Daniel Knowles
@dlknowles.bsky.social
Midwest correspondent at The Economist, in Chicago. Before that, in London, Mumbai, Nairobi and DC. Buy my book: http://shorturl.at/BJOUV
In China on holiday. It's wild. China in the American imagination: communist factory state full of worker drones destroying our industry and hostile to our civilisation China as I am seeing it: we have KFC, 7Eleven and McDonalds at the exit to all of our most important cultural heritage sites
Targeting crime, and especially the sort of petty crime that makes people feel like a place is unsafe or run-down, is something New Labour did well, in the face of a lot of initial criticism from both right and left.
Michael@michaeljsc.bsky.social · 2w agothere would be significant room for a Labour Home Secretary to lead a reforming agenda with socially conservative vibes that could unite the party, it’s just that it’s on crime, not immigration
there would be significant room for a Labour Home Secretary to lead a reforming agenda with socially conservative vibes that could unite the party, it’s just that it’s on crime, not immigration
Leftback@leftback.bsky.social · 2w agoWell this is a lovely story about how norms are collapsing and crime is something it's too much like hard work for the police to investigate www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
Reading the comments, I'm surprised how many people don't think that their favourite "inequality campaigner" being a fantasist matters. www.ft.com/content/5c48...
Gary Stevenson may have been Citi’s most profitable trader… in developed market foreign exchange
My testy exchange outside a London pub with a self-proclaimed currency trading legend
ft.com
The rollout of high speed internet in Uruguay worsended early childhood development. But not because the kids spent too much time in front of screens, because the parents did. cepr.org/voxeu/column...
High-speed internet and early childhood development: Causal evidence from a countrywide programme
The rapid expansion of high-speed internet has intensified concerns about how digital technologies affect early childhood. Using the staggered rollout of fibre optic to the home in Uruguay as a natura...
cepr.org
My son just told me is favourite sentence is: “I didn’t say we should kill him” because if you emphasise each different word it changes the entire meaning
Let me introduce you to... the parenting spreadsheet My column this week (300 free clicks): as.ft.com/r/8afe1f37-b...
This is basically every story that I write about London now, you don't have to want to live with Germany bureaucracy to want someone to do very basic checks. And the 'ease of setting up a business' is great (I've done it myself! It was so easy!) but unfortunately it's created scam central nation.
damowar@damowar.bsky.social · last mo.There is no working regulation in this country.
A 20% charge would work out to about $32 million for a fully-loaded very large crude carrier at current oil prices. That’s far higher than the tolls that have been charged by Iran, which have previously been described as reaching $2 million www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Trump to Restart Iran Blockade as US Plans 20% Hormuz Charge
President Donald Trump reinstated the US blockade of Iranian ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz and demanded a 20% reimbursement on all other cargo shipped through the waterway.
bloomberg.com
WHOA DHS does not say that the agent feared for his life… just the vague concern for “public safety.” So he killed him just because he did not want him in America, not because of any specific threat to agents?
ICE says he “weaponized his vehicle.” Same line that is already falling apart in the killing of S. Araujo. Same line that fell apart in murder of Renee Good. Same line ICE misused so often in Chicago that a Fed judge said it was “difficult, if not impossible, to believe almost” any such claim.
Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · 3w ago“The motorist killed by ICE officers in a Maine shooting Monday was not the target of the warrant the officers were executing, Sen. Angus King said Homeland Security Secretary Mullin told him.”
It is 23c (73f for the Americans) in Dublin and everyone keeps asking how on earth we are coping with the heatwave
You could fly from New York to London in three hours on a scheduled BA flight
Scott “bell beaker” Cave@hellabarnes.bsky.social · 3w agowhat is the reverse historical dorito? the thing from the past that would blow our minds in a positive way
Some of the people celebrating American excess are not what they seem. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
The Feel-Good Story of the World Cup Is Too Good to Be True
Some of the people celebrating American excess are not what they seem.
theatlantic.com
Employers pushed staff to use AI more. That has backfired ft.trib.al/tsFW1Gq
Employers pushed staff to use AI more. That has backfired
Incentives to use new tools are changing as costs start to hit home
ft.trib.al
Reason to be cheerful
The Economist@economist.com · 3w agoBetween 1988 and 2015 the share of older people being diagnosed with dementia fell by 13% a decade across six countries in North America and Europe. The question now is whether that drop will continue bit.ly/4pevfaV Illustration: Debora Szpilman
Another great example of how AI is killing the incentive to actually provide any of the data AI requires to be any good at anything
Ken Tindell@kentindell.bsky.social · 3w ago“Just before the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, there were more than 100,000 monthly questions asked on [Stack Overflow]; last month, there were fewer than 1,500. And the response rate, once around 80 per cent, has been cut in half.” Genuinely shocking. This is what LLMs were trained on, now it’s dead.
Who cleans up after the vibe-coding party? - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @financialtimes.com Possibly the most informative article I've read this year
Who cleans up after the vibe-coding party?
Our obsession with AI code-writing tools is overwhelming the web’s unsung human caretakers
giftarticle.ft.com
Rode a driverless autonomous bus on London's roads in live traffic. Worked great. Main issue was it actually followed the Highway Code which is a challenge when you're competing for road space with south west London's SUV drivers. www.londoncentric.media/p/londons-fi...
London's first driverless bus
Scroll to the end for: Berlin Wall latest • More on the TfL hacker's motive • Picturehouse Central fully reopens • London's Norwegian connections
londoncentric.media
was such a “ya we truly give zero fucks about player welfare” decision to have this match in Miami in the middle of July. 90+ (32+) degree heat and 65+% humidity. just ridiculous conditions to play potentially 120+ of football.
Hi England, here’s the Christmas tree we’re sending you for Trafalgar Square this year.
Love the way that ITV have hired a woman who knows exactly what she's talking about specifically for the purpose of being disregarded by two halfwit men
There's certain people who have to learn the difference between an organisation "disappearing" vs not posting on X anymore. I just watched a video of two very self-serious people who clearly spend too much time on X talking about how Bellingcat has just vanished.
Such a long list. Jumped feet first into the shallow end of a pool (aged approx 8) Tried to front flip off a cliff on skis (aged 19) Tried to back flip off a jump on skis (aged 26) Got my car stuck in Kenya then got out, in a spot full of lions (28) Sunk a kayak in a lake full of crocodiles (29)
Joel@itsjoels.bsky.social · 9mo agoWhat’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done? I don’t mean “cheating on your partner” stupid, I mean stupid stupid. Like, once, I had this bubble bath which smelled absolutely delicious, so I took a big glug of it. That kind of stupid. (It did not taste delicious.)
This is why I ultimately think AI will get much less useful pretty soon as a general purpose research tool. That is, it won't actually have access to most of the web any more. You'll have to upload your own information to it
Lawrence Hurley@lawrencehurley.bsky.social · 4w agoThis is really interesting, raising a very obvious question: why should publishers give Google access to content when they get nothing in return? www.adweek.com/media/publis...
For the past year and a half, we've talked a lot about a "Democratic Tea Party" (and the analogies are imperfect). But two defining traits were: -A sclerotic GOP establishment that didn't recognize shifts within the base happening underneath their feet -Insurgents exploiting that opening
There's a certain joy in realising, after an England win, the main thing I want from this World Cup is Argentina to lose, and so actually France being so dominant is totally fine
