Matthew Cole

Was very pleased the other day to find my book in the window of Lala in Camberwell. Buy it there or here: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/unpa...

We are seeing a hunger disaster unrolling before our eyes. Since Republicans passed the Big Beautiful Bill, 2 million kids have lost food assistance. These are by far the deepest SNAP cuts in history, and each month, we find out it’s even worse than we thought. The worst is yet to come.

🚨 New episode Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, generated an estimated 3 million explicit deepfake images of women in January 2026 – at a rate of 6,000 per hour As British police continue to struggle to track down perpetrators, survivors are taking matters into their own hands

What could go wrong?

Yesterday there was a general assembly of staff and students at Roskilde University in response to the firing of professor Michelle Pace and the repression of the student movement in solidarity with Palestine. The assembly unanimously agreed on five demands incl. the reinstatement of Professor Pace.

Anwar Shaikh’s 1978 paper on Marxian national accounts passed from hand to hand “almost like samizdat.” It grew into a book, and then a field.

Anthropic outlines its approach to "responsible data centre development", and........explicitly promises to carpet bomb communities with massive, polluting new fossil gas plants. This is what your Claude subscription is enabling: web.archive.org/web/20261016...

People seem to use Substack like Bluesky plus twitter 2013-17 plus wordpress / blogspot circa 2009. How should I use it? I apparently need to build a profile for book sales.

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

Interdits d’informer : Israël refuse l’entrée à l’envoyé spécial de « l’Humanité » - L'éditorial de Maud Vergnol ➡️ https://l.humanite.fr/y23

good news

It's absolutely astonishing how irresponsible the current UK AI strategy is. Ministers have not carried out an environmental assessment and data centres don't even have to report water consumption, despite using using about 1.9bn litres a year. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Astonishing that there are still liberals out there willing to defend Zionism!

What should we do about AI? Destroy it. A ‘slowdown’ is not enough. This technology needs to be razed to the ground. tribunemag.co.uk/2026/09/dest...

Have seen this Nature piece about the effects of X's algorithm mentioned again and it bears repeating; exposure to a right wing algorithm makes you - measurably and predictably - more right wing, even after you stop using it. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Never forget

What else? The one glaring omission from the chancellor’s speech is demand. If households don’t have money to spend, then businesses cannot thrive. This is something the government can address...

Our view: The chancellor is right to say that the UK needs more investment across the country. But for too long we have relied on markets and foreign investors to take the lead, resulting in value being extracted from, rather than invested in, our economy... www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c6...

'The number of students taking A-level music is at a record low: under 5,000, a drop of nearly half from 15 years ago....Music GCSE entries have also fallen. It has the widest attainment gap for disadvantaged students of any subject.'

all solidarity to the lovely people at the Baffler union, who've offered me a platform time and again to write about the catastrophe that is the modern workplace

What the actual fuck

lol

Genuine Londoners know best currency in city, not money, but kindness. After both appearing in a #BBC news article on subject this morning www.bbc.co.uk/news/article.... Visited #LaLaBooks & got myself free copy of the book Unpaid by @mattcole.bsky.social. #LetsGuide #UniquelyLondon #ALondonersLife4

New study finds that the rapid growth of electric vehicles in China has prevented over 300,000 premature deaths. Conversely -- and this is just math -- everything done to prevent the rise of EVs in the US leads to more preventable deaths of Americans. It's not an academic debate.

BBC invited Palestinian writer, researcher and analyst Muhammad Shehada on to talk about Israel’s decision to investigate the killing of Hind Rajab. Below is Muhammad’s account of what happened next. Full disclosure: I know him years and he’s a regular on the pod. So naturally I believe him 100%.

After Ben-Gvir called to kill 40 Palestinians daily, pro-Israel groups & officials insist he doesn’t represent Israel. But he’s the head of Israeli national security. And he’s had the job since 2022 (minus two months). And, in fact, between October 2023 - 2025, Israel killed 92 Palestinians daily.

#WolffBites: Californians vs extreme wealth on this November's ballot: a one-off 5% tax on personal wealth over $1 billion. One billionaire, Google's Sergey Brin, spent over $100 million get defeat the tax. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

BREAKING: Jury refuses to convict in second Filton trial After more than 38 hours of deliberation, the jury refused to convict Madeleine Norman, Hannah Davidson, Teuta Hoxha, Ola Alexandra Herbich, Ian Sanders, William Plastow and Yulia Brigadirova of all charges against them.

We do not build the reservoirs needed to store the rain that falls here. We do not build strategic food reserves needed to maintain provision in hard times. We failed to build effective stores of PPE, to protect us in pandemics. This country has long been governed by people who do not prepare.

Meanwhile in the USA, lynchings are on the rise once more.

Bubble goes pop next year unless the the bail out happens or everyone magically decides (or is forced) to pay through the nose for a service they didn’t want that also doesn’t work properly.

"X is driving engagement by making users fight in the replies." #confirnationofwhatweallsuspected www.404media.co/xs-algorithm...

"Mamdani’s public grocery sector plan is among the most compelling innovations in a food supply that is increasingly consolidated, expensive, corrupt, and lately, downright dangerous." Available in EN, ES, FR and IT. buff.ly/DasPVk1

Who could have predicted this?

What the actual fuck is the government doing

Wow this is a very nice surprise for me as well! What store?

Solidarity with the @rmtunion.bsky.social members at East Midlands Railway striking over rail safety, particularly concerns over the new Class 810 fleet, which the union has said has been operating with a number of faults. Every worker has the right to work in safe and comfortable conditions.

I think it takes a special type of stupidity to look at the state of our media and think “clearly journalists should just write what they think is important” as if there are no power dynamics, moral questions, societal issues to address beyond that.

This is the coverage of Arday **just in the Telegraph** in the UK. This is only the first four pages of results, just in one outlet.