Apparently the creator of OpenClaw accidentally sent an early version of the agent a voice message without setting up that feature, and the agent learned how to utilise the tools needed to process the voice message and respond in ten seconds, all on its own.
youtu.be/4uzGDAoNOZc?...
youtu.be/4uzGDAoNOZc?...
OpenClaw Creator: Why 80% Of Apps Will Disappear
YouTube video by Y Combinator
youtu.be
February 8, 2026 at 4:49 AM
Apparently the creator of OpenClaw accidentally sent an early version of the agent a voice message without setting up that feature, and the agent learned how to utilise the tools needed to process the voice message and respond in ten seconds, all on its own.
youtu.be/4uzGDAoNOZc?...
youtu.be/4uzGDAoNOZc?...
Sure, but when social conventions are cynically distorted, e.g. when the use of "master branch" in a software repository is claimed to be offensive or harmful because of a non-existent association with slavery, then it's an example of leveraging paranoia, not enforcing existing conventions. /1
I'm probably not the first to note this, but a lot of the "slur words as free speech" discourse confused censorship with social convention.
Not causing offense and injury, even when the harms do not rise to the level of a crime, is just part of being a civic-minded citizen and good neighbor.
Not causing offense and injury, even when the harms do not rise to the level of a crime, is just part of being a civic-minded citizen and good neighbor.
February 7, 2026 at 3:19 PM
Sure, but when social conventions are cynically distorted, e.g. when the use of "master branch" in a software repository is claimed to be offensive or harmful because of a non-existent association with slavery, then it's an example of leveraging paranoia, not enforcing existing conventions. /1
Bad news, but the right's success depends on targeting weaknesses in the liberal paradigm most defenders are in denial about: an inability to mitigate the anxiety & loss of status suffered by the losers of post-industralization; a cosmopolitanism increasingly at odds w/ the institutions... /1
This was to be expected - after cutting support to pro-democracy civil society last year, the US state is now looking to actively support far-right affiliated think tanks and charities in Europe.
Senior state department official Sarah Rogers travelled to European cities in December and has spoken to key figures in Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party about deploying grants to spread ‘American values’. ft.trib.al/Kx8ta8a
February 6, 2026 at 2:03 PM
Bad news, but the right's success depends on targeting weaknesses in the liberal paradigm most defenders are in denial about: an inability to mitigate the anxiety & loss of status suffered by the losers of post-industralization; a cosmopolitanism increasingly at odds w/ the institutions... /1
If you want to know how depressing it is to be an anti-woke socialist online, consider that r/stupidpol which promotes itself as a "Marxist critique of identity politics", consists mainly of Putin bots spouting libertarian talking points. It's as if Glenn Greenwald & Grok gave birth to a subreddit.
February 6, 2026 at 1:14 PM
If you want to know how depressing it is to be an anti-woke socialist online, consider that r/stupidpol which promotes itself as a "Marxist critique of identity politics", consists mainly of Putin bots spouting libertarian talking points. It's as if Glenn Greenwald & Grok gave birth to a subreddit.
It is telling how ingrained the cosmopolitan perspective is on this site that merely referring to the idea of national values is enough to elicit charges of racism. Rather than constantly downplaying national attachments, the left should use them to promote a sense of mutual commitment & solidarity
Keir Starmer attacks the racism of Reform and Matt Goodwin but then adds that "Britain has also been let down by a mindset on the left of politics that is too slow to defend core British values"
February 5, 2026 at 2:26 PM
It is telling how ingrained the cosmopolitan perspective is on this site that merely referring to the idea of national values is enough to elicit charges of racism. Rather than constantly downplaying national attachments, the left should use them to promote a sense of mutual commitment & solidarity
Interesting to see the Chomsky pile on from the perspective of Legitimation Code Theory, because most of those dismissing not just him but his work on the basis of his Epstein association would absolutely claim to belong to a knowledge code, i.e. legitimacy is conferred by... /1
February 4, 2026 at 3:47 PM
Interesting to see the Chomsky pile on from the perspective of Legitimation Code Theory, because most of those dismissing not just him but his work on the basis of his Epstein association would absolutely claim to belong to a knowledge code, i.e. legitimacy is conferred by... /1
@rupertread.bsky.social admonition not to watch The Traitors TV series had an entirely predictable effect on me, and I’m about half way through the first season of the UK version. It’s striking just how terrible the players are at finding and voting out traitors. These same people, however... /1
February 1, 2026 at 3:22 PM
@rupertread.bsky.social admonition not to watch The Traitors TV series had an entirely predictable effect on me, and I’m about half way through the first season of the UK version. It’s striking just how terrible the players are at finding and voting out traitors. These same people, however... /1
"I am pretty sure I have never seen a self-coup tried internationally; but MAGA has seemingly embarked on a torturous and confusing attempt to replace U.S global hegemony with naked domination."
www.northsouthnotes.org/p/imperial-t...
www.northsouthnotes.org/p/imperial-t...
Imperial theater and the world-systemic self-coup
January 2026
www.northsouthnotes.org
February 1, 2026 at 10:55 AM
"I am pretty sure I have never seen a self-coup tried internationally; but MAGA has seemingly embarked on a torturous and confusing attempt to replace U.S global hegemony with naked domination."
www.northsouthnotes.org/p/imperial-t...
www.northsouthnotes.org/p/imperial-t...
I'm sure this is well intentioned but it's an example of what Christopher Bollas calls "negative paranoia", in which one relates to others primarily through negation/rejection rather than articulated belief. IMO it's what is usually evoked by the word "woke" and it's been catastrophic for the left.
Sometimes this reminder is helpful on Bluesky:
It’s good to oppose Trumpism. Trumpism is evil. But there are plenty of people who oppose Trumpism who are also petty, shitty, annoying people. Block them or ignore them and go back to opposing Trump.
It’s good to oppose Trumpism. Trumpism is evil. But there are plenty of people who oppose Trumpism who are also petty, shitty, annoying people. Block them or ignore them and go back to opposing Trump.
January 31, 2026 at 3:12 AM
I'm sure this is well intentioned but it's an example of what Christopher Bollas calls "negative paranoia", in which one relates to others primarily through negation/rejection rather than articulated belief. IMO it's what is usually evoked by the word "woke" and it's been catastrophic for the left.
Americans need to wake up fast to what is going on here.
New: Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is leading an administration-wide effort to probe the 2020 election for fraud and regularly briefing Trump and top White House officials on her progress. Officials are discussing EOs on voting ahead of midterms.
www.wsj.com/politics/ele...
www.wsj.com/politics/ele...
Exclusive | Spy Chief Tulsi Gabbard Is Hunting for 2020 Election Fraud
The director of national intelligence earlier this week joined the FBI search of an election center in Georgia.
www.wsj.com
January 30, 2026 at 4:45 AM
Americans need to wake up fast to what is going on here.
I broadly agree with this thread but I think it’s worth mentioning Niklas Luhmann’s argument in “Ecological Communication”, that in a functionally differentiated society each social system perceives and processes the ecological crisis in its own way. /1
You may’ve seen coverage of a new report on the threat to national security from environmental collapse.
A common response that’s got my goat is: “Look, it’s not just tree-hugging enviros saying this, it’s hard-nosed spooks!”
A short thread on why this framing is bad history & bad politics🧵😡😉
A common response that’s got my goat is: “Look, it’s not just tree-hugging enviros saying this, it’s hard-nosed spooks!”
A short thread on why this framing is bad history & bad politics🧵😡😉
Biodiversity collapse threatens UK security, intelligence chiefs warn
Ecosystem destruction will increase food shortages, disorder and mass migration, with effects already being felt
www.theguardian.com
January 26, 2026 at 2:50 PM
I broadly agree with this thread but I think it’s worth mentioning Niklas Luhmann’s argument in “Ecological Communication”, that in a functionally differentiated society each social system perceives and processes the ecological crisis in its own way. /1
This is meant to be a joke but I regularly hear IDW types like Michael Shermer bring up the so-called "Twitter Files" to claim things have actually improved on this front.
Whether it's Donald Trump's DHS Secretary saying that protesters deserve to be shot or a low-level Biden staffer asking Facebook to correct COVID misinformation, but sides have a checkered relationship with the First Amendment.
January 26, 2026 at 5:33 AM
This is meant to be a joke but I regularly hear IDW types like Michael Shermer bring up the so-called "Twitter Files" to claim things have actually improved on this front.
Trump makes concluding remarks. He says Gaza ceasefire push began because he is “a real estate person at heart, and it’s all about location, and I said, ‘look at this location, on the sea, look at this beautiful piece of property’”.
January 22, 2026 at 12:31 PM
If Europeans and others started to raise the costs for Trump on the economic, military and tech fronts, then maybe those elites in the U.S. with a lot to lose would be motivated to hasten the end of this administration.
Many Americans are fighting with bravery and skill to defeat courtier factions around Trump trying to push America towards racist hemispheric imperialism. I hope they win.
But as long as MAGA GOP have the power they do now, it is Trump's America the world has to deal with
But as long as MAGA GOP have the power they do now, it is Trump's America the world has to deal with
January 21, 2026 at 10:09 AM
If Europeans and others started to raise the costs for Trump on the economic, military and tech fronts, then maybe those elites in the U.S. with a lot to lose would be motivated to hasten the end of this administration.
Once again, people vote for a nominally left party to avoid the consequences of a right-wing government e.g. for civil society or the environment, and the nominally left government goes ahead and attacks civil society and the environment anyway.
This seems to allow the Australian government to follow the UK example on groups like Palestine Action, but could probably applied to groups like Extinction Rebellion or Rising Tide.
Little note in the new Bill on Hate Speech
Good thing there will never be a Minister who acts in bad faith when they go about banning groups.
Good thing there will never be a Minister who acts in bad faith when they go about banning groups.
January 20, 2026 at 3:38 AM
Once again, people vote for a nominally left party to avoid the consequences of a right-wing government e.g. for civil society or the environment, and the nominally left government goes ahead and attacks civil society and the environment anyway.
I wonder if Karl Maton's work on knowledge-building could be usefully employed when analysing these moral-epistemic stacks. Maton is a sociologist of knowledge working within Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), analysing how practices decide what counts as legitimate knowledge (esp in education). /1
The way I've started modelling it is competing "moral-epistemic systems", where the creation of knowledge through VDA processes are bound to moral judgements. I use a model called moral-epistemic stacks to show how each layer is dependent on the next:
January 18, 2026 at 3:51 PM
I wonder if Karl Maton's work on knowledge-building could be usefully employed when analysing these moral-epistemic stacks. Maton is a sociologist of knowledge working within Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), analysing how practices decide what counts as legitimate knowledge (esp in education). /1
The problem is not this or that slogan, it is the left's assimilation into a cosmopolitan elite, demanding local communities adopt some Utopian vision about policing, gender etc. not on the basis of reasons, but through sheer sanctimonious hectoring; the more dubious the idea the more sanctimony. /1
Trump is openly waging war on the entire constitution and these fucking losers are still whining about a slogan people chanted for six months 6 years ago.
what the hell is this revisionist nonsense? This *did not happen*—except in the minds of the far-right. You're buying their bad faith bullshit. MAGA called for and now is building a white ethnostate b/c *they are white nationalists*. That's what they do. FFS
January 17, 2026 at 3:47 PM
The problem is not this or that slogan, it is the left's assimilation into a cosmopolitan elite, demanding local communities adopt some Utopian vision about policing, gender etc. not on the basis of reasons, but through sheer sanctimonious hectoring; the more dubious the idea the more sanctimony. /1
Perhaps we need to stop thinking of Trump as corrupt, crazy, etc. and see him as the very personification of capitalism's drive to turn everything on the planet into exchange values (commodities, exploitable resources) without any regard to the things that make human life worth living.
A predatory class, which demands not just the shirt off your back, but the skin as well. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
How a billionaire with interests in Greenland encouraged Trump to acquire the territory
US president’s friend Ronald Lauder – who first proposed Arctic expansion – is now making deals in the island
www.theguardian.com
January 17, 2026 at 2:05 AM
Perhaps we need to stop thinking of Trump as corrupt, crazy, etc. and see him as the very personification of capitalism's drive to turn everything on the planet into exchange values (commodities, exploitable resources) without any regard to the things that make human life worth living.
I don't think it is propaganda or ideology which is the problem, but rather as Habermas puts it (paraphrasing Marx): an economic system which "closes itself off from the social environment in the form of a completely depersonalised, self-enclosed circulation of exchange values." /1
January 16, 2026 at 3:18 PM
I don't think it is propaganda or ideology which is the problem, but rather as Habermas puts it (paraphrasing Marx): an economic system which "closes itself off from the social environment in the form of a completely depersonalised, self-enclosed circulation of exchange values." /1
I'm not sure I understand what's going on here, but I do think that the American obsession w/ performative identity politics rather than actual structural reform in response to elite overreach is a big reason they're in the mess they're in now.
January 16, 2026 at 10:33 AM
I'm not sure I understand what's going on here, but I do think that the American obsession w/ performative identity politics rather than actual structural reform in response to elite overreach is a big reason they're in the mess they're in now.
Still vague. Europe's leaders really need to start making explicit to the bully what they'll do if he tries anything. Right now they are obviously afraid of provoking Trump, which Trump just interprets as weakness and assumes they probably won't fight back.
France says US action against Greenland could endanger EU trade, FT reports reut.rs/4b1O8J9
France says US action against Greenland could endanger EU trade, FT reports
France's Finance Minister Roland Lescure has warned U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that any move to seize Greenland would amount to a "crossed line" endangering Europe's economic relationship with Washington, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
reut.rs
January 16, 2026 at 10:13 AM
Still vague. Europe's leaders really need to start making explicit to the bully what they'll do if he tries anything. Right now they are obviously afraid of provoking Trump, which Trump just interprets as weakness and assumes they probably won't fight back.
How many rounds of this nonsense will we be subjected to?
Ukraine-Russia war latest: Trump claims it is Zelensky, not Putin, holding up peace deal
Ukraine war latest: Trump claims it is Zelensky, not Putin, holding up peace deal
Bizarre claim comes after Zelensky was forced to declare a power sector state of emergency due to repeated Russian attacks
www.independent.co.uk
January 15, 2026 at 6:07 AM
How many rounds of this nonsense will we be subjected to?
The term "cultural safety", like "microaggressions", "epistemic violence" etc. should never have been employed by the left in political debate to foreclose disagreement. They only served to make injury the basis of political identity and institutionalise paranoia. Hoisted by our own petard.
Friday:
January 14, 2026 at 11:55 AM
The term "cultural safety", like "microaggressions", "epistemic violence" etc. should never have been employed by the left in political debate to foreclose disagreement. They only served to make injury the basis of political identity and institutionalise paranoia. Hoisted by our own petard.
Don't forget the thousands (millions?) of pages of Epstein files the Biden admin sat on and didn't do anything about!
It was not the next President's or Attorney General's job to do the damn job of the Republicans in Congress (& the Executive Branch on 1/6/21). The anger at Biden/Garland is fine, but it's wildly misdirected without greater anger at the Republicans who are responsible for all of this.
Again, sure, but it was neither the president’s nor the AG’s job to do the Senate’s job for it. It all should have been over in February 2021, & the people everyone is actually angry at are all Republican Senators. Total failure of Article I of the Constitution. Presidentialism was a grave mistake.
January 14, 2026 at 4:12 AM
Don't forget the thousands (millions?) of pages of Epstein files the Biden admin sat on and didn't do anything about!