The journalist Jamie Bartlett has wriiten a book about how to talk to AI amorally. He describes the subject in a newspaper article at - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/29/meet-the-ai-jailbreakers-i-see-the-worst-things-humanity-has-produced Maybe it’s unsurprising that the ‘AI hackers’ he interviewed were emptionally drained and sometimes damaged by the experience of being deliberately coercive in language for apparently bad - yet ultimately good - ends. He says something I’ve seen elsewhere, but find hard to fully believe - “No one – not even the people who build them – knows precisely how these models work, which means no one knows how to make them fully safe, either. We pour vast amounts of data in and something intelligible (usually) comes out the other end. The bit in the middle remains a mystery.” Is that really true? He concludes - ““I’ve seen other jailbreakers go beyond their limits and have breakdowns,” says Tagliabue. Originally from Italy, he recently moved to Thailand to work remotely. “I see the worst things that humanity has produced. A quiet place helps me stay grounded,” he says. Every morning he watches the sunrise from the nearby temple, and a picture-perfect tropical beach is five minutes’ walk away from his villa. After yoga and a healthy breakfast, he switches on his computer, and wonders what else is going on inside the black box, and what makes these mysterious new “minds” say the things they do.”.

The various technologies that capture ambient energy have slowly moved from being more expensive to less expensive than fossil fuels in many, though not all situations. Who would have thought that America - home of the Oil Baron - would give renewables an even greater advantage, through restricting the availability of fossil fuels? The environmentalist George Monbiot is clearly amazed at that development: see - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/18/fossil-fuel-trump-green-revolution-us-iran-renewable-energy He concludes - “The attack on Iran is not the way any of us wanted this to happen. But the unintended consequences of Trump’s pointless war could help sink Trumpism everywhere – and the corrupt and filthy industry that props it up.” Of course, as Steve has pointed out, the war with Iran has restricted the availability of much more than oil and gas.

In a multi-topic interview, sprinkled with insight and neat phrases, historian Timothy Snyder and foreign correspondent Terry Moran debate Trump, Hungary’s election, Pope Leo and the Iran war. See - https://snyder.substack.com/p/thinking-live-with-journalist-terry It’s worth watching because of how they both ‘think big’ - meaning a big picture, deep perceptions and open minds. At one point Snyder says “It’s about thinking ahead, thinking positively and finding a new language”. Though Skool isn’t geo-politics, that attitude seems relevant.

It was Churchill’s phrase, when the tide of events in WW2 turned in favour of the Allies, that it wasn’t the beginning of the end, only the end of the beginning. It looks that way for the decline of American economic and political hegemony today, as a journalist Behr writes - see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/08/europe-lesson-donald-trump-era-us-sanity Behr’s point is that Trump is a symptom not the disease, saying - “There is a psychological need to believe that the havoc unleashed by Trump, while extreme, is exceptional – a singular event, like the Covid pandemic; painful and costly, but not a permanent change to the order of things.”. He continues - “American conservatism is steeped in the paranoid, apocalyptic thinking that equates European traditions of liberal democracy with civilisational decline and the erasure of white, Christian culture by Muslim immigration.”. I feel that European tradition has been the powerhouse of peace and relative prosperity for generations, in both Europe and the US. Behr concludes by saying that the only democracy that any nation can save is its own. History suggests that economic and political power can readily be gained by authoritarian regimes through force and coercion, but not sustained that way. Voluntary cooperation is an essential ingredient of a vigorous society; competition on its own makes a society weak.

Hettie O’Brien is the author of a book just published called - ‘The Asset Class - how private equity turned capitalism against itself’. She gives an overview at - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/07/capitalism-endgame-private-equity-captured-nurseries-care-homes Her story seems a simple but disturbing one - private luxury with copious debt and public austerity without debt. She sees the absence of reporting structures in private equity as its key advantage, saying - “As a style of ownership, private equity resembles the opposite of democracy. It concentrates power among a small group of exceptionally wealthy dealmakers who reap the benefits of society’s failure to hold them accountable.”. She also says - “For the last 80 years, capitalism’s principal claim to legitimacy was the idea that the economy would keep on growing, offering everyone a share in its spoils.” and - “Instead, those on top have discovered an even easier formula for building wealth: buy up the basic tenets of our lives, heap them with debt, and push the consequences on to the little people.”. She quotes Stefano Sgambati, an academic who has studied the behaviour of private equity firms - “The game is that you borrow, and try to have others pay for your debts.”. Does this sound like taking a rigged game and rigging it further?