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Martin Robbins

@mjrobbins.com
3.8K followers 230 following 1.6K posts

Substack: mjrobbins.com Podcast: abundancepod.com

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Reposted by Martin Robbins
Andy Bruce (Reuters) @bruceandy.bsky.social · 11h
Get this - real GDP per head has grown by 1.1% over the first half of 2026. Excluding the swings caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, that's the largest increase since late 2017.
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James O'Malley @jamesomalley.co.uk · 23h
Happy birthday to my YIMBY Pod co-host and Britain’s youngest Jag owner, @mjrobbins.com!
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Every private conversation in Westminster: "Well the triple lock obviously has to go at some point". Every commentator on Burnham: "completely mad to propose getting rid of triple lock - political suicide".
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Iain Roberts @slowbikeiain.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I've no idea why the Telegraph thinks the mine is being opened by Labour and not the companies that have worked hard over several years to develop it to this point, but this is very positive news for Cornwall and the UK.
Telegraph headline: Labour opening lithium minr in Cornwall to combat China
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 27/09/2026
How is he good at travelling if it takes him that long?
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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I could quote pretty much this entire article by @mjrobbins.com on the bizarre psychology of the AI apocalypse freaks, but you should just read it instead. Such a relief to see someone express my feelings so eloquently. martinrobbins.substack.com/p/the-ai-apo...
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 25/09/2026
I love The Good Place and I think inherently these lists compare apples and oranges but I’d make a case for The US Office for sheer longevity, depth, consistency, the breadth and quality of its cast, the number of careers it launched. The Cheers of its time.
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 25/09/2026
This is a classic for players of Europa Universalis IV! (Savoy)
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Gaia Vince @wanderinggaia.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
So good! By @mjrobbins.com
martinrobbins.substack.com
The AI Apocalypse is Extremely Boring Now
Elites are obsessed with the end of the world. Most people have bigger problems.
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 22/09/2026
More that it’s never really made clear from a systems/domain perspective how ‘Claude 6’ materially changes the risk or the way it should be managed (or not).
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 22/09/2026
“What if it causes a deadly virus to leak from a lab causing a global pandemic…? Okay well what if it bombards us with streams of ragebait and misinfo…? Right, well what if it disrupted global shipping leading to…“
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 22/09/2026
Why does every AI Doomer scenario sound like the scene where Dr Evil threatens to put a hole in the Ozone Layer 🤷‍♂️
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 22/09/2026
So the exact same premise as the plot of Dr Strangelove, 62 years ago, based on 1950s technology
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 22/09/2026
Anyway, this has all the makings of a classic British scandal where something really bad happens, and we pretend the conditions weren't painfully obvious beforehand.
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 22/09/2026
Maybe we should have arrested this guy for blocking ports.
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Robert Hutton @roberthutton.co.uk · 22/09/2026
Hard to explain how gobsmacking this is. The government opened applications for farm subsidies this morning at 10. And closed it just before 4 because they'd run out of cash. Applying for your livelihood like it's Oasis tickets. defrafarming.blog.gov.uk/2026/09/22/s...
defrafarming.blog.gov.uk
SFI26: Window 2 now closed
Window 2 of the Sustainable Farming Incentive 2026 (SFI26) has now closed. Thank you to everyone who took the time to submit an application.
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Margaret Harris @drmlharris.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
"I wonder to what extent these smart people are drawn to AI precisely because of its grandiosity; because fixing the boring problems of society like healthcare or inequality is beneath people as smart as them." Very interesting post from @mjrobbins.com: martinrobbins.substack.com/p/the-ai-apo...
martinrobbins.substack.com
The AI Apocalypse is Extremely Boring Now
Elites are obsessed with the end of the world. Most people have bigger problems.
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 22/09/2026
ICYMI: my post on the sheer unhealthiness and groupthink of the culture around AI, "a community of would-be-martyrs, enmeshed in a deep paranoid fantasy that they alone can stave off the end of the world."
martinrobbins.substack.com
The AI Apocalypse is Extremely Boring Now
Elites are obsessed with the end of the world. Most people have bigger problems.
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Charlie Massey @charliecoffee.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
This is excellent, and reminds me to keep picking the tomatoes before the skins split, and make sure I've got a loaf out of the freezer for lunch.
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Kate Bevan @katebevan.com · 20/09/2026
This is a bit long but a nice skewering of the arrogant twats locked in their little bubbles who are driving the "AI is going to kill us all" nonsense.
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 20/09/2026
I just asked Claude and copy pasted the answer into my post 🤷‍♂️
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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
This is extremely good, though I am less certain than Martin that superintelligence (which I take to mean more intelligent than human) can't exist, given I don't think there is anything in the laws of physics that would prevent it
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 20/09/2026
It really hit me writing this piece that you've got this cohort of people who created the perfect excuse to justify any behaviour and the best they could come up with was a lame nerdy version of the same shit their grandparents were doing in San Francisco six decades ago.
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Kat Arney @katarney.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Far too many quotable bits in @mjrobbins.com latest piece about the AI apocalypse doomed, so you'll just have to go read the whole thing martinrobbins.substack.com/p/the-ai-apo...
martinrobbins.substack.com
The AI Apocalypse is Extremely Boring Now
Elites are obsessed with the end of the world. Most people have bigger problems.
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Stephen Curry @scurry.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Very much enjoyed @mjrobbins.com conversation-paced rant about the supposed threat of so-called superintelligent AI. martinrobbins.substack.com/p/the-ai-apo...
Screenshot from linked article reads: 

Civilisation is the gearbox for the engines of our minds; human intelligence is its attribute. The scale of that intelligence is not governed by the person or entity with the highest IQ. You can't make a car that goes at 3000mph by just putting a rocket in it. I'm not sure it's possible to be superintelligent. To me it's like saying you're going to make the ocean superwet by pouring more water into it.
Rationalists desperately wish this wasn't the case, because it means the promise of the Al priesthood, the promise of a world where being smart and thinking better magically solves all your problems - could lead you to the gates of heaven itself! - is a lie: that the world isn't changed by thinkers, but doers. That's why every contrived thought experiment that involves an AI triggering the end of humanity involves, ultimately, human beings doing something incredible stupid with real stuff, like shipping a super-virus to an angry teenager or firing a nuclear arsenal. The boring risks of human agency that we already face today.
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 20/09/2026
Yeah I’d be super annoyed if Claude went rogue just before I got my vibe coded HS2 game working.
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 20/09/2026
Obviously going to regret this when Claude starts a nuclear war on Monday.
martinrobbins.substack.com
The AI Apocalypse is Extremely Boring Now
Elites are obsessed with the end of the world. Most people have bigger problems.
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 19/09/2026
The other thing is video is discoverable in a way that text doesn’t seem to be and I’m not sure if that’s a function of the medium or the specific platforms (YouTube is insane for discovery, Substack is not in the same way)
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 19/09/2026
Thinking a lot about this piece, and I think it’s crystallised for me why self driving cars are a terrible idea.
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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
It's vastly more comforting to believe in an imminent robot apocalypse than the truth: the things that will destroy us are extensions of the unsexy but obvious problems all around us. We are not doomed in one grand way, but a thousand petty small ways.
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 18/09/2026
Yeeees come to daddy. #lasagne #godtier
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 17/09/2026
I mean it’s possible but gun-to-my-head I’d be amazed if the biggest users weren’t in or adjacent to the tech industry. And we’re talking orders of magnitude difference in use.
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 17/09/2026
Boring answer is almost none, chatting with an LLM uses virtually no tokens compared to cowork or code. The big token usage is when you’re using it to inefficiently search Slack or Confluence or JIRA or trawl through a code base.
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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 16/09/2026
I do think anyone who wants us to take Elizer Yudkowsky seriously as an authority on AI armageddon should be forced to testify on video that they have read the entirety of his 660,000 word rationalist Harry Potter fan fiction – written aged 30–34 – and still thinks the world needs his take.
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Tracy King @tracyking.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Fascinated by this thread of what parents gave their kids for dinner tonight, and how it compares to my childhood memories of Smash and tinned hot dog sausages or Findus Crispy Pancakes and Supernoodles: www.reddit.com/r/UKParentin...
reddit.com
From the UKParenting community on Reddit
Explore this post and more from the UKParenting community
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 15/09/2026
Most shows end in an unsatisfying mess and they're written by professional writers; so I'm sorry to inform you that the history of the world will have the 'How I Met Your Mother'-est of endings.
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 14/09/2026
Omg the morons who think if you use both lanes and merge-in-turn you're 'cutting in' and try to block you.
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 12/09/2026
God, just imagine if an insane person ended up in control of the US arsenal
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Andrew R @excelpope.net · 12/09/2026
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 11/09/2026
🚨 NEW BLOGPOST 🚨 The last week has seen multiple incidents of masked mobs trying to subvert the power of the state. Their actions have been illegal and unpleasant. But the treatment has been weak. The police haven't dealt with it, and neither has govt. open.substack.com/pub/joxleywr...
open.substack.com
Stop the Louts
The tools exist. The will, so far, doesn't.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Devolution created a natural experiment here and we have the results. bsky.app/profile/tom-...
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 05/09/2026
A large group of co-ordinated, masked men blockading a piece of significant infrastructure is a security threat and should be dealt with as one. There should also be serious questions about why police/intelligence services didn't pick up on it in advance.
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 04/09/2026
Tbh most planning disputes are about people vs people. People want better transport and cheaper housing and net zero and data centres and open fields and cheap food and local farming and the price of their homes to stay inflated.
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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Millenials are the only generation who received a survivable dosage of Internet. Gen Z has only every known Internet. Boomers and Gen X didn't grow up with Internet, so they succumbed to it immediately.
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 02/09/2026
I mean also I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure the landlord is getting credit checked when he gets the mortgage
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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 01/09/2026
have written about this before and, given the population of this website I guess I need to make that point carefully, but at what point do we start looking at how those kids got parented? am absolutely not doubting The World is also to blame but surely it can't be just that?
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Rob Blundell @blundell.eu · 31/08/2026
TheGuardian still behind the curve @mjrobbins.com bsky.app/profile/mjro...
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 30/08/2026
It turns out I am in fact motivated by deadlines 🤷‍♂️
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Martin Robbins @mjrobbins.com · 30/08/2026
First draft: complete!
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James O'Malley @jamesomalley.co.uk · 28/08/2026
Any MP who signs on to Burgon's motion is not acting within the national interest. We need more data centres – and it comes down to a question of security: takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/the-case-f...
takes.jamesomalley.co.uk
The case for Nightingale Datacentres
Britain isn’t prepared for the looming AI national security crisis
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