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Crooked Timber

crookedtimber.org

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made

Society / politics / economyEssays / personal

’05’10’15’20’25
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13,143 from 8 Jul 2003 to 31 Oct 2026
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about daily (167 in the last year)
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Latest

October 2026

  1. Occasional (Halloween) paper: A mother gives her all
  2. I’d rather drop the balls myself
  3. NAZA – on being a cog in a machine
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Cherry trees near Céret
  5. Turns out the Melbourne Mint was about Gold for India
  6. Sunday photoblogging: Ashton Avenue Bridge, Bristol
  7. PPE for Embodied Creatures on a Finite Planet
  8. On the demise of Contemporary Professional Mathematics
  9. Adrian Grey-Turner, 1955-1986
  10. The economic irrelevance of naval power
  11. Alan Thornett is dead
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Céret
  13. How Money Matters
  14. Experiments on Exploitation
  15. Sunday photoblogging: Céret, archway
  16. If a chatbot prompt like ‘find Australian medicine statistics’ results in a website breach, the responsibility does not lie with a piece of code

September 2026

  1. The Office: A sort of conjecture about why some US sitcoms are the way they are.
  2. Is philosophy of migration biased by methodological nationalism?
  3. Aggravated by “algorithms”
  4. How to run the ivory tower?
  5. NY Times should look across the East River, not across the Atlantic
  6. Into the darkness?
  7. Sunday photoblogging: La Pointe courte
  8. Existential Risks in an Age of Science
  9. The one where I figure out in real time whether I enjoy climbing
  10. The US is not a serious country
  11. Sunday photoblogging: Hôtel d’Alfonce, Pézenas
  12. Youth CND
  13. When Money Mattered
  14. The US Navy loses another war
  15. Don’t use a gmail.com address
  16. Taylor Swift: The Good Billionaire?

August 2026

  1. Teaching pluralizing political philosophy
  2. Gold and Myth in the Australian Blue Mountains
  3. Why Ceuta is European, and what came of it
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Jenisch-Haus, Hamburg
  5. AI and the reshuffling of labor
  6. The economics of Swifties
  7. Ceuta Summit: What Vitoria would tell Sánchez about migration
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Parys mountain copper mine
  9. My comprehensive plan for US strategy in the Middle East… *
  10. The Odyssey and the Bronze Age Collapse
  11. “Fight,” Progressivism, and Performative Politics — Michigan Edition
  12. John Crowley has died
  13. Sunday photoblogging: Castletown harbour, Isle of Man
  14. Summer lightness: errors that puzzled and/or irritated you.
  15. Occasional paper: The edge of the galaxy and the end of everything
  16. Perfectly Plausible
  17. If you can’t be bothered writing it, I can’t be bothered reading it.

July 2026

  1. Malware problem (fixed)
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Beaumaris
  3. Nate Silver discovers the educated poor
  4. Advice for England’s latest Secretary of State for Education.
  5. Fandom and Social Connection
  6. A big thank you …
  7. Sunday photoblogging: Hamburg, Hauptkirche Sankt Michaelis (Michel)
  8. On refugees being cast as “invaders” and “fighting-age males”
  9. The dispensable nation – updated
  10. Academic publishing as a public good
  11. Encounters with a future Tory MP, a popstar, and 25,000 placards
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Mèze, boat
  13. Brief thoughts on aircon
  14. Sunday photoblogging: Palais des Papes, Avignon
  15. Reflections on America’s 250th

June 2026

  1. The state of nuclear power in 2026
  2. On Humphreys opacity, Reverse Engineering, and Social Externalities of LLMs.
  3. Sunday photoblogging: wall, Collioure
  4. Feels like 40 degrees – Let’s get a Ministry for the Future
  5. AI Electricity use: a lot or a little
  6. In the 19th century small business folk traded gold and money. And then the banks took over.
  7. Sunday photoblogging: Sète
  8. Reminiscences of a young CND activist
  9. In honor of National Indigenous Peoples Day (Canada)
  10. On The Governance of LLMs, and The University (of Chicago)
  11. One big grift
  12. Sunday photoblogging: a drink in the shade
  13. Final Five And U.S. Competitiveness
  14. Everyday friction
  15. Sunday photoblogging: objet trouvé
  16. That time global capitalism converged on a town that now has pop.111

May 2026

  1. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas at night
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas
  3. Pet Haidt
  4. Occasional paper: St. Anthony’s Turnip
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Canigou with cherries (2)
  6. The text is not the product
  7. From The People’s Bank to the Banker’s Bank
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas, maison consulaire
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Canigou and cherry trees

April 2026

  1. Occasional paper: Blue Angels, Devil Hands
  2. Sunday photoblogging: l’Abbaye de Valmagne
  3. On Reinforcing Cynicism in the Academy
  4. Occasional paper: Inconstant moon
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas street
  6. Bobby, I hardly Knew Ye
  7. Global science equity – towards solutions
  8. Music break: Baba Yetu
  9. History Nerd Bucket List: The Jenny Geddes Stool
  10. How many babies do we want? How many will we have?
  11. Good news from Hungary
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas, old town
  13. Cosmic Alchemy
  14. Extreme wealth concentration — as strong as ever
  15. Older but not sicker

March 2026

  1. Ravens and robots
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas, Porte Faugères
  3. Habermas, democratic discourse, and class
  4. Sunday photoblogging: shed
  5. Imperia: A European Culture Story, Part 3 (and last)
  6. Fifteen years after Fukushima
  7. Women have been crazy successful at building spaces for themselves in the economy. Thing is, that is often exploited too.
  8. Sunday photoblogging: VW reflection
  9. Every child should be wanted
  10. Golden (missed) opportunities
  11. In the Next Great Transformation AI will not eliminate genuine expertise; rather it will make it more valuable
  12. Sunday photoblogging: car reflection

February 2026

  1. Imperia: A European Culture Story, Part 2
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Life in the UK
  3. The US state has proved itself dispensable
  4. Imperia: A European Culture Story, Part 1
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Hebron Road
  6. Runciman’s Rawls
  7. The Stone Pillars of the Sons of Seth
  8. A modest proposal for the use of AI
  9. Occasional reason to be cheerful: Babies
  10. A big thank you …
  11. 20th anniversary of the Bar Steward Sons of Val Doonican.
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Cumberland Basin

January 2026

  1. A New Hope
  2. WHO: An anecdote
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Tattoo Time
  4. A short post about heroin voice
  5. The social media ban that wasn’t
  6. Sunday photoblogging: East Street
  7. Utilitarianism: it all went wrong with Sidgwick
  8. On West Coast Straussianism and the Imperial Presidency
  9. The Tories are dead, long live the Tories (Reform version)!
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Derrynane Strand, Co. Kerry
  11. How to make sure the writing gets done
  12. Changing beliefs, moving house – suggestion for a change of metaphor
  13. Sunday photoblogging: Windmill Hill
  14. A note on the threat to art from AI
  15. For 2026, let’s hope…

December 2025

  1. Some thoughts on charitable donations
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Hebron Road
  3. L’Établi (2): the book
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Southville houses
  5. Bankers (not money) make the world go around? Towards a labour/tech history of finance
  6. Housework for singles
  7. Adventures with Deep Research: success then failure

Every year

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