It strikes me there is a way to keep everyone happy…
I should add, just to increase my irritation levels, it has been saying “finishing” for about 38 of those minutes.
My computer has now been updating for *45 minutes*. 🤬 So much for the early start.
A very simple but quite nice little AI use case, which seems to work well with LSE's Claude subscription: just dump your data in Excel, then ask Claude to format file in APA style, and it does it much faster than I could.
I remember being shocked when I first encountered applications from students born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are now close to having students applying who weren’t born when I had that revelation.
As I said, it’s not my view, but I think it has considerably more coherence than anything else we’ve heard this week - ultimately, the inescapable fact (and the problem) is that U.K. security architecture is entirely embedded in the assumption of US alliance.
🇯🇵 really does have a word for everything (and in this case, a particuarly useful one).
I personally think Starmer is in about the right place on Iran, but it is pretty damning of the various pro-intervention voices on the U.K. right that Blair has managed to clearly articulate a more logical case for the U.K. supporting the US than any of them have managed in the past week.
Whoops somehow accidentally managed to add a fake weblink to that post while trying in insert various flag emojis…
I agree the 🇬🇧 right (political & media) has proved itself intellectually bankrupt in the past few days, but also wonder if 🇺🇸 & 🇬🇧 are having entirely different debate too? In the 🇺🇸 it is about wisdom of intervention / absence of a plan. In 🇬🇧 it is basically about challenge of managing 🇺🇸 alliance.
In the second half of 2025, one man accounted for almost 40% of all money donated to political parties in the UK: a crypto-billionaire who lives in Thailand.
Britain desperately needs to rewrite its party funding rules.
observer.co.uk/news/the-sen...
One option is a more deliberative approach of the sort used in Ireland for Abortion referendum. You use that citizen jury model to build legitimacy for the process.
But - big caveat - they have rather fallen out of fashion in Ireland, and have proved less successful / more divisive since.
Interesting question from @sundersays.bsky.social ⬇️
One broader point is I think 🇬🇧 needs urgent conversation about how to do constitutional change… I’m guessing most govs will now shy away from referendums, so does that mean we do it through Parliament?
(Alternative is more deliberative options)
Nothing they talk about more in "left behind communities" than reinstalling the Shah.
This is really important new research and it was great to work with Steve on publishing it.
Two myths exposed here:
1. “Labour shouldn’t worry about voters it’s losing to its left because there’s a minimal electoral impact”. False.
2. “Labour’s only losing are woke lefties in safe seats”. False.
The key argument here seems to be that students who aren’t capable of doing UG studies should be admitted. But surely that is a decision for universities and their admissions rules?
Meanwhile, off-the-record Pentagon briefings suggest there is now a serious concern that American manufacturers won’t be able to up the production of banal cliches fast enough to cope with the way the US military is burning through them.
💯
Political theorist William E. Connolly passed last week, leaving behind an influential body of work studying democracy, capitalism & culture
To celebrate his legacy, we're unlocking his contributions to our journals thru 31 March on Project MUSE
press.jhu.edu/newsro...
1/3
Well at least one major international conflict has been averted.
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(Or put differently, what does 5.3 per cent mean in old money? How bad is this situation compared with previous periods of high unemployment?)
I'm sure it makes more logical sense, but when did unemployment start to be reported as a percentage? In 70s/80s/90s political discourse, the headline figure was always numeric, which at least provided a fairly understandable benchmark for what was happening.
www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
I imagine Starmer feels like he isn’t exactly dealing with FDR either.
*Academics of Bluesky:* Do you know a great UG/PG student with excellent quants skills?
@nspmartin.bsky.social and I are advertising a great fully-funded PhD on MRP and minority voting with our friends at Ipsos, so send them our way! ✌️
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In any normal week this would be a huge story. France moves toward extending a nuclear umbrella over European allies-- a major sign of declining credibility of US extended deterrence.
www.defensenews.com/global/europ...
JOB
Assistant Professor of Political Theory
University of Cambridge
@thecambridgeschool.bsky.social
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/univers...
Interesting from @YouGov. Public broadly with Starmer rhetorically (neither praise nor condemn US action in Iran).
However, there is no difference in levels of support for joining US action & the more defensive posture Starmer has adopted (e.g. UK resources can be used to take out missiles).
Very insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but in a weird way carries quite a lot of symbolic weight as a moment.
I've always used QDA Miner for my qual coding needs, but am using Nvivo for Mac for another project with someone else. Am I missing something??? It seems to lack really obvious functionality, like the ability to export all your highlights under their headings so you can review them???
