Nikhil Venkatesh

Dressing up as the repugnant conclusion from Derek Parfit's 'Reasons and Persons' for World Book Day

Lifelong learning and the Aims of Higher Education Last Thursday, I gave the annual Daniel C.

Interesting piece by @wiglet1981.bsky.social on the aims of higher education richardpettigrew.substack.com/p/lifelong-l...

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

With our electoral system this is now very high stakes. Could be the end of Labour, which could be a disaster or an opportunity. Labour should now be considering electoral reform and a progressive alliance, but will need big changes to win trust on the left. Probably only Burnham could pull it off

Have Labour just given up the main reason most of their voters have for voting for them - being the tactical anti-Tory, anti-Reform choice in most of the country - for the sake of stopping Andy Burnham moving policy slightly to the left?

Happy to talk!

Graph showing three paths for AI development - it could end scarcity, end humanity, or boost trend gdp growth by 0.2 percentage points

In conclusion, it's impossible to say whether it's good or not

Labour Together’s Smear Operation Made This Government The Labour Together spying scandal shows how Britain’s mainstream press looked the other way when dirty tricks were deployed against the Left — allowing a culture of surveillance and paranoia to take ...

As I have said before, you can't do a popular front if you're also doing McCarthyism. Great piece from philosophy's own @martinoneill.bsky.social tribunemag.co.uk/2026/02/smea...

The Hundred: IPL-linked teams 'not considering Pakistan players' Four sides in The Hundred with links to the IPL are not expected to sign players from Pakistan in next month's auction.

This would presumably be a breach of UK law, but in any case is seriously wrong. Cricket should be a vehicle for bringing people together www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricke...

Surprisingly good stuff from the UK government, if true

Yeah I guess they supply public bads as well! Maybe the play is subsidise all community spaces including pubs, cafes, music venues etc but tax alcohol

Not sure RP is the right way to value public goods!

Pubs supply some public goods and therefore deserve some subsidy imo

Curling is so good

I guess they don't see the western hemisphere as being truly foreign countries (tbf in the UK we often don't treat the US as being truly foreign either)

A Farewell to Morgan McSweeney What a fantastic week. Peter Mandelson toasted to charcoal, the government being forced to make public all communications about him, the pos...

This is superb from @philbc3.bsky.social averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2026/02/a-fa...

Screenshot from an academic paper reading: These are the sort of cases I had in mind in giving this essay its title, even though I am not actually Italian. I am Jewish, but the title “Blame, Jewish style” does not have nearly as appealing a ring to it. In any event, this is not the first time that someone has noticed similar patterns in Jewish and Italian families. African-Americans, Greeks, and Russians may identify as well.

Susan Wolf, on why she titled an essay "Blame, Italian style"
academic.oup.com/book/4117/ch...

This will be a general problem with a politics made out of befriending the elites, with little guiding principle apart from seeking power

The rot is not simply McSweeney or even Starmer, or this week's news cycle. The dominant faction in the Labour Party - and a large part of the centre-left media - regarded Mandelson as a hero and a genius for the past thirty years, when his flaws have been well-known for most of that time

I'd watch a muppet show movie where the muppets infiltrate an academic conference.

Full speech here: www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_spee....

Just listened to this excellent podcast about Mandela's trial www.ppfideas.com/episodes/pol...

Screenshot of text reading: Mandela: I was saying, My Lord, after I had read I told him that they seemed far too complicated for the ordinary reader in that the language was obtuse and they were full of usual communistic clichés and jargon. If the court will look at some of the standard works of Marxism, my point will be demonstrated. He said it was impossible to simplify the language

Nelson Mandela, on trial for his life, made time for a brutal aside on communist literature

You're absolutely right, my comment is more aimed at those who went along with them than those whose interests they served

Probably should have thought of that before the purges and stitch-ups but here we are

I suspect this is one of the reasons Mandelson always managed to get back into politics: most of the media approved of what he wanted to do, particularly in terms of the regular purges of the left (under Kinnock and Blair, as well as against Corbyn).

Lord Mandelson wearing an Epstein-branded top in 2009 Credit: Rex Features

losing my mind at this photo, it's literally the 'my t-shirt' meme

Hmm good points, not wholly convinced, but not my area of expertise

also hopefully AI will lead to some innovations that are true quality upgrades - vaccines we didn't have before, etc. (actually, medical innovations seem an important exception to your rule - lots of healthcare products today and are both way more expensive and way better than traditional remedies)

i take the point in those cases, but in OP's case it does seem worse from a social point of view though. news was already really cheap and widely available, making it worse doesn't benefit any consumers. maybe it frees up resources for producers to produce other stuff?

Hahaha - look, I agree Labour should be pursuing a popular front strategy, but the top of the party do not appear to agree!