A completely brilliant article on the role of the humanities in the digital age. When Pope Leo published his AI encyclica in May, non-Catholic old me begged my producer to discuss it on the Weekend show, and I am very glad we did.

Janine Gibson@janinegibson.ft.com · 2w ago

Good morning and welcome to your FT Weekend highlights via giftlink. First this week theologian and philosopher Carmody Grey explains why she declined to help Anthropic with Claude's moral schooling as.ft.com/r/15d7fd75-a...

Good morning and welcome to your FT Weekend highlights via giftlink. First this week theologian and philosopher Carmody Grey explains why she declined to help Anthropic with Claude's moral schooling as.ft.com/r/15d7fd75-a...

Why this philosopher turned down Anthropic

The AI industry is courting the humanities — but it is asking the wrong questions

as.ft.com

This alone is a *huge* strategic loss for the US (& the world) and we should not let anyone sugar coat that reality 😑

Shipwreck@shipwreck75.bsky.social · 3w ago

Oil markets and Middle East producers appear to be aligning around a new reality: The Strait of Hormuz is no longer expected to return to a prewar norm.

Thought provoking article. Note in particular the first paragraph where Stubb and Carney equate Finland's land border with Russia to Canada's land border with the US - two middle powers bordering aggressive imperial powers.

Prepare for a world of ad hoc coalitions

Neither wishful multilateralism nor cold realpolitik will do. Mark Carney and Alexander Stubb suggest a third way

economist.com

It's tragically appropriate that we spent a whole generation telling students that the humanities were moribund, and they should all study STEM, only for the greatest innovations in STEM to prove why the humanities were so essential all along.

Lauri Donahue@lauridonahue.bsky.social · last mo.

futurism.com/future-socie... lol

It‘s just insane to me that a sitting president has made MORE THAN A BILLION DOLLARS peddling fucking fairy dust with no intrinsic value beyond his stature and power AS president, and it’s not treated as the biggest corruption scandal in American history.

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · last mo.

“.. He also reported earning $636 million in royalties from Celebration Coins.” @bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

When they send JD Vance out to say we hold all the cards that’s your sign it’s a bag of shit that’s being held.

Oh yeah, this is clearly a defeat. We threw away $30bn+, plus whatever danegeld we're paying, plus 15 American lives, plus a whole bunch of airframes, plus we antagonized a lot of other states, in order to put Iran in a stronger strategic position than they were when we started. Absolute disaster.

Europe and the rest of the world just got a memo of a ready-made warning scenario. Access to AI models treated by their home country as national-security assets can be switched off by a single administrative decision. Anthropic sells the service. But Washington holds the keys to the lock?

America spent a quarter millennium fearing the fate of Rome and still wound up with a populist demagogue demolishing republican symbols while building triumphal arches and a personal gilded palace and an arena to host spectacular blood sports in honor of his birthday.

FactPost@factpostnews.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Trump tests the lights on his 92-foot-tall UFC stage on the White House lawn

I say without hyperbole that this is the most brazenly corrupt action in US Presidential history. That it does not immediately lead to impeachment is a dangerous sign of how far the rule of law has declined.

It is amazing how little the press is willing to dissect US decline under Trump. The US got no help with Iran, was scolded on Taiwan, says it got a small Boeing deal (China has not confirmed) and Trump appeased on Chinese students, microchips, etc. Xi even insulted US power.

Fascinating to see how many European commentators there still are that are so wedded to an outdated Transatlantic paradigm that they are in denial about how unreliable the United States now is

One thing to bear in mind is that the US is not stationed in Germany to do Germany a favour. It is stationed there for its own purposes and benefit. /1

Jeremy Cliffe@jeremycliffe.bsky.social · 3mo ago

There are two ways Germany could take the news US is pulling 5k of its DE-based troops: a) Panic, flee back to the old protector, flatter Trump in hope of reprieve b) Accept & advance: Europeanise 🇩🇪's huge defence investment package, embrace strategic autonomy www.reuters.com/world/us-wit...

The illiberals do not always win.

I hope liberal and left-wing Americans defeat Trump and all he stands for, but if they want to put America's relationship with the world on a more sustainably realistic basis they need to stop viewing every geopolitical crisis or conflict as a mere externalisation of domestic American culture wars

I’m sure many have drawn attention to the advice given by the Oracle of Delphi to King Croesus of Lydia, that if he should send an army against the Persians, he would destroy a mighty empire. Just not in the way he hoped

Elllllbridge coooollllllbyyyyy, come out to plaaaaaaayaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy

Stephen England@stephenengland.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Curiously, I hear nothing from the "Ukraine is destroying our ability to defend Taiwan" crowd these days.

We’re sleepwalking into a crisis of representational sovereignty, if we are already there. Staffs are tempted to substitute judgment (hard to manage) for metrics (easy to process). What the article adds is that the metics are now defined by contractors. warontherocks.com/2026/03/the-...

The U.S. Military Risks Letting Contractors Define How It Sees the Battlefield

In the 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove, an emergency war plan called “Plan R” allows an unhinged U.S. Air Force commander, Jack Ripper, to launch a

warontherocks.com

“There are no medals awarded on the battlefield for the most sophisticated, technologically advanced solution to a given problem. What matters in war is what works. In fact, cheap and easy is preferable to costly and complex, especially when it allows for mass deployment.”

Western Militaries Must Relearn the Value of Cheap and Easy Solutions

Technologically advanced systems must prove their worth through their effectiveness, and many Western systems currently don’t pass that test.

worldpoliticsreview.com

It would be catastrophically unwise for the rest of NATO to treat the US as a meaningful collective security partner while the Trump administration is in office. It's a nightmare scenario for Europe but it's where we are, as Europeans have increasingly recognised.

And of course NATO and Asian allies will be blamed for an outcome if Iran 🇮🇷 remains in control of straits of Hormuz. Bottom-lines: end of 80 years of US regulated energy order in MENA and US-centric alliance system in Europe & Asia compromised. Nuclear order also in peril as 🇮🇷 mulls NPT exit

François Heisbourg@fheisbourg.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Going TACO. Aka US loses its war of choice. Israel will be blamed for the whole mess. Gulfies will be dropped like old socks, to use a French expression. And the global economy can croak.

Hilarious how for years serious people have said that you can't rely on renewables because they are prone to disruptions in supply www.ft.com/content/19f1...

UK to receive last tanker of jet fuel from Middle East this week

Industry warnings of disruption contrast with government calls for calm

ft.com

There's something deeply amusing in an ironic sense about watching people who criticized U.S. COIN campaigns for lacking strategic coherence cheer on the Iran campaign, seemingly completely oblivious to the similar disconnect between tactical proficiency and political ends.

This is no different from Putin saying MH17 was shot down by Ukraine or Assad saying rebels gassed themselves.

Acyn@acyn.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Reporter: Did the US bomb an elementary school and kill 175 people? Trump: Based on what I’ve seen, it was done by Iran. Reporter: Is that true Mr. Hegseth? Hegseth: We’re investigating. Trump: They are very inaccurate with their munitions. It was done by Iran.

It could not be more obvious that the president does not care about US service members and in fact regards their deaths as mere political inconveniences. He has more sympathy for Putin than Americans who died because he decided to wage illegal war. Just listen to him.

Raytheon Executive: I know you’re skeptical about buying American again. But hear me out. The MIM-104 Patriot is the only surface to air missile system with a proven track record of success against the US Air Force. Danish Defense Minister: Continue.

PSYOP 2026: no need to drop leaflets when you can hijack push notifications. Israel hacked BadeSaba, one of Iran's most popular apps, with 37 million installs, used to track daily prayer times.