percent, study finds. Cognitive health in later life is 'strongly influenced' by lifelong exposure to intellectually stimulating environments, say researchers."

This is why you need to be reading books and writing your own emails, by the way. When you outsource your thinking abilities, you risk turning your brain into soup. Heavy dependence on AI has already been linked with severe cognitive decline. What you don’t use, you will lose.

'Covent Garden' (from 'This Is London', 1959) by Miroslav Šašek

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

- Pride and Prejudice, 1st published January 28th 1813

#JaneAusten #PrideandPrejudice

F*** #AI

We Have AI Now YouTube video by Eleanor Morton

We Have AI Now

www.youtube.com/shorts/8-lgJ...

Maybe we shouldn't have trusted the cigarette companies when they praised the health benefits of cigarettes

We are Christopher Isherwood, watching the scenes in the Berlin street below from our apartment window above. Watching from afar further shift in a worsening polity

We are Christopher Isherwood, watching the scenes in the Berlin street below from our apartment window above

Watching from afar further shifts in a worsening polity

By me

Substack: emptycity.substack.com/p/we-are-chr...

Personal Blog: davidallengreen.com/2026/01/we-a...

"Academics literally cannot make genAI go away" we also can't make underage drinking go away and we're not advocating for installing bar carts in every classroom.

A brown bunny wearing a Santa hat sits on a tiled floor next to two red and white wrapped Christmas presents.

I agree with this bit of flag logic. Canada should seasonally adjust its flag.

Stylised artwork featuring three white women in long patterned cloaks and dresses

Margaret Macdonald, The Three Perfumes, 1912, Glasgow School artist who was believed to have influenced Klimt #womensart

Juries are not perfect.

Many of the worst miscarriages of justice have followed jury trials.

But the merit of juries is not so much the power they have, but the power they prevent others from having.

They mean a judge cannot just nod-along with prosecution evidence and give a guilty verdict.

Thoughts about “AI” Yes it’s: The slop The theft The brainrot The loss of work The crumbling of creator rights The destroying of the environment and infrastructure But it's also the destroying of trust in anything that you’re not seeing with your own eyes right in front of you. Wonder now turned to the narrowing of eyes in immediate scepticism seeing something magical. Questioning the realness of everything from a stilted written apology to profound works by students in school. It feels like a slow poison to creativity and humanity at large. [At the bottom is a doodle of me, mouth a thin line, looking at the viewer]

Morning thoughts about "AI".

Where do we go from here?

Labour rn: “Shall we put a penny on income tax to pay for the things everyone wants and needs? Nah, let‘s introduce a chaotic hodge-podge of measures that won’t do what we need & will screw the country. When everything falls apart, the people will remember & respect that we didn’t raise income tax.”