The Productive Pessimist

  Ability, Dismissed - Again Young entrepreneurs. Female entrepreneurs. Female founders.  Yet again, a UK government makes vague mentions about "reducing the welfare bill" (having already claimed there's £15billion of headroom, rising to over £20billion in three years, and whilst expressing "full commitment" to AI, which is going to result in a wholesale loss  of jobs and opportunities), but disabled people, who bear the brunt of society's dissatisfaction with the welfare spend, and who are routinely the focus of media vitriol and aggressive rhetoric, are conspicuous in John Healey's enthusiasm for "supporting British entrepreneurship" by our absence. Apparently, even this enthusiastically "pro-British success" Labour government, with all its vision and ideology, can't conceive of disabled entrepreneurs.  A government with a responsibility to supporting every demographic in its society cannot see businesses being run by disabled p...

  Image shows a black typewriter with a sheet of paper reading "AI Ethics" on a wooden desk In recent weeks on Instagram, I've seen "whatabout-ism" around AI - "You're actually just racist, anti-Black, and operating from a colonialist mindset if you don't support AI",   "Neurodivergent people like me need  AI to achieve our potential!" LinkedIn is overwhelmingly in favour of AI, because of course it is - for people who talk such big games about how "business-minded" they are, how "hard" they work, and how "lazy and undeserving" people who are unemployed or under-employed are, the folks on LinkedIn, especially the white cis men, don't like to actually do work.  They actually have a lot in common with the AI-as-a-disability-inclusion-right ADHD folk on Instagram; "I'm an ideas person; I shouldn't be hamstrung by the fact that there just isn't the time for me to get all my ideas out in a...