Linklog

2024-11-15

The world according to Trump: How Trump is likely to think about Ukraine, the Middle East, Europe and China.

How “YMCA” became Donald Trump’s unlikely theme song: I had wondered.

2024-11-14

Congress About to Gift Trump Sweeping Powers to Crush Political Enemies: A bill which enables the treasury secretary to unilaterally declare that any non-profit supports terrorism.

2024-11-13

Before making clinical trials faster, let’s first agree on what they are: What’s needed for clinical trials designed to get new drugs onto the market is in tension with what’s needed for those designed to test interventions already in use.

I blame the media: for Trump’s electoral victory - by normalising him plus failing to recognise Biden’s achievements.

2024-11-12

The art in everyday life: ‘You don’t have to paint the Sistine Chapel to bring art into the world.’

Regime of Unreason: The US surely couldn’t need any ‘liberalisation’ of its fossil fuel regulations when it’s already a net exporter of energy.

The Banality of Online Recommendation Culture: Hard to know whether to recommend this or not.

The Podcast Election: Can some of Trump’s victory be explained by the weaponisation of the ‘emerging medium’ of podcasts?

‘Five to ten seconds appears to be optimal’: the science behind hugs: Why hugs are good.

I spent hours trying to persuade US voters to choose Harris not Trump. I know why she lost: Apparently plenty of people believed believed what Trump said.

I moved to Finland believing it was a progressive dream. It hasn’t turned out that way: Are there any decent countries left?

On the benefits of microblogging: It’s good to write, and there’s no need to make it perfect.

2024-11-11

Donald Trump should have the easiest presidency ever: Biden’s administration has already accomplished a lot of Trump’s campaign promises.

Finally, the end of ‘the British empire’ – and maybe an honours system a modern country can live with: Soon the E in the OBE might stand for ‘excellence’.

‘You tried to tell yourself I wasn’t real’: what happens when people with acute psychosis meet the voices in their heads?: Introducing ‘avatar therapy’ - where patients with psychosis interact with digital incarnations of the hallucinatory voices that plague them.

Donald Trump should have the easiest presidency ever: Many of the things he promised to do during his campaign have already been done by the Biden administration.

2024-11-10

taylor derangement syndrome: It reads differently now we know the result of the election, but I had originally enjoyed ‘Taylor is a normal person and that’s why she’s a Democrat’.

Introducing ChatGPT search: OpenAI releases its search engine.

Democrats join 2024’s graveyard of incumbents: Is the US election result simply a continuation of an unprecedented tendency for elections held this year to vote out the incumbent party?

What happened to Bhutan’s ‘kingdom of happiness’?: Sadly even the country that pioneered measuring Gross National Happiness has its own problems.

Spain’s apocalyptic floods show two undeniable truths: the climate crisis is getting worse and Big Oil is killing us

We will fight Trump’s plans to slap tariffs on the UK – Rachel Reeves: There’s going to be some ‘interesting’ decisions to be made, but I’m glad if our politicians aren’t necessarily going to roll over and take whatever crumbs we’re given.

2024-11-08

Exit polls from the 2024 presidential election: Some cross-tabs to distract us bewildered data addicts.

If I were a cautious, centre-left prime minister, Trump’s victory would have me worried: Are there more local lessons to learn from Harris' defeat?