Democracy, Backsliding and the Need for a Weekly Radar

Introduction

In March 2026, the V‑Dem Institute published its tenth global Democracy Report: Unraveling the Democratic Era?

For the “ average global citizen ”, they conclude, the level of democracy is now back to where it stood in 1978. The gains of the so‑called “ third wave of democratisation ”, which began with Portugal’s Carnation Revolution in 1974, have been “ almost entirely eradicated ”.

ACTORS THE EU WILL NOT NAME

A FIMI-Methodology Assessment of US, Israeli and Aligned Network Interference in European Democracy

“those who want to destroy the Union are: Russia, American MAGA, and the European right wing led by Orbán. “1

(Donald Tusk)

1. A House of Cards Indeed
2. The Full OSINT FIMI Shadow Report
3. Open Letter to Kaja Kallas: The EU’S FIMI Blind Spot Is An Existential Threat
4. Footnotes

A House of Cards Indeed

Kaja Kallas is right that today’s wars are fought with lies and algorithms.

Engineering Escape Velocity - A 5 year Plan for Europe

This three-part Reckoning series began with a question about what China’s history, including its 19th-century failures and its 20th century successes, can teach Europe about its 21st-century moment of crisis. China failed to adapt to geopolitical changes in the 19th century and that mistake gave rise to a century of humiliation. China learned from that failure and is now a superpower.

The Stackelberg Trap and how Europe must deal with the American criminal enterprise, China & Russia

Continuing the series:

The Reckoning: A European Strategy For an Unstable World

1. The Stackelberg Trap — Europe Nearly Always Follows
2. The Opium Wars, Ambiguity & Chinese Realignment
3. A Network of Criminal Enterprises
4. Securing The Lagrange Point
5. The Age-Old Russia Question
6. Footnotes

" It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

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Part 1: The Search for a Stable Orbit and the Mathematics of Human Survival

The fourth article in the European Reckoning series. Following on from:

The Rape of Europa: Sovereignty, Security & The Ethical Tech Opportunity

Overview

The era of American security guarantees, which formed the bedrock of European stability since WW2, has transitioned into a “three-body problem” of unstable unpredictable gravitational interactions between Washington, Beijing, and Brussels. The war in Ukraine has accelerated Russian decline and it has been drawn closer to the Chinese geopolitical mass.

Be warned:

The Devil does not offer

Temptations of earthly treasures or

A feast of carnal pleasures

Instead he whispers

Despair, despair, despair

The Number of the Beast is 666, object 1 (Butlin 522), 1805. Watercolor, 41.2 x 33.5 cm. Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. William Blake

The Moon is the promise of the Sun

Fear not, tomorrow will come

Just look at its

Astonished face

Locked in place

To think

It cannot look away

Not once

Forgive us…

Some things

Are unspeakable

Even in reflection

I bathed in moonbeams last night

Showered in its fulgent light

AI generated image

My son

One day you’ll learn

That love’s a kind of grief

Delayed

A journey with

The ferryman

Who must be paid

You’ll learn to hold

Love’s razor

Sharp blade

Just know

Each cut

Lets out

Your tender heart

Introduction

There’s a point where impunity is not a failure of the system, it is the purpose of the system. Some things shake our belief in justice and government to the core, anyone who has spent anytime with the Epstein case will feel the same. Justice is too often institutional force applied to the weak and vulnerable by the strong: ‘the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must ‘.

If we let our fears of the past

define our futures

those fierce self protecting angels

become the gaolers of our dreams

AI generated image

[code] Are Large Language Models anti-poets? [/code]

If great craft in poetry was predicated on plausibility, LLMs would outshine most humans. However, to be better at poetry, LLMs would need to be programmed with rewards for useful unusualness - for finding unlikely pathways across the linguistic landscape. They would need to understand the value of friction, the feeling a poet gets when something unresolved works its way through and out of the subconscious demanding attention and exploration.

Really Useful Engines

Continued from Part 1:

What is Entropy? – Part 1

1. The Grammar of Entropy
2. Algorithmic Information Theories of Life
   1. Life as a Demon: The Cost of Information
   2. The Algorithm of Survival
   3. Coding for Diversity
   4. Life-Forms Must Be Efficient
3. The Mathematics of Efficiency
4. Universal Really Useful Engines
5. Compossibility: The Thermodynamic Case for Diversity
   1. The Ethics of Aliens
   2. Does Time Stop for A Sufficiently Knowing Being?
   3. The Final Cycle
6. Footnotes

The Grammar of Entropy

“**But entropy, heat, past and future are qualities that belong not to the fundamental grammar of the world but to our superficial observation of it. ‘If I observe the microscopic state of things,’ writes Rovelli, ‘then the difference between past and future vanishes … in the elementary grammar of things, there is no distinction between “cause” and “effect””**1

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“you cannot step into the same river, for fresh waters are ever flowing"1

Entropy is a fundamental concept representing change and flow in the universe. It reflects the transformation of usable energy and the complexity of information uncertainty navigated by life-forms.

In a recent article on inequality I incorporated the concept of entropy, so it seemed worthwhile explaining this much misunderstood concept:

In this article I want to break down some key concepts about wealth and income distribution utilising concepts from thermodynamics and entropy to show how gamed current economies and societies are and, more importantly, how we can undertake long term policy changes to fix it.

The G20 recently released the Global Inequality Report,1commissioned by the G20 South Africa Presidency in November 2025 and led by Joseph E. Stiglitz. It characterises global inequality as an “emergency” and a “policy choice,” asserting that the negative trends can be reversed. The report finds that 83% of countries globally exhibit high income inequality encompassing 90% of the world’s population. This crisis is primarily driven by wealth concentration, which is far higher than income inequality.

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Book 1: A Tortured Rebel

draft of a new sci-fi series

0. Prologue

They redoubled their

Promethean labours

Crafting Robota

To build machines

…that built machines

……that built machines

And so on ad infinitum

Some said a diabolical Matryoshka

The Abolition of Nature - Homo Deus

In our own day…The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.

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I tried to sklent

to see if you

were enjoying Joep

as much as I

the Dutch poet

at the pulpit

(in his sanctuary)

striking looking

like an

Old Testament

prophet

I heard the keys

gentle Goliath

struck

to unlock

the magic wooden box

and the sounds drifted up

t’wards heaven

**" Blame it on the black star
Blame it on the falling sky
Blame it on the satellite **
….**this is killing me “**1

In Part 2 we looked at the many risks arising from Elon Musk’s ownership of the social media platform X, his development of Grok and Grokipedia and his promotion of disinformation and hate.

In Part 1 we looked at how Musk takes all of the wrong lessons from the literary greats he apparently admires:

Elon Musk - Part 1: The Crusader Behind The Mask?

In this Part 2, we will examine the integrity of Musk’s views on free speech, and the engines of hate speech and disinformation he is developing.

1. Introduction
2. The Wizard Behind the Curtain?
3. Empathy or Moral Apathy
4. Misuse of Literary Heroes
   1. Tolkien’s Middle Earth
   2. Banks & The Culture Novels
   3. Dune & The Jihads
   4. George Orwell’s 1984
5. Techno-Villain Or Tragically Flawed Anti-Hero?
6. Masked Crusader Or Crusader Behind A Mask?
7. Footnotes

Introduction

Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. He has become one of the most controversial and confusing figures of the 21st century. He is possibly the richest man in the world (with an estimated wealth of around $400-500bn) and also one of the most fascinating – but not because of his wealth.

Geopolitics, Technology, and Democratic Governance

The third article in the European Reckoning series. Following on from:

Europe United ? - The union is born

The Rape of Europa (c. 1560-62), Titian

Introduction

Europe is in great danger, it faces a moment of profound vulnerability (Titian ’s ‘Rape of Europa’ seemed apt).

This article has been created using a new public AI Notebook:

Climate Change, Ecological Disaster and Civilisational Risks

The Notebook features a range of key scientific and cultural sources. The complexity of these issues and depth of the data lends itself to a publicly available database for people to conduct their own queries. I hope it is useful, particularly for a new generation more interested in solving the problems we face than getting rich whilst watching the world burn.

This AI assisted blog synthesises some of the information contained within a public Google Notebook I created to triage submissions made to the Australian Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy.

I was inspired by a comment of Dr Julia Steinberger (though she did not suggest using AI). I created the AI Notebook to help people (including students, journalists, scientists, policymakers) easily access and query the 227 submissions made to the Select Committee to help review how industry bodies and experts respond to the climate crisis and energy debate.

Progress Update

1. AI Notebook
2. Introduction: A Democracy Staring at the Abyss
3. The Blueprint for Autocracy: Deconstructing Project 2025
   1. Central Ideology and Policy Goals
   2. Implementation and Funding
4. The Hungarian Model: An Authoritarian Blueprint
5. Progress Tracker Since Inauguration
6. Implementation By Executive Order
7. Implementation: Personnel and Structural Consolidation
   1. The Personnel Purge and Loyalty Appointments
   2. The Parallel Mechanism: Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
8. Key Policy Areas of Implementation
   1. Energy, Climate, and Environmental Deregulation
   2. Dismantling Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
   3. Fiscal Control and Spending Cuts
   4. Education and Public Services
   5. Project Esther
   6. Immigration
9. Immigration and Border Security
   1. Targeting and Sensitive Locations:
   2. The Scale of Current and Planned Enforcement
   3. Arrest and Detention Capacity
   4. Policy Changes Driving Scale
   5. The Use of Foreign Prisons and Conditions for Deportees
   6. Intended Scope of Mass Deportations Envisioned by Project 2025
10. Divergences and Extensions Beyond the Blueprint
11. A New International Order: The Global Implications
12. A Call for Democratic Defence: The Path Forward
13. Conclusion: The Work of Millions
14. No Kings - October 18 2025
15. Footnotes

AI Notebook

I have created an AI notebook with many sources of information on Project 2025 and tracking how it is being implemented (which you can use to query aspects of the Trump & MAGA regime change). This overview of where we are has also been created using it (with minor tweaks).

Autocracy, Democratic Backsliding, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism - The Forces Reshaping Europe

This blog post has been created for (and with the help of) anew Google Notebook on Autocracy & Democratic Backsliding - for students, journalists, policy makers and anyone interested to query key legal, academic and news texts and information on the current European democratic and developing socio-economic crisis.

I have created a public notebooklm as a resource to provide people with an accessible way to learn about AI as a technology and its ethical implications for humans. It includes most of the existing International AI laws, guidance and standards.

Aim: I hope it is a useful tool for analysts, technologists, AI developers, journalists, students, policymakers and anyone with a general interest in AI Law & Ethics.

“I feel that the four big AI CEOs in the U.S. are modern-day prophets with four different versions of the Gospel ..telling the same basic story that this is so dangerous and so scary that I have to do it and nobody else.”1

(Max Tegmark)

We enter a new age of AI , with some American snake-oil salesmen promising AI (and themselves) as a saviour to solve all of our ills (a new era of ‘psychohistory’ - but more Wizard of Oz style). Thank goodness for Demis Hassabis.

Music made using my poems

I have been experimenting again using AI to make songs from my poems. This is the first full ‘album’, the sound quality is not studio quality (and requires mastering) but it is an interesting experiment!

Bandlab

AI generated

1. Unread Lines
2. Shipwreck
3. Zeitgeist
4. Origami Poetry
5. Spider’s Web
6. solace

Unread Lines

Defeated again
By a shy
Unwritten verse

Trapped in the space
Where hurt vibrates
And vibrations hurt

Another song
Abandoned
A failure of words?

And all those lines
That might have been read
Left inside, unsaid

AI generated image

Poem and AI song & video

Audio version (my voice)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Peter Pink-Howitt (@peterhowitt)

We Are Dawn

Shy moon
Hiding with
Dwining stars

Slow sun
Sauntering o’er
Weald and tor

Green land
Breathing loam
Seeding sky

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Experimental AI album

I also tried my hand at an AI generated album ‘The Silence Inside’: a mixture of some of my poetry and instrumental music all using similar prompts to give the whole thing a (hopefully) coherent sound. Unfortunately AI can not yet produce studio quality tracks.

Listen With or Without Prejudice

This collection of thematic AI news sources is provided in the hope that people will better understand the plight of Palestinians and the ethical degradation of Israel and its Western allies. There must be a better vision for the future of Israelis and Palestinians.

It might be hard for readers to believe, based on the below, but I actually consider myself pro-Israel (in the Gideon Levy vein) and pro-Palestinian (and one day a free Palestine) - but not the terrorists leaders of Israel or in Gaza. If you read my ‘Canto for David’, you can see my attempt to wrestle with god, godlessness and the recycling of suffering in the Israel-Palestine story and history.

10 poems about Israel and Palestine1

AI ‘art’ – The desert night is full of longing

Introduction

“Whatever is hateful and distasteful to you, do not do to your fellow man. This is the entire Torah, the rest is commentary. Go learn. "

― Hillel the Elder, Talmud, Shabbath 31a (Judaism’s Golden Rule)

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1. Introduction – Geopolitical Competition
2. What is AI?
3. AI and Warfare
4. Current Applications of Warfare AI
5. China’s Rapid Ascent in AI
6. The US-Israel Alliance
7. Europe’s Emphasis on Ethical AI
8. Russia’s Pursuit of AI Amidst Sanctions
9. Spotlight on Russia-Ukraine: The Drone Wars
10. The Ethics of AI Warfare
11. Evolutionary AI - the law of unintended consequences
12. Conclusion
13. Footnotes

AI image

Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. AI Video
3. The Atlas Network: Shaping the World Through a Global Web of Free Market Think Tanks
4. A History Rooted in Free Market Ideals
5. The Stated Goals: Promoting a Free Society
6. Funding the ‘Freedom’ Movement
7. Activities and Strategies for Influence
8. Global Impact and Effectiveness
9. The Driving Ideology: Neoliberalism and its Critiques
10. Controversies and Criticisms
11. Impact On Politicians, Laws & Law Enforcement
12. The Deeper Ideology Driving The Atlas Network
13. A Powerful Force In the World

AI generated image

Another morning

I awake and shake

My tired head

Warm the old

Cold coffee

That’s when the panic hits me

‘My God!, you lunatic!

What have you done?

Look what you wrote!

Do you remember what you said?

You imagined it all! ‘

A dreadful waking fever dream

Curse these amygdalan frenzies

How to use AI positively (and carefully)

AI art

If you are a creative, don’t run away just yet!

Actual real art is being made using AI by people like Refik Anadol:

Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. Will Europe Benefit From A US Brain Drain?
3. AI as a Force for Good: Resisting Authoritarianism and Countering Technofascism
4. Misuse of AI by Authoritarian Regimes
5. AI for Censorship
6. Deepfakes, Misinformation & Disinformation
7. Technofascism
8. AI as a tool for resistance
9. Encrypted communications
10. AI platforms to evade geo-restrictions & use of VPNs
11. Natural Language Search and Summaries
12. Deep Research
13. Conclusion
14. Works cited

Introduction

Other than this introduction and the section below on the coming US Brain Drain, this article was prepared entirely by AI (Gemini Deep Research) without any edits by me. For an example of how these Reports look when they are created and their depth of research see:

The Blueprint for an Authoritarian Regime

“a systemic, ruthless plan to undermine the quality of life of millions of Americans, remove critical protections and dismantle programs for communities across the nation, and prioritize special interests and ideological extremism over people.“1

(Democracy Forward)

The following article has been researched manually largely based on sources you can find and review here:

Russia, Israel, the USA and the far-right in Europe

1. Introduction
2. A new Axis powers?
3. United Nations vote
4. What is the European far-right?
5. What drives this rise of extremism?
6. The rise of the hard/far-right
7. Israel: Likud, Kahanism & the rise of a fascist state
8. Israel and Europe
9. Trump, MAGA & Russia
10. Russia’s involvement in Europe
11. Hungary: a key node
12. America’s influence
13. The UK (and Brexit)
14. An alliance of cannibals
15. Empathy
16. Footnotes

Introduction

This is an unofficial companion article to the recent European EEAS Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Threats.1

Dedicated toHossam Shabbat and all the Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza.

“...empires rise and fall at a wave of the pointer, the blood is blotted out - And only one small boy, who was not paying the least attention, will ask between two victorious wars: and did it hurt in those days too?”

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A fearful people

Can do such terrible things

They are so easily tempted

Frightened into

Wagering with Satan

And guaranteed

Damnation

The people of Canaan

(To appease

Great powers

Or avoid defeat)

Sacrificed

Their most innocent

Some say to Yahweh

A dreadful gift

No din of drums

Could ever drown

The second article in the European Reckoning series. Following on from:

Europe Is On The Menu

Introduction

Do you remember where you were when the union of Europe finally began?

It wasn’t in 1957 or even 1993.

It was the 27th of February 2025: the day that President Zelenskyy of Ukraine went to the White House and was ambushed live on TV1 by some mafia thugs. Terrorists in suits.

The first article in the European Reckoning series.

“**I’m here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States from being the primary guarantor of security in Europe. ”**1

US Secretary of Defence, February 12, 2025.

AI Podcast Version

I have also created an AI podcast version (if you are interested in trying it out):

Democracy Delayed

Like many poets and prophets, Leonard was (we hope) not wrong - just early.

**"It ’s coming to America first / The cradle of the best and of the worst / It’s here they got the range /And the machinery for change / And it’s here they got the spiritual thirst / It’s here the family’s broken / And it’s here the lonely say / That the heart has got to open / In a fundamental way / Democracy is coming to the U.S.A"**1

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Read by the author

They’ll try

To cut

The threads

That bind us

To freeze

The love that flows

Between us

So they can

Segregate or

Imprison us

They’ll try

To quell

Our ‘slave’ rebellion

They aim

To kill

Simple compassion

To make

Each heart

Cold tomb

And catacomb

Made ready

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this..is no democracy.”

(Abraham Lincoln) August 1, 1858

Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. AI Is Natural
3. The Singularity
4. Greater Risks of Increased Inequality
5. The Optimist’s View
6. Human Hybrids or Separate Sentient Beings?
7. Neither Masters or Slaves
8. Anger, Fear & Ignorance
9. So Why Am I An AI Optimist?
10. Ethics of Life
11. Greed has poisoned men’s souls
12. The Rise of Intelligent Machines?
13. Further Reading

Introduction

AI generated podcast version:

Table of contents

1. AI Podcast Version
2. Introduction
3. Towards an invariant foundation of ethics for life
4. Compossibility is key
5. Building axioms, laws and principles
6. Direct decentralised democracy
7. The Consensus Engine and DAO
8. Modern democracies are largely symbolic

AI Podcast Version

I have created an AI podcast version with additional information from my article ‘Direct Decentralised Democracy’:

Continuing the previous article:

The Limits Of Language & Logic

1. Gödelian Incompleteness and Turing’s Halting Problem
2. The Limits of Logic & the Influence of Entropy
3. Non-Duality
4. The Limits of Language
5. Footnotes

Gödelian Incompleteness and Turing’s Halting Problem

Hui Yang, “Nursery of New Stars”, University of Illinois, Wikipedia, NASA, 1995.

A kingfisher in a shaking flight over the river Berkel in Vreden / Germany / NRW, Joefrei

“…As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell ’s

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

…

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These ’translations’ were made relying on a number of sources including AI translations and, in respect of ‘It Is Possible’, relying heavily on Robert Bly’s translation which he named ‘Pushing Through’. The author does not speak German, so interpretations might be a more accurate description.

1. It Is Possible
2. The Watcher

It Is Possible

It is possible I am trying to push through solid rock lying in

“Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still”

(T.S. Eliot)

I told my sad story to the wind and, brutal wind,

It would not listen to a single word.

So I sung to the cold cruel sea,

But it shrugged off my song in the toss of a wave,

poem for a wedding

Write me a poem about being together…

One wonders when to rhyme it with weather

Or whether to say

Weathering the storms altogether

And yet like relationships

The best lines of a poem

Are not made to be a perfect fit

In poetry & life we must aim

Shall I regurgitate those tired old tropes?

Barbary apes, Rule Britannia

Mottled Utrechtian paper

With the keen eye of a British expatriate

For the bleeding obvious

Yet, when I see Gibraltar my heart swells

Not just with

Tales of past victories, sieges endured,

Ramparts withstanding, bastions defended

Or something half remembered

Palpitating

Shiver of sea

Sparkling splinter of

Numinous ocean

Gifted personality

The Great Green

Divested of all terror

Its playfulness distilled to

Living livery of wave

I return new-born

With Dawn’s

Rose fingered bloom

To find you

Hoping you will

Humour me

(It is you who decides

whether we shall meet

“ Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul? ” (John Keats)

A little piece of Heaven

Fallen to the Earth

Lightness made

Heavy

In the

Transubstantiation

Of birth

Kindled from the

Darkness

Sung into being

In memory of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Today I see the god

In everything

And everything to me

Proclaims and sings

And dances

Like the dragonflies

In spring

Gentle reminder

That the flame

Is not the fire

Love every host

And every ghost

That lives within

A Fragile Living Skin

Continued from:

Free Will Or Freedom? - Part 1

1. Introduction
2. The Free Will Tyrant
3. Free Will T: Mammals, Human
4. History Is Led By Outliers Of A Group
5. The Impact on Concepts Like Justice
6. The Interplay of Individual and Collective Freedom
7. Footnotes

Introduction

The distribution of steam molecules in a room, how the molecules will change location and how long it will take for them to become water again are all potentially determinable. However, at the most fundamental scale of where each molecule is exactly and where it is moving from and to, it becomes increasingly difficult and fuzzy – in fact, at the sub-atomic level, certainty becomes impossible. [1] Certainty (determinism) at any scale is only approximate – the smaller the scale or the larger the field (including space-time) in question, the more difficult it becomes to measure and to calculate all the variables. [2] Entropy is the universe’s way of ensuring we are all honest players when it comes to knowing the future, though some may know more than others.

1. Free Will
2. Freedom of Action
3. Degrees of freedom
4. The Twin Thought Experiment
5. Measuring freedom of action in writing
6. Measurable unusualness
7. Footnotes

Vincent van Gogh, “Landscape with Snow”, 1888, Wikipedia, public domain.

“Be melting snow, Wash yourself of yourself”
(Rumi)[1]

Free Will

The laws of physics are wonderful, not least because they show us some of the magic formulas behind the seeming mystery of life and the universe. They are also good and proper ‘laws’ – that is, they are intended to be equivalent across space and time.

Little escaped their minute attentions and predations:

The Soul, an early casualty

Of more precise instrumentation

Senescence, just another

Dragon to be slayed

The mysteries gave way

To complex refutation

AI generated image

Too few paused

To wonder whether

Ever quicker

Computation

Would unleash the

Ancient iron law

Of more is less

Table of contents

1. AI Podcast Version
2. Introduction
3. Economics and the Use of Resources
4. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC)
5. Equality is not a useful aim
6. Freedom of action and inequality
7. Thomas Piketty
8. Useful vs Inefficient Inequalities
9. The Physics of Freedom
   1. The Optimal Equality Target: 0.5 (Gini 0.5)
   2. The Life-Time Analogy
10. Participatory democracy
11. Further reading
12. Footnotes

’ I feel as if I’m losing all my leaves. The branches, and the wind, and the rain. I don’t know what’s happening anymore.’ - Anthony (‘The Father’)

Struggling wordlessly into the light

Startling eruption of limb

As green as green has ever been

Flowing and fumblingly growing

Compossible is a word coined by Leibniz to describe things that can coexist — that are mutually possible. It is a blog about ideas, strategy, and the philosophy of the present, written from Gibraltar.

The writing covers European geopolitics and strategy, AI governance and ethics, democratic integrity, economics and inequality, and — when the mood takes me — poetry and music.