Jason Dunne

@EdwardGLuce High and Over, near Alfriston?

Early spring near Brighton

I've heard the best thing to do when you have a looming supply crisis is actually to massively subsidise demand

@FraserNelson Would be interested to know what inspired you to hire this way - it seems fairer and more effective than any other system. I guess most managers don’t do it because deep down they just want hire in their own image?

Great to see another former Spectator intern, Mimi Yates, make her debut on the front page of the Mail today. That anonymous, no-name, CV-blind scheme has been an incredibly effective talent-hunting mechanism. Any company could set up an equivalent!

People keep saying, "AI is the worst it will ever be." I hope the same is true for humans.

They capture the exact moment when a developing heart shifts from silence to its first beat. There is no “switch”: many cells gradually become active and, upon crossing a critical threshold, the entire tissue suddenly synchronizes.

Today in bunk: futurism.com/robots-and-mac…

@John_Stepek It's naughty, but last week I saw surfers pushing the emergency fence to one side, from the Birling Gap car park, and then you're down the stairs and onto the beach as normal - just watch the tide times. Alternatively, for a beach with thrilling views, try Exceat/Cuckmere.

@jasdun Beautiful place - where do you access it from now the stairs are gone?

Wee timeline cleanser

LLMs are living off the moral and intellectual capital of a pre-AI world, just like Nietzsche said secular liberals live off Christianity. What happens when the inheritance runs out? Using LLMs well — knowing when to trust them, how to interrogate their outputs, what questions are worth asking — depends on capacities that are pre-LLM in origin: critical judgment, domain expertise, philosophical seriousness, taste. People who use LLMs well right now tend to be people formed by traditions of deep reading, argument, and intellectual discipline that were not themselves produced by or optimized for interaction with language models. The tool works for them because they bring something the tool cannot supply. Nietzsche thought secular liberals were coasting on the fumes of a Christian metaphysics they'd officially abandoned. The shadow of God lingering on the cave wall. The question is whether LLM-native thinking is the same kind of afterglow.

I liked the world better when the news came on for 30 minutes and then we did other shit for 23 1/2 hours. Now it follows you around all day like a hobo begging for change.

Laugh all you want, but it’s more fun than Christopher Nolan, no? youtu.be/CdNWeGM48gs?si…

From Gorsuch concurrence.

Often, technological change does not make everyone more productive; it simply reveals who was not necessary to begin with. Removing those positions increases productivity even if everyone else still works that same way.

@John_Stepek Excellent!

@jasdun I'll have you know my Mega City descendant had a badge and everything

This is nothing - a pal once got my surname into a Judge Dredd comic and I've got the entire strip framed.

The two global centers of software and hardware innovation, San Francisco and Shenzhen, also have the highest share of empty offices. During a boom.

In science we trust

Wow!

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. —Flannery O'Connor

China’s Prosperity: Built by Households, Claimed by the State Let this sink in. The IMF puts China’s 2025 GDP per capita at $13,806 a year — roughly $1,150 a month. But using China International Capital Corp (CICC) income buckets below, only about ~2.5% of Chinese actually clear that level in monthly income — ~35 million out of ~1.4 billion. Most don’t live anywhere near the “average.” So when outsiders swoon over the skyline, the mega-bridges, the high-speed rail to end of map, and the factory machine that exports “cheap and good” to the world, keep the base reality in frame: •~547 million live on < $145/month. •~1.33 billion earn < $724/month. Official stats show Chinese workers averaged 48.6 hours a week in 2025 — basically seven hours a day, every day of the week. That’s the point: China’s wealth was allocated by the state — into bureaucracy, infrastructure, capacity, and export power, not household income. This isn’t prosperity for Chinese people. It’s industrial power—financed by households, enforced by silence.