I wrote for ⁦@novaramedia⁩ about the Dune films, and why they are the most important of the 2020s.

Not only do they show how humanity’s future could resemble its past, but they underscore our relationship to technology is a *choice*. novaramedia.com/2024/03/20/the… The Dune universe is built on a critique of technopoly, and the idea that technological progress can be substituted for human progress.

The Butlerian jihad is a more relevant uprising in a world of machine learning & generative AI than the Matrix or the Terminator.

I can’t quite believe what happened a few hours ago, but on my way to the train station, to head into the @novaramedia office, a man I’ve never seen before screamed my name while passing by and assaulted me. I was punched multiple times. (1/5) Fortunately I was able to pacify him, with subsequent assistance from a passer-by, until the police arrived.

This is someone who knew my name. Fortunately there were multiple independent witnesses, and the man is now being questioned by police. (2/5)

If he gets an invite to speak from them he should presumably… ‘no platform’ them? Nice one comrade! Radical!

I’ve spoken to communists in Sweden and Silicon Valley billionaires. The world isn’t a student occupation.

https://twitter.com/paulocanning/status/1665667845613658112

In 2023 some 50-something men on the left have the same political default as blue haired students occupying universities in 2016. Amazing how quickly it’s happened. No platform for… anyone I don’t entirely agree with!

Does anything demonstrate BBC’s complete lack of editorial confidence when it comes to an under 40 audience as seeing Kirsty Wark ask Mizzy about….Andrew Tate. What on Earth??

Median age is 40 in U.K. BBC news is fast becoming irrelevant for anyone younger than that. Also the Tate interview was utterly crap. Hectoring, predictable questions. Interviewer seemed genuinely underprepared (any gotchas would take hours of proper research watching him and having counter arguments to his replies.)

BBC interviews with Tate & Musk have been abysmal.

You can now watch my interview with @GoodwinMJ on the @novaramedia youtube channel. A few thoughts & an apology.

Firstly, I think it important to interview Goodwin as anti-elite politics are now the shared political fabric of *everyone*.

It's important to interrogate the right's version of that, & hold it alongside left's.

Personally I think an anti-elite politics infused with proper class analysis makes infinitely more sense, & I hope that comes across in the interview. The conservative account is lightweight.

Ed Miliband implies Corbyn is banned for antisemitism, which isn’t mentioned in Starmer’s motion. Decade ago Corbyn was only Labour MP to defend Miliband’s (deceased) dad in media from attacks.

Normal people can’t do this. Politics is a mucky business!

If you want honourable behaviour politics isn’t the right place to look. But Labour is the worst organisation I can think of in terms of gap between how MPs behave & who they think they are. ‘I must be nice, I’m a progressive!’ has no relationship to morals of normal people.

The 'Chip War' is THE essential story of 2023.

It's about gradual deglobalisation, the race for technological leadership, mastery of artificial intelligence, & how, when the rules no longer suited the US, they changed them.

Me for @novaramedia (1/14)
novaramedia.com/2023/03/27/the… For context the 'CHIPS and Science Act', ratified by the Biden Admin, allocates $52 billion to the US microprocessor industry.

Why? Because the US accounts for only 12% of global chip supply. Meanwhile Taiwan is in crosshairs of Beijing... (2/14)

The moment I fully understood the Met police was completely and utterly beyond repair? That it had to be abolished and start over?

It was when I was arrested alongside Ashok Kumar in 2011. Multiple officers were willing to lie to destroy a young man's life (1/10) Ashok Kumar, and I, were at a protest against David Willetts outside SOAS in 2011. Noisy, yes, but no threat of violence.

I saw Kumar being grabbed by one officer (the man in the first image) for no reason. I felt he had been picked because he was the darkest guy there. (2/10)

Some thoughts about our interview with Roger Hallam, founder of XR and Just Stop Oil. It really made me think. (1/9)

I do find it odd that after engaging with public for decades, & gradually getting point across that higher concentrations of CO2 lead to warming temperatures (which most, including me, only passively understand) that some want to say climate change is nothing to do w/ CO2! (2/9)

Any Tik Tok ban is a HUGE deal, but not for reasons stated here.

The truth is that, as with the CHIPS Act, the US now realises it can’t continue to lead innovation, & create worlds most valuable companies, without hobbling China & companies it creates. The significance of this is huge! And is at odds with two central pillar of ideology of last 40 years.

Firstly that free markets are good and create net benefits for all concerned (US clearly doesn’t believe this re strategic industries). And secondly…

The hysterical response to nepo babies in the media (from some) is bizarre. If you are highly successful in an industry, & your child chooses to enter it, a sensible person would say ‘make your mark, ignore any unfair criticism and be grateful for any advantages’ > Is it because in our culture everyone now needs a hard luck story to be authentic? (Including rich people with good connections). I have the upmost respect for people born with advantage, who are good at what they do, and are grateful for their background. >

One of the most extraordinary details of the PC David Carrick story is he raped a female colleague and she didn’t report a crime because she thought nothing would happen.

We are now at the point that *police officers* don’t trust the police to solve crime. Carrick pulled a knife out on another woman police officer. Neighbours called Hertfordshire police and the force has said Carrick’s Met supervisors were informed. He continued to work for the Met for another decade. And they now say they have “no record of the incident.” (!)

Why you should read more fiction in 2023.

Me for @novaramedia on the importance of speculative world-building in a society which often insists that nothing can change.

Some suggestions (1) >

novaramedia.com/2022/12/26/soc… 1) ‘Dawn’ by the Octavia Butler (the 🐐) goodreads.com/book/show/6092…

Pretty extraordinary story from Peckham & Camberwell. Im told the selection committee met last night to decide a shortlist. They voted 5/1 for a shortlist of 3, which was Evelyn Akoto, Peter Babadu, and Miatta Fanbulleh.

Then it got interesting (1/4) The NEC rep spent an hour trying to convince the selection committee to shortlist Johnson Situ as well, but they refused.

So the NEC rep agreed to a short list of 3 and the meeting closed with the regional rep saying he was going to inform the candidates of decision.

(2/4)

No, younger people aren’t always progressive. Indeed a century of low growth, climate change & geopolitical fragmentation could, in the medium term, mean the opposite.

Me for ⁦@novaramedia⁩ on why Brazil, & Israel, offer a glimpse of the future. novaramedia.com/2022/11/08/no-… According to polling conducted in 2016, 54% of Brazilians held a high number of conservative opinions up from 49% in 2010. Another poll from 2018 showed support for death penalty stood at 58%, 10% higher than 2008. The age cohort most in favour of capital punishment? Millennials.

I understand that there will be no standard trigger process for Labour MP Christian Wakeford, a Tory MP until this year.

The party bureaucracy has appointed him as the Party's GE candidate for Bury South - without the process that *all* of his colleagues must go through. It does make you wonder how a Labour government will deal with issues of legal equality and due process in government. There’s every chance they will be as bad as the Tories (possibly worse, late Blair certainly worse than Cameron on this).

Wigan MP Lisa Nandy fires back at bizarre speech by journalist Paul Mason trouncing the town. wigantoday.net/news/politics/… “This is utterly bizarre,” the shadow secretary of state for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, said. “We’ve had to put up with 12 years of Tory Governments attacking us. We could do without comments that talk us down, especially when they’re this off the charts.”

Given the Al Jazeera Labour Files it's probably time I divulge a strange episode that took place in the Spring of 2018.

It was a year after the 2017 election. And I applied for a job at IPPR as head of media. I received a job offer (!) then something strange happened (1/9) It was an exciting time. IPPR was producing some really interesting policy, and it was in the middle of the Commission on Social Justice (which ended up being a great document). It was a senior role, with real input. But not everyone was pleased. (2/9)

Yesterday the GMB trade union, and its general secretary Gary Smith, came out with a frankly batshit position in support of fracking.

Here's why they are completely wrong. Me for
@novaramedia

novaramedia.com/2022/09/23/the… Fracking won't lead to lower energy prices (in fact maintaining gas as a key source for the electricity grid will keep prices high).

Fracking doesn't mean 'good jobs' (100,000 fracking jobs were lost in US in 2015). Volatile prices means volatile industry.

>

We are *50* people away from reaching our goal of 10,000 supporters.

We’ve been putting out some seriously outstanding reporting and articles in the last few weeks including @simonchilds13 @mlothianmclean & @pollysmythe - help us do more!

Novaramedia.com/support novaramedia.com/2022/07/18/the…

Why aren't people having more kids?

A thread on my recent @novaramedia piece re why falling birth rates are happening, why that matters & why *that* @thesundaytimes piece could not have been more wrong in proposing taxes on those without children.

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novaramedia.com/2022/07/13/why… Birth rates are falling. That's an iron law of social development - and has been a good thing - but below 2.1 (the replacement rate) it can create issues around labour shortages and, ultimately, a productive base to care for an ageing population.

2/18