Anca Sandu

AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event Three years in, one of AI’s enduring impacts is to make people feel like they’re losing it.

"swimming in the primordial soup of machine cognition"

www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Greek court strips three far-right MPs of seats over electoral fraud Tribunal rules Spartans lawmakers ‘deceived’ voters after convicted ex-leader of Golden Dawn found to hold influence over party

Meanwhile in Athens
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Tennis.
Gotta love it.
@rolandgarros.com

Wake me up when AI becomes a reliable tool for gathering data from non OCR-izable pdf files.
And for the subsequent data cleanup

LIVE Președintele interimar al PNL a fost numit de președintele interimar al României în poziția de premier interimar - HotNews.ro Președintele interimar Ilie Bolojan va anunța în prima parte a zilei de marți numele premierului interimar după ce Marcel Ciolacu a transmis luni că își

Romania these days: "Interim Liberal Party president named by the Interim Romanian President as Interim Prime Minister"

God bless interimely

hotnews.ro/vom-afla-nou...

Maybe this is how we save US democracy?

We produce a personalised movie feed, beamed directly into the White House - like in "Goodbye Lenin" - full of craggy, strong-jawed American heroes who uphold the constitution, tackle climate change, restore international aid & stand up to dictators.

Ideas?

My academic take on memes and Romanian politics.

intersections.tk.hu/index.php/in...

The group chats that changed America A loose private network on Signal and WhatsApp helped usher in the new alliance between Silicon Valley and Donald Trump’s new right.

This reminds me a lot of the Blackberry era chats.

www.semafor.com/article/04/2...

A pope who could, and did change his mind.

U.S. Texts Barnard Employees and Asks if They Are Jewish A questionnaire from a federal commission also inquired about whether professors and other college staff members had been harassed.

Ah yes, the government asking Jews to register as Jewish, in the name of protecting the Jews. No way that could go wrong www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/n...

Azi la Agronomie mirosea a cantină de hotel Arad/Galați în Neptun în anii '90.

Sur le sable, face à la mer

I give up on satyre.

Although, this is how I can tell they are amateurs: real troopers have learnt how to do the "5 mins effortless French makeup look" in 20 second-bursts, using the rear mirror, waiting for the traffic lights to turn green
(Morning traffic can be a blessing)

Zelensky fires back at Trump amid rumors that the White House has offered to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea, posts a screenshot of the first Trump admin’s July 2018 denunciation of Moscow’s annexation. A not-so-subtle accusation of hypocrisy leveled at the Donald.

Three Wise Judges, One Mad King The administration took a drubbing yesterday in federal court over its summary deportations.

“This is not a secret court, an inquisition from medieval times. This is the United States of America. People are being thrown out of the country because of their tattoos."

The times we're living in, my dear Lord

open.substack.com/pub/statusku...

What did Pope Francis think of JD Vance? His view was more than clear | Jan-Werner Mueller Francis was as outspoken as could be without naming names, when he criticized Vance in his February letter to US bishops

What did Pope Francis think of JD Vance? His view was more than clear | Jan-Werner Mueller
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

War! What is it good for? Welcome to our second bonus guest post of the week (Sam is on holiday and back next week).

War! What is it good for?
open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/w...

Apple fined $570 million and Meta $228 million for breaching EU law Apple was fined 500 million euros ($570 million) on Wednesday and Meta 200 million euros, as European Union antitrust regulators handed out the first sanctions under landmark legislation aimed at curbing the power of Big Tech.

Apple was fined $570 million and Meta $228 million, as European Union antitrust regulators handed out the first sanctions under landmark legislation aimed at curbing the power of Big Tech reut.rs/44FRePF

‘The bomber’s words sound mainstream. Like he won!’ Oklahoma City’s tragedy in the time of Trump Revulsion at deadly Oklahoma City explosion in 1995 has faded. But echoes of the blast, and its perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, are heard today as far-right ideas storm the US

‘The bomber’s words sound mainstream. Like he won!’ Oklahoma City’s tragedy in the time of Trump

Exposing ‘the illegals’: how KGB’s fake westerners infiltrated the Prague Spring Kremlin’s most prized spies were sent in to Czechoslovakia to whip up the 1960s reform protests in a move then replicated across the eastern bloc

Exposing ‘the illegals’: how KGB’s fake westerners infiltrated the Prague Spring

a man in a suit says this is ridiculous in white letters ALT: a man in a suit says this is ridiculous in white letters

A short article of mine on civil-military relations and democratic backsliding had been accepted for publication in the journal "Connections".

Then I received an email that the editors can't publish the paper unless I "remove the case study/examples of the United States" (1/x)
#CivMilSky

Striking how often this regime has to choose between looking like liars & looking like losers. Here they opt once again for looking like liars *and* losers.

On Authoritarian Hubris And the perils of denial

The more I try to make sense of the mess we're in, the more depressing it gets. Life is life, innit.

ancasandu.substack.com/p/on-authori...

Google has illegal advertising monopoly, judge rules It is the second major case Google has lost in a year, after it was found to have a monopoly on online search.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

total clarity here from @edwardluce.bsky.social

www.ft.com/content/4c4b...

El Salvador President Bukele says he won't be releasing a Maryland man back to the US Trump’s top advisers and Nayib Bukele say that they had no basis for the Central American nation to return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported there.

The abominables.

apnews.com/article/dona...

Despite a court order, White House bars AP from Oval Office event The Trump administration has turned a reporter and photographer from The Associated Press away from covering an Oval Office news conference involving President Donald Trump and El Salvador President N...

Textbook authoritarianism

apnews.com/article/trum...

The Bookmarks #1 Online bits for future reference

I need to spend some more time with these analyses, so let's assemble them in a public list
ancasandu.substack.com/p/the-bookma...

Again and again, Trump misunderstands the limits of American power. And as a result is taking us to a global financial precipice.

"As of Wednesday afternoon, the markets were pricing 30 year Greek bonds as a less risky investment than American ones. The markets are moving with their feet."

open.substack.com/pub/goodalla... via @lewisgoodall.com

As a political scientist myself, all I can say is political science cannot explain it. It's beyond any institutional design to defend/distract from absurdity, unpredictability, and insanity is not really a concept when it comes to institutional design

Because both ways it’s about breaking an alliance.