Gavin Jackson

Yeah but deindustrialisation (partly due to robots) has already happened. Telling a sci-fi story about robots causing the same to happen to white collar workers is a way of talking about what happened to blue collar workers without doing so directly.

Call Me Ishmaelle, Xiaolu Guo

The Amazon: what everyone needs to know, Mark Plotkin

Science fiction is always a way of talking about the present rather than the future. Worrying about AI is a great way of talking about deindustrialisation without doing so.

This chart on the surface may be reassuring, but actually look at it - this decade is on track to have the highest level of famine deaths since the 1970s:

This is great Giles and I agree with it. But I do wonder if just a few weak inflation prints in the US could mean rates change quite swiftly.

A cover story from me in this week's @economist.com—on the "Poundland" strategy for the British economy: as a a cheap-but-good-value exporter of workers and assets.

That means slaying some sacred "world-beating" cows, but is truer to the advantages Britain actually has.

(🧵)

British bats are a conservation success story They have few friends, but powerful lawyers

On the success of bats in Britain
www.economist.com/britain/2025...

Going through the (depressing) OBR Fiscal Risks Report and, bloody hell, that’s quite the chart.

obr.uk/docs/dlm_upl...

Realised who Sabrina Carpenter reminds me of: it’s Barbara Windsor in the Carry On films

Pakistan's battery boom is definitely starting!

I got the battery data and it's $95m of batteries in March to May alone..

A quiet education revolution in England’s secondary cities Not just a London effect

A quiet education revolution in England’s secondary cities
economist.com/britain/2025...

Project Vend: Can Claude run a small shop? (And why does that matter?) We let Claude run a small shop in the Anthropic office. Here's what happened.

This is fascinating imo, and fun that the company with billions staked on the idiot-savant machine would document it losing the head in such odd ways

www.anthropic.com/research/pro...

Lovely idea for a column.

This must be the American equivalent of Brits finding out how popular Benny Hill was in the states.

India’s past gives a vision of America’s future.

Yes for Friends but Seinfeld you had to seek out and is not well known at all.

Call me basic, but my theory of fertility can be condensed to 6 bullet points:

t.co/uxM6qq4lwx

Britain is already a hot country. It should act like it A land of long holidays, cool homes and tree-lined streets awaits

Britain is hot. Accept it. Buy the aircon. Build the hotels. Take August off. Plant some trees. Put up the awning. www.economist.com/britain/2025...

Jane Street banned from dealing securities in India Regulator accuses trading firm of ‘sinister scheme’ to manipulate derivatives markets

on.ft.com/44hhkYR Jane Street banned from dealing securities in India

I think the evidence here is also limited. From the top of my head I think a lot of smartphone use has replaced TV, video games or being bored alone rather than free play. I think the decline in risk-taking and independence precedes smartphones and is more linked to safety fears.

This is what our Science section wrote fwiw

I’d have to check who is right when I’m at my desk but the poor evidence base is ime the reason for scepticism.

The Haidt thesis is also not specifically just about phones, it’s about them replacing face-to-face contact. So people can believe phones are bad for mental health while rejecting Haidt’s specific explanation of the causal mechanism.

So in social science you are wanting to use some sort of variance to identify causal effect. We can use either timing and geography (some people got them sooner) or intensity (some people use them more) as far as I am aware, neither of them show a correlation with the incidence of mh problems.

It’s just name recognition isn’t it? Corbyn was always good at being a vessel for other people to project their own ideology onto.

One of those (actually very unsure but might happen) longterm trend predictions I have is that there will be increasing demand for communities, spaces, services that put children and adults into techfree environments.

Basically the ability to be without tech will become increasingly commoditized.

Alex Harrowell had a theory that "echo chambers and filter bubbles" was diametrically wrong as a theory of how people used social media; most of them seemed to construct a huge radio telescope dedicated to seeking out things that would offend them, which was actually much more harmful.

First ever female chancellor crying in the commons and it making her politically stronger because the gilt market is on her side is so INTERESTING