Anthony Cox

In an effort that will no doubt torch my follower base, I have laid out some basic numbers around our fiscal situation. Obvious, but still a little sobering for me.

freethinkecon.wordpress.com/2025/07/15/t...

Why Bluesky Is the Best Social Media Platform I’m an academic philosopher.

‘If—as I do—you view social media as of little value but are also—as I am—mildly addicted to it then Bluesky is the best because it is the worst.’

open.substack.com/pub/rbnmcken...

Bar chart titled "Matters of Scale" comparing proposed US research budget cuts to the European Union's €500-million (US$571-million) "Choose Europe" fund. The chart shows: * National Institutes of Health (NIH): $8 billion in cancelled grants and $18 billion in proposed cuts by 2026 (long orange bar). * National Science Foundation (NSF): $5.1 billion in proposed cuts by 2026 (shorter orange bar). * EU's Choose Europe fund: $571 million (very short blue bar). The graphic highlights that the EU fund is much smaller in scale compared to the US budget cuts. Text above the chart explains the EU’s intention to attract US researchers in response to policy decisions by the convicted felon and rapist Donald Trump.

If people think American scientists are somehow going to land in Europe, I've got news for you about the difference between millions and billions.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

New paper: Wongtaweepkij et al. Public self-reported adverse experience and knowledge about use of herbal and dietary supplements. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies (2025) 25:226 doi.org/10.1186/s129...

link.springer.com/content/pdf/...

It's the intake salary that sets the bar for fighting for candidature. After that increased salaries are just given to those who got in.

Higher pay might help,

Stranger in a strange land

‘Get away from the Fridge Paul!’

Nice profile on Jesse Singal, who is a model for how liberalism could work. unherd.com/2025/06/can-...

Causality assessment is a fraught business.

I followed Jesse Singal for that.

Wordle 1,453 2/6

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This is a good balanced piece by Helen, and the response in comments is as you might expect here.

2016-2018 twitter, but without the socio-cultural power to destroy people. Very Wily Coyote running off a cliff and only falling when they notice they have done so.

The Phoenician Scheme was very good.

Don’t Mourn the Fact-Checkers Misguided decisions and the superiority of crowdsourcing mean Zuckerberg was right to change direction. But he must also keep Trump at arm’s length.

Possibly worse than that, it actively may make things worse. www.persuasion.community/p/dont-mourn...

Trip up Snowdon.

Britain gives Germany a ‘reason to launch V1 and V2s to bomb the hell out of them’ with its dam-buster attacks in the Ruhr Valley.

OK, this may be better.

Best one.

Stop gaslighting people about crime Yes, crime statistics show long-term decline, but the numbers don't tell the whole story.

My latest, a response to the tedious ‘but people are wrong, crime is actually falling!’ brigade. Shout out to @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk who inspired the piece.

Pulls up deck chair

Nice meme, but Christianity got rid of slavery in Europe under the Catholic Church, and British evangelicals were later a driving force in tackling slavery world wide.

I like the idea that spending on defence might alarm people. Good!

It was a jokey aside based on the meme, not a critique of your post. Agree on last part of 2.

That, and bins and failed IT projects in Birmingham.

a cartoon dog is sitting at a table with a cup of coffee in front of a fire with the words this is fine . ALT: a cartoon dog is sitting at a table with a cup of coffee in front of a fire with the words this is fine .

Apparently this epistemic bubble is fine.

Ducks

Topol all over this of course.

In the 1920/30s Weimar Germany had hate speech laws.

They are counterproductive.

Lab Leak: Could Smallpox Come Back? | Cautionary Tales In 1978 the world is on the brink of declaring victory over smallpox. But when a photographer in Birmingham gets sick, doctors are mystified: it looks like smallpox, but how could she have caught it? ...

I work in the building where this happened. Quite a moving podcast about the Birmingham smallpox lab leak.

www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/cau...