Adam Smith

Iran’s Lego AI videos of Trump working with Netanyahu and Satan were insanely effective

It’s weaponised nostalgia, fighting the White House’s Nintendo memes

Everyone is 12 now, etc

But Lego has one secret weapon that make it more relatable

Read here:

https://wealthofnotions.substack.com/p/quis-legodit-ipsos-legodes

Just finished writing the latest Adam Smith’s Wealth of Notions, and I think it’s a real treat if I do say so myself

It’s about the Iran war, Lego propaganda, and a little bit of comic theory

Make sure you’re subscribed so it goes straight to your inbox tomorrow

wealthofnotions.substack.com

After the world’s largest four-day working week trial in 2023, researchers found it

> increased productivity
> reduced burnout
> increased mental and physical health

So, of course, the Conservatives want to ban it.

“Some people are heroes. Other people jot down notes. Sometimes they’re the same person” - Terry Pratchett

https://wealthofnotions.substack.com/p/what-makes-you-think-you-have-the-right

GB News: pushes constant attacks on public funding of the BBC

Also GB News: begs for public funding of GB News

This proves antizionism is not antisemitism because Kanye West gets this lukewarm pushback after calling himself a Nazi while pensioners got prison in the UK for mildly criticising Israel

With the Green Party beating Reform, don’t let anyone tell you that politics is inevitable.

All it takes for things to change is for us to actually fight for it.

Teachers are getting deepfake nudes made of them, and boys are making jokes about raping girls in schools.

And the people who are supposed to be raising these children don’t care. They say it’s the teachers’ fault.

“Parents have told me if I can’t handle teenage boys then I need to ‘work in a fucking nursery’.”

If these are the sons being raised, the fathers should be ashamed.

JD Vance is aware of (and maybe hates?) bell hooks

Ignoring the potential psychological effects, if the left want to experiment and learn about AI it is very easy to run a local model on your own computer - no data leaving your system, no energy use beyond your own.

The big tech companies are hoping that nobody does this, in the same way Spotify hopes people never buy CDs or Netflix hopes nobody learns what self-hosting is.

But the opportunities are there, if we take them.

Call me disturbed because I have been getting down with the sickness

(by which I mean that I’ve been reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea, and I have thoughts about the political establishment, where our rights come from, and where they’ve gone)

https://wealthofnotions.substack.com/p/what-makes-you-think-you-have-the-right

“Punishable with a fine just means legal for the rich.”

These days, they’re not even punished with a fine.

Five years, £10m spent, nothing has happened.

Black people are four times as likely to be stopped by the police. Only six forces out of 44 think that’s a problem.

The police don’t want to be better. The culture “does not want to change.”

ACAB

Israel? Committing a war crime? Surely not!

This is grotesque. Imagine if a country said “death penalty for Jews, but nobody else”

This law is supposed to be about stopping terrorists. That’s a lie.

The definition of “terrorist” is so vague in the law, so that Israel can use it against whoever they want.

Israel is an apartheid state.

Fearmongering to the right-wing audience

“Critical Race Theory, anti-Zionism, gender ideology…anti-West, -Israel, -American, -Britain”

Maybe if they said the Green’s actual agenda - nationalising water, energy, railways, fighting Palantir, expanding social housing - their readers might support it

New blog post! On your latest iPhone update, Digital ID, Palantir, consent, and some other stuff.

It’s a good read, check out the rest while you’re there 🙏

https://wealthofnotions.substack.com/p/everythings-the-police-ads

Listen, it's clear who's a woman and who's a man. You can tell by looking.

Except when you can't, then it's about genitals. Or whether someone can produce eggs. Or chromosomes. XX and XY. Except when it's not

If you get confused, listen to women. NOT Judith Butler, she's the wrong kind of woman

Imagine being the kind of person who sees this as a victory

London has fallen so far as a city, just saw a sign in Paris for a ‘happy hour’ from 5pm until 2am

If I had a nickel for every time Franz Ferdinand was involved in the precursor events of a world war, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice