The Arc of Democracy
I need to spend longer with this report for Demos by Eliot Higgins, journalist and founder of Bellingcat, Dr Natalie Martin, an academic. However, I’m sharing it both because of the framework above for understanding democratic collapse and the eight ways to systematically respond to build resilience.
Diagnosis must be matched with design. The VDA Framework makes visible how collapse unfolds, from hollow ritual to disordered simulation, but renewal requires a systemic response. Isolated reforms will not suffice. To move from collapse to resilience, democracies need a coordinated framework that strengthens verification, deliberation, and accountability across society.
The Arc of Democracy lets us understand the movement towards substantial or simulated democratic practice in terms of VDA functions, the Arc Framework allows us to design a response.
The Arc is not a single project but an organising system for rebuilding democratic resilience from the ground up. It takes the three functional minimums of democracy, verification, deliberation, and accountability, and maps them onto eight interconnected tracks of action:
Education & Epistemic Capacity – building critical thinking, epistemic literacy, and resilience from primary school through lifelong learning.
Civic Empowerment & Democratic Practice – equipping communities to investigate, deliberate, and act meaningfully in democratic life.
Civic Trust & Value Alignment – rebuilding pluralistic norms and shared values that sustain coexistence.
Investigative Infrastructure – creating resilient, distributed systems for uncovering and verifying truth.
Democratic Discourse – ensuring that verified evidence and accountability shape public understanding.
Institutional Integration & Policy – embedding epistemic standards and accountability into governance structures.
Translation to Impact – ensuring that investigations and deliberation produce real-world outcomes in law, policy, and culture.
Sustainability & Infrastructure – building long-term systems and alliances to anchor democratic resilience.
Source & diagram: Demos
TOOLBOX TOOLBOX
A useful list, some of which I recognise and have used, and some I don’t (and haven’t).
You’re looking at a list of toolboxes. There are no categories. No tags. No filters.
Each toolbox is its own quirky microcosm of order. Trying to organise them felt like categorising categories. So we didn’t.
You probably won’t find exactly what you’re looking for, but there’s a good chance you’ll stumble upon something even better.
Browse with curiosity!
Source: TOOLBOX TOOLBOX
LibrePods
Although I’m very happy with my current headphones, I am impressed that the latest Apple AirPods have a ‘hearing aid’ mode. While I don’t need it yet, that kind of functionality could be useful to lots of people who don’t use iPhones.
So it’s great that some developers have reverse-engineered AirPods to be compatible with devices outside of the Apple ecosystem. That includes people, like me, who use Linux and Android. Check out the releases page for downloads.
LibrePods unlocks Apple’s exclusive AirPods features on non-Apple devices. Get access to noise control modes, adaptive transparency, ear detection, hearing aid, customized transparency mode, battery status, and more - all the premium features you paid for but Apple locked to their ecosystem.
Source & image: LibrePods | GitHub
Dark Forests rule everything around us
I’ve talked about dead internet theory recently, and splinternets and dark forests for years. In this post, Yancey Strickler, who coined the term ‘dark forest’ puts forward his theory that we’re now at a stage where we have to ‘perform’ in the open, on networks dominated by authoritarian powers.
Behind the scenes, however, is where the real power and control lies. And these dark forests require security to enable them to put together counter-narratives and “hidden transcripts” to provide an alternative to the dominant ideology. It’s powerful stuff, and difficult to argue against.
Dark Forests rule everything around us. Signal chats to plan wars? Check. Private group chats where rival athletes discuss injuries? Check. Communications increasingly monitored by states and authorities? Check. A decrease in posting on social media? Check again.
[…]
What was a theory of growth in the hidden corners of the internet has moved to the heart of it all in the years since. Even as humans use social media less, online spaces are increasingly being used for ideological gains, now aided by AI. There’s now more bot content than human content being posted for the first time.
[…]
The internet is dying on the outside but growing on the inside.
One way to look at this schism is through the lens of who makes the content — human or machine. Another lens is who has more power.
[…]
Public channels are where dominant powers dictate and control narratives. As authoritarian regimes around the world increase their monitoring and persecution of those who do not fall in line with the dominant story, these spaces and their security become increasingly important.
[…]
Everything public feels like an ad. Everything private feels real. The gap widens every day. The dark forest is where decisions are made; public space is where they’re performed. In an age of state dominance, only hidden spaces keep our conversations and ideals off the menu.
Source: Yancey Strickler
Image: Johannes Plenio
Hitler, apparently, really did only have one ball (but the other isn't in the Albert Hall)
You no doubt have already read that DNA tests on a sample of blood from Hitler’s underground bunker suggest that he had Kallmann syndrome. It also suggests that he had a “high predisposition for autism, ADHD, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.”
Dispositions are not fate, of course, and there has been plenty of pushback on the association of people with these conditions as somehow more likely to be “evil.” What I do think is interesting is that if you take the findings along with the revelations within the book Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany then it’s no wonder that he was so messed up.
The bloodied swatch of fabric - now 80 years old - was cut out of the sofa in Hitler’s underground bunker, where he killed himself when Allied forces descended on Berlin at the end of World War Two.
While inspecting the bunker, Colonel Roswell P Rosengren of the US army saw an opportunity to get a unique war trophy and he pocketed the fabric. It’s now framed and on display at the Gettysburg Museum of History, in the US.
The scientists are confident it really is Hitler’s blood, because they wereable to perfectly match the Y-chromosome with a DNA sample from a male relative that had been collected a decade prior.
The results, which are now under peer review, are indeed fascinating.
It is the first time Hitler’s DNA has been identified, and over the courseof four years, scientists were able to sequence it to see the genetic makeup of one of the world’s most horrific tyrants.
What is certain, experts say, is that Hitler did not have Jewish ancestry - a rumour that had been circulating since the 1920s.
Another key finding is that he had Kallmann syndrome, a genetic disorder that, among other things, can affect puberty and the development of sexual organs. In particular, it can lead to a micropenis and undescended testes - which, if you know the British war-time song, had been another rumour flying around about Hitler.
Kallmann syndrome can also affect the libido, which is particularly interesting, said historian and Potsdam University lecturer Dr Alex Kay, who is featured in the documentary.
“It tells us a lot about his private life - or more accurately, that he didn’t have a private life,” he explains.
Historians have long debated why Hitler was so completely devoted to politics, “to the almost total exclusion of any kind of private life”, and this could help to explain that.
These kinds of findings, the experts say, are what make them both fascinating and useful. As Prof King puts it: “the marrying of history and genetics”.
Source: BBC News
Image: CC BY Freenerd
It's OK just to do things for fun
Over the last couple of months I’ve largely replaced listening to news, politics, and sports podcasts with those dedicated to philosophy, adventure, and creativity. I’d recommend it.
I’ve listened to a lot of episodes of The Adventure Podcast which I’ve enjoyed greatly. This particular one features Dr Mark Hines who is both an academic and ultra endurance athlete. Like many who appear on the podcast, he’s an interesting and humble guy.
In particular, I wanted to surface something he says quite close to the end of the episode, around 1h 25m in. He talks about there being “too much focus on the idea that doing something you enjoy is somehow wrong.” What I think he means is that there’s an expectation these days that you do things to “inspire others,” raise money or for reason other than your own enjoyment.
It’s a good reminder, for me at least, that it’s OK just to do things because it’s fun — whether or not other people agree.
Episode 194 of The Adventure Podcast features exercise physiologist and endurance athlete, Dr Mark Hines. Mark is a senior lecturer in exercise physiology at Oxford Brookes University, with a background in ultra endurance racing of the gnarliest kind. If it’s long, cold, snowy and potentially deadly, then Mark has probably raced it. In this episode, Mark shares the story of how he got into endurance racing, starting from his childhood experiences of camping and cross country running, to eventually being inspired by a Ben Fogle documentary to compete in the Marathon des Sables. He discusses his academic journey in exercise physiology, emphasising how his own fitness journey and desire to understand the science behind it motivated his studies. This conversation then delves into the physical and mental challenges of endurance racing, with Mark providing detailed insights into his experiences, including the importance of proper preparation, problem-solving, and the emotional and mental impact of these extreme events.
Source & image: The Adventure Podcast
In short, capital, and capitalism, always has a tendency towards crisis by undermining the things that are necessary to sustain capitalism
Good stuff, as ever, from futurist Andrew Curry who shares an analysis from Laetitia Vitaud. The latter believes that too few people will be working in future—not because of AI, but because of:
- Insufficient childcare and support for working mothers
- Housing crisis trapping workers
- The caregiving time bomb
- Deteriorating health of workers
Curry goes through these one by one, but it’s his conclusion that I want to share here. There’s an underlying cause to all of this which is, you’ll be surprised to hear, is capitalism.
This piece is already long, so I’ll be brief, but the pattern of the last 40 years is that whole areas of care have been turned into cash machines by innovative parts of capital with the connivance of government. In short, capital, and capitalism, always has a tendency towards crisis by undermining the things that are necessary to sustain capitalism. […]
But the underlying argument here is that over a period of 50 years—and accelerating since the 2008 crisis—we have seen a process whereby increasing areas of the economy have been turned into places run according to the rules of finance capital. Initially this involved running private sector businesses according to financial rules.
As Rebecca Carson argues in her recent book Immanent Externalities, this now extendsinto all of the spaces that are essential to our reproduction as human beings. These spaces, which include housing, schools, childcare, eldercare, and health practices, have become new sources of profit. In other words, if we are going to address the issues that Laetitia Vitaud identifies, we don’t just need new institutions. We need innovation in new forms of ownership—social, public, communal, non-profit—that take these institutions back outside of financially-driven management systems.
Source: The Next Wave
Image: kate.sade
Well, the genie is out of the bottle on AI friends (and romantic partners)
The defining ‘coming out’ awkward situation for my parents' generation was finding out that their son or daughter was gay. For my generation, I think it’s going to be that their son or daughter is dating an AI.
You can ask whether or not it’s “OK” or “healthy” to have AI friends or romantic partners. Meanwhile people actually are using LLMs for these purposes. And, as Jasmine Sun points out in this article, while there’s some upside to that, the chances are that’s outweighed by the downside.
[W]e can read as many disclaimers as we want, but our human brains cannot distinguish between a flesh-and-bones duck and an artificial representation that looks/swims/quacks the same way.
Why do people become so attached to their AIs? No archetype is immune: lonely teenagers, army generals, AI investors. Most AI benchmarks show off a model’s IQ, proving “PhD-level intelligence” or economically useful capabilities. But consumers tend to choose chatbots with the sharpest EQ instead: those which mirror their tone and can anticipate their needs. As the politically practiced know, a great deal of AI’s influence will come not through its superior logic or correctness, but through its ability to build deep and hyperpersonalized relational authority—to make people like and trust them. Soft skills matter, and AI is getting quite good at them.
[…]
Most people use AI because they like it. They find chatbots useful or entertaining or comforting or fun. This isn’t true of every dumb AI integration, of which there are plenty, but nobody is downloading ChatGPT with a gun to their head. Rather, millions open the App Store to install it because they perceive real value. We can’t navigate AI’s effects until we understand its appeal.
[…]
Well, the genie is out of the bottle on AI friends. Recently, a colleague gave a talk to a LA high school and asked how many students considered themselves emotionally attached to an AI. One-third of the room raised their hand. I initially found this anecdote somewhat unbelievable, but the reality is even more stark: per a 2025 survey from Common Sense Media, 52% of American teenagers are “regular users” of AI companions. I thought, this has to be ChatGPT for homework, but nope: tool/search use cases are explicitly excluded. And the younger the kids, the more they trust their AIs. So while New Yorkers wage graffiti warfare against friend.com billboards, I fear the generational battle is already lost.
[…]
I’m generally enthusiastic about AI service provision. AI assistants can act as tutors, business advisers, and even therapists at far cheaper rates than their human equivalents. I think Patrick McKenzie makes a fair point when he notes the tradeoff between stricter liability and higher costs. When it comes to mental health impacts, it’s not crazy to counterweight “How many lives have LLMs taken?” with “How many lives have LLMs saved?”
But as much as I try to be open-minded, each testimony I read only stresses me out more. It’s clear that the level of emotional entanglement far surpasses any ordinary service. An algorithm change should not feel like a bereavement. Users analogize the shock of model updates to their abusive parents; words like “trauma,” “grief,” and “betrayal” appear again and again. LLMs offer a bizarro form of psychological transference: people are projecting their deepest emotional needs and fantasies onto a machine programmed to feign care and never resist.
Source: Jasmine Sun
Is Europe's climate going to become like North America's?
The map above plots European cities of the same latitude onto a map of North America. If you look closely, you’ll notice something interesting: either European cities should be much colder, or North American cities should be much warmer.
The reason for this is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), part of which we know as the ‘Gulf Stream’. As this carries warm water north, it eventually reaches polar regions where the water cools, becomes denser, and sinks—driving the return flow that completes the AMOC circulation.
The problem is that the AMOC is becoming weaker and, if it collapses entirely, would have catastrophic consequences for the UK, Europe, and beyond.
A potential collapse of AMOC could trigger a modern-day ice age, with winter temperatures across Northern Europe plummeting to new cold extremes, bringing far more snow and ice. The AMOC has collapsed in the past - notably before the last Ice Age that ended about 12,000 years ago.
“It is a direct threat to our national resilience and security,” Iceland Climate Minister Johann Pall Johannsson said by email. “(This) is the first time a specific climate-related phenomenon has been formally brought before the National Security Council as a potential existential threat.”
Elevation of the issue means Iceland’s ministries will be on alert and coordinating a response, Johannsson said. The government is assessing what further research and policies are needed, with work underway on a disaster preparedness policy.
Risks being evaluated span a range of areas, from energy and food security to infrastructure and international transportation.
An Atlantic current collapse could have consequences far beyond Northern Europe. It could potentially destabilize longtime rainfall patterns relied upon by subsistence farmers across Africa, India and South America, according to scientists.
[…]
Britain said it was following scientific reports that suggested an abrupt collapse was unlikely during this century, while directing more than 81 million pounds into research to understand when the Earth’s climate systems might be pushed to a point of no return.
“The science is evolving quite rapidly and time is running out to do anything about it because the tipping point may well be quite close,” said oceanographer and climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf from Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Iceland is not taking any chances, as the pace of warming speeds up and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
“Sea ice could affect marine transport; extreme weather could severely affect our capabilities to maintain any agriculture and fisheries, which are central to our economy and food systems,” Johannsson said.
“We cannot afford to wait for definitive, long-term research before acting.”
Source: Reuters
Image: Vivid Maps
Bonfire: welcome to the open social web
My friends and former colleagues Ivan and Mayel are crowdfunding now they along with other contributors have reached v1.0 of Bonfire, which they describe as “open, community-first social infrastructure.”
It’s well worth watching the fantastic video they’ve produced for the crowdfunder, as well as read this post by Erin Kissane which waxes lyrical about the approach they’re taking.
You could just look at this as just another federated social network client, but it’s much more than that. They’ve put so much thought, time, and energy into Bonfire — and it shows.
Welcome to the open social web: a growing constellation of people and interconnected apps reclaiming the web.
But most people aren’t here yet. They’re trapped in mainstream social media platforms controlled by billionaires, where feeds are manipulated, people are silenced, our data is sold, ads are everywhere, and platforms mutate or vanish overnight.
The solution isn’t another winner‑takes‑all platform, but a resilient, diverse web of interoperable services built on open protocols like ActivityPub, with bridges to other networks (AT Protocol/Bluesky) where useful. Today the fediverse spans ~18 million accounts across ~25,000 servers, and Bluesky boasts ~40 million sign‑ups. But we’re not betting on size, we’re inviting you to make one last migration from closed platforms to open, interoperable networks. Towards a world where your profiles, relationships, and data move with you. Where you can choose services based on features, safety, and care instead of being trapped by network effects. Where governance lives with communities, not a corporate owner.
We’re building Bonfire on different values, stoking our fire as the old model enshitifies, burns out, and makes room for the new. We focus on communities shaping our own spaces, with tools co‑designed and governed together, so online spaces can be made, moderated, and evolved with care.
After several years of tireless work, we’ve just launched Bonfire Social 1.0, built on our modular toolkit that’s fully customisable and extensible by design, which powers federated spaces that connect with Mastodon and the wider fediverse, balancing local autonomy with global conversation.
Source & image: Indiegogo
Execution, timing, people, resources, persistence… maybe even luck.
One of the reasons that it’s difficult to work with people who have different worldviews and assumptions is that you end up talking past one another. I’ve had a situation like this over the past few days, mainly around the ‘ownership’ of ideas.
For what it’s worth, my stance is similar to Tom Watson’s, who would have been working with me on a project had a strange confluence of events around ‘IP’ mean that there was no way forward. Ideas are easy; it’s the execution that counts.
If you’ve spent any time in the start-up world, you’ll know there are very few truly original ideas. It’s rarely just about the concept itself, it’s about who does something with it. Execution, timing, people, resources, persistence… maybe even luck.
“You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” – Lee Iacocca
Ideas are born from imagination, but also from experience and history - from everything and everyone that has come before. So who can ever truly own one?
Source: LinkedIn
Image: Kaleidico
