V.H. Belvadi

My review of the book ‘Climate changed’ by Mara Freilich, Irmak Turan, Jessica Varner, Lizzie Yarina has just been published with @springernature.com in @metasciencejournal.bsky.social. Read here: rdcu.be/fisGy #hps #histsci #climate #climatescience #climatechange

The first genuinely honest ad for generative AI I've ever seen, from Microsoft / CoPilot A mediocre white guy sees his non-white colleague getting praised for good work, he asks AI to *literally copy it*, and then he gets all the praise instead: www.ispot.tv/ad/SoDi/micr...

Thank you so much @benmillett.net – I’m pleased someone noticed the crop marks. I absolutely love your quilt work, not to mention their creative titles!

The most disappointing video you’ll see today.

Exclusive: I asked Andy Burnham about the gangs of masked thugs marauding around parts of our country and asked if he and his government should be doing more to call out their actions He called them ‘poisonous’ amongst other strong words. His condemnation was unequivocal. Full story here 👇

This is what we are up against. It’s why I’ve always said the under 16 social media ban doesn’t go far enough. We shouldn’t be banning it for children, we should be properly regulating it for everyone. This is scary. How do we fight this?

It does skew a bit American this. Terrific shows nevertheless.

‘India is, admittedly, a baffling place. Not even those who have lived in it … can claim to understand it. Yet a good way to approach it is with humility. Xuanzang walked thousands of miles to partake in its treasures. Foreign researchers can start the journey simply by opening their minds.’

Feminist activist and journalist Gloria Steinem died on September 2, at the age 92, her foundation said. The co-founder and consulting editor of Ms. Magazine championed the feminist movement from the late 1960s onwards and inspired generations of women. reut.rs/3T6z0n7

Despicable

Another book review so quickly? Indeed, this time it is Claire Keegan’s fantastic novella that I’m perhaps late to reading. Highly recommended.

My review of ‘The Mulai’ by Munir Hachemi – what a wonderful book.

How does one get to be a fly on the wall in one of these meetings?

This is an extremely well-written open letter from faculty at Ghent. I've heard colleagues privately express uncertainty about what the facts on the ground actually are. I urge everyone to read this letter. The people on the ground have been ringing the alarm bell, and been doing so for months

Congratulations!

11GB and less useful than a post-it note.

Lovely.

Good argument except this bit: ‘Were the White House to attempt such weaponisation, Palantir and its fellow American tech giants would resist it, given the sizeable share of revenues they derive from Europe, including Britain.’ How do you know? We’ve seen before if the top dog’s pockets are lined…

The Infinite State review: A riveting tale of an oppressive galactic empire

Our new exhibition 'A Most Valuable Library' is now open to the public. It tells the origin of the Whipple Library, Museum, and HPS Department through archive documents and Robert Whipple's books. The exhibition is on Level 1 of the Whipple Library, viewable from 9:15 AM to 5 PM, Monday to Friday.

Thoughts on a revised definition of the #IndieWeb that focuses on the ideas behind it rather than the tools, and argues for placing sovereignty, in its many forms, at the very heart of the IndieWeb.

Turns out ‘newscord’ is an AI-slop site. So for the record all I refer to in this post are its numbers, not its ‘analysis’.

this is also a good time to state once again that the phrase "many things can be true at once" is a lazy, cheap, shitty cop-out. you don't need to stand up and be the brave, fearless defender of biographical detail integrity right now, you need to have a fucking heart

If all goes well, this should end in a media reckoning. So far, they’ve got away with too much. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Second week as Prime Minister ✅

The new game ‘No. 10: Full Confidence’ is great fun. A bit like Medieval Dynasty but modern and text-based, so no reason not to like it.

They were warned.

The Telegraph, and plenty of other media outlets, and people on Substack and elsewhere, need to introspect. This was criticism turned into an unrelenting assault, fuelled by racial hatred, that lasted longer than any criticism proportionate to the individual’s academic activities warranted.

There was a human being in the middle of all this.

A 63/30 vote share between Farage and the Count then. Very well done @countbinface.bsky.social! www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c5...

The polls just opened but Bluesky has already declared Farage the winner.

The Fourth Lead Author Meeting of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities ended last Friday, 7 August. More than 100 scientists from 56 countries met in Bhopal, India to prepare the final draft. Look out for the report in March 2027. https://bit.ly/CitiesLm4

We need to talk about Richard Tice In May 2024, Tice told me he didn't expect to fund Reform through his companies any more. So why did £1m from 'Posh' George Cottrell's mother move through a company he controls, then to Reform weeks later? New by me: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/richard-ti...

Zanny Minton Beddoes’s brilliant interview for @economist.com with Elon Musk. In the last 50 min, as Musk’s worldviews come together incompatibly and he is fairly criticised for his actions, his only responses are denial and childish, baseless counter-accusations. www.economist.com/insider/the-...

This is what it looks like when a candidate has their priorities in order.

‘I've always said these players, and I'm not racist, but Black players don't have the concentration to last more than 60 to 80 minutes…’ If you find you’re prefacing something you say with ‘I’m not racist but…’ then perhaps you are about to be unequivocally racist. en.nogomania.com/read/Live-TV...

Brilliant @the-independent.com

Thousands of Albanians again took to the streets of Tirana protesting against a development planned by a company linked with Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner on an environmentally sensitive part of the Adriatic coast.

I always like it when an article somehow clarifies that it unequivocally does not concern me.

Social media as bad for children as smoking, British doctors say reut.rs/4e9i85R

So Britain has a decade or so to reengineer itself to cope with 40⁰ tempretures. This is terrifying and not adapting will mean people dying because of the heat. www.theguardian.com/environment/...