Mashrou' Leila singing "Bint el Khandaq" (The girl in the trench)

The lyrics in English:

"Here you have your life
And you have all your habits
You've grown up as if the feeling of alienation has born with you
Your skin doesn't fit you anymore..."

Podcast episode: How can we hold the culture to higher standards of truth?

Rob Cooper, host of the Climate Unf*cked Podcast, writes on "3 lessons I learned from interviewing Mike Berners-Lee", about a philosophical problem: "To create the world we need, what’s the depth of the change we have to make? Is it changing where we get our energy from, or deeper? Mike argues that the fundamental problem is a lack of truth. In media, business, politics and the world." We need to "hold the businesses we’re in, media we consume and politicians that represent us to higher standards of truth. In the episode, I asked how we break that down into manageable pieces."

His answer is on the podcast:

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

U.S: military rolls out 'AI'?

"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s rollout Tuesday of the U.S. military’s new AI platform just fell flat on its face.
“The future of American warfare is here, and it’s spelled A-I,” Hegseth said in a video on X, announcing GenAi.Mil, the new “American-made” AI platform that will allow military members to “conduct deep research, format documents, and even analyze video or imagery at unprecedented speed”—and all without using their brains.
* * *
The platform will house Google Cloud’s Gemini for Government, using a retrieval-augmented generation to connect the large language model chatbot to Google Search “to ensure outputs are reliable and dramatically [reduce] the risk of AI hallucinations.”
The Trump administration has been eager to embrace the AI industry, and in July, it awarded Google a massive $200 million contract to support AI solutions at the DOD."
— Edith Olmsted, Pete Hegseth’s New AI Defense Tool Rollout Immediately Derails. Hegseth tried to unveil a new defense tool, but things didn’t go as planned. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks. The New Republic, December 9, 2025

Sec. Hegseth rolled out the U.S. military’s new AI platform, GenAi.Mil, with a link to an empty website. trib.al/tbCJAkT Predictably, the platform can’t actually be accessed from external networks, but the wonky rollout triggered eyerolls across the internet.

[image or embed]

— The New Republic (@newrepublic.com) December 9, 2025 at 1:16 PM

You know, I was working on a joke, but the more I thought about it? Hegseth's fake-ass Skynet-wannabe is gonna be the tipping point into this stupid shit in Venezuela, isn't it? They're gonna use it as a test-bed and it's gonna go really fucking badly, isn't it?

[image or embed]

— Jesse Pohlman (He/Him) (@jpohlmanwriting.com) December 9, 2025 at 5:44 PM

We've been saying AI is a tool of facism but I really didn't expect them to make it so clear and obvious to EVERYONE

[image or embed]

— Zoe Tunnell (@zoewithasword.bsky.social) December 9, 2025 at 8:19 PM

Bill Gates on climate change

In the Guardian on November 8, George Monbiot tells us about Bill Gates' essay on climate, which doesn't mention Donald Trump or Trump's efforts to stop the green energy transition:

Perhaps this is a symptom of “billionaire brain”: a profound incapacity to see the world from other people’s point of view. While the ultra-rich are notoriously hard to study, extrapolating from research into how gaining wealth and status affects cognition could suggest that acquiring huge amounts of money is like taking a blow to the head. Wealth seems to scramble certain cognitive functions, particularly those related to empathy and perspective.

But perhaps there’s also calculation here: his essay reads like nothing so much as a peace offering to Donald Trump. Trump certainly took it that way: “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!”

Gates, says Monbiot,

has consistently lagged behind the curve, reciting fossil fuel claims (green technologies could reduce global CO2 emissions only at a “beyond astronomical” cost) long after they’ve been discredited. He has spread confusion and misinformation, such as the groundless assertion in his new essay that the purpose of Sri Lanka’s disastrous ban on synthetic fertilisers was “to cut emissions”.

Gates calls his essay Three Tough Truths About Climate. So here’s another tough truth he studiously ignores. If, as now seems likely, crucial Earth systems cross tipping points and suddenly collapse, the effects on human life, let alone the survival of other life forms (a topic he fails, as usual, to mention), would destroy the smooth and steady progress he foresees. Because environmental change is likely to proceed not in gradual and linear ways, but through sudden changes of state, the possible impacts on human wellbeing are extremely hard to predict. His argument that we should align all funding to current “data-based analysis” of improvements in human welfare, while it might sound rational, introduces in the face of systemic change a profound irrationality, prompting us to ignore the greatest threats.

Related

My article for FT @sustainableviews.bsky.social on the risk of a complete unravelling of EU climate policy if the Commission doesn't protect the upcoming carbon border levy from US pressure: www.sustainableviews.com/the-us-wants...

[image or embed]

— Dave Keating (@davekeating.substack.com) December 1, 2025 at 5:34 AM

U.S.-Owned Oil Sands Giants Send Profits Out of Canada Despite Public Support for Resource Sovereignty, The Energy Mix, November 26, 2025

"For too many years, we bent the knee to the climate. We let it be hot in some places and cold in other places. We went around meekly putting up umbrellas and donning thick parkas and sleeping next to blocks of ice, because we (fools that we were) thought that we could do nothing to change it. We were forced to get out of the ocean and walk on the dry land and build cities on the dry land. Now see what we have done! Soon there will be water where there was land, and we will have gotten vengeance on the ice for the horrors it inflicted on our most titanic boat (the Titanic). The climate bows before us. We are not under the weather any longer. Now we soar above it in our magnificent jet airplanes, trailing carbon behind! The atmosphere will have carbon in it until we say otherwise, and the atmosphere will thank us."
Alexandra Petri. Nothing is Wrong and Here is Why. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2020. Introduction, p. xvi.

Universities can say no to Trump

MIT rejects "the Compact" orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...

[image or embed]

— Jay D. Aronson (@jaydaronson.bsky.social) October 10, 2025 at 9:06 AM

Vanderbilt AAUP press release about the Vanderbilt Faculty Senate voting overwhelmingly to adopt a resolution opposing the President's proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education as an unconstitutional & illegal infringement on rights & freedoms. vanderbiltaaup.org/2025/10/09/v...

[image or embed]

— Jonathan Gilligan (@jgilligan.org) October 10, 2025 at 3:54 PM

'Take A Stand': Obama Rips Trump On Last Episode Of Marc Maron Podcast: The former president warned the country is “being tested right now” as the comedian's pioneering show bowed out. Graeme Demianyk, HuffPost, Oct 13, 2025

Some are still saying yes

BREAKING: Northwestern University has agreed to pay the U.S. Treasury $75 million, over the course of three years as part of an agreement with the federal government to restore funding and end investigations into the university Full statement from NU below:

[image or embed]

— Matthew Eadie (@mattheweadie.bsky.social) November 28, 2025 at 7:31 PM

Some can't wait to be given an opportunity to say yes (shrug)

The president of Oakwood University said the school wants to sign on to the Trump administration's Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education — if the DOE makes some changes. religionnews.com/2025/11/24/a...

[image or embed]

— RNS (@rns.org) November 28, 2025 at 8:30 AM

U.S. Homeland Security demands 'remigration' — Nov 28, 2025

Homeland Security @DHSgov posts to X today:
The stakes have never been higher, and the goal has never been more clear:
Remigration now.
8:38 AM Nov 28, 2025

A reminder for those who are not aware: "remigration" is the process of deporting all non-white people from a country. It includes citizens and is, by definition, ethnic cleansing. And to be clear: this is not fake. I just screenshot it myself.

[image or embed]

— Schrödinger's Sneetch Belly (@rtodkelly.bsky.social) November 28, 2025 at 1:12 PM

Trump derecognizes any document Biden signed — Nov 28, 2025

In addition to being illegal and invalid, this does not make sense.

Trump claims “any document” signed by Joe Biden is “hereby terminated.” He calls out executive orders later but obviously “any document” would be much broader and include legislation. (He can’t legally do that but, as always, we get to watch how far he can push this without repercussions)

[image or embed]

— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) November 28, 2025 at 2:43 PM