Eoin McLaughlin

Military Commander Tells Troops Bombing Iran Is ‘Part Of God’s Divine Plan’ One commander had a “big grin” on his face while saying Donald Trump “has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran," a service member said.

Religious zealots waging war: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/troops...

‘I live in constant fear’: surge in giant sinkholes threatens Turkey’s farmers Falling groundwater, extreme heat and water-intensive farming are accelerating land collapse, forcing a rethink in agricultural practices

Surge in sink holes:
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS A Thought Exercise in Financial History, from the Future

So effectively its the collapse of effective demand www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic

Pope Implores Priests to Stop Writing Sermons Using ChatGPT In a meeting with high-level clergy, Pope Leo XIV urged priests to avoid the temptation to use AI to generate homilies.

What a time to be alive: futurism.com/artificial-i...

Meet Einstein Einstein is an AI with a computer. He logs into Canvas every day, watches lectures, reads essays, writes papers, participates in discussions, and submits your homework — automatically.

What could possibly go wrong? 🤷

Botswana’s diamond-funded health system has failed: it needs to be reformed and rebuilt | Duma Gideon Boko As Botswana’s president here is my plan to renew this country’s beleaguered health system – and my vision for a stronger Africa

Important article

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

‘Is university still worth it?’ is the wrong question The graduate earnings premium isn’t really measuring what most people think

UK is now a low wage economy: ‘Is university still worth it?’ is the wrong question - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @FT

Breakingviews - The Supreme Court ignites a new tariff frenzy The court's rejection doesn’t end Trump's ad hoc gamesmanship. Only Congress can do that - now all they have to do is act.

From Breakingviews - Breakingviews - The Supreme Court ignites a new tariff frenzy reut.rs/4s3Mjk5

How AI slop is causing a crisis in computer science Preprint repositories and conference organizers are having to counter a tide of ‘AI slop’ submissions.

Lots of folk talking about how AI automating coding in economics, it's easy to write a paper(dissertation etc) but should you if it ends up being low quality output? Gresham's law in action

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Billionaire political contributions as a % of total contributions

@pkrugman.bsky.social sounds the alarm on tech billionaires' threat to our democracy. substack.com/home/post/p-...

So an AI boom driven inflation shock...

Can we fix the worst student loan system in the world? As graduates from England struggle under crippling levels of debt, Mary Downer looks at how other nations do it better

"We’re charging graduates a higher marginal tax rate than somebody earning £150,000" www.thetimes.com/money/family...

Yeah, not the answer I got! Head in the sand isn't going to address the real rapid ai improvements.

For those familiar w/ "ARkStorm/ARk2.0" flood scenarios for California, a comparable event has been unfolding on the Iberian Peninsula. These ridiculous rainfall accumulations, caused by a long series of extremely moist atmospheric rivers, have brought widespread severe flooding to Spain & Portugal.

This is why I'm still doing in-person exams....:“In my whole degree, I never had an in-person exam. That’s why ChatGPT has gone rampant. It’s just so easy to cheat.”

www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/ne...

Managing and mitigating future public health risks: Planetary boundaries, global catastrophic risk, and inclusive wealth There are two separate conceptualizations for assessing existential risks: Planetary Boundaries (PBs) and global catastrophic risks (GCRs). While these concepts are similar in principle, their underp...

I've written on existential risk too* onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Trump ally and tech billionaire Peter Thiel brings Antichrist warning to Paris “I heard more about the Antichrist during those 45 minutes than during the rest of my life,” one attendee tells POLITICO.

I've read a lot of literature on existential risk but this is a unique (unhinged?) perspective www.politico.eu/article/trum...

A recent fave for our mini reader subscribers was the very funny Once I Was A Tree by Eoin McLaughlin and Guilherme Karsten, we had so much fun creating an activity pack all about trees! 🌲 @nosycrow.bsky.social @eoinaldo.bsky.social #childrensbooks #BookSky

Gordon Brown on Mandelson: observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

The Gist: UK Labour's FG mastermind The UK Labour Party is being run into the ground, thanks to adopting FG's election tactics. This is the Gist.

This week’s Gist is about how the U.K. Labour Party unknowingly has been blowing itself up by following Morgan McSweeney’s FG electoral instincts.

They don’t know the patterns, but we do.

www.thegist.ie/the-gist-uk-...

This has been one of the most read articles on the RTE site in the past 24 hours

'We're seeing eviction rates not seen in Ireland since the 1850s' The issuing of 5,000 eviction notices in three months last year is quite revealing when viewed against Ireland's historical record

'We're seeing eviction rates not seen in Ireland since the 1850s'. The growth in eviction notices is quite revealing viewed against Ireland's historical record, write @eoinaldo.bsky.social @heriotwattuni.bsky.social @researchireland.ie & Richard McMahon MIC Limerick www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

We wrote an article on the high rate of evictions seen in Ireland last year and putting them in historical perspective www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

The dilemmas for the UK created by a rupturing world New priorities are needed to succeed amid unreliable and competing great powers

The global economic landscape has ruptured, how should the UK respond?: The dilemmas for the UK created by a rupturing world - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @FT

From Target to Disney, 2025 proved boycotts work. Here’s how to build on them | Michael Shank The US was founded on boycotts of British imports. As we mark the country’s 250th anniversary, that spirit is alive and well

And another www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

As the etymology of Boycott comes from the Land War in Ireland (Captain Charles Boycott was a land agent socially ostracised) I love seeing his name being put to use for honourable causes:
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a... (Archive link archive.is/L7FKw)

The Doomsday Clock timeline Explore the history of an internationally known symbol

The Doomsday Clock timeline explores every shift of the Clock—forward and backward— over the past 79 years.

Visit the timeline: buff.ly/UfYaZRZ

The rise of the answer machines Universities trained students to produce polished responses on demand. Then AI learnt the same trick. What now?

The rise of the answer machines - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @FT

AI is supercharging information warfare. Influence operations are being automated. A single setup can generate content, schedule posts, reply at scale, and run engagement loops. When this is self-hosted, it does not rely on a platform vendor and it is harder to detect, take down or attribute. (1/5)

The relatively high error rate & hallucination of AI would make any prudent company think twice before adopting current AI en masse (legal cost of repairing/compensating AI errors could be quite high!)