Sam Freedman

3 weeks ago | samf.substack.com | Sam Freedman

At least Ed Davey is enjoying himself on the campaign trailIt’s that time of year when I apologise to our international subscribers and dive into the details of England’s local elections, including predictions for every single council and mayoralty in play. The topline narrative is not difficult to foresee. The main parties will struggle, particularly the Tories because they were at their high point when these contests were last fought back in 2021.

3 weeks ago | samf.substack.com | Sam Freedman

Politics, policy analysis, and foreign affairs from Sam and Lawrence FreedmanOver 71,000 subscribersBy subscribing, I agree to Substack’s Terms of Use and acknowledge its Information Collection Notice and Privacy Policy“I love the taste of crunchy policy analysis in the morning, and nobody does it better than the Freedmans.”“Brilliant analysis, beautifully written. An essential source of nuanced information”“Substack done really well.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Sam Freedman

One can only imagine the horror the late Iain Banks would have felt on learning his legendary Culture series is a favourite of Elon Musk. The Scottish author was an outspoken socialist who could never understand why rightwing fans liked novels that were so obviously an attack on their worldview. But that hasn’t stopped Musk, whose Neuralink company – which develops implantable brain-to-computer interfaces – was directly inspired by Banks’s concept of “neural lace”.

1 month ago | msn.com | Sam Freedman

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1 month ago | samf.substack.com | Sam Freedman

Today’s post was inspired by reading a new book of the same title by Quinn Slobodian, a Canadian academic, whose last book “Crack-Up Capitalism” I recently recommended in my “Ten Books to Understand the World Right Now”. I’d add this new book to the list too and I’ve made use of it throughout this piece alongside other research. The conclusions are mine.