Hot enough for you?

Carole here with a phrase you’ve probably had someone or other say to you today. The person we could be addressing that to is Nigel Farage. Hot enough for you, Nige? Apparently so. So hot that Nige is running interference in the Mail on Sunday. It ran a spurious front page story that claimed the now infamous £5m donation he received from cryptobillionaire Christopher Harborne only became known because…the Kremlin hacked his phone. 

It wasn’t quite the dog ate my homework but it’s not far off. The heat is on Farage and if you missed it, do catch up with the first part of the Harborne Receipts, a deep dive into Harborne’s donations to Farage and Boris Johnson, and their parties, by the Nerve’s Charlie Young and Lucia Osborne-Crowley, that went viral on social media over the weekend. 

Here’s one tiny detail you may have missed. On the same day Harborne - whose wealth derives in large part from Tether, a so-called “stablecoin” - donated £3m to Farage, Farage published an op-ed saying Reform will bring forward stablecoin-friendly policies!

On Friday night, I interviewed Karen Hao, a former WSJ journalist, for a Nerve event in collaboration with the How To Academy. Karen’s influential and provocative book The Empire of AI is both a deep dive into OpenAI - she was the first reporter to gain access to the company - and a critique of the imperialist ideology and extractive design of the Silicon Valley companies fuelling the boom. 

Karen is a brilliant thinker and speaker and you can read an edited version of the conversation here. And now an incredible new anti-AI advocate has joined her ranks: the pope. Yesterday, he published his first encyclical and it was all about AI. It’s an incredible document, and for many people I know who have been pushing back hard against the “inevitability” of the technology, in its current iteration, it was a huge breath of fresh air. “New forms of slavery are fueled by economic chains and digital infrastructures,” he wrote in a passage that could have come straight from Karen’s book. 

Finally, here’s a photograph of Lucia Osborne-Crowley, speaking to Gisèle Pelicot this afternoon for the Nerve. We’re delighted that Penguin, the publisher of Gisèle’s book A Hymn to Life, and her (and my!) super-agent Susanna Lea, entrusted us with this interview, which we’ll publish in full on Friday. 

I’m going to let the rest of the team tell you what’s in today’s edition. Links below.

Thanks for reading,

Carole

There was a packed auditorium last Friday when the Nerve and the How to Academy hosted a conversation between Karen Hao and Carole Cadwalladr. Her take on Sam Altman, AI as a political project and how the kids are fighting back was fascinating. Read an edited transcript here.

“Empires rise and fall, but to my knowledge no state has ever deliberately, and systematically, killed its own power – much less with such speed,” writes the historian and expert on fascism Timothy Snyder of the US under Trump. From the abandonment of its alliances to the dismantling of its education system, Snyder lays out exactly why Trump and his “world-historic strategic buffoonery” are clear signs of a superpower suicide. Read Snyder’s fascinating piece here.

In February, it was revealed that over 2,000 Britons, mostly dual British Israeli nationals, have served for the Israel military in the Gaza war since 7 October 2023. While the foreign office currently advises British nationals against fighting in Ukraine and warns they could be prosecuted on return, the government does not even collect data on British nationals serving in the IDF. Today, an open letter signed by 60 politicians, human rights lawyers and journalists says that that should change. Our political commentator Sangita Myska argues that it’s essential the government investigate “potential links to war crimes” in relation to returning dual nationals and Britons. Read Sangita’s column here.

A new Russell T Davies series is always an event and for his first return to Channel 4 since 2021’s smash hit It’s A Sin, he brings together TV greats Alan Cumming and David Morrissey playing two Manchester neighbours who fall out over a misunderstanding which escalates against a backdrop of rising fear among the queer community. Tip Toe, which starts on Sunday, is a “blistering thriller” says TV writer Julia Raeside - but if you’re after something calmer in this heat try a cool plunge into Tom Fort’s new book Lido Land, a lively cultural history of Britain’s open air swimming spots. Elsewhere, the Nerve team has recommendations for theatre, music and more. Read the hotlist here.

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See you on Friday.