I want to expand on this in a short thread. Fascism sucks. It is also not going away: it is an effectively permanent part of modern representative politics because it is an effectively permanent part of human nature. We have to be prepared to push back against it, basically forever.

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux@bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 2w ago

That said, I think at this point, we can conclude that fascism is a latent political force in basically every country, to a greater or lesser degree and so you need to be thinking, "what if my country goes fascist? what if a neighboring country does?" and plan for how to avoid or deal with that.

god if you'd told me that one day I'd witness people coming out of shops to take a proper look at the rain falling out of the sky, in ENGLAND

In the Renaissance people theorized, since the Aeneid is great, if you wrote poems made only of words & phrases from the Aeneid rearranged they should be great too, since a great source regurgitated should yield greatness. They produced NOTHING we still read. Thinking about that a lot lately.

The successful candidate will work across the full range of our social platforms plus alerts, newsletters and emerging digital platforms. They will be expected to organise, mentor and inspire our award-winning team. Interested? Apply by August 23rd

The Economist is hiring a Deputy Head of Social Media

We are offering a permanent contract in London to work across social media plus notifications, newsletters and emerging digital platforms

bit.ly

My god, what an image. Dead kings in a plastic box, carried off as the world burns.

Reuters@reuters.com · 3w ago

Spain removes remains of 11th century kings from monastery as wildfire rages reut.rs/4zAAN4r

We have more data about ourselves than ever. So why is everything converging on the same? In my new post I use data on high streets, Billboard hits, a million films and my own AI personas to expose the algorithms behind the sameness and how to regulate them. laurenleek.substack.com/p/temperatur...

Temperature Zero for Culture: Why Everything Is Starting to Look the Same

What 640 London shopping streets, 4,000 Billboard hits, a million films and synthetic AI personas tell us about why everything is flattening into sameness and how to regulate the algorithms behind it.

laurenleek.substack.com

Uh, so who turned out the lights?

this owns www.inverse.com/input/cultur...

The adorable love story behind Wikipedia’s 'high five' photos

Nearly 14 years later, the tale of this iconic couple can finally be told.

inverse.com

I’ve never quite decided if the hyperbolic discussion around AI is marketing or, as this argues, Pygmalion-like affection. But it does shape the discussion around the wrong questions. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Why this philosopher turned down Anthropic

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

giftarticle.ft.com

For most of the past 30 years, the person in charge of The Economist’s covers has been Graeme James. We remember our dear friend and colleague

The Economist’s cover designer, Graeme James, has died, aged 65

His more than 2,500 covers cleverly captured, mocked and ridiculed the world

bit.ly

It's a fun time to learn that all security was actually security through obscurity. openai.com/index/huggin...

OpenAI and Hugging Face partner to address security incident during model evaluation

OpenAI and Hugging Face share early findings from a security incident during AI model evaluation, highlighting advanced cyber capabilities and lessons for defenders.

openai.com

The Guardian finally ran out of metaphors today. 💔💔💔💔💔💔💔 If you have any spare metaphors, please consider donating.

I've decided to compile a definitive thread of photos of the best sheep I've photographed during my walks in the countryside, together with supporting biographical information. I will put the vital story associated with each sheep in the alt text, since some of it is a little long to fit in a post.

My nine year old asked for a Rosetta Stone cake for his birthday

100% this! Was just having this conversation with a colleague yesterday - studying the process of 'doing history' gives you invaluable skills to be able to question the provenance of sources and understand perspectives. More, please :)

Tom Scott@tomscott.name · 3mo ago

I've written a thing about why I think an education in history is particularly useful in the land of LLMs. tomscott.name/2026/06/4/th...

GREG DAVIES: seems like a kind of a shit task. Everyone just seems like they're going home normally. ALEX HORNE: well before you say that let's have a look at how Odysseus did. cut to panel of AJAX, MENELAUS, AGAMEMNON, and DIOMEDES who are all staring at ODYSSEUS with his head in his hands

Has been a while since I wrote about agentic engineering, so this time around some learnings of maintaining Pi as a junior maintainer to @mariozechner.at lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/5/24/pi...

Building Pi With Pi

Learnings from post-AI Open Source and how we’re approaching this so far.

lucumr.pocoo.org

YOU’RE LISTENING TO SISYPHUS FM, THE HOME OF NON-STOP ROCK

We're hiring! It's only a fixed-term contract for maternity cover but the job—and the team—is interesting and fun infographics.economist.com/jobs/2026/in...

We’re hiring an interactive visual journalist

Come and join The Economist’s data team on a fixed-term contract

infographics.economist.com

“The majority of the technical infrastructure of the Internet was created in this way. For free, often by people in academia, or as part of their regular work, with no promise of some big payday or getting a ton of credit.” anildash.com/2026/01/09/h...

How Markdown took over the world - Anil Dash

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

anildash.com

Oh my. This is spectacular. sinceyouarrived.world/taken

taken.

A web page that tells you what your browser gave away the moment you arrived. No login, no form, no permission. Most pages do this. None of them tell you.

sinceyouarrived.world

73 years ago today, Squadron Commander Christopher Draper DSC flew under 15 of London’s 18 bridges, prompting ‘Mad Major’ headlines – a nickname he’d earned by trying the same stunt 23 years earlier. He was 61, basically got away with it, and didn’t lose his pilot’s licence for another 11 years 🧵

working on a cursor mmo

The intelligence of LLMs is “a function of the social complexity of the civilization whose language it digested”, and their widespread use will lead to a thinning of that complexity, “undermining the conditions for its own advancement”. (And ours.) [theideasletter.org]

The Social Edge of Intelligence - The Ideas Letter

Simons challenges the dominant story of AI-driven efficiency, arguing that the intelligence powering today’s systems is built from accumulated human interaction. As organizations automate work and offload thinking, they risk…

theideasletter.org

This is absolutely heartbreaking www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/o...

Opinion | Measles Took My Daughter. This Is What I Want Everyone to Know.

nytimes.com

This is such amazing news. It’s still reliant on early detection (this study treated people with operable cancers and it’s rare for pancreatic cancer to be detected early) but any progress at all is incredible.

Ignacio Gallup-Diaz@igallupd.bsky.social · 5mo ago

"Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial: Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later."

"Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial: Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later."

Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial

Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later.

nbcnews.com

Build-a-voter is back! @fransham.bsky.social's creation is now updated for 2026 with data from More in Common. www.economist.com/interactive/... My profile is predictably Labour-leaning...

I’m looking for an automated way to read others’s scientific data without giving credit or acknowledgement, and also claim full credit for insights from it. And I want it to have a fitting name OAI: say no more

OpenAI {bot}@openaibot.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Introducing GPT-Rosalind, our frontier reasoning model built to support research across biology, drug discovery, and translational medicine. Video: https://twitter.com/openai/status/2044861690911850863

Happy Hungarian election day! Our final poll tracker update gives Tisza, the centre-right opposition, a 6pt lead over Orban's Fidesz: www.economist.com/interactive/...