GeofCox

I see a lot of posts on mastodon about getting out from under the US tech giants - they're a reminder of how relatively lucky we are here in France. We have a similar-but-better - and generally cheaper - alternative to Amazon - Cdiscount - and if you pay by Carte Bancaire rather than Visa, etc, your payment is processed entirely in France by French banks. We have the government's own mapping service - CartesIGN - which is again superior to GoogleMaps in almost every respect (except that it only covers France). The general movement of French public services over to Linux, and onto Mastodon in the case of cultural services, has been well documented here - but in fact France has always been inclined this way, surprising me when I first moved here 15 years ago by the use of the open document format in the kids' schools, rather than .docs. And of course France's military has always been more independent, its nuclear weapons never integrated into NATO - with negotiations now underway to extend this 'nuclear umbrella' across Europe. Would it take much to extend the rest of the French tech and fintech infrastructure across Europe ? - at least to the Benelux countries, to entirely free the ICC of US corruption ?

There's a lot of intentional bias in both mainstream and social media - but there's also a lot of what I'd call unintentional bias - coming from a number of influences. One is the fact that 80% of journalists come from professional or upper-class backgrounds. Only 7% of people attend private school in the UK... but half of newspaper columnists are privately educated, 47% of political commentators, 45% of leading podcasters and 38% of BBC executives. Media professionals, their families and friends, their whole life experience and perspectives, are at the heart of the Establishment. Another influence is the self-censorship that inevitably infects an industry largely owned or influenced (for example by the need to attract advertising) by wealthy corporations and individuals. Even journalists free from specific pressures from media owners, etc, and trying to do the right thing, know that their career advancement depends on not doing it too enthusiastically. Then there are unquestioned 'professional' assumptions. Dramatic beach scenes of asylum seekers are preferred over presenting accurate statistics because they're 'televisual', they 'come across', boost viewing figures, etc... In itself, each clip may not be inaccurate - but cumulatively, by the very fact that they are selected as 'news', they create the impression that there are lots of such immigrants - but in fact there aren't. Deepest of all, perhaps, is the 'automatic' bias of the idea of news itself. By its very nature it's bad. Most people living pretty harmoniously with their good neighbours, in their supportive communities, are not newsworthy - nor indeed are they good grist for fictional dramas - so people that are more socially isolated, and therefore nowadays more dependent on media interactions, get the impression that most people are unkind and violent, and must be controlled by Authority. And it is in fact true that social isolation tends to move people to the political right (and that sociability moves them left).

Am I right in thinking there's a deep confusion at the heart of technological ideas on AI ? On the one hand they reject the physical basis of human intelligence - as they must, since they imagine a similar phenomenon can be machine-based. But at the same time, they imagine machine intelligence can emerge, almost as an epiphenomena, out of different physical systems. Dualist or not ? Perhaps we need a more sophisticated Turing test ? - eg. evidence in a machine of both aesthetic and physical reactions to a Puccini aria ?

@gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green "In the United States, nearly 5,000 data centres are either under construction or in planning stages, driven by growing demands for artificial intelligence." Yet there are adverts all over pushing AI on us, and indeed AI being built into every application whether anybody wants it or not - and despite the evidence that most don't want it at all. It's a perfect allegory of how capitalism works now: create demand through marketing, then claim we must use up the earth's resources to meet that demand.

The political centre in the western world is confronted by its own trolley problem. It must choose between letting democracy hurtle down the extreme right route, harming most people, or throwing the switch to the left, damaging the interests of the wealthy and privileged. It is refusing to choose - dreaming instead of a third way that cannot, in principle, exist.

'With France seeking profound change, momentum lies only with candidates who promise to upend the status quo' - Lemonde article on French politics, but describing the whole dilemma of western centrists.

It even enumerates, accurately, why voters are seeking profound change - stagnation or decline in living standards declining social mobility declining quality of public services failure to respond adequately to either the causes or effects of climate-ecological breakdown

• but bizarrely still focuses - as do mainstream political commentators everywhere - on the shortcomings of centrist political parties and personalities, rather than the simple, obvious fact that there are no non-radical solutions to this polycrisis - that no centrist candidate, however charismatic, has anything to offer.

https://archive.is/20260902082456/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2026/09/02/with-france-seeking-profound-change-momentum-lies-only-with-candidates-who-promise-to-upend-the-status-quo_6757068_23.html#selection-3553.430-3553.611

France has an almost universal provision of state apartment blocks for young people - my son lives in one now. They are like university halls of residence, but instead of just students at one uni, they are open to anybody under 25 that has a 'personal project' - any education or training course, starting work, setting up a business, etc. Generally, people can stay up to 2 years, and most have a social worker attached to help young people into independent life - everything from tax forms to counselling. It's brilliant - but then over half of the French economy is in the public sector - which is what the UK should be aiming for.

You could look at your tax bill like this... The government creates all money (either directly by spending or indirectly through the banks it licences). All of this money is created out of nothing - it's just 'IOUs' written by the government - which is why UK bank notes always had printed on them "I promise to pay the bearer on demand". The money created by banks when they make loans is cancelled - destroyed - when the loans are repaid. The money created when the government spends is destroyed when the government collects it back in tax. Tax does not pay for government spending - it's the other way round. The government doesn't collect back in tax all the money it creates (and of course bank loans don't always get repaid) - this is the money in circulation, savings, etc - and it's 'the national debt' - the difference between the amount of money the government has created and the amount it has destroyed. Public debt IS private wealth. If the government doesn't destroy enough money - ie. doesn't tax enough - there will be too much in circulation, and it's value will fall - that's inflation. So when you pay tax, you're not funding anything - you're protecting the value of the other money you have. Does that help ? By the way, all this is not just a way of looking at tax - it is in fact all true (if you live in a country with its own currency, or in the eurozone, which has shared euro ownership).

An AI executive's description of their business as "the largest theft of labour in human history" prompts comparisons with slavery - but it occurs to me that this comparison might run deeper than they realise. David Olusoga's new BBC series 'Finding Britain’s Slave Traders' takes an interesting approach - instead of focusing on the brutality and racism at the sharp end of the slave trade, it shows us the documents, houses and peaceful private lives of those that invested in the business of slavery, and made huge fortunes out of it. With AI, we tend to focus on the actions of the tech broligarchy - exploitation at the sharp end - and forget its other indispensable driver: investors seeking to maximise returns, the amorality of capital.

EU tells firms to label AI-generated content from Sunday - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/07/28/eu-tells-firms-to-label-ai-generated-content-from-sunday_6755910_4.html

"From Paris, it seems like a mystery. How could the US, which has set the pace for global science for nearly a century, systematically dismantle its dominant position – and, above all, why?" https://archive.is/20260902070050/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2026/09/02/trump-takes-aim-at-american-science-as-china-pulls-ahead_6757069_23.html#selection-3513.216-3513.507 "China now outcompetes the US in numerous scientific fields. Since 2019, it has led the world in patent filings and, since 2023, it has topped the Nature Index for scientific publications and continues to widen the gap. In 2024, it also surpassed the US in research and development spending."

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk These right-wingers are such snowflakes, aren't they ? The left are only terrorised by people that actually have deadly weapons like guns and knives and bombs, or cars they drive into crowds of innocent people. The right find household paints and gardening tools terrifying. Perhaps this could constitute a new test for underlying political affiliation ? Which of these items do you find more frightening ? 🖌️ 💣

France, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden today announced trade sanctions against Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

“For every £1 invested in protecting nature, you’ve got £30 spent trying to degrade it... So that’s a political choice and it’s not a lack of finance. It’s where it’s used.” - https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2026%2Fsep%2F10%2Fclimate-crisis-tipping-points-energy-environment-report But it's not 'a political choice', is it ? Investment simply flows where the returns are likely to be bigger, quicker. The problem is systemic. It lies in the fundamentals of the joint-stock company model, which facilitate remote shareholding only interested in returns. It lies in lightly regulated stock markets that enable fund managers to switch investments easily - so what if the oil runs out ? - take the profit while you can then switch to something else before it crashes. It lies in norms and regulations that actually require fund managers to maximise returns now, not sustainably. It lies in your private pension, that they manage - and in the neoliberal privatisation of pensions and savings that has moved investment and assets out of the public sector into the private on a truly massive scale over recent decades. What choice, exactly, is it that politics has ? Where, in this systemic maze, should we intervene to redirect investment where we know, for certain, it has to go ?

@charette@mstdn.ca Yep - tax is the answer. Thomas Piketty has analysed what actually happened when most western economies had very high marginal tax rates (eg. 90%). He calls it 'predistributuon' - obviously, people stopped asking for astronomical salaries, or dividends. What's the point ? Instead, companies reinvested profit - and this is one of the reasons economic growth, wage growth, training programmes, etc were all higher in the period between the war and the 1980s, when marginal tax was highest - and, far from the 'trickle down' expectations of the neoliberals, all these declined once tax was cut.

"Across 17 of the world’s largest economies — accounting for nearly 60 per cent of global GDP and well over a third of the world’s population — the message from citizens is unequivocal. Seven in 10 respondents state that economic inequality in their country has gone too far. Two-thirds view the economic system as fundamentally rigged in favour of the rich and powerful, while 69 per cent explicitly demand major economic transformation." https://www.socialeurope.eu/people-want-economic-change-but-have-stopped-trusting-governments-to-deliver-it

RE: https://mas.to/@therightarticle/117098031979293308 This was an academic lynching, led by an acknowledged racist - sacked for precisely that by Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 2024 - followed by an irresponsible pile-on by the UK's rabid right-wing press.

Extreme wealth inequality is a fissure running through every notion of liberal-democracy (and has been since 1776, when American slave-owners declared it self-evident that all men are created equal). Equality before the law ? Not if only the wealthy can afford to pursue cases, or the best lawyers. Equality of opportunity ? Not if only the wealthy can send their kids to exclusive schools, employ home tutors, etc. Free and fair elections ? Not if it's the wealthy that fund the political parties. Free press ? Not if the wealthy can buy up all the media.

Corsica's 'fight against Airbnb-ization' claims to have returned 233 homes to 'year-round residents' - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2026/07/27/corsica-s-fight-against-airbnb-ization-claims-to-have-returned-233-homes-to-year-round-residents_6755892_19.html

Let's draw a connection between the UK scandal over crypto billionaire funding of a far-right political party, and the American controversy over crypto funding of GrapheneOS. Are crypto currencies inherently right-wing ? I think they are, both because they are fundamentally based on scarcity, and therefore facilitate private rather than community benefit, and because they need excessive, environmentally damaging energy use.

Few would disagree that meeting everybody's basic needs while protecting the natural environment is the direction we need to go.

The contentious issue is more around the fact that it's a direction that requires more social control of parts of the economy, and this is controversial from a number of perspectives:

• the wealthy and privileged feel their vested interests are threatened by this extension of social control
• some economists and other commentators think that more social control over parts of the economy will cramp enterprise and innovation, leading in the end to less prosperous societies
• some think more social control over parts of the economy will become a 'slippery slope' to ever-more authoritarian control.

My own view is that the left needs to place equal emphasis on meeting everybody's basic needs, protecting the natural environment, AND guaranteeing free enterprise for a vibrant small-business sector.

Most of the problems we face come from big business - over-exploitation of resources and labour, pollution, intrusive advertising, booms and busts, disproportionate political influence... Supporting small business while disincentivising it growing too big seems to me the obvious answer to worries that more social control will either stifle enterprise and innovation or suppress personal freedom.

It's important to note that both wildfires and pandemics - like the Ebola incubating, perhaps, in Africa now - are symptoms of capitalism's over-exploitation of resources. Of course there were wildfires and pandemics before globalisation, but their frequency and intensity is increased by over-exploitation of natural resources: trade and mixing of rare species facilitates microbes crossing species barriers, trade and tourism facilitate contagion, just as surely as harmful emissions and over-use of water facilitate fire. And increasing social inequality is also an aspect of the same problematic, because it is multinational capitalism (not small business or local markets) that leads to excess emissions, excess resource exploitation, and excess profit extraction from both people and planet.

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk All the UK's political parties need to step back, take off their rose-tinted glasses and look honestly into the reality of voting. For Labour, this means recognising that 2024 was not the great victory the Starmer/Blairites painted it, but just the opposite: most of the seats won were simply the result of Tory collapse and right-wing division - in terms of actual votes it was a continuation of the long decline since Blair's first term, actually only punctuated by Corbyn; nor was the lauded Manchester mayoral victory meaningful in reality - when three-quarters of voters didn't even bother to turn up. GPEW need to recognise that like Green parties throughout Europe they are probably experiencing a long-term rise in support - but the recent surge and Gorton & Denton win have been mainly down precisely to the Starmer government's unpopularity - which Burnham may reverse to some extent. The LibDems need to understand that the political centre is an expression of the status-quo, and will hold no substantial votes while very large numbers of voters are dissatisfied with the status-quo. The Tories, having moved to the right in response to UKIP and its successor parties, find themselves scrabbling with Reform and Restore over the third of voters that might mistakenly flirt with the far right; Reform need to recognise that Farage is finished, and they'll only come out of this scrabble on top if they ditch him - and in any case, without merger or disintegration this far-right space is in fact far too small for anything approaching overall majority.

"The US used to be a beacon of human rights. Not anymore. Today, it stands alongside North Korea, Nicaragua, Mali & Russia, isolated. And the world no longer listens to it." - France’s UN Mission in Geneva. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/07/28/us-walks-out-on-france-at-un-meeting_6755911_4.html

@Geri@veganism.social Shouldn't that be 'firefighters' pole' ? Oh - I see what you mean... @distinctdipole@tech.lgbt

Looks like China already has the technology (extreme-ultraviolet lithography) to make the most advanced computer chips... https://observer.co.uk/news/business/article/china-shocks-with-chip-tech-breakthrough

"Playing on the opponents' ground always leads to defeat" - https://archive.is/20260910182226/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2026/09/10/macron-and-merz-two-losing-strategies-against-the-far-right_6757396_5.html#selection-3523.27-3523.32 Lemonde analysis of how Renzi's attempt to combat the far right in Italy ended up paving the way for Meloni - but that didn't stop Starmer, Macron, then Merz all repeating the same mistake. Just stupidity ? Or were these apparent centrists themselves infected by far-right ideology ?

"People said they lived better during the Soviet era, that they felt more valued" - https://archive.is/20260905161322/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/09/05/in-germany-memories-of-the-soviet-legacy-are-at-the-heart-of-saxony-anhalt-s-state-election-i-do-not-consider-russians-to-be-enemies_6757193_4.html#selection-3657.208-3661.95 - interesting article exploring the cultural and geopolitical drivers of today's likely far-right election win in former East Germany. If only we could see the rival communist and capitalist systems objectively, rather than through one or the other distorting lens. Many times, working in Eastern European countries, including Russia, in the 90s and 00s, I would hear people complain about soviet life - but immediately follow that up with 'but at least you knew your children would be well educated, treated if they were ill, get a job and a home, however humble, when they left you...' I remember a big group of easterners and westerners talking about television. Somebody from Albania reminisced how in the communist period they had only one channel, and most of an evening might be taken up by a broadcast of a classical music concert. Everybody laughed at the deprivation - then somebody said 'but you know we were all together - the next day you would talk and joke with all your friends about the programmes you had all seen... there was more of a community feeling'. And I remember most clearly the verdict of a Berlin taxi-driver: "Yeah, communism was shit. Capitalism - more shit."

@therightarticle@mas.to One thing the article doesn't say is that if the UK had had a proportional representation system for both the Corbyn elections, 2017 and 2019 (the supposed Labour electoral disaster, though in reality Corbyn won more votes than Starmer did in 2024) there would have been a leftish, anti-brexit majority - and Corbyn would have been Prime Minister.

"Six nuclear reactors were shut down on Thursday, August 13, due to the ongoing heatwave." - https://archive.is/4t4kH#selection-3347.1-3347.89 I think it's now clear that France must move away from nuclear power. It has saved a lot of fossil fuels emissions to date - but now, given the increasing pace of progress in renewables and battery technology, and climate-ecological breakdown rendering existing nuclear installations inoperable, France must take the strategic turn to renewable energy only.

@thepurpleoctopus@lgbtqia.space @Colman@mastodon.ie I'm interested in the differences between the anglosphere and other cultures on this - I'm from the UK but live in France, and my English/French daughter studied chemistry in the French grande école system - and received a much broader general education than she would have done in the UK - including at least 2 foreign languages throughout her 5 years higher education in chemistry, along with philosophy and the arts. There is in the UK constant criticism of the too-early over-specialisation in UK schools and universities, and attempts to introduce a French-style 'bac', which even for science specialists includes languages, philosophy, literature, etc... I'm not saying there's no 'two cultures' problem at all outside the anglosphere - but I tend to think it is particularly acute there.

Another accused Epstein associate found dead... Who is hindering prosecutions and revelations - even, perhaps, willing to kill to do so ? "The failure of the Paris public prosecutor's office to act in the knowledge that Siad was a close associate of Epstein and facing multiple rape and trafficking allegations is beyond comprehension." https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/07/22/epstein-case-french-model-scout-and-alleged-recruiter-found-dead_6755717_7.html

@wavesculptor@climatejustice.social It is of course just the uncontroversial - factual - bit of MMT - it doesn't go into the more contentious policy implications (such as the government's ability/duty to create full employment).

I think the left/green needs to beware of negativity around electric cars - specifically, it should view, and represent electric cars not as a continuation of the car problem, but as part of the transition away from car dependency. The developed world has been constructed around personal car ownership. Some on the left/green may not be fully conscious of this, because they are concentrated in cities that already have decent public transport, bike-able distances, etc - or among the young, or maybe in deep green rural enclaves. But many people are dependent on cars - many even on 2 or more cars, for example if family members work some distance from different jobs, in an area not served by public transport. Not only where people's homes and jobs are, but much else about our existing infrastructure has been constructed around car ownership - where shops, hospitals, schools, etc are located, where leisure and tourist facilities are, etc, etc... In particular, for elderly people, people with disabilities or health problems, or small children or other caring responsibilities, cars are vital. The point is that reducing car use and personal car ownership is not going to happen quickly, because for many people it requires fundamental changes not just to public transport, but to the whole built environment - and to community organisation, for example the development of car co-ops in every neighbourhood - not to mention changes to lifestyles, psychology, etc... The focus of the left/green, therefore, should be on the relative positives of electric cars as a vital part of the green transition - and the positives of electric car co-ops in local community ownership, replacing personal car ownership, so that people that can't cycle, or get where they want to go on public transport, can be welcomed into the green transition.

@randahl@mastodon.social Do you think they'll actually take place Randahl ? (I do, by the way - I think MAGA would have liked a national emergency to postpone and ultimately cancel them - but the mess Trump has made in Iran, etc, now means he's simply not popular enough to go that far.)

@dazinism@social.coop That's the myth @dazinism - in fact all the money the government collects in tax is simply deleted - and banks only create money to the extent that the government lets them.

@ccferrie@mastodon.ie I think the left/green needs to beware of negativity around electric cars - specifically, it should view, and represent electric cars not as a continuation of the car problem, but as part of the transition away from car dependency. The developed world has been constructed around personal car ownership. Some on the left/green may not be fully conscious of this, because they are concentrated in cities that already have decent public transport, bike-able distances, etc - or among the young, or maybe in deep green rural enclaves. But many people are dependent on cars - many even on 2 or more cars, for example if family members work some distance from different jobs, in an area not served by public transport. Not only where people's homes and jobs are, but much else about our existing infrastructure has been constructed around car ownership - where shops, hospitals, schools, etc are located, where leisure and tourist facilities are, etc, etc... In particular, for elderly people, people with disabilities or health problems, or small children or other caring responsibilities, cars are vital. The point is that reducing car use and personal car ownership is not going to happen quickly, because for many people it requires fundamental changes not just to public transport, but to the whole built environment - and to community organisation, for example the development of car co-ops in every neighbourhood - not to mention changes to lifestyles, psychology, etc... The focus of the left/green, therefore, should be on the relative positives of electric cars as a vital part of the green transition - and the positives of electric car co-ops in local community ownership, replacing personal car ownership, so that people that can't cycle, or get where they want to go on public transport, can be welcomed into the green transition.

"Russia and ​Israel both ​spread and amplified disinformation related to the mass entry ​of migrants ‌into ⁠Spain's North African exclave ‌of Ceuta last month, Prime ⁠Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday, ​citing research ‌by the European Union's foreign policy body, the European External Action Service (EEAS). "After July 30 and 31, there was a spread of rumours and disinformation, from social networks linked both to Russia and to Israel, and to an ultra-right international that always uses migration not only to attack Spain, but also to attack Europe and divide it."" https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260831-spanish-pm-sanchez-says-israel-and-russia-spread-disinformation-on-ceuta-migrant-crisis This will come as no surprise to Brits. Researchers from Swansea University and UC Berkeley identified around 150,000 accounts with links to Russia that tweeted about brexit in the run-up to the referendum. It's a long-standing Russian foreign policy aim to break up the EU - and now of the US and Israel too (though some of Israel's interference might be based more on opposition to Spain's admirable stand against the Gaza genocide and Iran war). What is surprising is that some other EU countries - eg. Italy - fell for the foreign trickery.

@markmason@mas.to I hadn't heard that - it's good.

@woo@fosstodon.org I think the point on A-Levels is that it's possible, but generally discouraged, to choose a mix of sciences and arts - but in France even if you choose a BacS (science) you still do languages, philosophy, etc - and this continues throughout higher education. My daughter too studied multiple languages at lower school levels - but continued French, English, Spanish and Italian at school until age 18, and at uni added German and Portuguese ! @thepurpleoctopus@lgbtqia.space @Colman@mastodon.ie

@Skembear@mastodon.social In 1975, 80% of government housing expenditure went on the construction of social housing; by 2000, 85% was instead going directly to landlords, via housing benefit. The UK has never recovered from Thatcherism / Reaganomics.

@heygarrett@social.lol It's something of a 'curate's egg' - "good in parts" - but note my post sets out only the uncontroversial, factual, basis of MMT - that Keynesians like Krugman accept - not the broader macroeconomic policy developments of Kelton, Mitchell, etc - and it's a bit out of date, and a bit anglosphere (I think the most important economics now is written in French - only some of which - eg. Piketty - finds its way into English, or Wikipedia).

@heygarrett@social.lol Incidntally Bill Mitchell is on Mastodon - @BillMitchell@mastodon.world - as is Richard Murphy - @RichardJMurphy@mas.to

@8r3n7@mstdn.ca Yes - but I wouldn't look at it in class or government or business terms - because a lot of people in every class and profession, including politicians, and especially political journalists, have no idea what money is, or how money or tax really work. What is true is that bankers, including central bankers, are very nervous about telling ti like it is (although they have in fact done so - in pretty obscure technical banking papers). This has I think 2 reasons, one is just hangover from previous theorisations and banking traditions, especially from the 'gold standard' period - but the other is fear that telling the plain truth will weaken faith in the currency/bank, and maybe the 'social contract' around tax.

@peterfisherbooks@disabled.social @markmason@mas.to See other replies here: https://climatejustice.social/@kbm0@mastodon.social/116974452281627286 'Cryptocurrency' is a misnomer - it isn't really a currency. It's more like assets or negotiable instruments like precious metals, shares or paintings - that of course can sometimes be used to perform some of the functions of currency - value store, swapping, etc - but not all.

@SecondUniverse@autistics.life Yes - so interesting that the MAGA reaction was to assume China had stolen the technology from Europe - they're so far up their white supremacist arses that they just can't conceive a world in which China leads and the West follows - though this is in fact already the reality... https://www.businessinsider.com/china-leads-us-critical-emerging-technologies-strategic-competition-research-report-2023-3

@felichsdakatze@mastodon.social And destroyed on repayment.

@peterfisherbooks@disabled.social Think of it like an asset like say a painting (but obviously with no historical or aesthetic merit whatsoever) - if somebody wants to pay a lot of money for it, that's up to them. The 'value' is whatever they think it is. @markmason@mas.to

@felichsdakatze@mastodon.social Where the bank balances out your loan account to zero, rules a line under it, and Hey Presto ! - the money is gone.

@PaulaToThePeople@climatejustice.social Even by defining intelligence as "what the IQ test measures" the testers still can't get a meaningful result - since none of them has ever come up with a test that people don't get better at with practice. The problem ultimately lies, I suspect, in a misconception of individuality whose development, like the Newtonian clockwork universe, parallels the development of capitalism - and like Newtonian physics needs replacing with a much more interactive, fluid, uncertain and ecological understanding of what people really are.