Adrian Holme
@adrianholme.bsky.social
Writer, educator, maker. Art, science and technology, Illustration Research, Journal of Illustration, 'It's Freezing in LA!' contributor.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed a memo formally rescinding the $1.776 “anti-weaponization” fund, but which leaves intact immunity for Trump by barring the federal government from any investigation, review or prosecution of any action by Trump... TAT: [Corruption | Undermining democracy]
Blanche order keeps intact immunity deal barring investigation of Trump and his family
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Sunday night memo formally rescinding the $1.776 “anti-weaponization” fund leaves intact another key provision for President Trump: an order offer…
thehill.com
Court rules “Mambo No. 6” must be written by a human
René Walter@rawx.bsky.social · yesterdayGEMA wins legal dispute against Suno to stop them from imitating "nine well-known songs by German artists without permission" from Helene Fischer, Alphaville, the Boney M. hits “Daddy Cool” from 1976 and “Rasputin” from 1978 to Lou Bega's 1999 version of “Mambo No. 5”.
Most serious work on school closure in emergencies takes that stance. Having done quite a lot of work on COVID and education at the time, I can tell you that public health and medical officials neither seriously consulted the emergency education literature nor took expert recommendations seriously.
The responsibility of scientists We created the nuclear monster. We must warn against it now | By Carlo Rovelli www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2026/0... #science #sciencesky #PhilosophySky
The responsibility of scientists
We created the nuclear monster. We must warn against it now
newstatesman.com
🧵On @thenewsagents.co.uk yesterday, school closures and the lab leak theory were offered as two examples of legitimate questions that were hard to ask. Both have in fact been asked constantly since 2020. But here's a thread on why I think they were wrong and dangerous on school closures 1/12
2. Clean indoor air: helpful in a pandemic and good for health and learning at all times (and not just in schools but other buildings too) 3. Effective public health measures: testing, contact tracing, support for isolation, communication, etc 10/12
4. Support for children in disadvantaged communities, inc devices, connectivity, food, safe spaces to learn, catch-up teaching 5. Dedicated and planned mental health and social support if school closures become necessary 6. Build capacity to generate evidence more rapidly for the next time 11/12
Keeping schools open is a goal not a policy. A blanket "never close schools" is a bad lesson. I suggest these: 1. Do not prejudge next pandemic which will be a different virus and could have very different age profile of who it attacks 9/12
This narrative mirrors the realist take on the security dilemma in IR, where nations are allegedly doomed to participate in an arms race toward mutually assured destruction. But this is just a capitulation of human intelligence, putting narrow self-interests before the greater collective good.
Eryk Salvaggio@eryk.bsky.social · last wk.The “losing control” narrative creates the loss of control. Nobody is losing control of an emerging intelligence. They’re redirecting their own agency to it, as a way of diffusing responsibility, but the self-perpetuated intelligence myth has them convinced they have no choice.
All 55 UEFA nations have unanimously agreed to boycott FIFA competitions if plans to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors move forward. European football is drawing a line in the sand: the World Cup belongs to the players and fans.
If I was still teaching a critical data course I’d add this to the syllabus. All about the importance of what is left unmeasured, despite being essential to “the description of the thing itself, rather than its variation.” www.thebeliever.net/on-descripti...
On Description - Believer Magazine
Not long ago, I was reading, in a magazine profile, a physical description of a person “who has a prodigious white beard, wavy gray bangs, and dark, beetling eyebrows.” A photo of the person was inclu...
thebeliever.net
Before things kick off officially at #BSPS2026, Adrian Currie explains the attack on philosophy (among others) happening at Exeter (among others). Rousing speech followed by big applause #DefendExeterUni
“Abduction begins with observing something that should not have happened under prevailing expectations, but did…Entire formal disciplines are devoted to deduction (mathematics) & induction (stats), yet abduction has been left to qualitative intuition or dismissed” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Advancing science by designing for surprise
Consider a thought experiment. Two graduate students have written identical dissertations: the same experiments, the same data, the same robust findings. One is written as a standard, cautious text th...
science.org
New from me in Tech Policy Press: The UN’s IISP Report extends the trend of erasing the human from major policy definitions of AI. Rather, it frames AI as a “system from nowhere,” further obscuring human accountability from the companies that build them.
How the UN’s Scientific Panel Erases Human Responsibility for AI
The UN Scientific Panel's report casts artificial intelligence as a system from nowhere, writes Eryk Salvaggio. The definition will shape policy for years.
techpolicy.press
To get better protection against respiratory infections and transmission we need to achieve nasal immunity. A new @cp-immunity.bsky.social review www.cell.com/immunity/abs...
Nasal immunity in respiratory viral infection, transmission, and protection
The nasal mucosa is a key decision point during respiratory viral infection. Here, Kazer et al. review new understanding of how local host cell subsets respond during viral infection and how this know...
cell.com
“Adult-literacy scores have also dropped: Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20 percent.” www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
The End of Reading Is Here
Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.
theatlantic.com
So many roads lead back to the question of whether the work outsourced to AI frees up time to do the important work or whether it will turn out to be the important work. Worth reading this by @helenouyang.bsky.social on what changes when AI writes patient notes. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/m...
A really unpleasant professional anxiety that I’ve just realized I have is that I don‘t know how to think about collaborations now that I’m so mismatched with peers on acceptable AI use. I expected this problem with students but I’m shocked at how everyone in their 40s/50s is just casually using it
The founder we should talk more about is Thomas Paine, who will fuck your shit up every time. Here he is in The Rights of Man just ripping into any ideas of "originalism" and that kind of garbage.
“Now, an investigation by Mother Jones confirms that the FBI used software from the Israeli firm Cellebrite to secretly extract data from the phones of Bray-Waters and at least a dozen other protesters. A month later, one of those protesters […] would be indicted as part of the Spokane 9 case”
Center for Democracy & Technology@cdt.org · last mo.CDT’s Tom Bowman in Mother Jones: “This sounds like a case in which the government basically had a blank check to hoover up everyone’s data:”
Trump thought suing the BBC would intimidate them. Instead, they turned his own lawsuit into a legal headache that could force him to defend his actions surrounding January 6 under oath. That is the kind of self inflicted karma no political strategist could have scripted.
And there it is… www.desmog.com/2026/04/30/r...
Revealed: Reform’s £24 Million from Fossil Fuel Interests
Reform UK has received £24 million from oil and gas interests, accounting for more than two thirds of its total income, DeSmog can reveal. Led by Nigel Farage, the party is calling for new North Sea o...
desmog.com
“Dysphoria Mundi” Call for papers deadline extended — many folks who follow me or someone who has reshared this may be interested: addressing “World Models” from critical perspectives in cognitive sciences, ecological concerns, creative practice, and more. www.biblhertz.it/3792468/2606...
Call for PapersDysphoria mundi: Breaking and Making World Models. Biennale Venezia
biblhertz.it
Starmer maintained the fiction that he saved a morally and politically bankrupt Labour Party. None of which is true. The landslide won less popular share of the vote than Corbyn's Labour. Membership halved under Starmer and if he hadn't resigned he would have completely ruined it
“It is a tragedy of today’s politics that, for too many, working-class defiance finds its outlet in racist organisations and reactionary parties, and that the left’s neglect of class politics… has left it with little moral standing to challenge that”: observer.co.uk/news/columni...
An abandoned working class has found its voice. Tragicall...
After decades of economic exploitation, political disdain and social abandonment, people turn to anyone who will listen
observer.co.uk
Though it hasn’t become a national issue, there have in recent weeks been arson attacks of mosques, street attacks on those perceived to be Muslim, and now this. An issue that needs to be taken seriously. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Man charged after suspected anti-Muslim attacks in Edinburgh
Two people were injured close to a mosque and a man was later seen battering the door of a pizzeria as members of the public run away.
bbc.co.uk
Obviously there should be an election by members for a new leader of the Labour Party, rather than a 'coronation'. Coronations are for Kings and Queens. It is vital for a debate on policy and future direction.
