Andrew J

"... as soon as you shift the frame to, these are politicians who've been bought & paid for by oil & gas, arms trade companies, private healthcare companies, gambling companies, their behaviour makes absolute sense"

@zackpolanski.bsky.social on Labour. Spot on.

Premium: The AI Data Center Financial Crisis Since the beginning of 2023, big tech has spent over $814 billion in capital expenditures, with a large portion of that going towards meeting the demands of AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.  B...

Premium Newsletter: AI data centers are low-margin, high-capex time bombs with low gross margins possible only in perfect circumstances, fueled by junk-grade debt. Without $100bn+ in new, non-hyperscaler demand by 2028, the majority of these loans go unpaid.
www.wheresyoured.at/data-center-...

#15 Class—Part 2 Podcast Episode · The New Party Podcast · 07/02/2026 · 1h 10m

Episode 15: Class pt. 2

@Tom_Gann of @NewSocialistNS joins again to continue our deep dive into what Marx thought about class. Is the working class a majority, how might our answers to this inform the building of a mass party, and who can drive change?
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

UNC Admin Can Now, Officially, Secretly Record Faculty The new policy prohibits students from recording class without permission but explicitly allows administrators to surveil professors for any “lawful purpose.”

“The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently rolled out a new policy that permits university officials to record classes without notifying the instructor. It’s a practice administrators have used in the past to investigate professors but have now formalized in writing.”

On Politics: Mandelson and the Private Life of Power Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · 02/11/2026 · 1h 7m

The Mandelson story is a rare glimpse into the private life of power, and the extent of state capture by unconstrained wealth. @petergeoghegan.bsky.social & @ethanshone.bsky.social joined me on @lrb.co.uk ON POLITICS to lay out just what that corruption means: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...

Keir Starmer talk like a half-way normal person challenge.

“I've known Morgan for eight years as a colleague and as a friend. We have run up and down every political football pitch that is across the country.”

Tim Allan, who just quit as Starmer's director of comms, was on the board of the trans-eliminationist hate group "Sex Matters", whose director of advocacy Helen Joyce urged transphobes to get through to "decision makers" so that the "numbers" of trans people could be "reduced." That's what they did.

Hey so has anyone asked well regarded podcaster Alistair Campbell about Epstein and his deep relationship with New Labour

Phillips OBrien @phillipspobrien.bsky.social Epstein is being described by the Polish PM as a possible Russian spy. If so, it would explain a great deal. All the Epstein "evidence" would actually be kompromat taking in the rich and powerful to serve Kremlin interests. www.telegraph.co.uk/ world-news/2... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/ 2026/02/03/epstein-was-probably-a-russian-spy-says-poland/ www.telegraph.co.uk 05:17 • 4 Feb 2026 © Everybody can reply

For sure man: Larry Summers, Peter Thiel, Ehud Barak, Peter Mandelson, Bill Gates, and basically every other oligarch, power broker and political bigwig in the western power structure were all taken in by a devious Russian plot to enact the precise policy suite they’ve espoused their entire careers.

uk workers unions are a total embarrassment

once again, East Central Europe leads the way notesfrompoland.com/2024/10/31/n...

This image is strikingly similar to the famous photo of a young Dilma Rousseff in front of a Brazilian military court also too cowardly to show their faces.

On the new TF we talk about Epstein in terms of his “day job” as a node in the global kleptocracy (I.e. facilitating bribes from wealthy Russians or Saudis to Trump or connecting western financiers with same), and it occurs to me now that the function is filled by… crypto!

1 job lost to blockchain.

If internet firms are defined by their fastest-growing monetized products, well, Meta is basically a Reels company, one that successfully chased TikTok into continued relevance, allowing Mark Zuckerberg to throw money at his next big chase (into generative AI). This isn’t just a formal change from the News Feed to Stories to predictively recommended vertical videos, though. It’s a long (and nearly complete) process of platform desocialization. Platforms originally defined by keeping up with people you know, or have at least heard of, become something fundamentally different.

"desocialization" (like "social deskilling") is a good term for what was once talked about in terms of "social graph" vs. "interest graph," or of "algorithmic recommendation"
nymag.com/intelligence...

Along with return of "new conglomerates" (@nsrnicek.bsky.social) in Big Tech, shift from publicly-traded to privately-held companies pointed out by @lenorepalladino.bsky.social is major shift of 21c capitalism.

Defend trans kids in school | Good Law Project

✏️ NEW 📏

A school faces a threat of legal action over policies that protect all children – so we’re fighting back.
https://goodlaw.social/a8mo

Shame on Donald Trump for single-handedly discrediting and dismantling the liberal rules-based international order all by himself without any assistance

“Despite their supposed victory in the Supreme Court last April, anti-trans campaigners like Sex Matters have encountered failure after failure in their attempts to use the law to bully trans people out of public life."

And If Sex Matters tries to bring another challenge, we’re ready to fight back.

The only way liberals can justify very low bar statements like this is by thinking the previous status quo was pretty much fine. Their normal is very bleak. Thankfully a lot of people on the ground are breaking away from accepting the bromides from establishment Democrats.

Alex Pretti’s coworkers take a moment of silence this morning

stuff like ice is the entire reason palantir exists, I have genuinely no idea how you go to work there and go "this isn't what I signed up for"

Week of action in honor of Alex Pretti, RN and all others killed by ice Join National Nurses United RN members in a week-long series of actions to honor Pretti and all who have been murdered by ICE, as well as demand that Congress vote to immediately abolish this violent,...

National Nurses United, largest nurses' union in US, are holding actions over the coming week in honor of Alex Pretti and all others killed by ICE

www.nationalnursesunited.org/week-of-acti...

This stuff is aimed at the billionaires who they want funding and support from, not the base, I don't think. Though it will appeal to the hardcore, that hardcore is a minority. The purpose is showing you are aligned with Musk & Co., and that you are willing to post unhinged things—gets you money.

"Citizens are here not treated as rational and autonomous individuals, but are manipulated based on their emotions; their autonomy is undermined. Through social media and with the help of AI algorithms, critical thought is also repressed"
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

ayyy

I actually think it's pretty easy to explain.

Younger people didn't buy into an older neoliberal elite's prejudices, the older neoliberal elite absolutely lost their shit at the notion that they might be called on to change, and fascists exploited that reactionary moment

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John Yoo, author of the Bush Administration's infamous 'Torture Memos', has some thoughts on updating the laws of war in The Atlantic monthly.