Code is a liability (not an asset). Tech bosses don't understand this. They think AI is great because it produces 10,000 times more code but that means it's producing 10,000 more liabilities. AI is the asbestos we're shoveling into the walls of our high-tech society:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
But if you're a software engineer who's been ordered to produce code at 10x, or 100x, or 10,000x your previous rate, and the only way to do that is via AI, and there is no human way that you could possibly review that code and ensure that it will not break on first contact with the world, you'll hate it (you'll hate it even more if you've been turned into the AI's accountability sink, personally on the hook for the AI's mistakes):
we don't need a social mobility plan what we need is an equality plan... we don't need to play the game of class difference better, we need to reduce (and reduce the influence of) class difference(s) in the first place.
A plan for equality is what we need (what one might have expected from a so-called left Govt, but yes I know they're Labour in Name Only)... however, this is something our political class will never deliver!
I disagree with the very idea of having a social mobility plan. The term itself captures the essence of what is wrong – class and inequality, and the notion that being upwardly mobile is the path to success. We are still a deeply class-divided society, underpinned by vast differences in economic and educational opportunity that recreate the social markers and attitudinal differences towards achievement and aspiration that constantly divide us.
We need an equality plan, not a social mobility one. As in 1997, a Labour government with a huge majority is failing to come up with a narrative that goes beyond ideas that merely tinker around the edges of the real challenge.
Christopher Tanner
St Ives, Cambridgeshire
"DOJ won’t meet Friday deadline to release all the Epstein files. The delay means the White House is in apparent conflict with a law President Donald Trump signed in November."
~ Gregory Svirnovskiy
The excuses they're floating range from a huge workload redacting files to concerns about protecting privacy of victims. By releasing material in dribs and drabs, they hope to extend the process through the holidays when people are distracted.
"The establishment doesn’t want to think about Epstein because they don’t want to think about how he got away with all of it, at such a scale, and for so long.
This is one reason—perhaps the main reason—why Epstein matters. ...
So, yes, a real reckoning with Epstein would mean a real re-thinking of questions of gender, wealth, and power."
"What we see [in the Epstein story] is a big club. And we ain't in it. And this big club is a very wealthy, powerful man who believe the world and its girls are their oysters. "
Then:
"I'm saying this since the summer now, that this is the biggest cover up in modern history."
If you're working class & are wanting to work in the visual arts (or maybe do already & have found it difficult for someone from your background) then Meg Molloy's Working Class Art Club might be for you... she is building a network of working class visual art workers & creatives to offer mutual support & networking as a way of dealing with the classism that is pretty evident throughout the arts in the UK right now... could be interesting?
So weird to read about the pre-1960 intellectual elite. They had such short and informal education. It took so little to become a Name.
The Swedish middle class today is like "Yeah, if you want to do anything beyond manual labour in this country then it's a five-year university degree. Can we also be an intellectual elite please? Even though we're 40% of the population? Is there, I don't know, a famous salon we can all join?"
Od jakiegoś czasu nie mam konta na Facebooku i co za tym idzie na Messengerze. Niestety jestem jeszcze w klasie maturalnej, co oznacza, że muszę utrzymywać kontakt z moją klasą i nauczycielami.
Praktycznie wszystkie grupy przedmiotowe mamy na mesie no i oczywiście grupę klasową. Dla ludzi z klasy Messenger to jedyny znany im komunikator, przez co mam kontakt z tylko dwoma osobami. Nauczyciele jeśli pisałem do nich, by zaczęli wysyłać materiały na bardziej oficjalne ścieżki szkolne np. Librus albo Classroom, zwykle odpisywali, że no przecież tak robią (nie robili od ponad roku). Ostatecznie nie mam dostępu do większości materiałów, do których mają inni uczniowie, nie wiem o niektórych wydarzeniach, o których wiedzą inni no i ogólnie nie jest łatwo.
Jeśli ktoś przeczytał te moje wypociny, dziękuję, pozdrawiam i życzę miłego dnia.
𐔌՞꜆. ̫.꜀՞𐦯 #szkoła#matura#class
As the economic (instrumental) argument for attending university has been degraded over the last decade or more, supporters of graduate education have emphasised (especially to applicants) the humanistic benefits of studying at degree level.... which leaves us with this Q.:
are the potential humanistic benefits of university (self-development, cultural awakening etc.) available to all students, or just those already well on that path through family & peer/network support?
So, I wonder what sort of (untraceable) phone calls were made between people at No.10 & Rachel Reeves letting agents, to encourage them to blame some who has now left their firm for the licensing mistake on Reeves family home rental?
Call me cynical but there seems to be a world of difference to how Angela Rayner's troubles were 'dealt' with & how Reeves have played out; it almost like the no.10 goons wanted rid of Rayner, but have been more forthright in protecting Reeves?
As we've been discussing class this morning (relating to the arts), here's a piece from yesterday's Guardian on Tommy Flowers, an early computer innovator (but working class) largely written out of the early history of computing....
Kenen Malik argues that the class problem in the UK arts is driven by the assumption that:
'ordinary people are unable to grasp anything challenging or complex. It is a wretchedly patronising claim imposed upon working-class people by middle-class gatekeepers who define what is “relevant” & have no grasp of working-class history'!
As so often (and not just in the arts) working class interests are presented via misinformed & paternalistic ventriloquism.
Just in case you doubted that the attack (and dismemberment) of Roe vs. Wade in the USA was a class issue, across the Southern States of the USA prosecutors have targeted low-income women... so not just an attack on women's rights but also an attack on the poor... And people will tell you call politics is a thing of the past?
I may not agree with everything Sharon Graham (Unite) says below, but the general thrust is correct;
Labour (and our mainstream political class) just cannot see how workers & the families have seen their material wellbeing dismembered & the promises of 'betterment' from hard work yanked away from them by an influential & profiteering elite.
You may think its old fashioned class politics focussed on economic factors, but it feels pretty right to me!
[T]he AI bubble is driven by monopolists who've conquered their markets and have no more growth potential, who are desperate to convince investors that they can continue to grow by moving into some other sector, e.g. "pivot to video," crypto, blockchain, NFTs, AI, and now "super-intelligence." Further: the topline growth that AI companies are selling comes from replacing most workers with AI, and re-tasking the surviving workers as AI babysitters ("humans in the loop"), which won't work. Finally: AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging "foundation models" will be shut off and we'll lose the AI that can't do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or "discouraged" and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job. AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations:
The only thing […] that we can do about this is to puncture the AI bubble as soon as possible, to halt this before it progresses any further and to head off the accumulation of social and economic debt. To do that, we have to take aim at the material basis for the AI bubble (creating a growth story by claiming that defective AI can do your job).
Like you, I'm sick to the back teeth of talking about AI. Like you, I keep getting dragged into AI discussions. Unlike you‡, I spent the summer writing a book about why I'm sick of writing about AI⹋, which Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish in 2026.
‡probably
⹋"The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI"
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
When the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging "foundation models" will be shut off and we'll lose the AI that can't do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or "discouraged" and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job. AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations:
Writing for The Bee (the website for working class writing), Richard Benson reminds us that:
'Class isn’t only about what you make of yourself, boastful or not.
Class is also something that is done to you'!
And, in the UK class is being done to the vulnerable a lot of the time... both through presumptions about social attitudes & through the construction of their economic fragility.
Q. is the problem for the LibDems that Ed Davey by adopting positions both to the left & to the right of the Labour Govt. seems to be working on the basis that the old Left/Right distinction should not pattern political strategy (or perhaps as cynics observe its just cynical opportunism), when actually inequality & the shift right suggest actually class politics (and the old Left/Right distinction) is resurgent?
Not sure I have an answer but thought I'd pose the Q.
As the crisis in school funding continues, we can be conclude that future generations are being betrayed by a consistent under-funding of state schools, leading (of course) to an ever more privileged status for the UK private educated... with more resources, more staff time & better infrastructure all enjoyed by those whose parent can afford it....
If you want to see class warfare this is as good example as any....
Python vs. Java ( sh.itjust.works )
Code is a liability (not an asset) ( pluralistic.net )
https://i0.wp.com/craphound.com/images/06Jan2026.jpg?w=840&ssl=1 ...
The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh ( pluralistic.net )
https://i0.wp.com/craphound.com/images/27Sep2025.jpg?w=840&ssl=1 ...