Duncan Wilson

Can't fault the clarity of Labour's message on protest. There are BAD protesters who must be punished (Irish musicians, anti-genocide vicars) and there are GOOD protesters whose views deserve respect (masked thugs with petrol bombs trying to start a pogrom)

This is why the fella who spent 30 years working for Murdoch is entirely comfortable working for the Prime Minister.

Bloody hell 😳

Towards

I had a nice chat with Jonathan Miller on the tube. I was on my way to a job interview and he said I should visit an exhibition he'd curated at a London gallery.

Tony Blair could lead a party that included Dennis Skinner — and often, in fact, spoke about the importance of the party being able to contain both of them within its broad church. This stuff doesn’t make Starmer look strong, quite the opposite.

I'd disagree slightly, but only because I think Achtung Baby and Zooropa are both terrific (especially Zooropa which I don't think has a bad song on it). Even bits of Pop are ok, but after that it's very meh. I saw them live in the mid 90s, with all the bells and whistles, and they were good fun.

Futurist Adam Dorr on how robots will take our jobs: ‘We don’t have long to get ready – it’s going to be tumultuous’ Researcher says tech could replace nearly all human labour within 20 years and societies urgently need to prepare

If you're a social scientist who also claims to be a 'futurist', you're not real social scientist. The grift of tech determinist 'consultancy' is getting worse. Seemingly no costs to bullshit and countless uncritical journalists to write it up. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Got to love the TBI.

There will be no consequences for this. The abyss of moral bankruptcy is bottomless.

AI isn’t replacing student writing – but it is reshaping it If AI allows students to automate routine cognitive tasks, it doesn’t mean they’re thinking less. It means their thinking is changing.

At a certain point, the fact that every pro AI-in-education article is so eye-poppingly stupid - this one takes its data on how students use AI from a study by Open AI, and apparently sees no issue there - is itself a finding.
theconversation.com/ai-isnt-repl...

A/HRC/59/23: From economy of occupation to economy of genocide - Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (Advance edited ve... This report investigates the corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. While political leaders and...

Came across this recent report by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese on how firms profit from occupation and genocide in Gaza. Some huge names in the report including Microsoft, HP, Blackrock, and Alphabet (Google). Worth reading in full.
www.ohchr.org/en/documents...

Start with nothing, add back, limbs, head and petals for each wrong guess. Number of petals depends on how generous you're feeling

It's 'flower person' at Aidan's school, and you draw a man with a flower for a head instead of someone dangling from the gallows. He was horrified when I had to explain what 'hangman' involved..!

It's all tights up here now, though I did marshal a race last week where someone ran a sub 15min 5k in football shirt and shorts!

In my experience* the 15 min people are all wearing SaySky tights now

*of getting rinsed in training and races

I'm looking forward to this. Overshoot was excellent

I once had an email exchange with Alasdair MacIntyre on the relationship between his work on medical ethics and After Virtue. I learnt more from those emails than most books. He was undoubtedly one of the most important Anglophone philosophers of the last fifty years.

I’m old fashioned enough to think the BBC should be leading on what the deal is and what it means. Rather than the political claims from both sides.

Yes! I got my first sighting during my regular laps of Hough End.

I think that Blue Labour guy is going to get to live out his fantasy of closing universities, where absolutely no Real People work, and which will definitely not blight any Real Places.

Congratulations! I'm going to order a copy and look forward to reading it

What Labour fail/refuse to understand of course is that anti-immigration politics can't be addressed at the level of technocratic policymaking. Those most animated by this don't know the exact numbers and won't know or care if the line is "going down". It is a misplaced libidinal desire for cruelty.

Labour’s “Farage is right, don’t vote for him” strategy, which was so successful on Thursday, looks set to continue.

I feel your pain. Buses in this country were not designed for the heat. I always avoid the top deck from about May onwards!

Majority of 902. Reform-curious or just desperate? Or just the tenor of Starmer's Labour and the void at its centre. UK HE was one of Britain's few export success stories! The rest is beneath contempt.

As ever I'd like someone to ask him specifically if he'd be happy for Lancaster University to close - which has a campus in his constituency. Or is just unis in other areas he doesn't want?

Speaking of your book, which is terrific, my Dad says to tell you he was the fourth mate on that Blue Funnel ship that ran into trouble in Shanghai

That 10 Downing St briefing saying Starmer doesn't believe trans women are women seems so needlessly cruel. Why rub salt in the wound?

Today, just like every day, we stand with trans people and are in solidarity with them fighting for their rights, dignity and healthcare. But today seems like a good day to re-state this.

You can’t be a government that’s serious about growth while simultaneously limiting one of your most successful export businesses and diminishing institutions that are crucial to delivering local and national growth and innovation.