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Will Davies

@will-davies.bsky.social

3.9K followers 550 following 1.8K posts

Professor @goldsmithsuol.bsky.social, Director of @goldperc.bsky.social - occasional contributor to @lrb.co.uk and others. Subscribe for latest writing etc at Williamdavies.blog

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 6d

My essay on stupidology (originally published in N+1) is in today's Guardian www.theguardian.com/news/2025/oc...

A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0

If the first term of Donald Trump provoked anxiety over the fate of objective knowledge, the second has led to claims we live in a world-historical age of stupid, accelerated by big tech. But might th...

www.theguardian.com

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 5h

so cooked is the discourse, I initially assumed this was about flags

Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 6h

BoE flags risk of ‘sudden correction’ in tech stocks inflated by AI on.ft.com/3WqHK5t

BoE flags risk of ‘sudden correction’ in tech stocks inflated by AI

Financial Policy Committee warns equity prices are at levels comparable with dotcom bubble

on.ft.com

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 6h

although it's been in the atmosphere for years. Cummings has been pushing this kind of line forever

Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 6h

Labour will pledge to reduce student numbers by 100,000?

Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 6h

Struggling to even muster a 'will this do?' dunk tweet on the Badenoch HE policy

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 7h

Something oddly cathartic about Kemi Badenoch making insane policy pledges

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 1d

Jenrick latest

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Reposted by Will Davies

Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 1d

this photo is pretty brutal

www.ft.com/content/5a73...

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Reposted by Will Davies

Nick Taylor @ntaylor.bsky.social · 1d

If you're wondering whether academics have written on 'asylum hotels', I can point you in the direction of Martina Tazzioli's work on refugee carcerality & value extraction in the UK, Greece & Italy. See esp. section on financialised asylum accommodation in the UK.

dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263...

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 1d

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 1d

finally wrests control of the Tory Party then enters a non-compete agreement/alliance with Farage might work out better for him

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George Eaton @georgeeaton.bsky.social · 1d

Stumbled upon a Ouija board at Tory conference.

But the serious answer to what Thatcher would make of tax rises is “does anyone remember the 1981 Budget?”

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 1d

Hauntology, Tory style

Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 1d

Britain’s Natural Party of Government has basically memed itself into chasing the Far Right vote. Proposals that once existed in the darker recesses of X have leapt via substacks and op-Eds into mainstream policy positions, in under a year.

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n+1 @nplusonemag.com · 2d

It’s hard to identify anything functional about Trumpian stupidity, which is less a form of organizational inertia than a slash-and-burn assault on the very things—universities, public health, market data—that help make the world intelligible. www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/pol...

Stupidology | William Davies

The challenge posed by this political crisis is how to take the stupidity seriously without reducing it to a wholly mental or psychiatric, let alone genetic, phenomenon. Stupidity can be understood as...

www.nplusonemag.com

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 2d

LOL. It's just like what happened with Uber - just scaled up to 80% of all US stock market gains and data centres the size of Manhattan...

Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 2d

Both the dotcom bubble and the sub-prime bubble were underpinned by theories as to why the growth might be 'real'. Now we have Bezos et al saying "but what if bubbles are *good*?" like a post-Keynesianism for billionaires

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 2d

Has there ever been a bubble with so much reflexivity regarding its status as a bubble as this one? www.ft.com/content/6cc8...

America is now one big bet on AI

It’s seen as the magic fix for every threat to the US economy

www.ft.com

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 2d

Yes, I look forward to seeing a college in a famed Red Wall constituency, which might actually rely on the income, getting a free pass from The Home Office...

Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 2d

UCL referring to "demand for places" here is acting like its some minor player that's hit the big-time. The honest answer is that it's deliberately over-recruited (and one can guess how it has done so...), because it can, at the cost of its smaller rivals www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Home Office grants extra visas for UCL international students told to defer

Hundreds of students with promised places had been left in limbo after university exceeded its visa allocations

www.theguardian.com

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 2d

whomst amongst us has not had an informal chat over beers, first thing in the morning, paid for by our Founding Partner Uber

Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 2d

Daily Mail donning its hotdog outfit for this one

Reposted by Will Davies

Ben Whitham @drbenwhitham.bsky.social · 3d

Men in balaclavas set fire to a mosque in East Sussex last night. It's only appearing on the BBC's local coverage, rather than its main national headlines, despite coming just a week after the (also under-reported) firebombing of an asylum hotel in London last week
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Peacehaven: Fire at East Sussex mosque probed as 'hate crime'

Video appears to show two people in balaclavas at the mosque before a large blaze spreads.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 3d

The fact that Arteta has not yet had to declare it “eeencredible we didn’t win that game” is a sign of how different this team is from last year

Reposted by Will Davies

Robert Hutton @roberthutton.co.uk · 3d

"Our credible plan is also an acrostic."

(This is, genuinely, the actual Conservative press release.)

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 3d

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 10d

If Liverpool were to lose at Chelsea next weekend, the wisdom of spending half a billion pounds on any attacking player just because you could, all at once, would suddenly start to look a little like Chelsea circa 2023

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