Justin Ibbett

Founder and CEO of interested in public policy and technology, bayesian stats, using data and AI for progress. Helping out at @focaldatahq

[Tom Forth @thomasforth]

The lack of growth is very much Britain's top problem. And there is a very good case that reforms by Thatcher that were never undone are a big cause of that. You can't fix the problem if you deny it. https://t.co/EyUxaNzmnl

[Kris @krxsctr]

UK Civil Service salaries never cease to confuse me, you can either help manage the UK’s nuclear defence for £47k or you can make TikToks for Andy Burnham for £57k

[Shakeel @ShakeelHashim]

Laura Gilbert — former Number 10 director of data science and incubator for AI, now senior director of AI at TBI — has published a *scathing* critique of how recent governments have treated science and tech policy, as seen from the inside.

[Anders Sandberg @anderssandberg]

Given that leaks are responsible for about 400 times the water usage of data centers, there is an obvious win-win solution: approve as many data centers as the market wants, but they have to fix at least twice as much leakage as they want to use water.

[Tim Leunig @timleunig]

Wow, this is amazing - well done to Alex and everyone who has taught him! You can make a reasonable claim that he is the best maths student of his age of all time!

[Alec MacGillis @AlecMacGillis]

"London would need to build 1.1 million more homes to reach the western European average of homes per capita. Last year, Vienna built three times more houses than London, despite being a much smaller city." https://t.co/vnVFPd8CSP

[Luke Johnson @LukeJohnsonRCP]

More than three times as many people in Britain are disabled as in Italy. The power of incentives at work…

[Sam Bowman @s8mb]

The 'modelling' of this report doesn't do anything except chart what rents would be if they'd been capped and there had been no supply response at all from, eg, landlords selling to flee the market. How is this publishable as a 42 page research paper?

[Sam Bowman @s8mb]

Every day we stray further from God’s light (a no-exemption 25% VAT with a turnover threshold of zero).

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

Literally the tax policy of the last Tory government.

At some point we need to recognise relentlessly hammering the most economically productive people in the country might not be something we can do forever with no consequences.

[Sam Bowman @s8mb]

"End rough sleeping" is very "Maths to 18". We keep getting mid-term PMs who think people want them to pursue their personal agendas, when they're actually being hired as stand-ins to solve problems that their predecessors couldn't.

[Paul Johnson @PJTheEconomist]

Neither big party wants to acknowledge this.
Between 2010 and 2024 share of tax paid by high earners rose sharply.
Big cuts in higher and additional rate thresholds, and in pension tax relief, hit them hard.
Trade offs as ever. But please let’s not pretend this didn’t happen.

[Sean Westwood @seanjwestwood]

Water use is just not a credible argument against the growth of AI data centers. It is misinformation.

[John Redwood @johnredwood]

Mr Burnham criticises selling UK utilities to foreign states and companies. I agree. I helped Margaret Thatcher put in Golden shares to prevent this. It was the Labour government after 1997 that wrongly cancelled these protections to please the EU.

[Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil]

Data centers barely use any water, barely use any land, and they lower electric bills.

[Natalie Wynn @ContraPoints]

So, The Odyssey. Lol. It’s good, maybe Nolan’s best, and not even slightly “woke.” The right-wing hysteria is amazingly detached from reality.

It’s a relentlessly masculine film, visually similar to Troy (2004) at times, but starker and bleaker, less flamboyant and less feminist. Circe, Calypso, Charybdis etc. are classic Nolan female chaos dragons. Penelope’s weaving is not dwelled upon.

The costumes look good. The soundscape is relentless roaring and clanging that rings in your ears when you wander out of the theater feeling slightly overwhelmed by three hours of torchlit Mycenaean brutality.

The brief presence of several black actors and one transsexual feels utterly natural in a mythological setting of seafaring travelers, and the fits of neurosis over it are extremely embarrassing for champions of the Master Race, whose ideological fanaticism and general hostility to aesthetic values has now exceeded the wildest excesses of left-wing media critique.

[Richard Hanania @RichardHanania]

The UK really is finished. I don't know how you look at that country and have much hope.

[Freddie Sayers @freddiesayers]

I hope we will now hear from all the free speech activists who have campaigned in defence of Lucy Connolly condemning this overreach by British police.

As Ann Widdecombe herself said: "No one has the right to be protected from offence or hurt feelings".

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

I didn't want to have to use ubiquitous cameras to civilize the U.S., but it's the only way, so let's get on with it

[Adam 🇺🇦 @PlinthBotherer5]

This is superb. Sinn Fein MEP scolds the European parliament for not providing interpreters to let her speak in Irish. She's told that the Irish interpreters are present. She flubs for a moment and then continues in English, because she doesn't actually speak Irish