David Butt Philip

At an airport I once saw a bunch of transcendentalists boarding a flight they’d chartered. At least I assumed they were transcendentalists because they were on a hire plane thank you please enjoy the weekend ahead.

The conditions that have led to what’s happening in the US today exist in democracies around the world.
They are an inevitable outcome of our collective failure to adapt to fundamental changes in the information ecosystem on which our democracies were originally built.

NEW 🧵 Is human intelligence starting to decline?

Recent results from major international tests show that the average person’s capacity to process information, use reasoning and solve novel problems has been falling since around the mid 2010s

What should we make of this?

www.ft.com/content/a801...

True story: a few years ago, I was being interviewed by a reporter for the New York Times. I mentioned the history of eviction statutes and how they tied into Jim Crow.

The reporter asked "what's Jim Crow?"

When I explained, the reporter didn't believe me and said the US wouldn't do that.

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." (Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night.)

This is why you don't design curricula around "jobs of the future".

We can't predict the future but we do know what general skills and knowledge will be valuable whatever job you do.

If a plea for kindness and empathy makes you furious, you might be a sociopath.

Luke Littler thrashes Michael van Gerwen to claim historic world title 17-year-old Luke Littler raced into a 4-0 lead before completing a 7-3 victory over Michael van Gerwen in the PDC world championship final

all right, have some darts writing

www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/j...

Headline says 'I am selling my chalets in the alps - how do I avoid inheritance tax?'

The Telegraph gets straight to the heart of the most pressing issue of the day for most people.

Jimmy Carter lived so long that one of the authors of his New York Times obituary left the Times in 1978 and died in 2017 at the age of 87.

To be added to the list of things Liz Truss is wrong about:

A message to anyone who is spending Christmas alone this year - congratulations

It is time.

Tomorrow we discuss the comma in ‘God rest you merry, gentlemen’.

Sleep well ahead of this exciting annual event.

me: you can’t fire me, I’m a whistleblower

HR: first of all, that’s a kazoo

Journal article called Bullshitters. Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives?

"Bullshitters. Who Are They and What Do
We Know about Their Lives?"

Just read this brilliant paper that used the PISA tests to look at who bullshits.

It asked 40,000 15yos to explain a fake maths term, eg Subjunctive scaling.

So guess what it found? 🧵

“No worries if not” -President Yoon Suk Yeol

You can tell the S Korea thing is serious because it's finally knocked Gregg Wallace off the number one spot on BBC news online.

Accrington Stanley? WHO ARE THEY?

God bless the German opera-going public, and especially the kindly woman who spotted me arriving for today’s premiere and stopped me to say “Toi toi” and hand me this! 😊🙏🏻

hell plate

Someone just posted a photo of the Mar-a-Lago Thanksgiving dinner and honestly, if someone served that to me on a plane in economy I'd fucking kick off.

Zelenskyy suggests he's prepared to end Ukraine war in return for NATO membership, even if Russia doesn't immediately return seized land The Ukrainian president told Sky News's chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay NATO membership would have to be offered to unoccupied parts of the country in order to end the "hot phase of the war", as lon...

BREAKING: Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested a ceasefire deal could be struck if Ukrainian territory he controls could be taken "under the NATO umbrella" - allowing him to negotiate the return of the rest later "in a diplomatic way"

news.sky.com/story/zelens...

Absolutely fascinating the coalitions (both expected and unexpected) formed on both sides by allowing a free vote. Should happen more often imo!

How are they ever going to replace someone with his skill set (“eats food”)

Gregg Wallace will step away from presenting MasterChef while complaints made to the BBC from individuals about historical allegations of misconduct are investigated, the show's production company Banijay UK said.

Also because they’ve already cut the London jobs.

Fans of a UK-US trade deal may note that the one traditional Free Trade Agreement Trump completed in his first term was with Mexico and Canada, who he is now threatening with 25% tariffs. Not a man to honour a deal, obviously.

Will be renegotiated, hard to say in what way exactly.

The only thing this is a sign of is exceptional taste. Life-changingly brilliant record.

Did…did a minotaur write this

them: this is your first rap battle, isn’t it?

me, holding scissors and sellotape: first of all, how dare you