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  RE: https://mstdn.party/@perdidonavida/117508457081302335 Grande leçon à tirer pour la gauche française l'année prochaine…

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  What's interesting about this LeMonde article on the cancellation of state debt is that the headline proclaims this "has only ever been implemented at times of war or revolution" - but the actual examples given, and the interpretation by economic historians, do not support this slant ! For example: "Repudiating the debt in 1932 did not cause a recession and even laid the foundations for an economic rebound a few years later..." https://archive.is/20261023035040/https://...

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  More pandemics are inevitable. We are caught in the jaws of globalised capitalism. On the one side, continuing and increasing over-exploitation of natural resources, bringing people and other species into new, closer contact, ensuring more microbial crossing of species barriers; and on the other side continuing and increasing trade, tourism and other global contacts. Like climate change, pollution, ecological destruction, extreme weather events, etc, pandemics are one more symptom of an under...

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  Funnily enough, the conclusion of this LeMonde analysis of the US economy - "if Trump had simply sat in the Oval Office and reaped the benefits of the Biden administration years, the country would be much better off today" - parallels an analysis of Trump's pre-politics business career I read years ago: if Trump had simply sat on the family wealth he inherited he would have made more money than he did by actually trying to do something. https://archive.is/20261016202754/https://ww...

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  Forgive extensive quote from this Thomas Piketty piece in LeMonde today - ostensibly it's about France's recent foolish disinvestment in education - but this argument applies to almost any area of public expenditure, in almost any western democracy... "To justify the inadequacy of education funding, and in particular the decrease in spending per student, the government and its supporters argue that France cannot afford to invest more. They are making two reasoning errors. Public de...

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  Good to see the Korean President debunking this 'the wealthy will leave' myth. I recently followed up the source of one of these media stories about an 'exodus' of UK millionaires - it was New World Wealth - a one-man-band using a co-working space in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a 'GoDaddy' website - and if you clicked on its 'Britain's Wealth Exodus' report link it just took you to a press release from last October from a 'wealth migration' consu...

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  I hope UK bookshops carry on selling the Sally Rooney novels the UK government has tried to ban. When I was in the book trade we carried on selling imported copies of Spycatcher - the exposé of nefarious political interventions by MI5 and the CIA that Thatcher tried to ban. As a bonus, our book co-op made a fortune, as the big chains (now Amazon, etc) bowed to the book banning. It would be nice to see prominent Sally Rooney displays in every independent bookshop in the UK...

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  High school rebellion in France: driven, in part, by worries about the use of AI ?

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  I see a lot of posts on mastodon about getting out from under the US tech giants - they're a reminder of how relatively lucky we are here in France. We have a similar-but-better - and generally cheaper - alternative to Amazon - Cdiscount - and if you pay by Carte Bancaire rather than Visa, etc, your payment is processed entirely in France by French banks. We have the government's own mapping service - CartesIGN - which is again superior to GoogleMaps in almost every respect (except tha...

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  Am I right in thinking there's a deep confusion at the heart of technological ideas on AI ? On the one hand they reject the physical basis of human intelligence - as they must, since they imagine a similar phenomenon can be machine-based. But at the same time, they imagine machine intelligence can emerge, almost as an epiphenomena, out of different physical systems. Dualist or not ? Perhaps we need a more sophisticated Turing test ? - eg. evidence in a machine of both aesthetic and phys...

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  There's a lot of intentional bias in both mainstream and social media - but there's also a lot of what I'd call unintentional bias - coming from a number of influences. One is the fact that 80% of journalists come from professional or upper-class backgrounds. Only 7% of people attend private school in the UK... but half of newspaper columnists are privately educated, 47% of political commentators, 45% of leading podcasters and 38% of BBC executives. Media professionals, their fa...

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  An AI executive's description of their business as "the largest theft of labour in human history" prompts comparisons with slavery - but it occurs to me that this comparison might run deeper than they realise. David Olusoga's new BBC series 'Finding Britain’s Slave Traders' takes an interesting approach - instead of focusing on the brutality and racism at the sharp end of the slave trade, it shows us the documents, houses and peaceful private lives of those that invest...

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  "Across 17 of the world’s largest economies — accounting for nearly 60 per cent of global GDP and well over a third of the world’s population — the message from citizens is unequivocal. Seven in 10 respondents state that economic inequality in their country has gone too far. Two-thirds view the economic system as fundamentally rigged in favour of the rich and powerful, while 69 per cent explicitly demand major economic transformation." https://www.socialeurope.eu/people-want-economic-...

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  Extreme wealth inequality is a fissure running through every notion of liberal-democracy (and has been since 1776, when American slave-owners declared it self-evident that all men are created equal). Equality before the law ? Not if only the wealthy can afford to pursue cases, or the best lawyers. Equality of opportunity ? Not if only the wealthy can send their kids to exclusive schools, employ home tutors, etc. Free and fair elections ? Not if it's the wealthy that fund the political par...

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  Let's draw a connection between the UK scandal over crypto billionaire funding of a far-right political party, and the American controversy over crypto funding of GrapheneOS. Are crypto currencies inherently right-wing ? I think they are, both because they are fundamentally based on scarcity, and therefore facilitate private rather than community benefit, and because they need excessive, environmentally damaging energy use.

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  "Playing on the opponents' ground always leads to defeat" - https://archive.is/20260910182226/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2026/09/10/macron-and-merz-two-losing-strategies-against-the-far-right_6757396_5.html#selection-3523.27-3523.32 Lemonde analysis of how Renzi's attempt to combat the far right in Italy ended up paving the way for Meloni - but that didn't stop Starmer, Macron, then Merz all repeating the same mistake. Just stupidity ? Or were these appa...

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  “For every £1 invested in protecting nature, you’ve got £30 spent trying to degrade it... So that’s a political choice and it’s not a lack of finance. It’s where it’s used.” - https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2026%2Fsep%2F10%2Fclimate-crisis-tipping-points-energy-environment-report But it's not 'a political choice', is it ? Investment simply flows where the returns are likely to be bigger, quicker. The problem is system...

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  France, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden today announced trade sanctions against Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

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  Few would disagree that meeting everybody's basic needs while protecting the natural environment is the direction we need to go. The contentious issue is more around the fact that it's a direction that requires more social control of parts of the economy, and this is controversial from a number of perspectives: - the wealthy and privileged feel their vested interests are threatened by this extension of social control - some economists and other commentators think that more social cont...

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  "People said they lived better during the Soviet era, that they felt more valued" - https://archive.is/20260905161322/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/09/05/in-germany-memories-of-the-soviet-legacy-are-at-the-heart-of-saxony-anhalt-s-state-election-i-do-not-consider-russians-to-be-enemies_6757193_4.html#selection-3657.208-3661.95 - interesting article exploring the cultural and geopolitical drivers of today's likely far-right election win in former East Germany....

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  The political centre in the western world is confronted by its own trolley problem. It must choose between letting democracy hurtle down the extreme right route, harming most people, or throwing the switch to the left, damaging the interests of the wealthy and privileged. It is refusing to choose - dreaming instead of a third way that cannot, in principle, exist. 'With France seeking profound change, momentum lies only with candidates who promise to upend the status quo' - Lemonde art...

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  "From Paris, it seems like a mystery. How could the US, which has set the pace for global science for nearly a century, systematically dismantle its dominant position – and, above all, why?" https://archive.is/20260902070050/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2026/09/02/trump-takes-aim-at-american-science-as-china-pulls-ahead_6757069_23.html#selection-3513.216-3513.507 "China now outcompetes the US in numerous scientific fields. Since 2019, it has led the world in patent...

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  "Russia and ​Israel both ​spread and amplified disinformation related to the mass entry ​of migrants ‌into ⁠Spain's North African exclave ‌of Ceuta last month, Prime ⁠Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday, ​citing research ‌by the European Union's foreign policy body, the European External Action Service (EEAS). "After July 30 and 31, there was a spread of rumours and disinformation, from social networks linked both to Russia and to Israel, and to an ultra-right international tha...

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  "Six nuclear reactors were shut down on Thursday, August 13, due to the ongoing heatwave." - https://archive.is/4t4kH#selection-3347.1-3347.89 I think it's now clear that France must move away from nuclear power. It has saved a lot of fossil fuels emissions to date - but now, given the increasing pace of progress in renewables and battery technology, and climate-ecological breakdown rendering existing nuclear installations inoperable, France must take the strategic turn to renew...

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  RE: https://mas.to/@therightarticle/117098031979293308 This was an academic lynching, led by an acknowledged racist - sacked for precisely that by Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 2024 - followed by an irresponsible pile-on by the UK's rabid right-wing press.

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  Looks like China already has the technology (extreme-ultraviolet lithography) to make the most advanced computer chips... https://observer.co.uk/news/business/article/china-shocks-with-chip-tech-breakthrough

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  "The US used to be a beacon of human rights. Not anymore. Today, it stands alongside North Korea, Nicaragua, Mali & Russia, isolated. And the world no longer listens to it." - France’s UN Mission in Geneva. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/07/28/us-walks-out-on-france-at-un-meeting_6755911_4.html

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  EU tells firms to label AI-generated content from Sunday - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/07/28/eu-tells-firms-to-label-ai-generated-content-from-sunday_6755910_4.html

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  It's important to note that both wildfires and pandemics - like the Ebola incubating, perhaps, in Africa now - are symptoms of capitalism's over-exploitation of resources. Of course there were wildfires and pandemics before globalisation, but their frequency and intensity is increased by over-exploitation of natural resources: trade and mixing of rare species facilitates microbes crossing species barriers, trade and tourism facilitate contagion, just as surely as harmful emissions and o...

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  Corsica's 'fight against Airbnb-ization' claims to have returned 233 homes to 'year-round residents' - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2026/07/27/corsica-s-fight-against-airbnb-ization-claims-to-have-returned-233-homes-to-year-round-residents_6755892_19.html