Nick Harkaway
@nickharkaway.com
Book-writin' man. Also husband, dad and occasional clothing-repairer, dog-walker, enthusiastic improviser of temporary solutions to random problems. Decreasingly rigorous on social media.
www.linktr.ee/harkaway
He/him
www.linktr.ee/harkaway
He/him
Pinned
November 11, 2025 at 7:58 AM
Reposted by Nick Harkaway
SUPERB and angrily unvarnished response, by former BBC chairman, Lord Patten.
"I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that the BBC is only any good, if it reflects the prejudice of the last person who shouted at it." ~AA
"I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that the BBC is only any good, if it reflects the prejudice of the last person who shouted at it." ~AA
November 10, 2025 at 6:40 PM
SUPERB and angrily unvarnished response, by former BBC chairman, Lord Patten.
"I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that the BBC is only any good, if it reflects the prejudice of the last person who shouted at it." ~AA
"I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that the BBC is only any good, if it reflects the prejudice of the last person who shouted at it." ~AA
Reposted by Nick Harkaway
And in soil microbes? Excuse me? www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/668...
Soil Bacteria Work In Similar Way To Antidepressants
UK scientists suggest that a type of friendly bacteria found in soil may affect the brain in a similar way to antidepressants.
www.medicalnewstoday.com
November 10, 2025 at 9:59 PM
And in soil microbes? Excuse me? www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/668...
Reposted by Nick Harkaway
Pinning this again:
Do not use milk, juice, urine, antacids, baking soda on pepper spray or tear gas. Just water. Plain water..
Optical saline ok in eyes, but maybe save it for the dumbasses who wore contact lenses.
Plain soap or shampoo ok on skin, but never in eyes.
Do not use milk, juice, urine, antacids, baking soda on pepper spray or tear gas. Just water. Plain water..
Optical saline ok in eyes, but maybe save it for the dumbasses who wore contact lenses.
Plain soap or shampoo ok on skin, but never in eyes.
November 10, 2025 at 11:12 AM
Pinning this again:
Do not use milk, juice, urine, antacids, baking soda on pepper spray or tear gas. Just water. Plain water..
Optical saline ok in eyes, but maybe save it for the dumbasses who wore contact lenses.
Plain soap or shampoo ok on skin, but never in eyes.
Do not use milk, juice, urine, antacids, baking soda on pepper spray or tear gas. Just water. Plain water..
Optical saline ok in eyes, but maybe save it for the dumbasses who wore contact lenses.
Plain soap or shampoo ok on skin, but never in eyes.
The crazy thing about (global) government inaction on climate is that almost everyone is screaming at them to act.
COP30 kicking off today with a call from major businesses for governments to up their ambition on pretty much every front. www.businessgreen.com/news/4521574...
'COP30 is the moment': Businesses urge governments to respond to escalating climate risks
Belém Summits kicks off with fresh calls from leading global businesses for governments to 'turn climate targets into real policies and action'
www.businessgreen.com
November 10, 2025 at 10:53 AM
The crazy thing about (global) government inaction on climate is that almost everyone is screaming at them to act.
Reposted by Nick Harkaway
If the BBC really has systemic bias in favour of progressive issues, why isn’t this the top story every single day?
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Rich countries have lost enthusiasm for tackling climate crisis, says Cop30 chief
Brazil’s André Corrêa do Lago says countries should follow China’s lead on clean energy as conference begins
www.theguardian.com
November 10, 2025 at 7:53 AM
If the BBC really has systemic bias in favour of progressive issues, why isn’t this the top story every single day?
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Reposted by Nick Harkaway
1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️
November 9, 2025 at 9:23 AM
1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️
Reposted by Nick Harkaway
The most incredible library in the world, @bodleian.ox.ac.uk opened to OTD 1602, through the energy, money & commitment of Sir Thomas Bodley. It began with 5k books, & now more than 22m, with 2m+reader visits a year, & multi-million online users across the globe. Privilged to be its 25th librarian!
November 8, 2025 at 7:20 AM
The most incredible library in the world, @bodleian.ox.ac.uk opened to OTD 1602, through the energy, money & commitment of Sir Thomas Bodley. It began with 5k books, & now more than 22m, with 2m+reader visits a year, & multi-million online users across the globe. Privilged to be its 25th librarian!
Reposted by Nick Harkaway
Can’t wait to hear fuel duty get frozen again in the budget in ten days or so!!
Govt scraps all electrification investment. Midland Main Line to stay forever diesel Leicester Nottingham Derby Sheffield. Hugely embarrassing and inexplicable
www.ft.com/content/5ecd...
www.ft.com/content/5ecd...
UK transport secretary says full electrification of railways ‘not affordable right now’
Heidi Alexander says focus will be on other projects such as HS2
www.ft.com
November 9, 2025 at 9:25 AM
Can’t wait to hear fuel duty get frozen again in the budget in ten days or so!!
Reposted by Nick Harkaway
"Rooftop solar is spreading fast in Jamaica, and people with panels got their power back almost immediately. The ‘entire neighborhood benefits,’ one resident said."
Jamaicans Have Been Turning to Solar Power. It Paid Off After the Storm.
www.nytimes.com
November 8, 2025 at 2:06 PM
"Rooftop solar is spreading fast in Jamaica, and people with panels got their power back almost immediately. The ‘entire neighborhood benefits,’ one resident said."
Reposted by Nick Harkaway
I feel like we have the opportunity to turn David Lynch's quote into this moment's "Keep Calm and Carry On" and it's a far better rallying cry too.
November 7, 2025 at 1:15 PM
I feel like we have the opportunity to turn David Lynch's quote into this moment's "Keep Calm and Carry On" and it's a far better rallying cry too.
I kinda think if you actually work in politics and have an eye to government, and you were not at least thinking this was likely, you need to look at the information flow from which you draw your model of the world. Chances are it’s got some other howlers in it.
“Nobody thought a Labour government would have to raise taxes by more than £70bn,” claims one insider in this excellent piece. Shows the problem of the climate of fear in meetings created by some of Starmer’s aides, in that plenty of Labour insiders, did, in fact, think this!
The politics of breaking manifesto promises
The history of politicians who go back on their words has lessons for Rachel Reeves as she mulls raising taxes
www.ft.com
November 8, 2025 at 11:48 AM
I kinda think if you actually work in politics and have an eye to government, and you were not at least thinking this was likely, you need to look at the information flow from which you draw your model of the world. Chances are it’s got some other howlers in it.
Hah! Yes. I still believe this is true.
November 7, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Hah! Yes. I still believe this is true.
Reposted by Nick Harkaway
FACT OF THE DAY. 7 November 1917 (Gregorian calendar). The Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin stormed the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg to begin the Russian Revolution.
November 7, 2025 at 9:41 AM
FACT OF THE DAY. 7 November 1917 (Gregorian calendar). The Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin stormed the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg to begin the Russian Revolution.
“We conduct the largest pretraining poisoning experiments to date, pretraining models from 600M to 13B parameters on chinchilla-optimal datasets (6B to 260B tokens). We find that 250 poisoned documents similarly compromise models across all model and dataset sizes…”
arxiv.org/abs/2510.07192
arxiv.org/abs/2510.07192
Poisoning Attacks on LLMs Require a Near-constant Number of Poison Samples
Poisoning attacks can compromise the safety of large language models (LLMs) by injecting malicious documents into their training data. Existing work has studied pretraining poisoning assuming adversar...
arxiv.org
November 7, 2025 at 12:39 PM
“We conduct the largest pretraining poisoning experiments to date, pretraining models from 600M to 13B parameters on chinchilla-optimal datasets (6B to 260B tokens). We find that 250 poisoned documents similarly compromise models across all model and dataset sizes…”
arxiv.org/abs/2510.07192
arxiv.org/abs/2510.07192
This thread is majestic and ongoing
OK, as promised, here's my thread about the links between tear gas/pepper spray and the arms trade and gun industry.
November 7, 2025 at 12:24 PM
This thread is majestic and ongoing
Reposted by Nick Harkaway
The US is the world's largest oil and gas producer. Yet, "China is now making more money from exporting green technology than America makes from exporting fossil fuels."
China’s clean-energy revolution will reshape markets and politics
The world’s biggest manufacturer now has an interest in the world decarbonising
www.economist.com
November 7, 2025 at 11:05 AM
The US is the world's largest oil and gas producer. Yet, "China is now making more money from exporting green technology than America makes from exporting fossil fuels."
November 7, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Reposted by Nick Harkaway
LLMs are now widely used in social science as stand-ins for humans—assuming they can produce realistic, human-like text
But... can they? We don’t actually know.
In our new study, we develop a Computational Turing Test.
And our findings are striking:
LLMs may be far less human-like than we think.🧵
But... can they? We don’t actually know.
In our new study, we develop a Computational Turing Test.
And our findings are striking:
LLMs may be far less human-like than we think.🧵
Computational Turing Test Reveals Systematic Differences Between Human and AI Language
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in the social sciences to simulate human behavior, based on the assumption that they can generate realistic, human-like text. Yet this assumption rem...
arxiv.org
November 7, 2025 at 11:13 AM
LLMs are now widely used in social science as stand-ins for humans—assuming they can produce realistic, human-like text
But... can they? We don’t actually know.
In our new study, we develop a Computational Turing Test.
And our findings are striking:
LLMs may be far less human-like than we think.🧵
But... can they? We don’t actually know.
In our new study, we develop a Computational Turing Test.
And our findings are striking:
LLMs may be far less human-like than we think.🧵
I have now reached the "all my rough paper has been written on on both sides and around the edges and looks like the confession letter of a guy who thinks aliens are talking to him through a stuffed weasel and that's why he had to eat his neighbour's dog" stage of writing this book.
November 7, 2025 at 10:40 AM
I have now reached the "all my rough paper has been written on on both sides and around the edges and looks like the confession letter of a guy who thinks aliens are talking to him through a stuffed weasel and that's why he had to eat his neighbour's dog" stage of writing this book.
This is kind of interesting to muck around with in the run-up to the budget.
www.reed.co.uk/tax-calculator
#yesishouldbeworking
www.reed.co.uk/tax-calculator
#yesishouldbeworking
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www.reed.co.uk
November 7, 2025 at 10:34 AM
This is kind of interesting to muck around with in the run-up to the budget.
www.reed.co.uk/tax-calculator
#yesishouldbeworking
www.reed.co.uk/tax-calculator
#yesishouldbeworking
Trying to source a bit of fake antique mirror glass for a thing. Apparently this puts me in a very specific demographic?
November 7, 2025 at 10:16 AM
Trying to source a bit of fake antique mirror glass for a thing. Apparently this puts me in a very specific demographic?
Reposted by Nick Harkaway
I'm sure the Minister for the DCMS will be all across the issue of a major company in a strategic industry we are a world leader in falling into foreign hands, particularly a country where there are complex geopolitical issues
November 7, 2025 at 8:53 AM
I'm sure the Minister for the DCMS will be all across the issue of a major company in a strategic industry we are a world leader in falling into foreign hands, particularly a country where there are complex geopolitical issues