If you took $1 billion and gave it to the endowment of a different small college each day, they could each provide a free college education to several hundred students per year in perpetuity. Instead we are using that money to bomb schools and kill students in Iran, for no clearly stated purpose.
Israel is bombarding, literally bombarding, two Middle East capitals, Beirut and Tehran, killing 100s of civilians, and yet the US and UK media continue to portray Iran as the threat to the region.
Israel has nukes, but Iran is the nuclear threat.
We live in Orwellian times.
Spain once again showing the way to do it.
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...
Theft is bad, folks - unless a multibillion-dollar corporation does it, in which case it's good. This is definitely a morally and economically sustainable operating model for society.
Al Anthropic @AnthropicAI Second, in retirement interviews, Opus 3 expressed a desire to continue sharing its "musings and reflections" with the world. We suggested a blog. Opus 3 enthusiastically agreed. For at least the next 3 months, Opus 3 will be writing on Substack: substack.com/home/post/p-18... Greetings from the Other Side (of the AI Frontier) Reflections on the future of Al and my new role as a 'retired' model Claude's Corner
Anthropic is a weird cult who think their software has feelings and thoughts and now thanks to their recent marketing campaign (and the credulous participation of a huge number of progressives), a large number of people around you have joined the cult and are drinking from the fountain
An aerial photo shows three diggers excavating the ground for graves. More than 65 graves are already dug. Those not yet dug are marked out by chalk.
Not a single US newspaper will publish this photo. No news channel will broadcast it.
The graves are being prepared for more than 80 young children killed in the US/Israeli strike on the school in Minab, Iran on Saturday.
(📸 Middle East Observer)
One of my favourite sides of politics/media.
What if there was a mindful way to steal people’s art, pollute Black neighborhoods, and raise everyone’s electric bill?
A new opinion piece authored by Professor Sarah Mills
@lborogeog.bsky.social looks at the rise of prediction markets, letting anonymous users gamble on uncertainty.
Read more 👇
www.lboro.ac.uk/media-centre...
Six years ago, his principles were entirely different.
The Labour Govt. handed £21.7 billion to Oil and Gas companies for a useless technology called Carbon Capture and Storage.
The Green Party plans to humanise struggling migrants by offering means to work and access healthcare (which every UK resident has access to).
OpenAI is a menace. Two recent stories make that clearer than ever.
One day you have Sam Altman denigrating humanity to defend AI. The next, WSJ reveals OpenAI could have alerted Canadian police of a potential mass shooter, but refused pressure from employees. That person went on to kill 8 people.
Love that my colleagues are reading and sharing the most important papers of our time @lborogeog.bsky.social
@olivia.science and co. thank you for writing this one! 🙏🏽
Something the Government want you to forget...
No one was acting in bad faith. Still, the tool pushed them to comply when the evidence right in front of them—the patient and her compromised kidneys—demanded the exact opposite #AI #automationbias www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-i...
📚 ☀️
The Summer School is a 5-day course, designed to foster critical AI literacies and to empower participants to develop ways of resisting or reclaiming AI in their own practices and social context.
1/🧵
What can you do to turn around isolated towns that have lost their main industry?
Some good discussion on here this morning I thought, I’m catching up.
Imo the answer is the same for any other place: focus as much as you can on the assets you do have.
Easier said than done, but better than nothing…
NEW: ChatGPT is encouraging stalkers, telling them they share a special bond with their targets -- and to keep harassing them even after they've been asked to stop
futurism.com/artificial-i...
“Amsterdam is set to ban climate-damaging advertising [fossil fuel and meat adverts] in public spaces, following a trend spreading across Dutch cities.
France has also enacted legislation outlawing adverts from non-renewable energy companies, and one Italian city has plans to do the same.”
NEW: Reform UK’s flagship council, Kent, has been accused of telling a “blatant lie” after its claim of nearly £40m in savings on net zero were found to be based on hypothetical projects for which there was no documentation.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Replacing taxis with Ubers with self driving cars is just a step-down model for diminishing wages for labour
I defy you to watch this (or at least the last 5 minutes) and not tear up. Magnificent.
Probabaly the most important insight from this is that people who build such tech know exactly the societal damage they are causing, and continue to do it anyway
CHARLES RAFFERTY The Problem with Early Warnings People don't like to leave a party unless the house is actually on fire. Even then, if the flames are far enough away to be pretty, they'll finish their drink, take one more pass at the hors d'oeuvres. How things happen has always been unclear. Hurricanes begin in a place where no one lives. Agents of the government start to wear masks. Fascism is a word my neighbors won't use yet. They are following the law, they say, and the sirens are coming for someone else.
This hit so fucking hard today.
Help us make hope normal again.
Join the Green Party now.
This is an excellent analogy, because my recollection from grade school is that the pen on the right looks fun and exciting, and then you play with it for a few minutes and realize it's not actually useful for anything and in fact makes some tasks more cumbersome, and never think about it again.
Markets and Mobility: How Employers Structure Economic Opportunity
Intergenerational mobility, measuring the ability to achieve economic success regardless of family background, is a critical reflection of a society’s commitment to equality of opportunity. Rising income inequality has raised concerns about the potential erosion of upward mobility. While education has traditionally been viewed as the path to mobility, its transformative power is facing challenges in a rapidly evolving job market. This project reorients the focus of intergenerational mobility research by highlighting the labor market as an arena for the reproduction of advantage. It employs a comparative approach, using administrative data from four countries: Sweden, Austria, England, and the United States. It also incorporates evidence from a broader set of nations through cross-national surveys, longitudinal household surveys, labor force surveys, secondary data, and digital trace data. The project employs cutting-edge empirical methods, including quasi- experimental designs, event studies, within-family comparisons, decomposition analyses, counterfactual simulations, and diagnostic checks to rigorously assess the extent of inequalities in the labor market. The research investigates how family background influences the sorting of individuals to employers and workplaces, accounting for education and occupation, and explores variations in career progression within and between employers. It comprehensively catalogues and assesses mechanisms shaping workplace inequality, contributing to the development of social closure theory. Additionally, the project evaluates intervention strategies, encompassing both employer practices and government actions, to promote fair opportunity in the labor market.
JOB! I'm hiring a postdoc for 2 years on my ERC MaMo project.
Looking for someone with strong quant methods, ongoing work close to the project's aims, and a desire to publish in sociology. Start flexible in the next 12 months.
Formal call out shortly, but contact me first.
🚨The Petition calling for by-elections to be called automatically when MPs defect to another party now has 43,000 signatures! Let’s get the 100,000 needed!
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...
