Henry Farrell

Disinhibited might be better than uninhibited in context.

For those following the Meta cases, these are documents behind Project MYST, a Meta collaboration with the University of Chicago. Note: this research *was* eventually conducted (then buried) and came up in the trial. See the Christakis Expert Report: techoversight.org/wp-content/u...

I'm not sure exactly how Beth Moles got the revolting parasite story beat at Ars Technica but this is an exceptionally fine example.

Cosma and I use this example to describe the bureaucratic consequences of LLMs - knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-a...

Drawing on my ongoing qualitative research w/ Medicaid beneficiaries across the country, I talked to @scholars.org abt the politics of Medicaid. Medicaid beneficiaries understand BOTH its administrative workings & its political stakes. The more we center their knowledge in our discourse, the better.

Cosma and I have Actually Interesting Odyssey AI Arguments that have nothing to do with Musk but should be out in the world soonish.

they have long had far and away the most sophisticated and strategic outreach/influence program of any platform - to academics, governments, int'l orgs, CSOs, media.

not that I am a fan of Jonathan Haidt, but this clicks with a lot of stuff I've heard (and once been on the receiving end of, when I helped edit a blog at the Washington Post and published a piece by a third party that a Facebook flack took exception to).

this makes me homesick.

Read this excellent essay by @beenwrekt.bsky.social In short, forget OpenAI; we need to build open AI. www.argmin.net/p/the-world-...

Fascinating- new position on China from German Chamber of Commerce comes out AGAINST EU's planned solidarity mechanism, designed to compensate firms hit by retaliation "A blanket compensation fund can create false incentives & should not replace companies’ own risk provisioning"

@edwardluce.bsky.social "Affordability is a heuristic for a deeper sense of being locked out." www.ft.com/content/51db...

Exclusive: Researchers at TrendAI ‌concluded the Israeli company Discover-Tech was one of the biggest sources of digital ads shown to users of SpaceX's Starlink service and that the ads were likely being used to geolocate or otherwise surveil them reut.rs/4jDCHLZ

I'll be taking a night flight to Ireland for talks and Kilkenomics - makes things easier!

High level observation from some of our election rumor work this season: The Trump admin & right wing media ecosystem are focusing a lot of energy on California — which with all of their congressional seats and the long counting period could set the stage for some "rigged election" shenanigans.

The world needs a high-quality, truly open language model. I wrote about why it’s necessary and why it’s easier to build than you might think.

Incredible what Brazil did tonight, a lesson to many supposedly mature democracies. When confronted with the possibility of having back in power those who had already shown their authoritarian colors, the Brazilian people, surprisingly and beautifully, said no.

(Sorting through piles that I didn’t deal with for literal decades) aha. Well wasn’t I annoyingly prescient.

Sometimes it’s just a bad box office showing not a conspiracy. Plus it’s 4 hours. And only so-so as a film.

advice from Gary King, back in the day. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

JUST POSTED: Today at The NYT we are publishing a major investigation into how President Trump used his executive powers to expose millions of Americans to greater cancer risks. A six month-long investigation built on more than 10,000 pages of FOIA records. Read it www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/c...

who did this @robinwigglesworth.ft.com . i bow down in awe to them.

idea in the shower --> prompt --> chatbot --> paper --> chatbot --> reviewers --> chatbot --> reubuttal --> chatbot --> associate editor --> chatbot --> random number generator --> acceptance --> CV --> profit

@beenwrekt.bsky.social they are playing your tune on the dancefloor

this is really nicely done.

I have a new newsletter today, about LLMs and interoception and introspection and narrative and definitely NOT consciousness why do you think it's about consciousness I would never write about consciousness buttondown.com/apperceptive...

has anyone made a 'that dog won't hunt' joke yet?

Lives in Czechia rather than Nebraska, but the point carries nonetheless.

#Breaking: Detailed data confirm Moderna and Merck cancer vaccine met key endpoints in melanoma trial https://www.statnews.com/2026/10/22/esmo-moderna-merck-cancer-vaccine-intismeran-data-released/

"In a world in which everything is connected, nearly everything could be considered a chokepoint." This is a driving force behind #fracturedglobalization. www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

apply this aesthetic to a remix of the ASML EUV machine set, and we'll be cooking.

The suggestion has been met with fury in Beijing, where official organs have been pushing back strongly against the idea that China could be managed in such a way.

In Berlin on Wednesday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was “surprised” at the “unanimous support” from EU members at the summit, even as he said Germany did not want a trade war with China.

New in @foreignaffairs.com w/ @himself.bsky.social and @yelingtan.bsky.social on The Chokepoint Trap. Economic security efforts that seem individually rational can trigger collective insecurity/ arms races. Time to work on assurances rather than escalation. www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

and was likely intended as such from the beginning.

"“I read the Cheney family’s Trump derangement syndrome as an attempt to buy favor with the [International Criminal Court] and avoid prosecution. Probably too late,” Thiel said. " Something has gone terribly wrong with the knowledge and thinking capacity of a class of Silicon Valley billionaires.

In past weeks Trump has lifted some sanctions on Moscow and offered the Kremlin lucrative business deals - in our fresh @ecfr.eu piece, Jim O'Brien and I outline three concrete steps that Europeans can take to derail US-Russia plans (spoiler: the EU has all the tools at hand) ecfr.eu/article/trum...

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... indeed

Fun teachable moment forthcoming

The Alethea Hayter heads know that Romantic poetry, and therefore the subsequent anti-Enlightenment, is downstream of the notorious consequences of opium eating for the digestive system, and the necessity of occupying one's mind by versifying during the many hours of idleness stuck on the pot.

and in other news that will interest very few of my readers, MPSA, the cockroach farm of political science conferences, has scraped my email address from my website and started sending me "personal invites from the conference chairs" to attend next year.

this is really good.

Just got a Trump propaganda email from the Social Security Administration.

Viewing the world economy as a system of chokepoints leads policymakers to focus on capabilities rather than strategy—fixate on what leverage they have, & what others have over them, rather than considering what happens when many build up chokepoint power all at once, Yeling Tan & coauthors write.