Joseph O'Mahoney
LightNews LightNews
jomahoney.bsky.social
Joseph O'Mahoney
@jomahoney.bsky.social
580 followers 260 following 54 posts
Associate Professor of International Relations at University of Reading.
https://sites.google.com/site/jpomahoney/
ORCID: 0000-0002-6316-1771
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
sandertordoir.bsky.social
The United States is no longer providing any financial support for Ukraine according to Kiel's tracker - and has not been for a few months now (although I do wonder how one counts the intelligence support).

Europe is footing the bill alone.
November 24, 2025 at 1:01 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
hypervisible.blacksky.app
“AI workers said they distrust the models they work on because of a consistent emphasis on rapid turnaround time at the expense of quality.”
Meet the AI workers who tell their friends and family to stay away from AI
When the people making AI seem trustworthy are the ones who trust it the least, it shows that incentives for speed are overtaking safety, experts say
www.theguardian.com
November 22, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
anitaleirfall.bsky.social
Studying philosophy does make people better thinkers, according to new research on more than 600,000 college grads

Philosophy majors rank higher than all other majors on verbal and logical reasoning. theconversation.com/studying-phi... #philosophy #skills #thinking #PhilosophySky #philsky
Studying philosophy does make people better thinkers, according to new research on more than 600,000 college grads
Philosophers are fond of saying that their field boosts critical thinking. Two of them decided to put that claim to the test.
theconversation.com
November 21, 2025 at 1:04 PM
jomahoney.bsky.social
This actually sounds pretty desperate. Yes, limiting Ukraine's military, no NATO-accession/troops are non-starters. But the rest reads as if Putin knows he has made a huge mistake and wants to go back to how it was before. G8, reintegrate into global economy, no war crimes liability. Plus...
November 21, 2025 at 9:53 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
russianforces.org
Niels Bohr writing to Carlsberg Foundation: "I respectfully request a travel grant of 2500 Kr for a one-year study stay at foreign universities." That's it. That's the entire proposal. He received approval the next day...
November 21, 2025 at 8:40 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
profmarkraymond.bsky.social
My colleague @moritz-graefrath.com and I argue in @foreignaffairs.com for selective nuclear proliferation to Canada, Germany and Japan.

We make the case it will benefit all three, as well as the USA, and that it will also strengthen the increasingly brittle global order.
foreignaffairs.com Foreign Affairs @foreignaffairs.com · 5d
“Were Canada, Germany, and Japan to acquire nuclear weapons, they would rebalance global military capabilities in favor of a coalition of states committed to the rules-based system,” argue Moritz Graefrath and Mark Raymond.
America’s Allies Should Go Nuclear
Selective proliferation will strengthen the global order, not end it.
fam.ag
November 19, 2025 at 4:21 PM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
sarahoconnorft.ft.com
Is AI making job recruitment less meritocratic? We're getting some v interesting research studies on this question now, and the news is... not good. @jburnmurdoch.ft.com & I dive in, in the latest edition of our newsletter The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/e5b7...
November 14, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
artinsociety.bsky.social
You may be astonished to learn that this is an illusion, a trompe-l’oeil. The whole thing — not just the major painting (supposedly by Poussin) -- but the drawings, easel & paintbrushes have all been painted in oil by Antoine Fort-Bras on a wooden cutout (1686, Calvet Museum)
November 13, 2025 at 8:05 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
annfinkbeiner.bsky.social
The rigorous crew at Science magazine did an actual test of AI: could it summarize science results as well as the human editors? I mean, it could't even tell a correlation from a cause. www.lastwordonnothing.com/2025/11/12/w...
The Last Word On Nothing | Why AAAS won’t be using AI to write press releases anytime soon
www.lastwordonnothing.com
November 12, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
bucksarchives.bsky.social
Hoping this helps our colleagues across the industry
A meme of 'Is this an archive?' showing a grid with various classifications of things that might be archives based on their content and structure.
November 5, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
irgetsreal.bsky.social
NYT today.

It turns out that when you put tariffs on everyone, they just trade more with each other.

Trump made US the loner in the lunchroom of world trade.
November 4, 2025 at 9:42 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
irisvanrooij.bsky.social
‘Study after study shows that students want to develop these critical thinking skills, are not lazy, and large numbers of them would be in favor of banning ChatGPT and similar tools in universities’, says @olivia.science www.ru.nl/en/research/...
‘Opposing the inevitability of AI at universities is possible and necessary’ | Radboud University
Since the widespread release of ChatGPT in December of 2022, AI has taken over much of the world by storm – including academia. Most of this happened with very little pushback, despite a myriad of iss...
www.ru.nl
November 1, 2025 at 10:26 PM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
nathankhensley.bsky.social
I love to see stuff like this because it helps explain to people trapped in tech-sponsored information bubbles the actually obvious fact that universities teach people to know & think things, and AI is a way to produce the effect of knowing & thinking things w/o actually knowing & thinking them.
Opinion | Why Even Basic A.I. Use Is So Bad for Students
www.nytimes.com
October 31, 2025 at 11:13 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
pettertornberg.com
Twitter/X is a story on its own:

🔴 While users have become more Republican
💥 POSTING has completely transformed: it has moved nearly ❗50 percentage points❗ from Democrat-dominated to slightly Republican-leaning.
October 30, 2025 at 8:09 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
carlzimmer.com
Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory. www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...
Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory
An intensive international study was coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC
www.bbc.co.uk
October 23, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
petervogel.bsky.social
Amazing to see this view from another world. Gale Crater on Mars. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
View from Mars showing windswept terrain and water-eroded rock formations.
October 23, 2025 at 6:58 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
alanbeattie.bsky.social
The “health surcharge” is an utterly bogus labelling. It’s not hypothecated for health spending and you can’t choose not to pay it and not use the NHS. You could call it an education surcharge or a defence surcharge or anything. It’s just using the sanctified status of the NHS to rip off immigrants.
October 21, 2025 at 6:35 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
hetanshah.bsky.social
The costs of the UK’s Global Talent Visa looks a trifle high in comparison to competitor countries - largely through the Immigration Health Surcharge (which critics say is a form of double taxation as they contribute to the NHS through normal tax on their earnings)
Researchers applying for the UK's Global Talent visa face high upfront costs Upfront cost of visa to applicant and employer in 2025 UK Denmark £692 India £602 Australia £405 Israel £362 US £305 Italy £235 Netherlands 1 £207 Germany | £170 Spain 1£144 Sweden | £117 South Korea | £98 France £84 Japan £21 £5,941 £O £2,000 £4 Source: Fragomen for the Royal Society • Excludes ongoing costs such as mandatory healthcare premiums or fees such as language tests
October 21, 2025 at 5:57 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
drewharwell.com
An OpenAI executive said GPT-5 found solutions to 10 "previously unsolved" math problems when in reality all it did was find online references to places where people had already solved them

techcrunch.com/2025/10/19/o...
OpenAI’s ‘embarrassing’ math | TechCrunch
No, GPT-5 did not solve a bunch of previously unsolved math problems.
techcrunch.com
October 20, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
ufw.bsky.social
"Maria" is rolling up raisins under the hot Madera sun. To earn $70, she has to roll 1,000 sheets! Each row has around 250 sheet. It's hard grueling work walking on the burning sand for hours rolling one sheet after another. #WeFeedYou
October 13, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
junoryleejournalism.com
David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)
SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems... SIMON: What? SHAPIRO: ...Or saying... SIMON: You imagine that? SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over. SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level. SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this. SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.
October 9, 2025 at 4:42 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
rikefranke.bsky.social
And here we go. I never wrote this article, and yet it is cited here.

www.liberalbriefs.com/geopolitics/...

And of course, it sounds so plausible, I seriously checked whether I had forgotten it, or the footnote was slightly wrong.

#AIisnotresearch
October 7, 2025 at 8:17 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
eicathomefinn.bsky.social
Finally, an article that at least touches on teaching quality and staff workload issues. Not that it suggests any viable alternatives to the current state of play. (And for 'colleges' in the headline, read 'universities', a telling choice of nomenclature.
Grade deflation, overcrowding and ‘chaos’ as colleges scr...
Russell group hoovers up international students to stave off budget deficit fears
observer.co.uk
October 5, 2025 at 7:09 AM
Reposted by Joseph O'Mahoney
unburntwitch.com
Microsoft says its Agent Mode in Excel has an accuracy rate of 57.2 percent in SpreadsheetBench, a benchmark for evaluating an Al model's ability to edit real world spreadsheets. This result
October 1, 2025 at 7:38 PM