Matheson Russell
@mathesonrussell.bsky.social
Social & political philosophy | deliberative democracy | social epistemology | climate activist | music lover | him/his | sidekick to @drjinrussell @AucklandUni
Fixing complex problems usually involves difficult, unpalatable decisions. One solution: randomly select a group of ordinary people to debate the pros and cons and find a way forward.
Can a room full of strangers solve problems MPs can't?
newsroom.co.nz
The normalisation of far right rhetoric and policies across Western Europe and including Scandinavia is utterly depressing this century
How Sweden lost its soul – and stopped being Sweden | Martin Gelin
In 2022 my country entered a new era of cruelty. It will take more than one election to get the old, tolerant Sweden back, writes Swedish journalist Martin Gelin
theguardian.com
The Equal Earth projection is nice. But the UN rejected an alternative proposal from the New Zealand delegation, the Middle-earth projection:
Andrew Heiss@andrew.heiss.phd · last wk.You can use this UN-approved Equal Earth projection right now in #rstats #gis #databs
New WoodMac report discusses "natural carbon sinks," which currently absorb about 40% of human carbon emissions ... but are not valued by carbon pricing schemes, are not captured in climate models, and are all basically in decline. And unlike engineered removals, you can't just build new ecosystems.
Wood Mackenzie: Natural Carbon Sinks Absorb 40% of Human CO2 Emissions and Are Not Valued in Most Climate Models
New analysis finds land and ocean sinks are weakening and carbon prices and coverage fall short of what is needed to protect them, leaving net zero...
globenewswire.com
in 1989 francis fukuyama invented the clickbait title and has been punished for his sins ever since
I bumped into my Hungarian buddy on Friday, fresh back from a visit home. He said it's hard now to find anyone who'll cop to having been an Orban supporter. The regime is very rapidly disappearing into history. This how quickly things can turn. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The Guardian view on the new Hungary: de-Orbánising at pace | Editorial
Editorial: As a Brussels deadline looms with over €10bn at stake, Péter Magyar’s first three months have been transformative in addressing a corrupt legacy
theguardian.com
Introduce yourself with 10 acts you’ve seen live: Herbie Hancock Kurt Elling Arturo Sandoval Wynton Marsalis Snarky Puppy George Benson James Brown Hiatus Kaiyote Erykah Badu Bobby McFerrin
Jo Wolff@jowolff.bsky.social · 2w agoIntroduce yourself with 10 acts you’ve seen live: Can Ramones The Slits Siouxsie and the Banshees The Clash Talking Heads Miles Davis Sun Ra Bayreuth Festival Orchestra Pina Bausch Company
People on here are starting to forget why freedom of extramural unscholarly speech is part of academic freedom, even with the firings of people who said unkind truths about Charlie Kirk in recent memory and attacks on extramural pro-Palestinian speech ongoing. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Conceptualizing Academic Freedom
Academic freedom is an unusual and complex set of norms and practices. It arises out of the combination of the corporate self-governance of medieval universities and the spirit of disciplinary scienti...
annualreviews.org
This must be the third video of wonderful voices singing global scales I have seen, and each is mesmerising and has taught me things I didn't know. Such as: That these scales exist and how they, the bare backbone of tunes, reflect and unlock whole world regions' music. This is amazing.
Chris sacked Chris for plotting to replace Chris with Chris to stand against Chris #nzpol
if the cheese banks fail we will have a problem worse than 2008
Albert Pinto@70sbachchan.bsky.social · last mo.You can't predict the turns this sentence takes. Extreme heat is threatening Italy’s “cheese banks,” where hundreds of thousands of Parmigiano-Reggiano wheels are stored as loan collateral. fortune.com/2026/08/10/i...
New publication: "Democracy and Rule over Others" doi.org/10.1017/S003... In this article, David Kelley and I offer some new reasons to abandon the idea of democracy as collective self-rule. /1
Democracy and Rule over Others: The Boundary Problem and the Limits of Collective Self-Rule | The Review of Politics | Cambridge Core
Democracy and Rule over Others: The Boundary Problem and the Limits of Collective Self-Rule
doi.org
Gotta shut down the factory that makes this kinda guy
Israel is giving Trump's former campaign manager millions of dollars to fill the internet with pro-Israel articles written by AI, not so that anyone will actually read them, but so that *LLMs will train on them* & regurgitate their perspective. This is the future of the information environment.
Israel Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk About Gaza. It's Working.
Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is overseeing an operation posting hundreds of blog posts on behalf of Israel, with the goal of infiltrating artificial intelligence.
dropsitenews.com
To the the climate concerned - please sign: our.actionstation.org.nz/petitions/st...
Stop the Climate Amendment Bill!
This is important because climate change is the most serious and important issue facing humankind. We have a rapidly closing window of opportunity to prevent catastrophic damage to the natural world ...
our.actionstation.org.nz
Matt Walsh complains that Nolan brought his obsession with nonlinear story telling to the Odyssey, undercutting the original's narrative. The defenders of western civilisation, folks.
This is the fulfillment of a fever dream of the far right to punish universities for hosting new ideas of social progress since William F Buckley published GOD AND MAN AT YALE in *1951* It took this long for a group of short-sighted hate-fueled degenerates to rise to the pinnacle of national power.
Ben Allen@evodynamics.bsky.social · 2mo agoCongrats we just made it impossible to come here for a PhD www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/16/m...
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
Love this. If your solutions are not commensurable with the scale of the problems, I will give you a polite nod and move on
Rude1 Haunted Badness. ⁂@rude1.blacksky.team · 4mo agoin this video in like 4 different ways and I hate that
Suzanne Vega releases “Luka” 39 years ago this weekend. She said she once received a fan letter about it: “Dear Suzanne, Luka is the most compelling piece of music I’ve heard in a long time. There are no words 2 tell U all the things I feel when I hear it. I thank God 4 U, Prince”
No government since at least 1987 has passed 30 or more laws without a select committee vet – until the coalition last month. newsroom.co.nz/2026/04/16/g...
Govt sets new record for bills skipping select committees
No government since at least 1987 has passed 30 or more laws without a select committee vet – until the coalition last month, Marc Daalder reports.
newsroom.co.nz
We saw that press conference with Trump, JD and Zelenskyy. We know their negotiation style. It’s a masterclass in treating ppl like sh*t.
Whatthefuck 👊🇨🇦🔥@fktrump2025.bsky.social · 5mo agoThis is nothing new. For as long as I remember the USA has had no regard for other nations, acting as if they were “better than”. Arrogant pricks!
People hear "judge" and they assume judicial independence. But the Trump administration has hacked away at immigration judges independence to the point that they can expect to be fired if they don't do the Trump administration's bidding. And the Supreme Court has blessed this loss of autonomy.
Steven Rich@datab.ae · 5mo agoBREAKING: the judges who dismissed high-profile cases in immigration court against two international students who have advocated for Palestinian causes, Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi, were fired yesterday, alongside four other judges. /w @haleaziz.bsky.social and @nicknehamas.bsky.social
Still one of my all time favs on the Tiny Desk. If you haven’t seen it, check it out youtu.be/dzgEjZyN9ec?...
Lous and The Yakuza: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
YouTube video by NPR Music
youtu.be
