Kemi might be the one most likely to have read all of the Yudkowsky book, mind you.

Speaking as a 💯 Numbers Fuckstein guy myself, that is...

Nonono, there are absolutely a bunch of lib-nerd-growth-science Numbers Fuckstein types across all the main parties who are SSC/ACT readers. A cross-bench Alexander Caucus.

And FWIW I don't mean to pick on @cinemashoebox.bsky.social who IIUC is merely pointing out the silly name-descriptor (which it is) rather than claiming, as I've seen this morning, that "this is proof that the NYT hates the UK".

If his aim is to make the UK as reliant on a cryptocurrency-based shadow economy as Argentina’s is, then sure, let’s think about this plan.

That (the Philips piece) is an insane piece of writing, and you’re all correct about the absurdity of such a policy, but in any case, TP has clearly given no thought at all to the mechanism of *how* one would prevent capital transfers in the world of 2025 without crippling the rest of the economy.

There's a nice 2011 interview here with both Bailey, then aged 66, and Cox:

The full PDF is here:

I saw this and the words “Lionalan Rushbarber” popped into my head and now you have to hear them too 😆 (also, sounds good and will listen) m.

Yes. While I wouldn't turn it down, why should I suddenly get a £1,500 boost to my salary when I turn 60, funded by council taxation? (I know it can't be used before 9am but it'd be trivial for me to game that or just start work later.)

And those questions are just for London. Further out, how do you make the distinction between public transport and the intercity rail network? Are we subsidising rich American tourists from the tax take from those minimum-wage shop workers again?

If you're subsidising free fares across the tube network how will we deal a literal free-rider problem in which people who don't pay any London council tax will be able to travel in free from tube-connected home counties suburbs? How about the additional parking problems at terminal tube stations?

That is much better

Ha, I didn’t even notice that. Were I still working a sub desk, I’d remove “refute” from more or less any copy I saw, but you’re right that that sentence in this piece is at best… inaccurate 😆

The piece itself is moderately well written, enough to make it clear that Adele and Beckham are named in this way, not as participants of any kind. But the headline makes a fairly obvious nudge-wink implication, and that’s a very unwise thing to do IMO.

They’re named in chatter by one participant or other in the course of general conversations. The number of actually interesting names, of people implicated, is tiny, which makes reporting on the database very hard work. Nobody is helped by this kind of cheap drive-by.

This I know because the first thing I thought of doing when I saw there was a searchable version of the email database was to put British people’s names into it, out of morbid curiosity. Then you quickly see that almost all the names (like it might be 90+ per cent) are just like this.