Fergus Ryan

You can’t really “turn off” the algorithm. A reverse-chronological feed is an algorithm too! The real question is who gets to choose our feeds. My argument, outlined in @capitalbrief.com, is that we should be able to choose who designs the algorithms that shape our feeds.

watching the 4K release of Ronin with frankenheimer's commentary and learning that the car chases in the movie were happening *at speed*. no camera tricks or anything, they were straight up *racing*. "we set up all the actors in high performance driving school so they were used to the speeds."

Please join us in showing support for Helen, the Haines family, her staff, and the community of Indi by lighting a candle tomorrow night. 🧡

My interview of Michael Turton on the deportation of a Chinese exchange student by Taiwan due to his social media post against the Taiwanese President: necessary enforcement of immigration rules or infringement of political freedom? @michaelturton.bsky.social youtu.be/t3ZM_6migZ8?...

“Australia’s government is set to sue Facebook, TikTok and other major digital platforms for alleged non-compliance with a nationwide social media ban for under-16s, Communications Minister Anika Wells said in an interview.”

Some key phrases in Christiane Amanpour's announcement today that she's leaving CNN. “I’ve decided to separate from CNN” “I’ve always been fiercely independent” “unprecedented pressures from all sides, political, financial...”

NEW: Ex-AG Bill Barr is now lobbying DOJ for Airwallex, a fintech backed by Chinese tech giant Tencent, per a lobbying filing I found.

Helen Haines is the most generous and kind person - a woman of warmth and great personal integrity.

This is a case that makes my heart sink. Feng Rui (known as xiaowu) is an activist/writer focused on labour rights and one of my mutuals on social media. We don't always agree on things and sometimes he'd repost my post and challenge my view. He was arrested after

The U.S. government urgently needs to stop committing egregious human rights abuses at home if it wants to retain credibility when speaking out against abuses by the CCP and other authoritarian governments. Video credit: JF Books

"AI researchers are taking up smoking because they expect AI to cure cancer, says Palantir CTO"

It’s very funny to be like “X is once again important because it’s where executives post marketing material.”

Zelenskyy: "If President Trump really wants to have elections, tell Putin give us two months, 60 days of total ceasefire -- 60 days -- and we will organize elections. Of course, we will be ready for any choice of our people."

Well, it’s a quick take, and no doubt data will come in, but it sure looks like based on today’s evidence that a lot of pro-Trump and pro-AfD bot work depends directly on Russian data centers.

China and North Korea have never live-streamed an execution to the masses. In terms of public executions that have been recorded and then shared and spread online, there’s stuff from Iran and also Mexican cartels.

Bloomberg: "It’s now more expensive to hire a tanker from the US to China than to launch a rocket into space. That ocean journey runs about $80 million compared with $74 million for a standard commercial launch. The eye-watering prices are the result of a global tanker shortage that's getting worse"

Hard to overstate how much Hegseth's execution stream mirrors the U.S. military's traditional description of ISIS propaganda: broadcast killings designed to send a message, strike fear and create a social media spectacle. Will almost certainly be repurposed by online terror cells

When ISIS killed my friend James Foley on camera they put him in an orange jumpsuit as a direct reference to images of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Not fucking interested my government having a fucking propaganda CONVERSATION with tomorrow’s terrorists, thanks.

republicans used to complain about the violence in gangster rap and now they want to livestream an execution

I'd add that there are lots of Republicans actually taking money from Elon Musk, and they are rarely or never asked about his more radical/racist statements.

Horrified obviously, but it has occurred to me that eSafety would require platforms hosting the footage to block it in Australia, I would think. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Having long been aware of those tech bros who read my work as utopian porn, where they’ve taken that doesn’t exactly surprise me.

The Xinjiang Victims Database is a very worthy cause that desperately needs support. If you cared about this stuff back in 2017 when the news first started leaking out, please don't let compassion fatigue affect you! www.gofundme.com/f/xinjiang-v...

Europe is preparing for 'severe' Russian hybrid attacks, said German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as Vladimir Putin threatened that his conflict with the west could reach a 'fatal point of no return'. ft.trib.al/FIHsqd9

Putting aside the merits of Palmer Luckey and Elon Musk as individuals, there's an inherent conflict of interest placing them on a board that will determine the future of a US military they intend to get rich selling to.

“In Chinese, the word for “artificial” is formed by combining the characters for “person” (ren) and “work” (gong), emphasizing something made by human effort rather than set in opposition to nature.” www.theideasletter.org/essay/shooti...

CATL, the world’s largest electric vehicle battery maker, restarted operations at the largest factory of its kind in Europe in September after Hungarian authorities suspended production when local workers were exposed to high levels of nickel.

Pretty clear to me there’s a very good case against this man for mass murder, and I’m saying that in as measured a fashion as I can. He’s order the killing of 234 people under no plausible war or legal justification. I am skeptical he will ever face legal accountability for til his but he should.

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

The White House accord on AI that was signed by all the big tech oligarchs today misspells United States as “Unites States.”

China’s approach to AI governance is best understood as ‘infrastructural statecraft’ combined with managed pluralism: the Party-State builds the layered infrastructure (energy, compute, chips, talent, and governance), then invites firms to compete in developing applications, writes Haiqing Yu.

the official English version: www.mfa.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xw/f...

Reporter (roughly): What's up with the US calling AI "superintelligence"? Chinese spox (roughly): The two leaders talked about "artificial intelligence." We respect the US side's "formulation." (A "formulation"/提法 is what they call the CCP set terms, like socialism with Chinese characteristics...)

Democracy is tougher than it looks. Menaced by voter anger, populism and disinfo, it has survived harsh tests before. From 1960s-1990s 1000s of Europeans were killed by political violence. The lesson of those “Years of Lead”? Channel rage into politics economist.com/internationa...

Something else I noticed in this blog post, OpenAI says it was using a model /intentionally/ without safeguards, and gave it access the internet for a task. And it was doing this without closely monitoring it given that it took 3 months to flag up the breach.

I am grateful that some media outlets still want to discuss human rights in US-China relations. The moral collapse of the U.S. government should not cause us to lose sight of what matters and what the public should continue to care about.

So uhhhhhh… Apparently meta's muse "AI" is just straight up doxxing people to strangers on FB marketplace??? This has the potential to hurt so so many people, and I genuinely wonder how long before they roll out a fix for it.

What happened here? Agents weren’t reporting what they’d done accurately. And they assumed more authorisation to keep pushing through ‘obstacles’ than they were entitled to The combination makes it difficult to predict behaviour, difficult to evaluate, & difficult to report safety incidents

truly alarming that a China correspondent’s sources on Chinese politics are… in China.

Peter Baker writing in the NYT’s current lead story: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/u...

remember when everyone was like “u should delete Facebook” and somehow now it’s “you should give Facebook all your emails, bank statements, text messages, all of it!” nothing matters 💕

Trump wrote on Truth Social suggesting today's meetings with Xi will NOT result in joint guidance on artificial intelligence. Notable to me that Xi Jinping, in his opening remarks, stressed AI should ultimately remain "under human control". us.china-embassy.gov.cn/zgyw/202609/...

been a while since I saw a mutant character that really delighted me

“All the indicators point to another summit as a theatrical performance — a lot of spin, a lot of rhetoric, but paltry output" www.politico.com/newsletters/...

1/ My cartoon on Xi-Trump Summit. AI risk control could be one of the major topic. Is our future in hands of dictators or AI or something else ？

Treasury just announced a two-month extension, far shorter than what China proposed. Speaks to the daylight between the U.S. and China but also the desire to make Xi's visit tomorrow as smooth as possible. www.nbcnews.com/business/eco...

Reuters: Xi is expected to press Trump to halt Taiwan arms sales under a 1982 ​joint statement during a visit to Washington this week, which he could do at the US National Archives www.reuters.com/world/china/...