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Matt Collin

@mattcollin.bsky.social
2K followers 464 following 4.9K posts

Development economist working at the @taxobservatory.bsky.social‬ in Paris. Illicit finance, tax evasion, and foreign aid. Techno DJ when no one is looking. www.matthewcollin.com datadarkly.substack.com

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Reposted by Matt Collin
Matt Ford @mford.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Ezra Klein asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about AI making kids worse at math and reading. Huang’s reply: “Does it matter?” Then he said he doesn’t know his own address or phone number. “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...
So the message of this research out of China, where you were seeing a lot of kids using A.I. to help them, was that when they were using the A.I., they were getting things done faster. But it turned out that the skills they were learning were not holding, that their actual personal performance, at least in the way we traditionally measure it, was degrading.

What do you think when you hear that?

The last part — I completely agree. Try to get a kid to do long division right now. The multiplication table is starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots, my goodness. Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter?

That’s my question for you.

Yeah. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does.

But there must be some set of skills that matter.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe not those. We’re going to discover new ones. Just maybe not those.

There are a lot of skills that don’t matter. My first confession, I actually don’t know my address.And I ——

I don’t really believe that to be true.

It’s completely true. Janine will tell you and Lori will tell you.

One day I had to pump gas — it was a few years ago. They needed my ZIP code, and I panicked. I didn’t know my ZIP code. I don’t know my telephone number. I forget these things. I can live with it.

But let me take the other side because I don’t want to fall into a thing where, because some skills can be safely offloaded ——

Yeah.

I also can’t get anywhere without a mapping system now. Never could, frankly. But I’m a big reader. And one of the skills I really value, one of the capacities I have that I really value is an attention span formed on physical books.

You’re a big reader. I’ve read about the kind of reading you do. And there is, prior to A.I., a lot of concern and noticing among college professors and others that the way people use the internet has probably shortened attention spans.
Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.

Yeah. Well, I think that we’re going to lose some finer intellectual dexterity, but we’re going to be better systems thinkers.

Today’s engineers are far better systems thinkers than I was when I graduated from school. But I was a much better transistor thinker.

What do you mean by systems thinker?

They think of large systems. Today’s computers have trillions, hundreds of trillions of transistors in them. When I first graduated from school, the first chip I worked on had 200 transistors. I knew every one of them by name. No engineer does that today. Most engineers now work well above the transistor, well above the functionality, and they’re cobbling things together to do things.

So you need to think much more about systems and interactions of systems. So some of the lower-level knowledge is gone.
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I'm a development econ guy and I don't think I'd be that happy losing my job to the AIs!
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Reposted by Matt Collin
Brexit Bin 🇪🇺 🇬🇧 🇩🇪 @brexitbin.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
So true !!! 💻 Check out this great Norwegian video about how shitty the internet has become 😅
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Lotfi El Hamidi @lotfielhamidi.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Love it:
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
One thing I've found that Claude Code is good at is very quickly showing me visually something my 42 year old brain strugles to understand from its sometimes challenging prose
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
what?
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
New research out with @jeannebomare.bsky.social and Eva Nappert We examine the impact of Companies Houses's new ID verification rollout, which intends to require all directors and beneficial owners of UK companies to verify their identity either directly with CH or through a third party provider
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Look, I am in favour, but I really don't think firms engaged in international trade give a shit about how big a country looks on a map
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 02/09/2026
Who would like to guess why UK, US and European media outlets are not publishing 3,000 articles per minute about this www.dukechronicle.com/article/duke...
dukechronicle.com
‘Insane data’: Duke professor Dan Ariely accused of additional research fraud
New evidence released Monday shows that Dan Ariely, professor of business administration in the Fuqua School of Business, likely tampered with or fabricated data in an influential research paper from ...
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Belinda Archibong @belindaarch.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
ICYMI, the new “America First Global Health Strategy” has turned the US approach to global health into a series of transactional, bilateral agreements with potentially devastating consequences for global health security as we write in our Brookings piece here: www.brookings.edu/articles/the...
brookings.edu
The new 'America First Global Health Strategy' could erode years of progress under PEPFAR | Brookings
The authors unpack the impacts the new "America First Global Health Strategy" will have when it comes to HIV/AIDS mitigation in African countries.
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
RIP you absolute Legend
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Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Axios writer: I melted my brain with AI. Not only can I no longer read, but I don't even understand the purpose of reading anymore. Here's how you can also do this. www.axios.com/2026/08/11/r...
Axios: AI has become my reading buddy as I've plowed through my summer book list, helping me keep track of plots and characters, unpack themes, and make sense of wordy, old prose.

Why it matters: The way many of us actually read books — a few pages before bed, a chapter at the beach, another on a plane — makes it easy to lose the thread. AI can help you pick it back up without starting over.
📖 I really got into using AI while reading James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans." The text was far too dense for casual vacation reading. My first prompt asked:

"I'd like a guide as I read The Last of the Mohicans who can help me understand what I've read and where the story is, without giving spoilers or getting ahead of my progress. Can you do this, chapter by chapter?"
The robot agreed: "Cooper's sentences are long and his diction is archaic."
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
EU Commission may open new cases against states lagging on beneficial ownership registry access www.amlintelligence.com/2026/08/news... News story by @cgboffa6.bsky.social for AML Intelligence #beneficialownership #legitimateinterest #6AMLD
amlintelligence.com
NEWS: EU Commission may open new cases against states lagging on registry access - AML Intelligence
The European Commission said it may open a case against countries that have not yet completed a framework to grant journalists and civil society organisations access to national beneficial ownership r...
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Beneficial ownership information on 480,360 German entities is missing from the country’s national Transparenzregister, according to a risk assessment released by the country’s ministries of finance and justice www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/D... #beneficialownership #UBO #AMLR #6AMLD
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G. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 27/07/2026
Not sure I’d shit on something that helped me sell half a million copies of my book, personally
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Christian Odendahl @codendahl.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
The winning design. 🇪🇺💶
Italian DJs of meme fame on a 20€ note.
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Tip to money launderers: if you want to buy a property, maybe don't buy a property that has already been frozen in the past on suspicion of money laundering
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Europeans: Beneficial ownership data is a massive privacy risk! We have to make it hard to access UK: We have an public streaming API that will let you see ownership changes in real time
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Watch UK beneficial ownership information change in real time  as open, standardised data bods.stream #beneficialownership #openstandards #opendata #UBO #datastandards #interoperability #opensource
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
I mean, good lord, it's 104 degrees outside right now. No one wants to be outside, air conditioning or not. The worry that occasional air con use is going to destroy the fabric of society is really very silly
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Reporting live from Paris right now
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Every morning my 18 month old gets up and demands that I put on a vinyl record (by pointing to her ears) She only accepts vinyl music And for the past two weeks, she only accepts this record by Ghanian musician Gyedu-Blay Ambolley. Before that it was a Bowie obsession.
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
This looks awful. Klara and the Sun is a haunting, strange and very beautiful book which absolutely did not deserve the Taika Waititi twee treatment youtu.be/wixzainceAE?...
youtu.be
KLARA AND THE SUN – Official Trailer (4K)
YouTube video by Sony Pictures Entertainment
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Got to love the French university position of "We didn't invest in climate control, so please don't come to work and die of heatstroke, we much prefer that you die of heatstroke at home"
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Zachary Tvarozna @shadyshores.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
18 months in the making! My conclusion forever will be Russia's A7 was never entirely a cryptocurrency network and relied on captured states. Thanks 2 everyone who supported and hugest s/o to the OSC for turning this hypothesis into an investigation. www.opensourcecentre.org/research/the...
opensourcecentre.org
The Big Shor
OSC and TRM Labs reveal how the Kremlin-backed A7 Network used the international correspondent banking system and Kyrgyzstan to likely move billions of dollars of Russian payments through the global f...
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
"We believe these people are circumventing sanctions" and "We are not suggesting any wrongdoing here" in the exact same paragraph is a hell of a way to start a report
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
I really don't know how the EAs keep convincing other EAs to give them money to... start blogs?
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
I'm sitting on a (hot!) train waiting to leave at Gare de l'Est and the young man next to me just whipped out a personal powered mini fan. What is this, 1997?
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
Today was in the unique position of spotting Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad fame in the toy section of a department store and then having my toddler daughter have an absolutely epic breakdown right next to him and his family
static.klipy.com
Jesse Pinkman's Sadness Turns to Shock
ALT: Jesse Pinkman's Sadness Turns to Shock
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Pretty grim stuff from a White House full of people from the central casting of They Live
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Anti-Corruption Data Collective @acdatacollective.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
ACDC sat down with @60minutes.bsky.social for last night's episode, explaining that military insiders accused of illegal profiteering on Polymarket are not isolated cases but part of a systemic problem. www.cbsnews.com/news/predict...
cbsnews.com
Online prediction market traders make millions betting on U.S. military operations
Prediction market users are profiting from bets on war. Analysts say suspiciously timed bets, and the high win rates of wagers on military outcomes , are likely signs of insider trading.
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Sophie E. Hill @sophieehill.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Step 1: Run regression of [scary Y] on [trendy X] using observational data Step 2: Magically "adjust" for the 20 bajillion imperfectly-measured confounders Step 3: Wait for a credulous journalist to write it up as causal www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
theguardian.com
Arts and cultural engagement ‘linked to slower pace of biological ageing’
Research from UCL suggests visiting art galleries or museums, singing and painting can help improve health outcomes
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Video games aren't bad for the average kid, exhibit #21380 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
LET ME GUESS, IS IT NUDGING? IS IT NUDGING?
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Purported UFOs on the moon Going to love seeing the conspiracy theorists who think the government was covering up UFO sightings but also think tha the moon landing was faked try to reconcile this
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FT Edit @ftedit.ft.com · 30/04/2026
Long-shot bets on military action made on Polymarket have a win-rate almost four times higher than the platform average, according to new research, raising fears that wagers placed by insiders could reveal classified information. Read the full story on #FTEdit 👉 ft.trib.al/Zqokt5y
Bar chart showing win rates of high-value “long-shot” bets on Polymarket by topic, with military and defence markets highest at around 50%, far above other areas like elections, policy and central bank decisions.
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Gabriel Zucman @gabrielzucman.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Where are the profits of the war going? With the rise in oil prices, the profits of extractive companies surge—and a significant share ends up funneled through tax havens. But it’s not too late to tax war profiteers effectively. open.substack.com/pub/gzucman/...
open.substack.com
Where are the profits of the war going ?
With the rise in oil prices, the profits of extractive companies surge—and a significant share ends up funneled through tax havens. But it’s not too late to tax war profiteers effectively.
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
A lot of the world has benefit from more transparency over overseas assets. Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America? Not so much
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International Tax Observatory @taxobservatory.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
🧵 1/9 Global tax transparency has made real progress since 2017. But the same system that works for rich countries leaves many developing nations in the dark. New research note by Sarah Godar & Juan Vergara: taxobservatory.world/publication/...
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
The presidents family is running a... pig butchering scheme?
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
We're in William Gibson's world now www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Meta to track workers' clicks and keystrokes to train AI
The firm will take data from the way employees work for its artificial intelligence models.
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Standplaats Kraków could really use some cash! @standplaatskrk.pl · 24/04/2026
business cat (a black kitty in a tie, looking serious) in the vicious cycle meme [going forward we're gonna need more of your data to make sure its you] -> [ahaha youre not gonna believe this but we had a bit of a data breach] -> [your data is probably for sale online now] -> [that means someone could easily impersonate you] -> [rinse, repeat]
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Efrén Pérez @efrenpolipsy.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Me agreeing to a new project knowing full well it’s gonna add stress 🇲🇽
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Charles Kenny @charlesjkenny.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
On April 9th the report is taken down, on the grounds that opening to petrol imports “may run counter to efforts that countries around the world are undertaking to ensure their energy and national security.”
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Some people reflect on their mortality on their birthday. For me, it's the semi-annual reminder that if I don't log in to my Gmail for six months, my wife gets access
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More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Unbelievable stuff from the Washington Post on behalf of Jeff Bezos today.
Opinion
Editorial Board
America’s income tax is progressive
The rich already pay more than their fair share
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Claude research has started citing research papers autonomously generated by Claude, which is bad ape.socialcatalystlab.org/papers/apep_...
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