: How to (re)move Windows 11's supposedly 'unmovable' files in order to shrink its disk partition It took a while until annoyance (and ethics?) overcame my laziness, but I finally got to the point …
: Anthropic develops an AI model that is extremely good at finding and exploiting previously unknown security bugs in software In further unreassuring news, Anthropic has developed an AI that is capable of “finding and …
: AI-generated Lego videos and Trump’s poo-bombing: welcome to the Iran-US slopaganda wars: …
: The Team Behind a Pro-Iran, Lego-Themed Viral-Video Campaign: Turns out America isn’t the only …
: The incomprehensible events of contemporary times The unbearable inexplicability of modern-day living where on one hand the despicable US president - …
: Legislation punishing citizens of specific nationalities for actions they didn't take is absolutely unacceptable Reform are proposing increasingly odd and racist seeming policies. This one is an unpleasant mix of …
: The Guardian view on Britain’s religious right: using and abusing faith in the pursuit of power: The …
: Welcome to the MrBeastification of British politics: the latest trick up Nigel Farage’s sleeve: …
: Policy reactions so far to the oil crisis Shaiel Ben-Ephraim documents the various policies which a variety of countries have brought in to …
: Maybe you should have bought an electric car: Electric cars have improved a lot since they came out …
: The British Home Secretary's lust for the panopticon Good god, the UK Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has really been saying the quiet part out loud: …
: ‘The era of invincibility is over’: the week big tech was brought to heel: If only.
: Scientists film whale giving birth while other whales work together to help her
: Well this from O. Westin’s Micro SF/F Mastodon account is the most affecting 323-character …
: Four Steps to Hell: ‘…if you’re seeking the most influential aesthetic vision on …
: Top English schools take in half as many Send pupils as average comprehensive: ‘…in …
: who is “you” in a livestream?: ‘A person sitting alone in their room, rambling …
: Campaign groups rail against Palantir, but the UK contracts keep coming: Now we’re apparently …
: Lockdowns trigger dramatic fall in global carbon emissions: “Responses to coronavirus crisis …
: The IEA's ten steps to mitigate against the sky-rocketing price of oil Here’s the full list of recommendations from the International Energy Agency (IEA) as to what …
: The 'OSINT Techniques' book is surely the bible for all things Open Source Intelligence 📚 Finished reading OSINT Techniques: Resources for Uncovering Online Information by Michael Bazzell …
: Timothy Snyder on why the No Kings protests are important Justly famed author Timothy Snyder on his participation in the upcoming US No Kings protest. …
: 📚 Finished reading Cult of the Dead Cow How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the …
: Britain is sliding towards billionaire politics: Is Labour too timid to stop it?: ‘The …
: GB News has become Reform TV and no one stopped it: Yet another example of Britain’s …
: ‘Record-shattering March temperatures in Western North America virtually impossible without …
: An interesting proposal from the government to help Britons reduce fuel consumption and hence costs …
: A short visual history of US interference with Iran Ted Rall’s cartoon summarises just a few reasons why some of the Iranian population might on …
: Iran war risks global food shock as fertiliser supplies cut
: Anthropic-Pentagon Dispute Reverberates in European Capitals: ‘It puts a very stark light on …
: 📚 Finished reading The Cut Throat Trial by S J Fleet. 3 boys are on trial for committing the brutal …
: 🎶 Listening to The Wild, the Innocent & the Raging by Iluka. This one came to my attention after …
: 🎶 Listening to The Clearing by Wolf Alice. Checked this one out after hearing one of its tracks, …
: Oil company shares soar to all-time highs as Middle East war turbocharges price per barrel
: Little liars: babies younger than one practise deceit, study suggests
: Vulnerable women in England still being arrested over suspected illegal abortions
: What do coders do after AI?: Somewhat depends on whether you like coding as a craft in itself or …
: Noted 6 decades ago: '...extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people' We can’t say we weren’t warned. From Joseph Weizenbaum, writing in 1976 (I think): I …
: 📚 Finished listening to V for Vendetta by Steve Moore. This V for Vendetta is the novelisation of …
: One reason LLMs hallucinate is because we incentivise them to give any answer over saying they don't know A paper by Kalai et al “Why Language Models Hallucinate” gives one explanation as to why …
: New Employment Rights Act ‘a huge boost for women in the workplace’: A rare bright spot in the …
: UK must stockpile food in readiness for climate shocks or war, expert warns: ‘The first UK …
: A GUI for the Substack archiving process We recently covered how to archive Substack newsletters to your local computer, as well as how to …
: 🎶 Listening to Bleeds by Wednesday. This album seemed fairly universally acclaimed in many …
: The Greens win the Gorton and Denton by-election by a whopping 12 percentage points Well this is an unexpectedly pleasing result from yesterday’s Gorton and Denton by-election. …
: 📚 Finished reading Julia by Sandra Newman. This is a retelling of George Orwell’s extremely …
: The inventor of the world wide web implores us to remember that 'This Is For Everyone' 📚 Finished reading This Is for Everyone by Tim Berners-Lee. This is partly a biography of possibly …
: From NPR: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is urging broadcasters to air more …
: Our American friends continue with their gratifying propensity to name their legislative bills with …
: Companies are trying to force their employees to use generative AI When a friend told me that her employer was monitoring its staff for generative AI usage I had …
: Accenture ‘links staff promotions to use of AI tools’
: Researchers find that using X's algorithm shifts people's political views to the right There’s some very valuable insights in paper recently published in Nature - “The …
: The Big Short retells and explains what led to the devasting 2007-2008 financial crisis 🎥 Watched The Big Short. This is a surprisingly gripping film about a few renegade bankers back in …
: $15 million of USAID's former budget seized to provide protection for 1 Trump official From The New Republic: Office of Budget and Management Director Russell Vought killed USAID, …
: The left is missing out on AI: ‘…ceding debate about a threat and opportunity to the …
: How to archive even paid Substacks - converting them into an eBook In recent years, a sizeable amount of great writers, professional or otherwise, have started sharing …
: In 1984, An Unemployed Ice Cream Truck Driver Memorized A Game Show’s Secret Winning Formula. …
: Where are all the ‘Don’t tread on me’ Americans?: ‘If you oppose tyranny, the people of …
: Revealed: The true toll of female suicides in UK with domestic abuse at their core: ‘Research …
: John Higgs presents the illustrious history of Doctor Who in his book 'Exterminate/Regenerate' 📚Finished listening to Exterminate/Regenerate by John Higgs. This is a book surrounding the history …
: Stop generating, start thinking: Arguments against letting Claude Code et al just blindly do your …
: Where to view and download the recently released 'Epstein files' Everyone who has seen any news in recent times will be aware that the US authorities have released a …
: A non-exhaustive list of cases where it is alleged that generative AI may have played some part in humans committing fatal violence to themselves or others Here’s the start of a quick collation of articles I’ve seen over time that concern cases …
: The Spanish Prime Minister outlines the urgent moral and pragmatic case for warmly welcoming immigrants to our shores This op-ed, written by the Pedro Sánchez, the Prime Minister of Spain, is an accurate and beautiful …
: An experiment suggests that using AI 'impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities' when it comes to mastering programming tasks A new preprint suggests whilst the use of AI assistants can improve the productivity of workers - …
: AI companies are happily releasing products that they don't know how to test the safety of I’m aware of the school of thought that says all the dramatic “AIs are so powerful we …
: Dryoutside calculates whether it’s worth hanging your clothes outside to dry or not I’ve no idea yet how reliable it is but I do enjoy the idea of dryoutside. It solves that …
: Despicable sex crimes aside, Jeffrey Epstein aimed to orchestrate 'the downfall of the global order' I hadn’t appreciated that Jeffrey Epstein, a man who committed and facilitated some of the …
: Write about the future you want: “If complaining worked, we would have won the culture war …
: The enshittification of the United States of America I’ve written about Cory Doctorow’s concept of platform enshittification before. In …
: In 'Artificial Wisdom', Humanity must choose between a deeply flawed politician and an AI to save the planet 📚 Finished reading Artificial Wisdom by Thomas R Weaver. One of those books that marries together …
: 🎶 Listening to moisturizer by Wet Leg. The creative geniuses behind 2021’s Chaise Longue et …
: 📺 Watched season 4 of The Traitors. Back to the normies after the celebrity dalliance. This time …
: The enshittification of American hegemony: Countries as platforms.
: U.S Proxy Warfare: Patterns in Middle Eastern Conflicts
: Only the Metrics Care: ‘The user isn’t the customer. And they’re not the product …
: The Who Cares Era: ‘…where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for …
: Abusers using AI and digital tech to attack and control women, charity warns: ‘Smartwatches, …
: Well, the inevitable shark-jumping exercise happened, and now there exists a social network …
: How liberals lost the internet: ‘cutting-edge propagandists now focus less on policy messaging …
: When it came down to it, totally predictably, big tech chose to support the baddies We live in a world where gangs of armed, poorly-trained state-sponsored masked thugs are apparently …
: Phantom Obligation: ‘The guilt you feel for something no one asked you to do.’, and how …
: 🎥Watched Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale . Surely the last Downton Abbey film, the famous …
: Harry Shukman goes undercover to discover what is really going on behidn the scenes of the British far right movement in his 'Year of the Rat' 📚 Finished reading: Year of the Rat by Harry Shukman. This is Harry Shukman’s self-authored …
: In Nexus, Harari explains the criticality of information networks - and why the rise of AI might endanger them, and hence humanity 📚 Finished reading Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari. This is recent book from the author probably most …
: It looks like some clever coders have figured out how to remove DRM from newer Kindle books now. …
: Poverty Safari provides insights into the lived experience of poverty and what should be done to alleviate this social ill 📚Finished reading Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey. This book is a mixture of the author’s …
: 📺 Watched This Country seasons 1-3. I’m a sucker for a spoof documentary, and this BBC …
: No Briton is less patriotic than Tommy Robinson There is nothing in this world less patriotic than calling on a foreign leader to come abduct your …
: FTSE 100 CEOs have already earned more than you probably will all year FTSE 100 CEOs earn more than average worker’s yearly pay by noon on 6 January Statistics like these …
: The NYT and WaPo knew the US was going to abduct President Maduro in advance It was interesting to read that (at least) the New York Times and the Washington Post learned about …
: 📺 Watched Return To Paradise seasons 1 and 2. Yet another Death In Paradise spinoff. This time …
: Yet more of the apparent hypocrisy: November 28 2025: Trump issues a full pardon to ex-Honduran …
: Weird date coincidence (I assume): January 3 1990: US captures Panamas’s ruler Noriega on …
: The US bombs Venezuela, kidnapping its president Trump authorises his military to bomb Venezuela and kidnap its president, Maduro, which they have …
: Reform's defence of your right to tweet 'controversial' opinions only extends to their ideological friends On the one hand, Reform UK heavily promote and feature Lucy Connolly at their annual conference - a …
: Books I read in 2025 Here are the books I finished reading in 2025.
: When Online Content Disappears: On link-rot - ‘A quarter of all webpages that existed at one …
: Tech bros seem obsessed with Lord of The Rings. Perhaps they should read it. Innumerable start up ventures from the often morality-free seeming tech bros that control most of …
: The Observer view: Britain cannot afford Reform: ‘They offer not just a toxic nostalgia, but …
: Okay, so age verification is pretty painless. It’s still not a good thing. At all.: ‘It …
: Why RSS matters: RSS has always seemed like one of the increasingly few unconditionally good aspects …
: Large Language Muddle: A litany of some of the darker sides of AI.
: The British anti-immigrant hostility threatens our health service Yet another way in which the often appalling, often racist, anti-immigrant sentiment being …
: Professor Langdon returns in Dan Brown's gripping 'The Secret of Secrets' book 📚 Finished reading: The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown. This is Dan Brown’s sixth book in the …
: Reform UK is mostly funded by very rich people with foreign interests- cui bono? For all their plastic patriotism, Reform sure do get financed by a lot of people with extensive …
: Demographic and attitude shifts suggest that if the Brexit referendum was held today, the pro-Remain side might win by around 8 million. Peter Kellner uses Yougov data to estimate how many British people might vote or against Brexit if …
: Brits keep getting arrested for tweets. Elon Musk is (part of) the reason.: ‘…by …
: An NBER paper estimates that Brexit caused a massive cost to the UK's economy, employment and productivity The National Bureau of Economic Research recently released a working paper looking at The Economic …
: Gardner's 'Time for change' report calls for a positive vision of immigration in the UK, demanding policies that will benefit us all Often I feel that those of us who dislike the continuous and unpatriotic efforts of various …
: In the UK, people who receive certain types of benefits get a £10 Christmas bonus each year. Whilst …
: The public reaction to last week's UK budget. After a lead up mired in chaos and leaks, the UK’s new budget dropped last week. At first …
: King of slop: How anti-migrant AI content made one Sri Lankan influencer rich: He now teaches a …
: 🎥 Watched Cruella. The supposed origin story of everyone’s least favourite Dalmatian-murderer. …
: The 14 common features of fascism according to Umberto Eco As summarised by Open Culture, Umberto Eco documented in his relatively famous essay what he sees as …
: 📚 Finished reading Deadline by Steph McGovern. Deadline or Dead line? Either would make sense. …
: 📺 Watched You season 5. In this, the final season of the show, our apparently charming psychopath …
: Prem Sikka's progressive ideas for Labour's budget this week Prem Sikka has put forward a few progressive-oriented ideas for the Chancellor to deliver in her …
: ‘Too little, too late’: damning report condemns UK’s Covid response: The findings of part 2 of the …
: No pasarán: anti-fascist slogan takes on new significance in Ukraine crisis
: Dark forces are preventing us fighting the climate crisis – by taking knowledge hostage: ‘What …
: Easily download all your completed Datacamp course materials for future offline usage Datacamp is one of the many sites where you can sign up to learning various types of coding. This …
: World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds: ‘That all means the …
: America’s Dumbest Billionaires Fail to Stop Zohran Mamdani: ‘What these oligarchs spent to …
: 🎶 Listening to Dreams on Toast by The Darkness. Another long-serving band releasing an album in 2025 …
: 🎶 Listening to Mayhem by Lady Gaga. Gaga is back with her 6th solo album. Doesn’t time fly? I …
: 📺 Watched The Celebrity Traitors Season 1. Unsurprisingly, this is The Traitors, but with …
: I hate that the British flag is being deliberately transformed into a symbol of hatred Until recently I’ve basically not really cared one way or another about the British flag. It …
: Ash Sarkar busts the myths of 'minority rule', imploring us to work together against those who truly harm us 📚 Finished reading Minority Rule by Ash Sarkar. Ash Sarkar, of Novara Media and “I’m …
: Sarah Wynn-Williams' book 'Careless People' exposes the ethical horrors of how Facebook is run 📚 Finished reading Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. This book, subtitled “A Cautionary …
: Around 1/3 of Englanders report believing in ghosts Some recent ghost stats for Halloween 👻 : Just over one in three people in England said they …
: A strange brew: the case of the man behind an audacious Scottish tea fraud: Real tea, but not from …
: OpenAI estimate that a million people a week show suicidal intent when using ChatGPT This is so sad: More than a million ChatGPT users each week send messages that include “explicit …
: Tory MP criticised after demanding legally settled families be deported: A disgusting policy idea …
: The Majority AI View: Perhaps there’s a silent majority who think that we should just treat it …
: The 6-7 meme Apparently today’s youngsters are descending into hysterics after shouting out the numbers 6 …
: UN expert claims that the appalling rise of UK far right populism is fuelled by the incessant cuts to the welfare system The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Schutter, reminds us that …
: Welfare cuts have fuelled rise of far right and populism, top UN expert says
: ChatGPT’s Atlas: The Browser That’s Anti-Web: Bad UI, doesn’t actually let you see …
: AI eats leisure time, makes employees work more, study finds: “their effect has been to make …
: Tell Me an Ending is a fascinating sci-fi exploration of what it might mean if we could erase our memories 📚 Finished reading Tell Me an Ending by Jo Harkin. This was a book with an absolutely fascinating …
: We must act now: without a written constitution, Reform UK will have carte blanche to toxify our …
: Talks I attended from New Scientist Live 2025 Had another wonderful day out with a friend at 2025’s New Scientist Live The talks I attended: …
: London Became a Global Hub for Phone Theft. Now We Know Why: Thousands of stolen phone shipped …
: Towns may have to be abandoned due to floods with millions more homes in Great Britain at risk: More …
: UK charities say toxic immigration rhetoric leading to threats against staff: due to …
: 📺 Watched Wednesday seasons 1 and 2. This is Wednesday as in Wednesday Addams. The creepy goth girl …
: 📺Watched Doctor Who season 2. That’s the season 2 released in 2025. Confusingly, there have …
: 📺 Watched The Inheritance season 1. This one is a reality show where 13 people are summoned by a …
: 📺 Watched Black Mirror season 7. This unsettling show (mostly) about the dark side of of our …
: 🎥 Watched Infinity Pool. We join a struggling author and his wealthy wife taking a break at a …
: 📚 Finished reading The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. I’d heard grim and dark things about this …
: How A Private Equity Firm Brought About The Death Of British Steel: ‘British Steel has …
: Trump sounds the alarm on pain relief drug – and Kennedy’ and Kennedy’s allies look set to profit: A …
: Russia, China and Iran Use Kirk’s Murder to Stoke Conspiracy Theories and Division
: Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning
: 'Virtue lies in caring about the safety and well-being of children you don’t know' I like this quote from Elizabeth Spiers' article “Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No …
: Why Tommy Robinson rally was different to any other: “…an overt Christian …
: Upsettingly, yesterday saw Britain's 'largest ever far right rally' take place in London Yesterday saw the largest ever far right rally taking place in Britain. (Photo from UPI.com) This is …
: Charlie Kirk’s Murder Is a Tragedy and a Disaster: ‘Escalating political violence corrodes …
: 'The Mauritanian' tells the story of one person's horrific experience of Guantanamo Bay 🎥 Watched The Mauritanian. In an era where people that should know better are expanding the remit of …
: Vaccine hesitancy is causing needless death and suffering, a vaccine expert says.
: The Job Market Is Hell: Masses of people using AI being filtered with AI when applying to rather …
: The insect apocalypse is upon us Also from this month’s Byline Times - concerns for the ongoing ‘insect apocalypse’ …
: The dominance of the right in recent US political violence Some terrifying sounding statistics on political violence in the US in this month’s Byline …
: Broadcasters told not to air any booing of Donald Trump at US Open men’s final
: Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion to authors in landmark AI settlement: For their use of pirated books …
: Finally, some good news: …calling your boss a dickhead is not a sackable offence, a tribunal …
: Doctors find drug that is better than aspirin at preventing heart attacks
: Violence at the Bell Hotel: Far-right footprints in Epping Forest
: Two out of every five protestors arrested at last years anti-immigrant protests had a history of domestic abuse Regarding the upsettingly wide-spread and often violent anti-immigrant protests last year that …
: Two in five arrested for last summer’s UK riots had been reported for domestic abuse: These …
: This is an idea I’ve not seen before on the kind of site that suggests you write a letter …
: Fertility rate hits record low in England, Scotland and Wales
: Britain's anti-immigrant protests are infused with right-wing extremism In things that seem truly unbelievable until they turn out to be true, it turns out that at least …
: Heatwaves are making people age faster, study suggests
: UK gender pay gap underestimated for two decades, report says
: 'Putin's People' gives you a detailed background of Putin's rise to power, and the causes of some of the consequent horrors 📚 Finished reading Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took on the West by …
: In 'Butler to the World', Bullough elucidates Britain's apparent ambition to be a facilitator to any corrupt billionaire that'll pay enough 📚 Finished reading Butler to the World by Oliver Bullough. Oliver Bullough examines what Britain did …
: Why Labour keep losing the attention war
: ‘I can’t cope with it any more’: newsrooms scramble to retain audiences amid the big switch-off
: When a Tweet Becomes a Crime: What the Lucy Connolly Case Says
: Farage's Times interview - his dystopian cruelty and proven incompetence will surely make Britain a worse place for us all Nigel Farage’s interview in last Saturday’s Times is somewhat revealing and very …
: Why Gen Z Loves to Invest: (well, those who have spare money) - mainly because trying to live on …
: Refugee charities install safe rooms and relocate amid rise in far-right threats
: Join in the Archive Team and help save at-risk online content into the Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a superbly useful tool in finding out what various websites in the past …
: The UK government wants to use 'advanced AI' to catch pre-crime AI to help police catch criminals before they strike says a press release from the UK Government …
: America, América by Greg Grandin is an exceptional retelling of the history of the Americas, with great relevance to the world today 📚 Finished reading America, América by Greg Grandin. This book, by a Pulitzer-Prize winning …
: Only a tiny percentage of deaths in the UK result in an inheritance tax payment being due Some facts and figures that are useful to know as the battle around inheritance tax in the UK will …
: ‘None of us feel safe’: attacks on A&E nurses double in six years as waits rise
: Digital resurrection: fascination and fear over the rise of the deathbot: This of course actually …
: Question: who is marking your GCSE? Answer: an AI examiner: A lot of this makes me nervous.
: Police arrest 474 people at protest over Palestine Action ban in London: Mostly for holding up a …
: Scientists find link between genes and ME/chronic fatigue syndrome
: There's been a dramatic increase in the number of young people - especially men - attending church in the UK These charts based on a report commissioned by the Bible Society, leveraging a poll run by Yougov, …
: ‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse: There is nothing new …
: 📚 Want to read: Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp. The usual cheery reading. Luke Kemp surveys the …
: Enough of the billionaires and their big tech. ‘Frugal tech’ will build us all a better world This …
: Enough of the billionaires and their big tech. ‘Frugal tech’ will build us all a better world: Open …
: Spotify CEO invested in AI weapons, now bands are pulling their music: Yet another reason.
: Trump fires statistics chief after soft jobs report: Shooting the messenger because he doesn’t …
: Edinburgh University had ‘outsized’ role in creating racist scientific theories, inquiry finds
: Democrats Act Like Elections Are Complicated. They’re Not. Our research found that economically …
: Democrats Act Like Elections Are Complicated. They’re Not.: Just run on progressive economic …
: Ring reintroduces video sharing with police
: Russia using children to design and test its military drones, investigation finds
: The usual relationship between religion and political party in the UK - something that has really …
: Why the antagonism over the rise in autism diagnoses? It’s actually good news: ‘A ninefold …
: A call for increased involvement of people with obesity and neurodiversity in policy, research, and …
: 📺 Watched seasons 1-3 of The White Lotus. I missed this the first time round, but it appeared to …
: 📺 Watched season 3 of Beyond Paradise. The set-in-Britain spin-off of its more famous cousin, Death …
: 🎶 Listening to Cacophony by Paris Paloma. I’m told a big chunk of folk who have social media …
: 🎶 Listening to Mirror Starts Moving Without Me by Pom Pom Squad. More angsty than the band name …
: 🎶 Listening to Wake Up, Shut Up, Work by Millie Manders and The Shutup. I came across this one …
: 🎶 Listening to I’m Doing It Again Baby! by Girl in Red. The first of a ton of belated and …
: Will Nigel Farage’s attempt to copy and paste Trump’s policies work in the UK?: No, or at least not …
: Voting age to be lowered to 16 across UK by next general election
: Two years ago a data leak revealed the personal details of the thousands of Afghans who secretly helped the UK's armed forces in the decades long war Potentially the worst data leak I’ve ever heard of has just come to light, two years after it …
: The US and UK cuts to aid are a death sentence for millions of people The Trump administration’s cuts to, or rather near eradication of, US Agency for International …
: A text, a Telegram link, then an offer of money: how Iran sought to recruit spies in Israel
: Body Fat Beats BMI in Predicting Death
: How the Supreme Court’s Injunction Ruling Expands Trump’s Power: ‘The Supreme Court ruling …
: Labour’s relationship with working class ‘broken’ as analysis reveals it is now the party of …
: Mustafa Suleyman shares a dramatic warning about our future with AI and synthetic biology in 'The Coming Wave' 📚 Finished listening to The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman. Suleyman is the co-founder of the …
: Why Write?: ‘Write because it improves your mind, not the minds of your readers’
: Meta are apparently offering AI experts $100 million to come work for them Apparently Meta is so ashamed of their AI efforts to date that they are offering $100 million …
: The Hidden Risks of Expanding Medical Assistance in Dying: ‘…ask whether it is …
: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths
: This Pride Month, We’ve Reached Rainbow Capitalism’s End: ‘…when the culture goes in …
: New (to me) vocab just dropped. Apparently the youngsters have taken to referring to an ice cold …
: WhatsApp deploys advertising and accidentally leaks someone's personal information via its AI assistant WhatsApp is finally rolling out adverts to all users. If you have a Facebook or Instagram account it …
: Trump’s New Post About Taylor Swift Is So Immature We Needed Child Psychologists To Explain …
: Millions across US turn out for ‘No Kings’ protests against Donald Trump
: Definitions for populism, nativism, authoritarianism An article in a recent issue of the Byline Times headlined “The British Political-Media Class’ …
: Silicon Valley to Westminster: How the tech-right’s crypto crusade is crossing the Atlantic: Nigel …
: RFK Jr. announces 8 appointees to CDC vaccine panel—they’re not good
: Budget shopping store Poundland, who has ‘everything costs one pound’ as its key selling …
: We Should Immediately Nationalize SpaceX and Starlink: If only.
: 📚 Finished reading Conclave by Robert Harris. I joined the macabre throng of people who suddenly …
: 📚 Finished reading: Unhinged: A Parody by Ian Martin. This is a short satirical book on the subject …
: The unexpected link between Bargain Hunt and terrorism Today, in headlines I never expected to see: …
: Mattel accidentally add link to adult website onto Wicked doll box Mattel has apologized for a misprint on doll packaging that mistakenly listed an adult website, …
: Good news for vegan body builders. As more sophisticated studies start to be run, it seems like …
: Vegan protein matches meat for muscle growth in strength training
: More than half of top 100 mental health TikToks contain misinformation, study finds
: 📚 Finished listening to You Love Me by Caroline Kepnes. Apparentlyy I’m addicted to these …
: Influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate face rape and human trafficking charges in UK: 21 charges in …
: Housing ombudsman for England warns of ‘simmering anger’ over living conditions: There’s been …
: Sadiq Khan calls for partial decriminalisation of cannabis possession: ‘…the way the …
: The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those …
: Unions hail UK’s rail renationalisation bills as a return to ‘public service’
: Only a third of recommendations to tackle endemic racism in UK implemented
: Nick wanted to drop bodyfat and build his own micro-harem of women: how my friend fell for the …
: Live facial recognition cameras may become ‘commonplace’ as police use soars: Needs discussion.
: Nigel Farage currently has 10 paying jobs Nigel Farage now has 10 jobs, only one of which is being an MP. Left Foot Forward lists the jobs and …
: Child sex abuse and grooming gangs: What we know, and what we don’t, from the data: Data …
: White farmers: how a far-right idea was planted in Donald Trump’s mind : His current obsession …
: Borders of whiteness: Do refugees have a colour?: ‘Reports on the refugee crisis have also …
: There's one type of refugee Trump is willing to help - White Afrikaners I don’t know enough about what’s going on in Africa to have an informed opinion - but …
: Shabana Mahmood considers chemical castration for serious sex offenders
: Counter-protests to Saturday's Great British National Strike Stand Up To Racism has a list of counter-protests to the upcoming Great British National Strike (in …
: The Great British National Strike seems to have an insidious far-right agenda This Saturday, 24 May 2025, sees the so-called Great British National Strike taking place in a wide …
: The bankrupt genetic testing company 23andme is selling all its users' genetic data to biotech drug …
: The SingleFile extension lets you easily archive complete webpages SingleFile is a very useful extension for most mainstream web browsers that lets you save the entire …
: Weight-Loss Drugs Aren’t Really About Weight: Perhaps measures like visceral fat are more important …
: 📺 Watched seasons 1-4 of the US series of Ghosts. This is a re-do of the original British version of …
: How weight-loss wonder drugs are redefining the way our bodies work: The ups and downs of GLP-1s.
: The UK's recent local election results are pretty devastating for anyone who opposes Reform The UK had a few mostly-local elections a couple of weeks ago. The Guardian charted some of the …
: This year is the 100 year anniversary of the birth of Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s …
: The Guardian view on Labour’s immigration plan: cohesion isn’t helped by talk of ‘strangers’
: Starmer accused of echoing far-right with ‘island of strangers’ speech: A totally fair accusation.
: Two charts that explain why Reform isn’t being dented by its scandals: Correlations between Reform …
: …I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and …
: How the US president and his clan ushered in a new golden age of corruption: ‘…his …
: ‘It’s an illogical job’: Why driving a train isn’t as cushy as it might seem: A lot more training, …
: Kashmir: how a mountain paradise became a nuclear tinderbox: Key points in the history of Kashmir …
: Wendell Berry's 9 standards for embracing technological innovation Anotherinteresting article from The Honest Broker goes through Wendell Berry’s “nine …
: 9 Rules for New Technology: Wendell Berry’s list of what new technologies should provide for …
: The World’s Largest Search Engine Doesn’t Want You to Search: Google would just love you …
: 'Almost everything in the digital world is turning into its opposite' I totally agree with the main thrust of this article from The Honest Broker - that Google is …
: 📚Finished reading Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid. This short book tells a new episode from the world …
: The Big Winner of Trump’s Much-Hyped Trade Deal Is … Not the U.S.: Did the UK finally manage …
: ‘Outdated and unjust’: can we reform global capitalism?: There is little hope if not.
: The Guardian view on Labour and immigration debate: time to change the frame: ‘The way to win …
: Moderation.txt: Some rules for moderating communities.
: 📺 Watched Louis Theroux: The Settlers. Louis Theroux is back in his indomitable style, this time …
: This Is the Moment of Moral Reckoning in Gaza: How will the world handle the ever-increasing …
: Trump’s College Research Cuts Could Trim GDP By At Least 3.8%, Study Finds
: People with neurodiversity are more likely to also have obesity Flint et al write regarding the potential link between neurodiversity and having obesity; a …
: It never ends - Trump continues to do satirists' jobs for them From the scrapbook of “this must be an Onion article; oh no turns out it isn’t”: …
: Farage claims Reform UK local election gains ‘beginning of the end’ for Tories: The election results …
: Most parents don’t enjoy reading to their children, survey suggests
: A judge just blew up Apple’s control of the App Store: They aren’t allowed to stop apps …
: Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk is a somewhat hagiographic telling of his life up until 2023. 📚 Finished reading: Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. This is one of the more famous biographies of Elon …
: Gender ruling could ‘gravely affect very vulnerable prisoners’ – solicitor
: Government will ban trans employees from toilets that reflect their gender, minister says: …
: Brexiteer Ben Habib vows to ‘unite the right’ as he prepares to launch ‘super …
: Was it the courts, the cops, or The Sun who killed Just Stop Oil?: ‘…the hammer of the …
: ‘The message is clear. Trump and Putin want to destroy Europe’: ‘Trump and Vladimir Putin hold …
: 📚 Want to read: Erasing History by Jason Stanley. Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the …
: Jung - A Very Short Introduction is a useful brief on key Jungian concepts 📚 Finished listening to Jung - A Very Short Introduction by Anthony Stevens. This is exactly what …
: A week after a major hack brought down 4chan and doxxed all its users, it seems like it may be dead …
: Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan Arrested by FBI in Immigration Dispute
: Trump lets the press know exactly what kind of questions he considers ‘good’: ‘He has certain …
: ICE Can Now Enter Your Home Without a Warrant to Look for Migrants, DOJ Memo Says: …
: 2-Year-Old U.S. Citizen Deported ‘With No Meaningful Process,’ Judge Suspects
: Autocracy, Inc. elucidates the workings of the modern-day autocrats and how we might fight against them 📚 Finished reading Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum. In this book I believe Anne Applebaum adeptly …
: We Are at Peak ‘Yep’ and It’s Wonderful: Word.
: Elon Musk and DOGE’s Savings May Be Erased by New Costs: Not only have they saved only a tiny …
: Trump’s Crimea Proposal Would End a Decade of U.S. Resistance: Officially recognising Crimea as …
: Farage sparks furious backlash after claiming children with special educational needs are ‘over …
: The Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments book is worth a read for anyone involved in carrying them out 📚 Finished reading Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments by Ron Kohavi. This is a very …
: 📚 Want to read: Year of the Rat: Undercover in the British Far Right by Harry Shukman. The British …
: The Government Has Already Won the Meta Case: ‘Facebook is being watched, and it cannot be as …
: A year of hate: what I learned when I went undercover with the far right: Lonely people, into …
: Mark Zuckerberg Says Social Media Is Over: Who needs actual friends when you’ve got “the …
: Lib Dems back ban on playing music and videos on public transport in England: A ban on playing …
: 📺 Watched Matlock. Not the original classic; this is a 2024 call-back to the show. Madeline …
: RIP to the Google Privacy Sandbox: Third-party cookies will continue in Chrome.
: Humanoid workers and surveillance buggies: ‘embodied AI’ is reshaping daily life in China
: Trump Aides Solicit Ideas to Raise Birthrate, From Baby Bonuses to Fertility Planning
: There’s a Reason the World Is a Mess, and It’s Not Trump: Economic stagnation.
: Doctor Who is the best show ever made. Here’s why.: ‘In a time when cruelty and fear …
: Have We Been Thinking About A.D.H.D. All Wrong? : ‘The alternative model, by contrast, tells a …
: Hegseth Said to Have Shared Attack Details in Second Signal Chat: ‘The defense secretary sent …
: Francis, the First Latin American Pope, Dies at 88
: I’m delighted to see gen Z men flocking back to church – I just hope it’s for the right reasons: …
: The Guardian view on City deregulation: a recipe for recklessness: ‘…the Treasury seems …
: Parents must make tough choices on smartphones, says children’s commissioner for England: ‘As …
: Zelenskyy accuses Russia of violating Putin’s Easter ceasefire 2,000 times
: NHS cancer patients denied life-saving drugs due to Brexit costs, report finds
: 🎶 Listening to Super Pedestrian by Annie DiRusso. This is the first album from Annie DiRusso, and …
: Severance, the best show on TV, is back with season 2 📺 Watched Severance season 2. We’re back with our intrepid macro-data-refining team of four …
: 🎙️ Listening to The Retrievals. This is a podcast from the famous about a horrific incident in the …
: This Is How Universities Can Escape Trump’s Trap, if They Dare: The rich ones, at least, could worry …
: The authoritarian takeover attempt is here: And their incompetence is seemingly the main hope we …
: ‘There were no warning signs’: what happens when your partner falls into the ‘manosphere’?: You …
: There’s only one way to fight the climate greenlash: appeal to the naysayers’ self-interest: …
: The long list of words that the Trump administration has banned or restricted government workers from using Brace yourself for the long list of words that the New York Times found are flagged by the Trump …
: Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard: Perhaps the letter with …
: Harvard’s Decision to Resist Trump Is ‘of Momentous Significance’: ‘…rejecting the …
: Inside El Salvador’s CECOT Prison, Where Abrego Garcia Was Held
: Barking at female staff and blocking doorways: Teachers warn of rise in misogyny and racism in UK …
: 📺 Watched Death in Paradise season 14. Back on the tropical island that must have the highest murder …
: 📺 Watched The Apprentice season 19. Previous season.
: Nearly 300 apply as French university offers US academics ‘scientific asylum’
: Toxic Town tells the important story of the Corby toxic waste scandal 📺 Watched Toxic Town. This mini-series was also written by Jack Thorne, the same person who co-wrote …
: 📚 Finished listening to Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes. This is the second book in the …
: Young Men Voters May Be More Likely To Swing Back: ‘Net approval for Trump declined by 29 …
: A crack in the manosphere: Joe Rogan’s guests are revolting: Everyone has some limit, so I’d …
: UK officials label trade documents ‘secret’ to shield from US eyes amid Trump tariff war: Special …
: Scientists hail ‘strongest evidence’ so far for life beyond our solar system: ‘Observations by …
: UK officials label trade documents ‘secret’ to shield from US eyes amid Trump tariff war
: Legal definition of woman is based on biological sex, UK supreme court rules
: And now she wants to start her own social network. Yes, Liz Truss stood up at a crypto conference - …
: Suspected 4chan Hack Could Expose Longtime, Anonymous Admins: People might regret using their actual …
: Liz Truss to launch ‘uncensored’ social network to counter mainstream media m: No thank you.
: Liz Truss re-emerges to tell us how great she and Donald Trump definitely are Our disastrous and incompetent ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss re-emerges to provide an absolutely …
: OpenAI is building a social network: More competition is better, but why is it always the torment …
: OpenAI ships GPT-4.1 without a safety report: Self-regulation doesn’t work shocker.
: She was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone texted her what they said: Is your cab …
: The rise of end times fascism: ‘…the most powerful people in the world are preparing …
: Librarians in UK increasingly asked to remove books, as influence of US pressure groups spreads: …
: ‘Electoral wake-up call’: dozens of Labour MPs risk losing majorities over welfare cuts: …
: The White House refuses to talk to journalists who have pronouns in their email signatures Once again showing that the MAGA folk exhibit the exact same behaviours they falsely ascribe to …
: TIL: Microsoft Windows does not include country flag emojis. Somewhat unbelievable I only just …
: Previously impossible new levels of incompetence achieved as the US administration accidentally invites famous journalist to their secret chat group The Atlantic recently revealed one of the more unbelievable examples of the rabid and revealing …
: Federal Workers Told to Remove Pronouns From Email Signatures After Trump Order
: Trump White House Won’t Respond to Some Journalists Who Display Their Pronouns: ‘refusing to …
: Print Media to Mass Protests: “Please Turn to Page 18”: ‘When print outlets bury one of the …
: Musk’s Latest Fraud Finding Isn’t What It Seems: So-called genius finds the results of other …
: UK takes control of British Steel under emergency powers: Once again, the state needs to step in and …
: Never let it be said that the Trumpistas are not creative in their cruelty. The Trump …
: Trump administration lists thousands of living immigrants as dead to prompt them to leave
: Apple said to be flying iPhones from India to US to avoid Trump tariffs: It’s estimated that …
: One in four women in England have serious reproductive health issue, survey finds | Women’s …
: In the face of fascism, climate activists tell a better story: ‘A new network named ‘The …
: Half of England’s state secondaries forced to cut staff in budget squeeze, poll finds: As well as …
: We’ve built a society on bullshit and emojis.: ‘Today’s reality is the result of …
: Two Chinese nationals caught fighting for Russia in Ukraine, Zelenskyy says: Happenstance or …
: UK creating ‘murder prediction’ tool to identify people most likely to kill: Why do I feel this …
: Executions at 10-year high after huge increases in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia: Fewer states are …
: Woman becomes first UK womb transplant recipient to give birth
: Trump tells UK to buy chlorinated chicken from US if it wants tariff relief
: How the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg got added to the White House Signal group chat: Mike Waltz saved …
: Hillbilly Elegy is an entirely unsurprising polemic from the VP of the US 📚Finished reading Hillbilly Elegy by J D Vance. Yes, this is the famous autobiography of the current …
: ‘Profiting from misery’: how TikTok makes money from child begging livestreams : ‘Begging live …
: Christian missionary group accused of public shaming and rituals to ‘cure’ sexual sin: ‘An …
: 📚 Want to read: Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. …a once-in-a-generation, …
: Leaked Memo Reveals Insane Ban on Words Agriculture Department Can Say: The phrase ‘safe …
: A new security fund opens up to help protect the fediverse: Money to help find and fix those …
: Reciprocal Tariff Calculations: The official methodology behind those bizarre numbers, in my to-read …
: Has the Trump administration used AI to calculate tariffs?: Well, probably , but either way their …
: How to download and remove the DRM from your Kindle books even after the great download-via-USB shutdown In their great unwisdom, Amazon recently decided to remove the feature that allowed you to download …
: Global markets in turmoil as Trump tariffs wipe $2.5tn off Wall Street: Self-proclaimed great …
: ‘I heard them take their last breath’: survivor recounts Gaza paramedic killings: An absolutely …
: Vilified, arrested, held incommunicado: that’s the price of protest in Britain today: On the …
: Most graduate degrees in analytics are scams: I had wondered.
: We have to talk about AI “art”: It’s a difficult moment in time for moderators of communities …
: Useful Renumeration: A work-focused positive potential vision of the future, in stark contrast to …
: What the Venezuelans Deported to El Salvador Experienced: It’s as bleak as you’d expect.
: Is it safe? Is it spying? Disquiet over NHS ‘magic eye’ surveillance camera in mental health units: …
: 📺 Watched Adolescence. This 4-part drama is somewhat sweeping the world by storm, at least the small …
: Washington Post opinion editor departs as Bezos pushes to promote ‘personal liberties and free …
: Why I regret using 23andMe: I gave up my DNA just to find out I’m British: The results weren’t …
: Norwegian files complaint after ChatGPT falsely said he had murdered his children
: Yale professor who studies fascism fleeing US to work in Canada: So as “to raise my kids in a …
: Trump Demands Social Media Accounts for Immigrants in U.S.
: Musk’s xAI buys Musk’s X social media platform for $33 billion: Again?
: The R-Word: Why Language Matters and How We Can Do Better
: Napster Just Sold For $207 Million. Yes, That Napster. And It’s Headed Straight Into The Metaverse: …
: America Is Done Pretending About Meat: Gone is the dream of a cruelty-free world of vegans; …
: The 2025 journalist’s digital security checklist: Some good ideas in here even if you’re not a …
: Pixelfed leaks private posts from other Fediverse instances: Fixed but admins would need to update.
: Everything you say to your Echo will be sent to Amazon starting on March 28: They’re disabling …
: Is it safe to travel to the United States with your phone right now?: It’s worth taking …
: Days after the Signal leak, the Pentagon warned the app was the target of hackers: Via tricking …
: Rachel Reeves accused of balancing books on back of UK’s poorest: Based on this year’s Spring …
: How Terrorgram Collective Influencers Groomed a Killer: Juraj Krajčík, who shot people outside an …
: Florida to replacement immigrant workers with…child labour Florida is considering relaxing child labor laws to address labor shortages, allowing children as …
: Florida debates lifting some child labor laws to fill jobs vacated by undocumented immigrants
: As the Trump administration purges web pages, this group is rushing to save them: The incredible …
: 23andme declares bankruptcy - consider downloading and delete your data Previously-popular DNA analysing company 23andme has filed for bankruptcy. On the basis that no-one …
: The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans: The top US national security brass, …
: ‘There was just wave after wave’: Gaza doctors recount horror of the last week: Israel’s …
: Trump administration’s blockchain plan for USAID is a real head-scratcher: insomuch as no one can …
: 📚 Finished listening to You by Caroline Kepnes. This is the book behind the TV show …
: What happens when the internet disappears?: For so many links, the internet is not forever.
: ‘Key lessons of Covid are being forgotten,’ UK scientists warn: There’s little suggestion …
: All UK families ‘to be worse off by 2030’ as poor bear the brunt, new data warns: Labour need to …
: Another week of corruption and probable unconstitutionality from Trump et al As regular as these shocks to the system have become, one or two still catch me by surprise. I did …
: Trump is abandoning democracy and freedom. That creates an opening for Europe – and Britain
: How do Britons feel about Brexit five years on?: Poll shows 55% of us would support a complete …
: Trump weighs in on report King Charles will offer U.S. commonwealth membership: I did not see this …
: Enjoy the Silence: ‘Your life is not a movie, so stop soundtracking it 24/7’
: Massive purge of Pentagon websites includes content on Holocaust remembrance, sexual assault and …
: After Trump DEI order, Navajo Code Talkers disappear from military websites: Not even being a war …
: GLP-1 Side Effects Only One Factor Driving Patient Discontinuation Rates: Other factors include …
: Man Whose Daughter Died From Measles Stands by Failure to Vaccinate Her: “The Vaccination Has …
: ‘Deplorable’: French scientist denied US entry over text messages criticising Trump: …
: Britain Issues Travel Warning for US: Essentially: be sure your paperwork is perfect if you …
: Reeves to reveal biggest UK spending cuts since austerity in spring statement: Really not something …
: Greenpeace must pay at least $660m over Dakota pipeline protests, says jury: I hope they appeal and …
: 🎶 Listening to Critical Thinking by Manic Street Preachers. This is the band’s 15th album over …
: 🎶 Listening to Brat by Charli XCX. I’m sure everyone will have heard this album. It was an …
: 📺 Watched Russia - A Thousand Years of History. Part of my probably vain attempt to understand the …
: Do Republicans really believe this stuff?: Is the difference between the early days of Trump’s …
: Have humans passed peak brain power?: ‘Data across countries and ages reveal a growing …
: JFK Assassination Records - 2025 Documents Release: The final batch of government documents relating …
: Trump releases the last batch of previously classified government documents relating to the JFK …
: This thing will fail: ‘Trump will not restore the “strong gods” of community, …
: The future of Amazon coders is the present of Amazon warehouse workers: Big tech will start …
: The World’s Most Invasive Apps: I’m not particularly convinced by the methodology, but, even …
: Keir Starmer to unveil drastic disability benefit cuts despite opposition: Awful - putting people …
: US deports hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador despite court order: The Trump administration …
: More illegal and unconstitutional behaviour from the Trump administration as they openly defy the US judiciary The dark timeline continues forthwith as the Trump administrationexplicitly defies the order of a …
: 📚 Want to read Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. …exposes both the personal and …
: We can’t move for therapists but do they help or harm mental health patients?: It’s very hard …
: Trump Is Fighting His Court Losses With a Surprising Legal Tactic: Trying to end the practice of …
: AI coding assistant refuses to write code, tells user to learn programming instead. Uh-oh, either …
: Revealed: how the UK tech secretary Peter Kyle uses ChatGPT for policy advice. …
: US Senator Chris Murphy details just some of the incredible amount of very corrupt seeming …
: Of course it would be ridiculous to compare the UK’s current administration with the appalling …
: Photographers Are on a Mission to Fix Wikipedia’s Famously Bad Celebrity Portraits
: America is turning on Trump: Again, we can but hope - his approval ratings have certainly been …
: Inside the Reform civil war: Perhaps the Lowe/ Farage conflict and its drivers will weaken the party …
: Billionaires at Trump’s Swearing-In Have Since Lost $200 Billion Donald Trump inadvertently …
: Microplastics hinder plant photosynthesis, study finds, threatening millions with starvation. It …
: Thousands of U.S. Government Web Pages Have Been Taken Down Since Friday. Here’s the …
: OpenAI reportedly plans to charge up to $20,000 a month for specialized AI ‘agents’ …
: Sisyphus 55 onthe relationship between the modern-day internet and Carl Jung’s notion of …
: ‘Nigel Farage feels real’: why young British men are drawn to Reform
: 📚 Want to read: Pink-pilled by Lois Shearing - ‘A daring investigation into how women are recruited …
: Five years on: Britons among hardest hit by Covid fallout: ‘Life expectancy, homelessness and …
: To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a …
: 📚 Finished reading The You You Are: A Spiritual Biography of You by Ricken Lazlo Hale. After …
: Since I last looked at the news, it seems that the US has unilaterally decided to stop sharing …
: 📚 Finished reading Severance - The Lexington Letter by Anonymous. OK, this might be something of a …
: Despite the horrors, the laundry must be done; Despite the laundry, the horrors must be faced: One …
: US stops sharing intelligence on Russia with Ukraine: A further development in the US' attempts to …
: British pharma company GSK uses the US president as an excuse to 'pause' its DEI programs Big pharma company GSK - a British company based in, under the jurisdiction, and listed on the stock …
: The Great Post Office Scandal tells the story of one of biggest miscarriages of justice in the UK's recent history 📚 Finished reading The Great Post Office Scandal by Nick Wallis. If you’re one of the millions …
: Elon Musk supports the idea that the US should leave both NATO and the United Nations. Of course …
: The US freezes military aid to Ukraine after Trump and Vance's horrendous meeting with Zelenskyy Here, for disgusting posterity, is the infamous video of Vance and Trump behaving once again like …
: ‘Tesla Takedown’ protesters gather outside showrooms to rally against Elon Musk’s role with DOGE: …
: Yet more additions to my books-to-read list Flushed with the success of reading a whole one book so far this year, and then having pummelled …
: The Winterbreak exploit lets everyone jailbreak their Kindle Here’s something I hadn’t thought about until recently: jailbreaking my Kindle. I came …
: Citigroup bank accidentally credits someone with trillions of dollars An employee pressed some wrong buttons at Citigroup. The US bank Citigroup credited a …
: Sobhani's 'Proof of Spiritual Phenomena' goes through the evidence that turned her from a sceptic into a true believer in various unexplained phenomena 📚 Finished reading Proof of Spiritual Phenomena by Mona Sobhani. This book details neuroscientist …
: It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds: ‘…it is very …
: Automattic’s “nuclear war” over WordPress access sparks potential class action
: Deezer receives 10k AI-generated music tracks per day, artists aren't happy The music streaming service Deezer reports that about 10,000 tracks that are entirely generated by …
: Damon Albarn, Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and over 1,000 artists release silent album to protest UK …
: 10,000 AI-generated tracks are uploaded to Deezer every day
: Starmer slashes aid to fund major increase in defence spending
: ‘Everybody is looking at their phones,’ says man freed after 30 years in prison I mean, …
: The Executive Order that deports you for acts of protest Trump administration to cancel student visas of pro-Palestinian protesters This was one of the many …
: More Musk censorship - his Grok AI was was programmed to explicitly ignore all evidence that he or Trump spread disinformation Surprise surprise. Grok, the large language model AI chatbot owned by Elon Musk’s company X …
: A script to automatically download all your Kindle books to your computer - whilst you still can Amazon has unilaterally decided to disable your ability to download any Kindle books you bought from …
: 🎥 Watched Moonfall. Extremely silly action flick where a conspiracy theorist and a disgraced …
: 🎶 Listening to Feeling Not Found by Origami Angel. One of my favourite pop punk style albums of last …
: The first few weeks of the Trump administration - from the ridiculous to the horrific Trump and his minions (and perhaps his masters?) have been busy. If there was anyone left who still …
: Countries with Birthright Citizenship 2024: 33 countries have unrestricted birthright citizenship, …
: Trump’s birthright citizenship order shows how he is challenging the Constitution itself: He …
: Apparently former free-speech-absolutist (lol), encrypted-messenger-app-Signal recommending Elon …
: Why Blog If Nobody Reads It?: ‘When you write, you think better’.
: Starmer to join Macron-led European crisis summit on Trump’s Ukraine plan. Wouldn’t it be …
: Revealed: Google facilitated Russia and China’s censorship requests: Amongst those from other …
: I Want Your Attention. I Need Your Attention. Here is How I Mastered My Own: Humans just hate …
: Never Forgive Them: A long and eviscerating read from Ed Zitron on how and why the tech industry is …
: Revealed: ‘extremely concerning’ industry influence over UN aviation body | Airline emissions: The …
: Extreme weather expected to cause food price volatility in 2025 after cost of cocoa and coffee …
: Silicon Valley is Embracing Christianity (With the Help of Peter Thiel): The tech bros appear to …
: Is it okay?: Robin Sloan considers the ethics of generative AI models needing to slurp up the …
: Trump demands $500B in rare earths from Ukraine for continued support
: Elon Musk’s Big Government Grift: An article from 2020 on Musk’s mission ‘to get …
: Elon Musk’s growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies: Old news, but …
: The poor guy who accidentally binned a hard drive containing what is now £600 million worth of …
: More Than 800K Have Lost $2B on Trump’s Meme Coin: He, of course, profited vociferously.
: The incessant infusion of relentless advertising continues. Imagine coming to a stop in your prize …
: He’s anti-democracy and pro-Trump: the obscure ‘dark enlightenment’ blogger influencing the next US …
: Statista visualises some data from Duetti’s pretty interesting 2024 Music Economics Report. …
: Baltic nations disconnect from Russian power grid to avoid power being used ‘as a …
: TIL: It’s illegal to sell or consume alcohol in Colombia during the days surrounding an …
: Is OpenAI’s Operator, a new AI ‘agent,’ ready to help in the real world?: A reporter’s very …
: Advice for a friend who wants to start a blog: ‘…since there are already countless …
: How Mark Zuckerberg, Once a Trump Foe, Changed His Tune on President-Elect: There was a time when he …
: The Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy Act Perhaps the only good thing that remains of American politics is their mastery of naming their …
: Zuckerberg hands over another $25 million to Trump It seems recent hardcore-Trump convert Mark Zuckerberg just can’t resist funnelling off as …
: Reform UK tops landmark poll for first time: Ugh.
: A Coup is In Progress in America: ‘The transformation happening before our eyes—from a …
: A real-world test of artificial intelligence infiltration of a university examinations system: A …
: DeepSeek Fails Researchers' Safety Tests: The hot new AI bot appears to be up for discussing pretty …
: ‘I lost 10 years of my life’: how UK betting giant’s unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler …
: 📺 Watched season 1 of Out There. This was a surprise find, coming from being in the company of a …
: 📺 Watched season 3 of The Traitors. The UK version is back, with the same basic premise as the …
: Mostly Human Media looks into the potentially risk of supposedly 'empathic' AI 📺 Watched Grieving Mother: AI was the Stranger in my Home. This is a video from a company that a …
: The UK is a World Leader in Stomping Peaceful Protest: There is, unfortunately, something …
: Continued upsetting news about our inadequate response to the ever-present problem of violence …
: Trump’s calls with British leaders reportedly left staff crying from laughter: Maybe they were …
: Labour might be claiming that “growth” is their number one priority - and sure, …
: Dear Trans Kids, You Don’t Need the Government’s Permission to Exist: ‘In every …
: 🎶 Listening to Happenings by Kasabian. Twenty years after their eponymous first album, Kasabian …
: Never let it be said that no tech billionaire has ever had a valid and accurate thought. Bill Gates …
: ‘Sputnik moment’: $1tn wiped off US stocks after Chinese firm unveils AI chatbot: Open-source …
: My fantasy TBR pick of the New Statesman's 'Twenty-five books to read in 2025' A recent edition of New Statesman listed out their recommended “Twenty-five books to read in …
: Spotify joins the inauspicious ranks of companies that funded Trump's inauguration Spotify, a company which is fairly famously not even an American-HQd enterprise (it’s …
: Spotify Hosts Trump Inauguration Brunch and Makes $150,000 Donation to Ceremony: Sigh.
: We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and …
: Björk Says Spotify Is “The Worst Thing That Has Happened To Musicians”: ‘The …
: Let’s Try to Always Provide a Dignified Way Forward: “While dealing with tough student …
: Far-right pundit Matt Walsh rails against women in law enforcement: ‘It’s an absurdity!’: Matt Walsh …
: A perhaps surprising fact courtesy of a report on Labour’s desire to cut down the admittedly …
: Trumpian legislation via LLMs (we should be so lucky) Someone might be on the verge of being caught using ChatGPT to half-ass their job again. Yep, people …
: Advocates ‘deeply worried’ as Trump’s justice department halts new civil rights cases: One among …
: Pope warns Davos summit that AI could worsen ‘crisis of truth’: He was the subject of one of the …
: So Nigel Farage is “reticent” about some of Elon Musk’s opinions. Former Breitbart …
: A rotten Apple: Tim Cook’s betrayal of LGBTQ+ rights: Never love a corporation part 9999.
: The Emptiness Of Zuck’s Promise To Move ‘Biased’ Trust & Safety From California To Texas: …
: How to survive being online: You can use the internet without being Very Online, as they say.
: There’s a way in which nothing is new under the sun. No matter how appalling it seems. …
: Trump inauguration: Zuckerberg, Bezos and Musk seated in front of cabinet picks: Remember the good …
: Trump embraces role of demagogue on divine mission to reshape America: Trump kicks off with an …
: From Reuters: U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday issued pre-emptive pardons for General Mark …
: 📚 Want to read: From Label to Table by Xaq Frohlich. How did the Nutrition Facts label come to …
: New Year, same American violence: America is a ‘culturally violent place’, as well as …
: Zuckerberg’s Spineless Surrender: Rehashing Old News To Enable False GOP Narratives: …
: The Guardian view on development’s paradox: the rich benefit more than the poor: ‘Developing …
: The Guardian view on corridor care: the normalisation of crisis is shocking: Medics increasingly …
: Smartphones Are Hot: A decade-old take on ‘What would Marshall McLuhan make of the …
: Trump's inauguration fund has raised an unconscionable amount of money from people who should know better Unpleasant to see Trump setting a new high score record in terms of amount donated to his …
: The US Tiktok ban goes into force Somewhat to my surprise, it seems that the Tiktok ban has actually happened for our US friends - at …
: Google Maps turns 20, adds AI features, new countries to beat Apple: Next month sees Google Maps' …
: ‘I’ll kiss the ground’: chaos feared amid Gaza ceasefire as families head home: Many of the 90% of …
: TikTok ban: App shuts down in the United States hours ahead of a ban: Whether the ban will last is a …
: 📚 Want to read: Power to the People by Danny Sriskandarajah. The book presents a blueprint for how …
: People Left Twitter Because Twitter’s Product Sucks, Not Because of Purity Politics: Hard to …
: Call to overhaul obesity diagnoses amid fears of over-reliance on BMI: ‘…there are …
: Lawsuit: Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to quietly track driving behavior: Allstate taken to …
: Nowhere to retvrn: how far-right revisionism spreads online: You can’t ‘return’ to …
: 20% of younger Britons apparently think we shouldn't bother with elections 14% of Britons apparently believe that “The best system for running a country effectively is a …
: This seems like it should be illegal. From today’s Observer: A new payment system brought in …
: BBC News has an extremely impressive reach I hadn’t realised quite how much reach our tax-funded public news organisation, BBC News has. …
: Please let the idea of Andrew Tate forming a new political party just be a joke Andrew Tate launches ‘Bruv Party’ Andrew Tate, an extraordinarily unpleasant grifter who has been …
: Meta surrenders to the right on speech: A good summary of Zuckerberg’s awful announcement …
: From 404 Media: Meta’s HR team is deleting internal employee criticism of new board member, …
: What we learned about LLMs in 2024 Simon Williamson reviews what we learned about Large Language Model AI development in 2024. He goes …
: A new era of lies: Mark Zuckerberg has just ushered in an extinction-level event for truth on social …
: Meta announces that it's doing its best to make 2025 even worse than it already was Meta to get rid of factcheckers and recommend more political content Just what 2025 needs to really …
: Uh-oh, Musk wants to 'liberate' the UK next I hate but can’t resist giving him attention, but theworld’s richest pub bore is really …
: Understanding DOGE as Procurement Capture: The Department of Government Efficiency is clearly going …
: Ambulance handover delays in England may harm 1,000 patients a day: This is happening more and more …
: DDoS’ing Yourself with To-dos and Reminders: It me.
: Not content with imperilling a single country, or the international community as a whole, Musk …
: Year in this blog for 2024 This year it seems this blog contributed nearly 100k words to the unwitting public sphere / …
: Pornhub Is Now Blocked In Almost All of the U.S. South: Due to new state-level age verification …
: Meet Gem the cocker spaniel – the face of UK pet cloning: It’s illegal to clone animals for …
: Alcohol should carry warning label for cancer risk, US surgeon general says
: Your App Should Have Been A Website (And Probably Your Game Too): Modern web browsers are powerful …
: Year in music for 2024 Here’s the music I apparently listened to this year. Sometimes I look at these kind of stats …
: “Efficientize” is not a real word but even so: never ever efficientize the things you …
: Year in books for 2024 Here are the books I finished reading in 2024.
: 📚 Finished reading 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami . I scraped this one in on the last day of 2024. Anything …
: The beautiful sentence that is the web: ‘In web development, HTML is the noun, CSS is the …
: 'The top 10 hottest years on record have happened in the last 10 years' Add 2024 to the list of years where humanity didn’t do much about the impending climate …
: World endures ‘decade of deadly heat’ as 2024 caps hottest years on record: ‘The …
: Quitting social media gave me a new creed: only disconnect: ‘…our virtual selves are …
: Is Immersion the Best Way to Learn a Language?: It’s helpful, but only if you proactively …
: 2024’s most costly climate disasters killed 2,000 people and caused $229bn in damages, data shows
: Scientist’s ‘ruthlessly imaginative’ 1925 predictions for the future come true – mostly: How much …
: 📺 Watched season 68 of Have I Got News For You. This is a comedy political news quiz show I remember …
: 📺 Watched Good Behavior. Letty, a compulsive thief since childhood, gets out of prison, intending to …
: Just learned that you can now turn off Microsoft Excel’s previously incessant desire to …
: Scientists rename human genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates: Apparently …
: Edit csv is a very handy tool if you need to make some basic edits to a CSV file on a computer …
: Scrabble, Anonymous: The life of a Scrabble addict.
: I’m Tired of Pretending Physical Media Isn’t Still Better Than Streaming Digital: I’m too …
: The most popular show on UK Netflix over Christmas was a continuous loop of logs being burned, …
: Revealed: 1.5m children in England studying in unfit school buildings: Years of insufficient budgets …
: Todayspaper | The Guardian: Some of the stories that make up the physical version of the Guardian …
: I like to prioritise much of my news reading by starting off with what makes the first few pages of …
: Doorstep carolling feels weird in the modern era A common enough Christmas tradition in the UK (and I imagine elsewhere) - in the past anyway, even …
: Joyful, joyful: The tradition of door-to-door carolling does sound extremely weird when put like …
: ‘Wild west’: experts concerned by illegal promotion of weight-loss jabs in UK: Companies are …
: Older music has been getting a second life on TikTok, data shows: An increasing amount of TikTok …
: Indian Ocean tsunami: how survivors found love after Boxing Day disaster: Life in Indonesia, 20 …
: 📚 Want to read: Proof of Spiritual Phenomena by Mona Sobhani, On the Edge by Nate Silver and The …
: 📚 Want to read: Mood Machine by Liz Pelly. I’ve a feeling this book might reinforce my fears …
: Scientists Quantified The Speed of Human Thought, And It’s a Big Surprise: Apparently our …
: AdGuard Mail — a new AdGuard product to protect your email: AdGuard enters into the cadre of …
: Just 2% of some key trains on London to Manchester line run on time: The worst offender being the …
: £100m spent in England on failed efforts to block children’s Send support: Only 1.2% of …
: Councils spend over £100 million trying to avoid providing special educational needs support From the Guardian: More than £100m was spent last year by local authorities and the government on …
: making a website is hard: cathode ray dude bemoans the lack of a modern Microsoft Frontpage or …
: Apparently King Charles isn’t a great fan of Dairy Milk. Chocolate maker one of 100 previous …
: Welcome to Britain’s Victorian Christmas, where volunteers in Santa hats fulfil the basic functions …
: Charity is a cold grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes …
: 🎶 Listening to some modern-day Christmas music: December’s Here by New Found Glory, Punk Rawk …
: Photographs reveal first glimpse of uncontacted Amazon community: Photos of the Massaco emerge - one …
: Proud to be a blockhead: Doctorow covers several important concepts, including that of vocational …
: 📚 Want to read: Steadfast Self-Hosting by Adam Monsen. Sounds like it may be a decent intro to the …
: Mobile Communications Best Practice Guidance: Largely sensible advice from the US cyber defence …
: Louisiana forbids public health workers from promoting COVID, flu and mpox shots: Public health …
: I’m sure this is supposed to be festive but it feels somehow ominous to me. Hope it’s …
: 🎥 Watched The Devil Wears Prada. Only 18 years after its release, which if I vaguely remember at the …
: 📧 Reading the Liner Notes newsletter. These days I usually avoid music streaming services. Partially …
: The billionaires are full of bull: ‘You don’t earn trust with “balance” – especially not …
: More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators diagnosed with severe PTSD: Spending hours a day looking at …
: Moderating Facebook is giving their less privileged workers PTSD One of the dirty secrets of modern big tech - in this case those companies running the large social …
: Starmer urged to change donation rules amid talk of Musk bankrolling Reform: Yep, it’s …
: Just discovered Amazon Prime Gaming. If you are one of the huddled masses with Amazon Prime then you …
: Chicken Farm: On the US healthcare system - ‘The “front line” of doctors and …
: Vatican ‘on the brink of Bankruptcy’ due to dramatic decline in global donations under …
: The end of life hacking: The rise and fall of life-hacking as praxis.
: Noticed that Mimo, one of the ‘Duolingo but for coding’ educational apps I sometimes …
: Retrospective, financial: ‘We long for the security that money brings, but to get it we must …
: This is My Most Expensive Habit: Anxiety.
: 📚Want to read: Julia by Sandra Newman. George Orwell’s 1984, but told from the viewpoint of …
: Is Protein Powder a Scam?: ‘Most people don’t need to consume this supplement, experts say, …
: Ozempic Killed Diet and Exercise: It’s seeming like patients on GLP-1 drugs don’t …
: Why Romania’s election was annulled – and what happens next?: Romanian courts rule that their …
: AI’s Walking Dog: ‘AI itself has much to offer, but it has not lived up to its potential to …
: I have a cunning plan…: Charles Stross comes up with a cunning business plan for a world in …
: Syrians celebrate the end of the Assad family's unimaginably cruel regime The 53 year long father-and-son Assad regime in Syria ended a few days ago, much to the fervent …
: 🎥 Watched Buried in Barstow. This is a made-for-TV movie/show - not quite sure how to classify it - …
: GoFullPage is a useful Chrome browser extension that lets you take a screenshot of all of a webpage …
: You have to be in the richest 10% of households by income to find the average house price in England affordable Housing is one of the rights of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, amongst other …
: Happy to learn that there’s to be a new mini-series of Red Dwarf next year, with basically the …
: The Race For the Best Stock Footage: Joe’s (skeptical) thoughts on the utility of AI video …
: One big choice shapes a hundred more: ‘Knowing the consequences I want, what choice would …
: Going off the record with Trump? That’s just kissing his ring: Yep, Trump really doesn’t seem …
: Ugh, the leader of the Conservatives used the “m” word. ‘I will not touch bread …
: Syrians celebrate fall of Bashar al-Assad after five decades of dynastic rule: Although some also …
: 🎶 Listening to From Zero by Linkin Park. This is nu-metal gids Linkin Park’s first album in 7 …
: Complaints: ‘The best way to complain is to make things better.’
: Congressional Republicans conclude SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab leak: Whatever the truth of the …
: Why is Meta adding fediverse interoperability to Threads?: I was somewhat astonished when Meta said …
: Russia Tests Cutting Off Access to Global Web, and VPNs Can’t Get Around It
: Culture war and revolution: 30 Years of Manic Street Preachers’ Generation Terrorists: Great as they …
: The Allure of ‘Microdosing’ Ozempic: It might be tempting, but there’s not much evidence as to …
: Artificial Irony: Misinformation Expert’s Testimony Has Fake Citations: Via unchecked ChatGPT …
: Misinformation expert misinforms court by using ChatGPT Whoops, another professional gets called out for inappropriate use of ChatGPT. This one is …
: Smartphones don’t suck. People do: We shouldn’t let our phones bore us so often.
: One million elderly people skipping meals as costs bite: Neither eating or heating is affordable for …
: Murdered Insurance CEO Had Deployed an AI to Automatically Deny Benefits for Sick People: Not to …
: 📚 Finished reading Depraved New World by John Crace. John Crace is a political sketch writer for the …
: John le Carre's contributions to the English language of spying TIL: John le Carre - famed author of Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy amongst many others - apparently …
: OpenAI may be planning a ChatGPT Pro plan for $200 per month. Well, that’s quite a hike if …
: How John le Carre reinvented the English language and made us all sound like spies: How we talk …
: Rape trials collapse as victims abandon cases amid long court delays: Some of the measures designed …
: Looking Back: On the evolution of how we read - ‘Where once we were rapt, now we are …
: OpenAI’s new model tried to avoid being shut down: By disabling its oversight mechanism and …
: OpenAI’s new model tried to avoid being shut down. Well, that’s a little unnerving, for …
: Michael Jackson's Malt Whisky Companion is a handy guide to the world of single malts 📚 Finished reading Michael Jackson’s Malt Whisky Companion by Michael Jackson. (No, not that …
: A friend kindly informs me that if you’re a customer of O2, a common mobile phone carrier in …
: Cybersecurity has gotten so bad that even the US government is imploring us to encrypt our communications It feels like a topsy-turvy world we’re living in when it’s the US state authorities that are …
: A Pictorial History of Santa Claus: Turns out that “Red-and-white Santa Claus was invented by …
: The Senate’s New Anti-Encryption Bill Is Even Worse Than EARN IT, and That’s Saying Something: A …
: A brief history of U.S. encryption policy: “law enforcement will always want access to …
: U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid cyberattack: Chinese hackers have gotten …
: Hackers breach Andrew Tate’s online university - obtain chat logs and leak data on 800,000 …
: leadership: ‘…the single most important trait of a good leader is the ability to listen …
: Hackers leak data from Andrew Tate's 'university' of 'money making' “The Real World” - Andrew Tate’s presumably vomitous $50-a-month “learning …
: I’m not saying The Owl is wrong, but this was a bit galling to be presented with earlier today …
: New presumably terrible reality show just dropped. The life of Jacob Rees Mogg and family - …
: 📺 Watched season 7 of Young Sheldon. This is the final season of Young Sheldon. Any fans of the Big …
: The Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done, Grace and Forgiveness: We’re more than the worst thing …
: The First Amendment doesn't 'protect' every conceivable type of speech in every conceivable setting An older article from MSNBC explains why Elon Musk’s basic misunderstandings of free speech are a …
: Elon Musk’s basic misunderstandings of free speech are a problem for all of us: Firstly that the …
: Why you should use a different email address for every site: The list of things you might want to do …
: Choke Point 2.0: A primer on the right’s latest conspiracy theory: Today’s wild claim is …
: The British TV channel GB News - right-wing mouth-piece for the worst of Conservative/Reform lame …
: 📺 Watched Breath of Fire. This is a 4 part HBO documentary about the rise of a type of yoga called …
: Assisted dying is a curiously unpartisan issue amongst the British public Today is the big vote for our British Parliamentarians on whether we should introduce a law to allow …
: Some good work by Skeleton Claw:
: Federal Court Blocks Louisiana Law Mandating Posting Of Ten Commandments In School Classrooms: Turns …
: Bill Gates’ warning to the world: ‘As they reckon with their multiple defeats, progressives …
: Helpline for Yakuza victims fears it leaked their personal info: A Japanese government agency was …
: From The Register: A local Japanese government agency dedicated to preventing organized crime has …
: Who is winning UK Politics Bluesky so far?: The left, at least as measured by the slightly strange …
: The far right grows through “disaster fantasies”: Their prioritisation of imaginary disasters that …
: The insatiable and unmet demand for GLP-1 medications is unlikely to decrease anytime soon. …
: Semaglutide Eligibility Across All Current Indications for US Adults: An estimated 137 million US …
: Texas AG Declares War On Advertisers Who Snub Musk’s ExTwitter: Ken Paxton seems to want to make it …
: The board games the CIA uses to train its agents It was fun to learn that training to be a CIA agent involves playing board games. Not just any old …
: The CIA uses board games to train officers—and I got to play them
: What are the key issues in the assisted dying bill debate?: Things to think about as the UK vote on …
: The Guardian newspaper will no longer post on X The Guardian will no longer officially post on X, formerly known as Twitter. I’m sure one …
: ‘The Apprentice’ actor Sebastian Stan: Hollywood stars fear Trump: It’s not only tech …
: Islands of Abandonment is a surprisingly hopeful tale of what happens to places when humans leave 📚 Finished listening to Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn. In …
: A new era dawns. America’s tech bros now strut their stuff in the corridors of power: ‘This is …
: ‘Real nastiness’: therapist training courses in UK can be ‘toxic’ and need regulating, say students: …
: Quite incredibly, yesterday was the 1000-day anniversary of Russia’s ongoing invasion of …
: Don’t call it a Substack: Anil implores us not to refer to our writing using some other …
: Blue skies ahead: Leon wrangles with whether to join Bluesky.
: Bluesky, decentralisation, and the distribution of power: How decentralised Bluesky is depends on …
: On Bluesky: Regarding its vibes and its technology.
: I now believe the Bluesky mass migration is for real, having learned that even dril made the leap.
: No religious liberty on offer from the Office of Religious Liberty From Kosu: State Superintendent Ryan Walters sent superintendents an email Thursday afternoon …
: Fat cells have a ‘memory’ of obesity — hinting at why it’s hard to keep weight off: A potential …
: What I want from Mozilla: To fulfil their stated mission by ‘fostering an ecosystem of open, …
: More than one in three children in poverty as UK deprivation hits record high: Along with a quarter …
: Ukrainian hackers breach former Russian commander’s computer: Romanchuk turns out to be more a …
: To turn Britain around, we need a proper understanding of life for poorer workers: Plagued by ill …
: One more failure in care: locking up children in dangerous places Britain’s social care system appears to be in a real mess following years of neglect and …
: Watch rich people behave badly in a TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s book Rivals 📺 Watched Rivals. This is an adaption of Jilly Cooper’s book of the same name. Former British …
: Fears grow over UK children at risk placed in illegal care homes: Many children subject to …
: Thought Experiment 5: Wittgenstein’s Beetle
: Zionism’s long 20th century: And the shifts in the relationship between the British political left …
: Feel like a defence lawyer without the hassle of law school in 'Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney' 🎮 Played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. This a 20 year old visual novel videogame, reissued on a wide …
: 🎥 Watched A Haunting in Venice. This is an (apparently loose) adaptation of Agatha Christie’s …
: 🎥 Watched Dune: Part 2. The battle for power (and spice) continues at Paul Atreides, his mother, and …
: The Sanewashing of RFK Jr.: Let’s not forget that this guy has some very bizarre (and …
: Trump's victory added $27 billion dollars to the wealth of the 10 richest people in the world It’s a near-Christmas miracle, Donald Trump’s election victory has already improved …
: The world according to Trump: How Trump is likely to think about Ukraine, the Middle East, Europe …
: The Onion buys Infowars The wonderful Onion has bought Alex Jones' despicable “Infowars” site. At least I think …
: How “YMCA” became Donald Trump’s unlikely theme song: I had wondered.
: Congress About to Gift Trump Sweeping Powers to Crush Political Enemies: A bill which enables the …
: Before making clinical trials faster, let’s first agree on what they are: What’s needed …
: I’m reluctant to volunteer my own evidence-free theory into the morass of folk providing …
: I blame the media: for Trump’s electoral victory - by normalising him plus failing to …
: Google receives its biggest fine yet. $20 decillion. A decillion is a one with 33 zeroes after it. …
: The art in everyday life: ‘You don’t have to paint the Sistine Chapel to bring art into …
: Regime of Unreason: The US surely couldn’t need any ‘liberalisation’ of its fossil …
: The Banality of Online Recommendation Culture: Hard to know whether to recommend this or not.
: The Podcast Election: Can some of Trump’s victory be explained by the weaponisation of the …
: ‘Five to ten seconds appears to be optimal’: the science behind hugs: Why hugs are good.
: I spent hours trying to persuade US voters to choose Harris not Trump. I know why she lost: …
: I moved to Finland believing it was a progressive dream. It hasn’t turned out that way: Are there …
: On the benefits of microblogging: It’s good to write, and there’s no need to make it …
: Trump’s election promises weren’t only meaningless because they were almost certainly …
: Donald Trump should have the easiest presidency ever: Biden’s administration has already …
: Finally, the end of ‘the British empire’ – and maybe an honours system a modern country can live …
: Changing the E of an OBE There’s little left to like about the British honours system, if there ever was. In recent …
: Who knew that Michael Gove got one particularly foolish part of his political philosophy from a 1967 …
: ‘You tried to tell yourself I wasn’t real’: what happens when people with acute psychosis meet the …
: Donald Trump should have the easiest presidency ever: Many of the things he promised to do during …
: taylor derangement syndrome: It reads differently now we know the result of the election, but I had …
: OpenAI released their web search engine - at least to paid subscribers. Looks to be integrated into …
: Introducing ChatGPT search: OpenAI releases its search engine.
: Democrats join 2024’s graveyard of incumbents: Is the US election result simply a continuation …
: What happened to Bhutan’s ‘kingdom of happiness’?: Sadly even the country that pioneered measuring …
: RSS as a method of subscribing to your favourite online content is not dead, and thanks to its open …
: Spain’s apocalyptic floods show two undeniable truths: the climate crisis is getting worse and Big …
: We will fight Trump’s plans to slap tariffs on the UK – Rachel Reeves: There’s going to be …
: In Rough Justice, a Crown Court judge looks at how we treat crime committed by, or against, women 📚 Finished reading Rough Justice by Wendy Joseph. This a sort of sequel to Joseph’s previous …
: Exit polls from the 2024 presidential election: Some cross-tabs to distract us bewildered data …
: If I were a cautious, centre-left prime minister, Trump’s victory would have me worried: Are there …
: Daring Fireball collects the sycophantic well-done-Trump tweets sent by all those big tech CEOs …
: Various breakdowns of voter support for Harris vs Trump from the BBC, in an effort to understand …
: US election 2024 results and exit poll in maps and charts: More exit poll analysis from the BBC.
: The voters who tipped the balance for Trump: The BBC looks at exit polls to try and determine who …
: Exit polls 2024: Deep economic discontent with Biden drove voters to Trump: Early exit poll suggests …
: The return of President Trump: a bleak day for the US and the world: ‘An already treacherous …
: Trump won. By more than expected. How did it happen? Sometimes fear triumphs over hope. … …
: Handy guide as to whether it’s safe to go to bed from The Guardian.
: Some publications aren't afraid to endorse Harris, and do better for it Unlike the enfeebled Washington Post and LA Times, the Guardian isn’t pulling many punches on …
: What does Jeff Bezos' non-endorsement mean?: Max notes that historically it’s been the owners …
: Bluesky and enshittification: The most well-intentioned service remains at risk of enshittification …
: The Washington Post sold Democracy. Now it needs a new line of business. : The WaPo and the LA Times …
: Cowardly tech billionaires further ruin their newspapers by letting Trump intimidate them into censoring the Opinions out of their Opinions section As everyone on the internet noticed, all of a sudden last week the Washington Post newspaper decided …
: Google CEO says over 25% of new Google code is generated by AI: Their computer programmers are …
: What happens when someone dies on a cruise ship?: I never thought about the need for a morgue on a …
: Admittedly this isn’t the most pressing issue of the forthcoming US presidential election, but …
: Tampering with the polls for the US election It seems that US Republican affiliated groups may have commissioned presidential election polls that …
: Republicans preparing to reject result if Trump loses, warn strategists: A lack of respect for …
: Doing dumb stuff faster is still dumb: And adds to the amount of dumb stuff in the universe.
: Reeves’s £40bn tax rises will boost growth ‘sustainably’, says IMF: The IMF supports Labour’s …
: Budget 2024: key points at a glance: Bullet-point summary of this government’s first budget; …
: Jeff Bezos’ view from nowhere: Bezo’s insistence that the WaPo doesn’t endorse a …
: The billionaires hedge their bets: Purely out of immoral and misguided self-interest, many of the …
: Why I Am (Still) a Liberal (For Now): ‘Thin’ vs ‘thick’ liberalism, and the …
: Yelling at clouds: ‘The Cloud’ might feel like magic but we must remember that it has a …
: Hundreds of ballots possibly burned after Vancouver ballot box arson: FBI investigating: …
: Videos Reveal Trump Adviser’s “Shadow” Plan for Second Administration: Gone are the days when the …
: RSS and Instapaper as cup and saucer: I appreciate anyone’s efforts to make me feel OK about …
: The events leading up to the US election seem even more horrifying than usual I’m wary of succumbing to my own biases by seeing the risks of the rise of the far right …
: Vox's take on "Is AI the new nuclear weapons?" Last year, Vox laid out their view as to how true or useful the “artificial intelligence is …
: The AI-nuclear weapons analogy, explained : Vox catalogues some similarities and differences between …
: The Doc Web: A deep dive into the dynamics of publishing to the web via Google Docs.
: A woman, blogging: this is a political act: Blogging can be empowering, especially for people who …
: The AI-Generated Product Reviews Choking the Internet Are Now Illegal: The FTC makes certain types …
: Smarter than ‘Ctrl+F’: Linking Directly to Web Page Content: I didn’t realise URLs …
: Ban LLMs Using First-Person Pronouns: Maybe we shouldn’t allow AI chatbots to refer to …
: 'Oppenheimer' tells the story of the man behind the world's first nuclear bomb, and his later regrets 🎥 Watched Oppenheimer. This is the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who led theLos …
: Tell me how you measure me and I will tell you how I will behave. If you measure me in an illogical …
: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it’s haunted: Consider your URL haunted …
: Needles in Project 2025’s Haystack: Some of the more disturbing phrases concealed within the …
: Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Putin for two years, says report: Beginning to worry that …
: You’ve Already Been Living The Project 2025 Test Drive: Public school closures, library book …
: Project 2025: The Wikipedia summary of a set of legislative ideas from The Heritage Foundation, most …
: It turns out we should have taken Trump literally as well as seriously: Back in 2016 Vox claimed …
: Believe Him: The New York Times tells us to believe Trump when he says what he is going to do if he …
: The New York Times advises us to believe Trump when he tells us what he's going to do We’re not far away from the next US presidential election, which is to be held this November …
: The United States of Abortion Mazes: Access to abortion in each US state visualised as an …
: Facts Are Important: Abortion Is Healthcare: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists …
: Abortion rights: Amnesty International on access to abortion being a human right.
: 10 Things to Know About Abortion Access Since the Dobbs Decision: Some of the impacts of the …
: The Pudding visualises the process of getting an abortion as a maze The Pudding visualises the often laborious and damaging path some who needs an abortion needs to …
: Pluralistic: The housing crisis considered as an income crisis: ‘The American rich are the …
: MrBeast Goes to Washington: Elon Musk failed to recruit MrBeast, so now he’s trying to be him.
: The web and I: Ben Werdmuller on growing up during the time when the web-as-we-know it - with its …
: Intentional web: A name for the parts of the web you proactively choose to interact with.
: Jokey reform ideas removed from NHS consultation website: Always dangerous to ask the British public …
: against brute forcing: Sometimes the correct response to being faced with a challenge isn’t to …
: Ed Newton-Rex, who organised the recent anti AI ingesting everyone’s work for free statement …
: Thom Yorke and Julianne Moore join thousands of creatives in AI warning: Even superstars are …
: New commission may ban English water companies from making a profit: Good: water is both a life …
: Two types of information overload: the situational vs the ambient I have an information problem. There are 278 books on my “Want to read list”. There are …
: Twelve Million Deportations: Timothy Snyder asks us to think seriously about what would happen if …
: It’s not just you, Google Search really has gotten worse: Researchers find that search engines …
: Hot take: It’s okay if we don’t consume all of the world’s information before we die: Do we really …
: Haystacks of Needles: Situational overload vs ambient overload.
: Currently trying out a combo of FreshRSS and NetNewsWire to experience the joy (?) of aggregating, …
: Why you should ditch social media for a (micro)blog: Yes, I’m a big fan of both the general …
: A List Of Text-Only & Minimalist News Sites: If you prefer getting your news in a format devoid …
: Found a new creepy critter in the garden, just in time for the Halloween season. My phone believes …
: Why changes to the block on Elon Musk’s X are driving users away: Musk doesn’t believe …
: Why Trump’s staged McDonald’s theatrics don’t count as work: Obviously, Trump’s …
: Online Safety and the “Great Decentralization” – The Perils and Promises of Federated Social Media: …
: All What Is Delicious to Man: Today’s implausible vision of superabundance is a lot grimmer …
: What is genomic prediction and can embryos really be ‘screened for IQ’?: Even if it wasn’t a …
: Google moves to end geofence warrants, a surveillance problem it largely created: Geofence warrants …
: The ‘Internet of Things’ helping to provide key evidence in criminal trials: The Crown Prosecution …
: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications - US senator: Inevitably the …
: Governments Are Using Spyware on Citizens. Can They Be Stopped?: Companies like the NSO Group are …
: The wrongness of 'If you've got nothing to hide then you've nothing to fear' “If you’ve got nothing to hide then you’ve nothing to fear” is a common …
: The Subprime AI Crisis: Ed Zitron worries about what happens when the unprofitability of the current …
: Get Me Out Of Data Hell: The day Nikhil Suresh’s software engineering work pushed him so far …
: Ban smacking in England now, says children’s commissioner: Proposal to ban smacking one’s …
: The Shareholder Supremacy: One of the many original sins of modern-day capitalism was when we …
: The Other Bubble: Why “Software as a Service” (SaaS) products - especially the …
: When therapy goes wrong: the problem of underqualified practitioners: Far more people should see …
: XOXO festival 2024 playlist: Videos from the final outing of the ‘experimental festival for …
: Who owns your shiny new Pixel 9 phone? You can’t say no to Google’s surveillance: Researchers find …
: A Personal Take on Using LLMs: Eleanor Konik’s view on when she finds it reasonable to use …
: New Scientist Live show 2024 books list Inevitably after attending any type of show that features something even vaguely sciencey the list …
: The Return of the Deniers and the Revenge of Patoshi: One of the analyses that suggest that the …
: TIL: Thanks to the innate lack of privacy that the technology has, whilst we might not know who …
: Using static websites for tiny archives: What Alex does with the files that survive the …
: Added a few more books to my absolutely unrealistic “Books about AI I want to read” …
: Digital decluttering: Alex Chan’s process of deleting their less valuable files.
: Revealed: International ‘race science’ network secretly funded by US tech boss: Andrew Conru …
: It is a battle evident in the psyche of many partnered people, and especially so in midlife. It …
: You should be using an RSS reader: RSS is great (& Cory Doctorow uses Newsblur for it).
: Undercover police officer admits spying on Keir Starmer when he was a barrister: I’d maybe …
: Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance: Arguments …
: The Art of Working Loudly: Don’t hold back from talking about what you’re working on.
: Armed man arrested near Trump’s California rally was plotting to kill him, police say: Are there …
: Induction chemotherapy followed by standard chemoradiotherapy versus standard chemoradiotherapy …
: Ken Follett's Fall of Giants tells fictional-but-realistic stories of family life in the early twentieth century 📚 Finished listening to Fall of Giants by Ken Follett. This is the first book of Ken Follet’s …
: Ryan Broderick succinctly sums up why the contemporary mega-hype around AI doesn’t depend on …
: Expensive sci-fi dreck: The title refers to Elon Musk’s latest robo-stuff of course.
: Starmer’s Brexit “Reset” is Not What the Public Wants: Starmer’s transition …
: Muscle matters: the effects of medically induced weight loss on skeletal muscle: Losing large …
: 28 things I’ve learned: Mainly about how to treat both yourself and other people.
: Pure Blogger: ‘Pure blogging’ is ‘blogging because you have something to …
: TikTok plans mass job cuts on UK moderation and safety teams: To be replaced by a mix of offshore …
: Five Reasons People Who Claim PR Will Help the Far-Right are Wrong: Rebuttal to a common claim that …
: TikTok knows its app is harming kids, new internal documents show: All the social media companies …
: New Scientist Live talks 2024 Journeying back from the ever-fascinating New Scientist Live show, 2024 edition. A list of the talks …
: I’m curious about precisely what level of surveillance technology is powering this (admittedly …
: Busting ghosts for breakfast.
: Well this is one of the more aggravating CAPTCHAs I’ve had to solve. Especially as 2/3 of the …
: Ribbonfarm is Retiring: The how and why of Venkatesh Rao - creator of the term ‘cozyweb’ …
: The future of live news online sucks: Why the TikTokization of the big social media platforms makes …
: In pursuit of the Engineering Analyst: On the (fairly new) role of the analytics engineer.
: The Essential Tools for Exploratory Analysis: The types of tools one might want at hand when …
: Trump’s rampant lies about FEMA’s Hurricane Helene response, briefly explained: Once again, …
: New enforcement agency will protect workers’ rights as part of ‘watershed’ bill: Big fan of anything …
: Hurricane Milton: what causes such intense storms?: Largely climate change, unsurprisingly.
: I’ve missed Sam for a long time (or: Pick Your Battles): A wonderful written tale of what …
: Democrats launch new campaign attack on ‘weird’ Republicans: Seems legit.
: A disappointing selection for the next Conservative leader Looks like the next UK Conservative leader stands a good chance of being a right-wing weirdo. …
: Why Privacy Matters: You should care about your privacy even if you don’t have any secrets.
: Google's creators envisaged that advertising-funded search engines are a bad idea (but made one anyway) May we never forget that back in the early days, before Google decided to not not be evil, its …
: Introducing canvas: A new interface for OpenAI’s ChatGPT that’s designed for better …
: Aesthetic Command Lines with Hyper, Spaceship, and Oh My Zsh: Never really thought about customising …
: Crowdsourcing the Monetization of Social Media: Social media could have been good if only we’d …
: You Can’t Own The Social Web: Would the ‘Social Web Foundation’ better be thought of as …
: Representation of the People Act 1948: The act that abolished the right of some people to vote twice …
: The blogosphere is in full bloom. The rest of the internet has wilted: There’s plenty of good …
: TIL: Until the 1948 Representation of the People Act, graduates of certain universities in the UK …
: Thousands of Linux systems infected by stealthy malware since 2021: Researchers discover …
: A Profile of the Top-Ranked Podcasts in the U.S.: True crime is the most popular genre.
: 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism' explains why Big Tech does what it does, and why it's dangerous 📚 Finished reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. I’ve had this book …
: New Scientist Live: The “festival of ideas and discoveries” is back in London later this …
: Digital Content Piracy Is on the Rise: Not very surprising given ‘legitimate’ services …
: From Ars Technica: Streaming services say they make more revenue per user on average if the …
: Amazon will “ramp up” Prime Video ads in 2025: Ugh, in a further recreation of cable TV, we’re …
: MPs to get historic vote on the legalisation of assisted dying: Almost certainly a good idea as long …
: Labour to commit almost £22bn to carbon capture and storage projects: Glad to see them putting …
: The Riddle of Ambition: Don’t commoditise your ambition - use it to know yourself.
: Keir Starmer pays back £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality: Oh boy, Taylor Swift tickets are real …
: Melania Trump passionately defends abortion rights in upcoming memoir: Must make for some …
: Apple is Silently Removing VPN Apps from Russia’s App Store: Presumably at government request, …
: Exposing The Flaw In Our Phone System: Mildly terrifying episode of Veritasium showing how easy it …
: Spy companies using Channel Islands to track phones around the world: The Channel Islands are a …
: Nope, the Pandemic Did Not Make Us All Gain Weight:: NHANES data suggests that, contrary to earlier …
: Tory gasps as Robert Jenrick reveals daughter’s middle name is Thatcher: New level of weird …
: When it comes to listening to podcasts I’m a big Pocket Casts user. Whilst it has a …
: Cannabis legalisation could be worth £9.5 billion per year to the UK: It’s astonishing and …
: Is UK maternity pay excessive and how much does it cost the taxpayer?: No, it’s nowhere near …
: Maternity pay is ‘excessive’, says Tory leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch: No, ‘personal …
: ‘Not all cultures equally valid’ when it comes to immigration, says Badenoch: I hope this was just …
: Absolutely love this recent post from the fantastic SMBC Comics.
: How unique is Covid-19? Being somewhat drawn to the Covid-doomer persuasion myself, I appreciate the reminder from Miloš …
: The Forever Plague and its enemies: A reminder to put Covid in the context of other illnesses and …
: Iran vows vengeance after assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah: Israel’s …
: Rosie Duffield resigns as Labour MP: Furious both at Keir Starmer’s political style and the …
: Elon Musk's free speech 'principles' lose to his economic interests once again as he capitulates to Brazil's Twitter demands We previously saw how Twitter/X was banned in Brazil on the basis that Elon Musk had been picking …
: Moving to Pika: In which a post about changing blog hosts turns out to be full of commentary on …
: Honestly it’s probably a losing battle, but if you want to try then organisations like CNN and …
: Hidden Figures reminds us that not all 1960s NASA geniuses were Serious White Men 📽️ Watched Hidden Figures. Based on real life events, this is the story of 3 computers. This was in …
: The True Story of “Hidden Figures,” the Forgotten Women Who Helped Win the Space Race: Not all 1960s …
: Reducing Food Cravings: Pratik shares 4 things that research suggests can diminish food cravings: …
: NIST proposes barring some of the most nonsensical password rules: The US National Institute of …
: Eric Adams charged with taking bribes and foreign campaign contributions: Another US politico-crime …
: Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network: Claims from last year that under Musk’s …
: Elon Musk says he wants free speech, but his track record suggests otherwise: Elon Musk is only …
: Twitter is complying with more government demands under Elon Musk: Probably not a bad thing, but …
: Hate speech is soaring on Twitter under Elon Musk: Contra Musk’s claims, hate speech on …
: The EU far right wants to give Elon Musk a free speech award: What a surprise that it’s only …
: Sakharov Prize: A prize given by the European Parliament to “individuals or groups who have …
: Elon Musk backs down in his fight with Brazilian judges to restore X: Musk presumably decided that …
: A battle with the gods: Exercising creativity is difficult, but forgoing the attempt may be even …
: Just re-encountered Good Clean Fun’s classic “The MySpace Song”. Emotional …
: Highlights from Matt Mullenweg’s Spiciest Word Camp Presentation at WordCamp US 2024: More info and …
: As the open social web grows, a new nonprofit looks to expand the ‘fediverse’: I’m …
: Social Web Foundation: It’s a slightly controversial organisation - mainly I think for …
: Maine woman sues Anthem insurance for failing to cover weight loss drugs: I hope she wins - if the …
: Obesity prevalence among US adults falls slightly to 40%, remains higher than 10 years ago: CDC: …
: Somewhat bewildered at what’s going on between the ultra famous web content management system …
: Two New Studies Point to Diabetes from COVID: Getting Covid may be a risk factor for developing …
: 14,000 Chemicals in Food Packaging, 3,601 Enter Our Bodies: Thousands of chemicals used in food prep …
: A new study finds 3,601 of the more-than-14,000 chemicals known to be used to store, process, …
: Criminal Investigative Analysis: Part 1 of 4 of a Law Enforcement Bulletin article I found when …
: Keir Starmer now less popular than Rishi Sunak, poll suggests: 45 point drop in approval since the …
: The case for public funding of UK political parties: One possible alternative to the current system …
: Almost half of UK political donations come from private wealthy ‘super-donors’: Maybe letting very …
: Why limit the political gifts ban to buying clothes for the PM? Starmer and top colleagues to stop taking clothes gifts from donors Oddly specific rule. If gifts …
: 'Outrage' erupts as Keir Starmer moves a painting to another room It’s interesting, if somewhat predictable, what passes muster for making it to the status of a …
: The era of Britishcore is upon us Apparently we’re in the aesthetic era of Britishcore. I’ve enjoyed learning about the …
: Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk: It’d be hard to argue this wasn’t true even if Mr …
: Brat summer: is the long era of clean living finally over?: What it means to be a cultural brat in …
: The brutal truth behind Italy’s migrant reduction: beatings and rape by EU-funded forces in Tunisia: …
: The rise of Britishcore: 100 experiences that define and unite modern Britons: I always enjoy a new …
: Now Hezbollah's walkie-talkies are exploding First it was their pagers. Now it’s Hezbollah’s walkie-talkies that are exploding. The …
: Walkie-talkie blasts: attacks on Hezbollah kill 20: The earlier exploding pager attack has been …
: Do you really need a new phone every 2 years? How to get more out of your devices: If you must …
: Repairing – not recycling – is the first step to tackling smartphone e-waste: Reusing and repairing …
: New phones aren't all that more exciting despite what Google claims I believe Jason has previously noted on his blog that new phones are boring - although I can’t …
: 10015 is a useful website containing a ton of quick little web tools that handle a set of fairly …
: ‘BlueAnon’ conspiracy theories flood social media after Trump rally shooting: The first Trump …
: Using LLMs to Simplify your Writing: Using LLMs as a personal writing editor seems like one of their …
: Ban warnings fly as users dare to probe the “thoughts” of OpenAI’s latest model: OpenAI’s …
: Remote cyber-attack on Hezbollah's pagers causes thousands of injuries and deaths In what sounds like a plot of a fairly implausible science fiction story, hundreds of pagers …
: Hundreds of pagers exploded in Lebanon and Syria in deadly attack: Seemingly a coordinated attack on …
: ‘Excuse Me. May I Have Your Seat?': A less widely-known Milgram experiment - asking someone to …
: Learning to Reason with LLMs: OpenAI discusses its new model, OpenAI o1.
: J.D. Vance: ‘If I Have to Create Stories… That’s What I’m Going to …
: Analytics for the personal web: What would the ideal web analytics system for a personal website …
: 🎶 Listening to HIT ME HARD AND SOFT by Billie Eilish. The world’s most famous whisperer is …
: 🎶 Listening to Radical Optimism by Dua Lipa. Described in part as being influenced by the …
: 🎶 Listening to ~mAntras~ by Alien Ant Farm. These are the guys who made the almost indisputably best …
: Save videos, photos and audio from your favourite sites with Cobalt Colbalt.tools looks to be a very useful web tool that lets you download and save video, audio and …
: Recent research provides some (weak) evidence that labelling menu items with calories might cause harm to some Something I feel myself gradually changing my mind on is the ubiquitous labelling of how many …
: UniGetUI is a handy GUI for Winget and other Windows package managers If you’re a Windows users who likes using Winget as a package manager, as I do, but would …
: Where is the boundary between blue and green? ismy.blue is a weirdly fascinating website whereby it shows you a page that has a background colour …
: Fake streamers listening to fake music by fake artists on Spotify allegedly made a single fraudster at least $10 million In a perfect example of the potential made available by the deleterious effects of bad business …
: A friend gets in touch to let me know that it’s not necessarily scary AI cyber-brains that are …
: 📄 Reading the Pivot to AI blog. This is high-grade fodder for those of us who harbour a significant …
: More events in what is starting to feel something like a global backlash against some of the big …
: Research suggests that GLP-1 pharmaceuticals can prevent Covid-19 deaths Some new research is out about that category of drugs which at times seems to be a class of …
: Another great free e-books offer from Verso, a publisher that continues to release at least one book …
: Telegram is only end-to-end encrypted if you solely use 'secret chats' I haven’t looked into the arrest of message-app Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov enough to …
: 🎥Watched Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde. Well I just watched the first. I couldn’t …
: 🎥 Watched Legally Blonde. This was the year rewatched the very famous, very popular, feminist comedy …
: Windows has a keyboard shortcut for opening LinkedIn for some reason New contender for the least useful Windows keyboard shortcut in existence: Windows key + Ctrl + Alt …
: The US Food and Drug Administration approved new vaccines for Covid-19 last week. The recommendation …
: Ibrahim Al-Nasser has officially set a new world record for how many video games consoles anyone has …
: Station Eleven is a highly compelling novel about humanity in the age of a very deadly pandemic 📚 Finished reading Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel. Imagine Covid but much worse. This book …
: It’s quite something to have gotten to the point in Britain that a UN committee feels …
: US Democrats borrow a dril tweet - a good excuse to list some faves Just in case any wayward Americans wanted even more reasons to vote Democrat in the upcoming …
: The IFS's interactive 'impact of tax and benefit changes' tool shows the cruel impact of the post-2010 tax and benefit changes The Institute for Fiscal Studies has released a handy interactive tool that lets you analyse how all …
: Gotta say, currently being in the midst of the outstanding book ‘The Age of Surveillance …
: Disabling my webcam from being a 'sound, video and game controller' fixed my Windows 11 laptop having no sound I came across another random fix to an annoying computer problem. When using a Windows 11 laptop it …
: Is there anything more ‘US politics in 2024’ than this? While the real Trump-Musk Space …
: So far in 2024, one woman in the UK has allegedly been killed by a man every three days on average. …
: 📚 Finished reading Starting & Running a Business All-in-One For Dummies by Colin Barrow. At …
: The UK far right riots show the days of overt and violent racist behaviour in the UK are far from over The past few days have made it very clear that anyone who thought the days of the British far right …
: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - a newer Star Trek series seemingly modelled on TNG 📺 Watched Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I was a huge fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation as a …
: The tech billionaires who at least used to be ashamed about their support for Trump Some conspiracies are real. For all the right-wing concern about some loony left shadowy elites …
: 📚 Finished reading Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway. Sci-fi detective noir, what’s not to love …
: Robert Jenrick, a Conservative MP who has aspirations to lead the party despite apparently being a …
: In news that chills me to the core, Hazel, a software engineer, has been keeping around 7,500 tabs …
: One of my favourite publishers in terms of their typical subject matter, Verso Books, is temporarily …
: TIL: Boris Johnson once disfigured a Long Covid report he was supposed to read by scrawling the word …
: I wasn’t wrong about the torment nexus AI plastic necklace company called ‘Friend’ …
: TIL: The US' current cybersecurity legislation, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, is an evolution of …
: Naomi Alderman's 'The Future' further fed my big tech scepticism 📚 Finished reading The Future by Naomi Alderman. This is by the same author as the rightfully …
: Once again, managing a government budget is not like managing a household budget I always appreciate seeing a reminder as to why, despite what politicians from several parties …
: An AI company reinvents the concept of a 'friend' One of the increasing morass of “throw it all against the wall and hope it sticks” AI …
: A spate of double-yolked eggs Nine of the last twelve standard supermarket eggs I’ve cracked open had double yolks. …
: Rainbow CSV is an extension for VSCode that makes working with CSV fields in that editor a lot more …
: We unleashed Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms on blank accounts. They served up sexism and …
: JAM Software’s TreeSize app is a handy Windows utility to quickly visualise which of your …
: Generative AI Is Totally Shameless. I Want to Be It Paul Ford writes entertainingly about generative …
: Think about your actual rather than idealised office when deciding whether to go into work When thinking about the “should you force employees to come into the office on the basis that …
: Disco Elysium is one of the most atmospheric, most unique, games I've played 🎮 Played Disco Elysium - The Final Cut. This was the first time I’d played a game quite like …
: A Microsoft Powershell command for the brave / foolish-of-heart! This - I hope: looks through all …
: A bug in Crowdstrike's software breaks large swathes of the world Large parts of the world are on fire - metaphorically speaking at least, but I’d not rule out …
: If you ever have a desire to edit MP3 tags without putting your phone down, then Evertag seems worth …
: The compareDF R package seems to be a super convenient way to quickly compare two dataframes to see …
: No-one seems to sell cheap Linux laptops It finally happened. My trusty personal laptop died. To be fair I can’t complain; it’s …
: 404 Media reveals the “Face Fraud” marketplace, wherein for a few dollars you can buy a …
: Contra the New Yorker, Christopher Snowdon gives us some reasons to believe that the case …
: Britain now has MPs aged from 22 to 80 The recent UK election, with its Labour landside, brought a new record for Britain’s youngest …
: The UK has a new Labour government The election is over. The UK has a new government, following a landslide victory by Labour. The …
: The day has come - it's time to go vote in the UK general election It’s General Election Day today here in the UK. Us UK folk should all leave the house and go …
: A new Channel 4 documentary asks us 'Can AI steal your vote?' 📺 Watched “Can AI Steal Your Vote?” documentary. This is a Channel 4 documentary from …
: Last month Ticketmaster got hacked by a group known as ShinyHunters, the same group that previously …
: From The BBC: France’s far right is in pole position after the first round of parliamentary …
: Led by Donkeys doing some of their usual amazing work via slowly dropping a banner featuring an …
: Microsoft accidentally leaks some of the source code behind their PlayReady DRM software. The …
: New scandal dropped: The Conservative officials who bet on the election date based on inside knowledge Several Conservative party candidates and officials are in trouble for, perhaps in a desperate …
: Rory Stewart's book reveals the total dysfunction behind Britain's political system 📚 Finished reading Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart. This is Rory Stewart’s memoir of his …
: 404 reports that: Users of massively popular AI chatbot platform Character.AI are reporting that …
: free-for.dev is a great list of free-tier cloud service tools for developers free-for.dev is a wonderful list consolidating a ton of “as a service” offerings that …
: 📧 Reading the Political Calculus newsletter. It’s election season madness here in the UK, so …
: Another huge NHS data leak following a ransomware attack Stolen test data and NHS numbers published by hospital hackers (From The BBC) A group called Qilin …
: Louisiana schools are now legally required to display the biblical Ten Commandments The US separation of church and state ethos continues to be ever more troubled under the influence …
: What a surprise that Nigel Farage - current face of the booming Reform party - isn’t opposed …
: 📺 Watched Clarkson’s Farm. A show so fantastical that, at times, it makes Jeremy Clarkson look …
: Shoutout to Patsy Gallagher, who spent the first few months of her life officially known as …
: This month’s The American Prospect magazine has an absolutely - possibly surprisingly - …
: Maybe I’m just vegetable-sheltered, but I don’t think I encountered something that …
: (At least) one of the UK's general election candidates is an AI chatbot Britain has something of a penchant for novelty candidates in its elections. We’re regularly …
: Apparently I was not the only person to rather take advantage of all-you-can-eat deals, at least in …
: Being thin is (in part) a genetic trait In the same way that being susceptible to obesity is, at least in part, a biological genetic trait, …
: The day has come: Reform is polling slightly higher than the Conservatives in the “Who do you …
: The general election manifestos are out This week has been manifesto week for the biggest political parties in the UK, part of the lead up …
: The cutting edge AI-bots couldn't say who won the 2020 US Presidential election It seems there was a recent point in time where neither OpenAI’s ChatGPT nor Google Gemini …
: The pro-Putin anti-women Reform candidate who prefers Hitler to Churchill The BBC found a rare example of a Reform party candidate for the forthcoming UK election who …
: The Gunning fog index formula, amongst others, calculates how readable your writing is The Gunning fog index is an algorithm that aims to indicate how readable your writing is by …
: Conservatives halt digital ad campaigns after daily spend plunged The party has halted all its …
: A calculator to quickly compare the energy costs of using different types of appliances A couple of years ago, back when British energy prices were skyrocketing to unprecedented and, for …
: Nigel Farage is, unfortunately, (dis)gracing us with his presence once again Notorious liar Nigel ‘Vile’ Farage - never has a man with a greater or more desperate …
: Free music streaming and more from your local library I recently noticed Freegal, a music service that does free streaming and even DRM-free downloads for …
: A third Conservative MP defects to Labour Mark Logan becomes the third Conservative MP to flip his allegiance and join the Labour party. He …
: Professor Etchells explains his personal experience and the scientific research around playing computer games 📚 Finished reading Lost in a Good Game by Pete Etchells. Since childhood the author, Professor Pete …
: 📺 Watched Beyond Paradise season 1 and 2. This is ‘Death in Paradise’, fully UK edition. …
: Trump can't pardon himself for yesterday's crimes even if he becomes president again I felt compelled to check. Happily, it turns out that if the now-certified-criminal Trump was to …
: I just learned that Microsoft released some older versions of MS-DOS as open source. Whilst it shows …
: Donald Trump has been convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his historic …
: The study behind the trial that Novo Nordisk stopped early last year for efficacy reasons has been …
: Seems it is impossible to delete your old Google Gemini chatbot chats if you have a Google business …
: 📽 Watched Civil War. Set in a presumably near-future time - I suppose 2025 would be a reasonable …
: The Labour party’s chief of staff Sue Gray has created a risk register - less formally known …
: 🎭 Excitedly awaiting ‘Standing at the Sky’s Edge’, which claims to be ‘the …
: Apple Music attempts to adjudicate the top 100 'greatest albums ever made' Apple Music tempts fate / goes full engagement growth hack by releasing a list of the top 100 …
: So far 80 Conservative MPs quit rather than face a general election More former big hitter Tory stars are abandoning the sinking ship. Perhaps the most surprising to me …
: Sunak announces that the UK will have a General Election on July 4th with nary an umbrella in sight, announces that the UK is to have a general election on July 4th. The …
: The New Yorker suggests there was little evidence behind the conviction of Lucy Letby An incredible story from the New Yorker about the case of British nurse Lucy Letby, a nurse - …
: The randomizr package for R (and apparently Stata) provides some nice simple functions to help …
: OpenAI's latest model - why are we trying so hard to make these products sound so human? Last week OpenAI, a company who never shies away from inventing something at least adjacent to the …
: In reassuring news, it turns out that the security code needed to get into the UK’s National …
: Britain has the highest rate of homelessness in the developed world The large majority of homelessness in Britain doesn’t manifest as the stereotypical rough …
: The Tortured Poets Department enters the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe 🎶 Listening to The Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift. As has everyone else, given it has …
: The excellent ConscienHealth blog, writing about a fierce debate in the world of nutrition science, …
: Watch a new city block of Pompeii get unearthed in a new BBC documentary 📺 Watched Pompeii: The New Dig. The BBC shows us some days in the lives of an Italian archeology …
: Between Death and Life shares interview transcripts from people who claim to know what happens after you die 📚 Finished reading Between Death and Life by Dolores Cannon. Ever wanted to learn what happens after …
: The Rwanda bill went through, but that doesn't make it OK From the combined forces of Freedom from Torture, Amnesty International UK and Liberty: This …
: Publishers are receiving a deluge of AI-generated dross The low-effort AI-generated botshit has presumably reached such a volume in the books world that …
: Some services that help transfer your music library and playlists between different music streaming services I’m slowly weaning myself away from the use of the mainstream music streaming service - …
: 'Ghost Hunter' details some of Hans Holzer's spooky cases 📚 Finished reading Ghost Hunter by Hans Holzer. Hans Holzer was a parapsychologist and a ghost …
: Happy to see that even the Norton anti-virus homepage totally acknowledges that their prices get …
: Hundreds of IPCC scientists think we'll being living in an environmental semi-dystopia by the end of the century Nearly 80% of the 380 expert scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) …
: Rewatching Westworld in the AI-infused year 2024 📺 (Re)watching Westworld. Humans invent a theme park populated by supposedly memory-less, insensible …
: Everyone was right - Barbie is indeed a fun feminist-leaning film. Watched Barbie (the movie). Unfortunately this film was a big enough sensation that I’d heard …
: Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs now has a AI-generated 'digital person' as a spokesperson Ukraine’s latest government spokesperson is an AI-generated “digital person”. A …
: A council has provoked the wrath of residents and linguists alike after announcing it would ban …
: Tom Hunt's predicament is a perfect example of why voter ID laws are usually bad laws Yesterday the UK saw a swathe of local and other miscellaneous elections taking place. It’s …
: For future reference, there is a website where you can find out what your local candidates for the …
: Happy 50th birthday to SQL! Structured Query Language is an incredibly popular computer language …
: The British people's opinion on immigration is becoming less hostile whilst the number of immigrants goes up Peter Kellner notes what seems to be something of a paradox in the British peoples' views around …
: Top Tory MP defects to Labour in fury at NHS crisis Dan Poulter crosses the aisle. He doesn’t …
: What if, for example, you only want your content to be seen by humans in their thirties with …
: Remove DRM from Amazon Kindle books with Calibre Amazon Kindle provides a popular, easy-to-use, and (sometimes) cheap ecosystem of devices and books …
: 🎶 Listening to Kaiser Chief’s Easy Eighth Album by The Kaiser Chiefs. Here’s another …
: Georgi Gospodinov's 'The Physics of Sorrow' 📚 Finished reading The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov. This is another wonderful, …
: 📺 Watched season 13 of Death In Paradise. More (mostly) light-hearted murder in the sun. I guessed …
: The results aren’t published yet, but it looks like we’re going to see that the …
: 'Becoming a Data Head' tries to teach you how best to think about data projects 📚 Finished reading Becoming a Data Head by Alex J Gutman and Jordan Goldmeier. This book is a nice …
: Emulators hit the iOS app store A couple of weeks ago Apple started allowing emulators onto its app store. Not a scene I’ve …
: The source of the 'AI experts think there's a 10% chance that AI will destroy humanity' statistic I’m two years later to the party, but I believe this is the source of the famous “AI …
: 📧 Reading the Data Is Plural newsletter - “a weekly newsletter of useful/curious …
: Let's not make the update to the 1824 Vagrancy Act worse than the original Homeless people should not be arrested just if they smell - minister One of the increasingly rare …
: Trump forced to see mean memes about him shared by prospective jurors (from Rolling Stone) Donald …
: Taking GLP-1 drugs may increase your chance of getting pregnant Anecdotal evidence is coming to light that suggests that folk on the revolutionary GLP-1 …
: Spotify's new minimum stream threshold means most tracks no longer pay the artist Spotify has changed its payment structure such that playing most tracks they host will result in a …
: US regulators introduce a law to limit the levels of PFAS present in drinking water US imposes first-ever limits on levels of toxic PFAS in drinking water (From The Guardian) PFAS are …
: The 'mother of all breaches' saw billions of confidential data records leaked earlier this year January 2024 saw the probably the biggest known leak of personal data yet known. An astonishing 26 …
: A couple of 'DuoLingo but for computer rather than human languages' options Started learning how to be a ‘Full-Stack Developer’ with Mimo. Being a DuoLingo streak …
: Is the UK housing crisis more about who owns the houses rather than how many houses there are? TIL that an astonishing (to me) 1 in every 21 adults in the UK is a landlord. The article I learned …
: The definition of Botshit In a recent paper “Beware of Botshit: How to manage the epistemic risks of generative …
: 📧 Reading the Garbage Day newsletter. This often hilarious, sometimes thought-provoking, always …
: 📺 Watched season 21 of of Dragon’s Den. BBC ‘Business Thursday’ hit our household …
: Today’s DuoLingo seems to be 100% sponsored by our dog.
: 📺 Watched The Power. This is the TV adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s justly-famous book of the …
: R. A. Fisher’s quote from his address to the 1938 First Indian Statistical Congress remains …
: Immediate low-key stress response whenever I see a message like this from a product owned by Meta. …
: ‘Refugee Astronaut III’, from a recent visit to the Wellcome Collection’s …
: 🎶 Listening to Saviors by Green Day. I’m constantly amazed that bands that were big when I was …
: The benefits of eating snakes It’s rather alien to mainstream British culture, but: Reptile meat is not unlike chicken: …
: Doctorow's Martin Hench returns to sort out more all-too-real corporate crimes in 'The Bezzle' 📚 Finished reading The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow. This is the sequel to a book I read last year Red …
: A trip to the 'The Cult of Beauty' exhibition A few exhibits below that caught my eye from a recent trip to the Wellcome Collection’s …
: 🎶 Listening to GUTS (spilled) by Olivia Rodrigo. I’m not often a fan of “deluxe” …
: ChatGPT remembers Once more disregarding the warnings from future-documentary Westworld, I noticed that OpenAI gave …
: 📺 Watched Black Mirror season 6. Despite the fact that I’m not sure my nerves need shattering …
: GB News breaks TV broadcast regulations once again Here comes yet another example of conservatives hating law and order, at least those laws that seek …
: From The Guardian: Five people have been killed and 10 injured in Gaza when they were hit by a …
: Theresa May's latest book educates us about (other people's) abuses of power 📚 Finished reading The Abuse of Power by Theresa May. It may, astonishingly, be four Prime Ministers …
: Bash script to delete local git branches that haven't been updated for a long time Here’s a quick bash script to delete all local git branches that haven’t seen a commit …
: Perelandra Bookshop, in Fort Collins, Colorado, has a “reader-in-residence” program. A …
: I hadn’t realised that the directors had confirmed that the fan theory that The Matrix movie …
: Figure is putting ChatGPT brains into humanoid bodies OpenAI is one of a number of tech companies that have provided sizeable investments into Figure, a …
: The Conservative leadership leans into conspiracy thinking Some of the top British Conservatives seem to be ever more happy to embrace a low-key version of the …
: After a trial involving nearly 18000 participants, the US FDA approves Wegovy, one of the famed …
: The Torment Nexus meme I finally remembered the meme I should have used to describe the concept I was after when recently …
: Big Duolingo milestone this week for my mission to learn Spanish: It’s honestly amazing how …
: The day Replika lobotomised everyone's AI girlfriend Last year, Gio wrote movingly about the day that Replika turned its AI virtual girl and boyfriends …
: From The Guardian: Britain will go into the next general election with taxes at their highest level …
: Glasgow’s ‘Willy’s Chocolate Experience’ (as in Willy Wonka of course) seems …
: The PK Cookbook argues for the benefits of a high fat, high fibre, low carb diet 📚 Finished reading The PK Cookbook by Sarah Myhill. Yes, I actually read a cookbook. To be fair this …
: Reliving the story of Britain's shortest-serving Prime Minister with Harry Cole's 'Out of the Blue' 📚 Finished listening to Out of the Blue by Harry Cole. Cue the obvious jokes about that it must be …
: Disenchanted ex-Vice employees sneak a final podcast episode onto the Cyber feed 🎙 Listening to Cyber: The End of Vice podcast. Vice Media, owners of such famous media properties as …
: The layers of the Internet “The Internet” is just too big and too important to think about as being one thing these …
: In data breach news, Wyze, a maker of internet-enabled smart security cameras to put in your home, …
: 📚 Finished reading In Ascension by Martin MacInnes. We start by learning about the childhood of our …
: Apparently even more British children have smartphones than I’d have guessed. Ofcom data says …
: Air Canada instructed to honour a refund that their chatbot inadvertently promised From Ars Technica: After months of resisting, Air Canada was forced to give a partial refund to a …
: Another 'abuse of power': thousands of students wrongly deported from the UK for supposedly cheating on a test This multi-year miscarriage of justice is embarrassingly new to me, but then again so was an event …
: Learned a new phase last week: stinge-watching. It’s the opposite of binge-watching. …
: 📺 Watching The Apprentice - season 18. It’s sometimes reassuring when things stay the same - …
: For anyone that finishes Wordle too quickly, Puzzmo - “the (new) place for thoughtful …
: TIL: Elon Musk wasn’t the founder of Tesla. Tesla’s real founders were Martin Eberhard …
: Interesting that “social media” is such a toxic brand these days that Snapchat’s …
: NearbyWiki.org is a fun site that plots Wikipedia encyclopedia entries over an interactive map. You …
: 📧 Reading the Bits About Money newsletter. I’d never spent too much time thinking about how …
: TIL: Buckingham Palace pays a council tax bill of £1,828 per year. That’s lower than 46% of …
: Neuralink implants a chip in someone's brain Elon Musk has implanted a microchip in someone else’s brain. No, this isn’t some weird …
: The asylum seekers fleeing from Rwanda make the UK's plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda seem even more unhinged I feel like a bare minimum criteria for the criminal abrogation of the UK’s international …
: 📺 Watched season 6 of The Crown. This is the final season of this “is it fact or …
: 📺 Watched season 2 of The Traitors (UK version). Exactly the same setup as in the first season, but …
: Cory Doctorow reminds us that AI doesn’t actually have to be better than us at our jobs in …
: 143 companies want to know that I visited the Teen Vogue website This very explicit cookie consent / surveillance message jarred me a little today. All I wanted to …
: A friend shares the UK National Careers Service’s job description of an astronaut with me. …
: 🎶 Listening to Sweet Justice by Tkay Maidza. Tkay is a Zimbabwean-Australian rapper who …
: This (taken from some random Discord if I remember correctly) might be a little simplistic in some …
: 1 mobile phone gets stolen every 6 minutes in London, back in 2022 at least. That year 90,864 got …
: The shocking role of modern-day slavery in the UK care sector Just when I imagined I couldn’t learn anything new about the often dreadful conditions that …
: TIL: Ireland’s Dublin Airport holds an annual “Blessing of the Planes” ceremony. …
: The world yearns for its past in Gospodinov's Time Shelter 📚 Finished reading: Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov. This was a fascinating and, at times, darkly …
: Computerphile takes us through some of the technical issues found with the Post Office Horizon …
: NewsGuard identifies 634 entire websites full of generative-AI-created content farm nonsense It’s not only books, music and product listings that are being created, or contaminated, by …
: Amazon appears to be selling OpenAI apologies disguised as chairs Very lazy AI content has already contaminated our supply of books and music. Now two great forces of …
: Mis- and dis-information are the biggest immediate threats to the world according to the WEF One of the conspiracy-minded folks' least favourite organisations, the World Economic Forum, has …
: A huge number of important elections are due to be held in 2024 At least 64 countries, plus the EU, are due to hold elections this year. Between them, they …
: 📺 Started the mammoth mission of watching all available ‘classic’ Doctor Who episodes, …
: Mr Bates vs The Post Office tells the story of one of Britain's 'worst miscarriages of justice' 📺 Watched Mr Bates vs The Post Office. I’m one of the nearly 15 million folk so far who have …
: Trump team argues assassination of rivals is covered by presidential immunity Not the most …
: Compassion beats empathy in a helpless situation Adam Grant writes about empathic stress. This is the numbness that can manifest when you feel …
: Elsewhere, I wrote about the ongoing battle between between human creators and AI trainers.
: On the verge of entering ‘Unbelievable’ - a magic show in the West End. It was written …
: The 'Power Up' exhibition - a festival of mostly-retro videogaming I recently had the pleasure of going to the “Power Up” exhibition in London’s …
: The last vestiges of Christmas lights, outside Kings Cross station, London.
: Visiting Sigmund Freud's last home I recently visited the final residence of Sigmund Freud - the extraordinarily famous father of …
: What it takes to be in the top 1% of UK income tax payers I always find it interesting to understand the thresholds involved in being in the various economic …
: From CNBC: Google is considering a substantial workforce reduction, potentially affecting up to …
: More than 1 in 50 Londoners are homeless An incredible 1 in 50 Londoners are homeless - and that’s a figure from August last year so I …
: My year in music, 2023 My most listened to albums, 2023. (at least from the times when I remembered to use apps that can …
: My year in books, 2023 Here’s the final list of books I managed to finish this year.
: The Lost Cause - an oddly hopeful story of a climate-change ravaged near future 📚 Finished reading The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow. This book is set in California, three decades …
: Unsurprisingly, ChatGPT and its ilk are finding their way into providing direct customer service for …
: Some books about Artificial Intelligence I'd like to read - updated (List last updated 2024-10-15, first written 2023-12-29) Ever since the generative AI chatGPT craze …
: At last the most important top X things of 2023 post is out. Here’s Rolling Stone’s take …
: (Nearly) new year, new URL. I’ve kept this blog up long enough it’s time to give it its …
: Busy wasting time on The Great Scrollback of Alexandria. This is a preservation effort, attempting …
: Over 10,000 research papers were retracted this year It’s been a record-setting year in terms of how many research articles have had to be …
: Being You: Anil Seth's new theory of consciousness 📚 Finished reading Being You: A New Science of Consciousness by Anil Seth. This feels like a book …
: The Word of the Year 2023 winners are in Looking at the various dictionaries' Word Of The Year 2023 winners - let’s hope no good words …
: Good news, it looks like federating is still in fashion. Flipboard has starting federating a few of …
: 🎶 Listening to Stumpwork by Dry Cleaning. I didn’t really know I needed someone sardonically …
: 📚 Finished reading Zero Days by Ruth Ware. The book opens with Jacintha Cross sneaking around a …
: Elon Musk tried to create a ‘politically neutral’ - also known as ‘politically …
: Maryam Moshiri falls victim to the same self-inflicted disaster that I’m sure all of us remote …
: Currently on consecutive day 9 of wearing my Christmas jumper.
: Quiver Quantitative tracks and shares a lot of stock trading information to enable reporting on and …
: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications - US senator I don’t …
: TIL: When playing fruit machines, legally it’s the person who presses the button that gets the …
: The last of the big tech giants recently released its version of a large language model generative …
: Being an data analyst type of person I am a fervent believer in the below concept, but until now I …
: Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies Rolling Stone …
: The world is on track for a “hellish” 3C of global heating, the UN has warned. Apparently our …
: 📚 Finished reading Upgrade by Blake Crouch. I read and enjoyed “Recursion” by the same …
: "The Extended Mind" teaches us how to improve our thinking in some counterintuitive ways 📚 Finished reading The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul. This was one of those books that are so …
: 🎶 Listening to GUTS by Olivia Rodrigo. Everyone’s favourite childhood High School Musical …
: Everyone was right, The Three-Body Problem is great 📚 Finished reading The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. I remember this book got pretty rave reviews …
: In 2019 OpenAI was too scared to open GPT-2 to the world Remember the halcyon days of circa 2019, when OpenAI were too nervous to release GPT-2, yes, two, on …
: “The Data Warehouse Toolkit” teaches us dimensional modelling and the Kimball method of data warehouse design 📚 Finished reading The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Definitive Guide to Dimensional Modeling by Ralph …
: The Conservative party appears to hate law and order Remember when the Conservatives thought they were the party of law and order? Hilarious. I’m …
: Humans will go to considerable effort to get obviously useless information In a finding that may not surprise anyone who endures reading this blog, a recent study found that …
: Facebook permanently disabled my account, no right of appeal Never trust a social network you don’t own, lesson number 999. After a period of disuse, …
: Sam Altman, the famed head of OpenAI seems to have been fired. Mr. Altman’s departure follows …
: The Sherlock & Co. podcast updates the Sherlock Holmes stories for the Facebook era 🎙️ Listening to Sherlock & Co. podcast. Meet Dr. John Watson, an army medic who had to leave …
: There's now a dangerous black market in anti-obesity drugs Demand continues to dramatically outpace supply in terms of getting access to the recent …
: Crime and Punishment - the original psychological thriller 📚 Finished reading Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. This is the book that has been …
: We Are Bellingcat: Bellingcat's origin story and how they do what they do 📚 Finished reading We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins. This is the story of how Elliot Higgins went …
: Is Britain on the verge of introducing an age limit on baking?
: Meta-owned WhatsApp confirms (once again) that adverts are coming to its app. Code to enable this …
: Arcade claw machines are even more scammy than I thought Only recently did I learn that those arcade claw machines where the game is to precisely navigate a …
: The deleterious effects of bad business models, incentives and AI on music streaming services When Spotify and its competitors launched it heralded a whole new way to listen to music. Suddenly …
: This interactive visualisation is a great way of explaining or visualising what a given …
: Expect lots of fun new pun-ridden URLs to show up soon. Starting December 5th everyone can purchase …
: Braverman thinks homelessness is a "lifestyle choice" Our Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, tell us that the homelessness crisis in Britain is in fact …
: Ooh, after the success of the Super Mario Bros Movie they’re making a live-action Legend of …
: TIL: The collective noun for a group of ferrets is a “business” of ferrets. So now you …
: Jennifer Daniel shares what we can expect for official new emojis in 2025. Just seven this time, …
: The UK does not need to widen the definition of extremism even further Via some leaked documents the Observer got their hands on, we learn that the government is thinking …
: I often wondered what happened if you accidentally tick the “Yes I have committed …
: Verso Books is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world, …
: 🎙️ Listening to ‘Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook: Israel/Gaza Edition’ from the …
: The impact of the Hamas Israel war on hate-crime in Britain What’s going on in the Middle East at the moment - after Hamas committed an appalling attack …
: 🎶 Listening to The More Red Chapter by Taylor Swift. Whilst these differently compiled re-releases …
: 🎶 Listening to The Jaws of Life by Pierce The Veil. This is their first album in a 7 years. Emo pop …
: 🎶 Listening to Just a Christmas Dirtbag by Wheatus. There’s something a bit tragic about bands …
: I’m sure no-one needs reminding, but today is National Mole Day. . Nothing to do with small …
: Unsurprisingly, the 'eat 2000 calories a day' recommendation isn't very scientific TIL: The 2000 calories per day recommendation you see on food labels that say things like …
: In a recent paper, researchers compared the trends in Google searches that suggest people are …
: Can’t believe its taken me 7 years to learn of the outrageous decline of everyone’s favourite …
: The real AI alignment problem 🎙️ Listening to The Ezra Klein Show podcast episode “Why A.I. Might Not Take Your Job or …
: IPleak.net looks to be a pretty comprehensive website that allows you to check what IP address …
: Newspaper in trouble for publishing Braverman's lie about child grooming gangs IPSO rules that the Mail on Sunday must apologise for publishing an article by Suella Braverman that …
: 📚 Finished reading Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Rich young partygirl Noemi - more used to …
: Walmart finds that people who start taking the GLP-1 anti-obesity medications go on to buy …
: 📺 Watched Jury Duty. Caved into the show that almost every American I know seems to be talking …
: 🎶 Listening to Re: This Is Why. Ever wondered what it’d be like if the recent Paramore album …
: A wet fish, outside Sheffield station.
: I was curious to know what age the oldest person to have ever lived got to. According to the …
: Amazon now charges third-party sellers almost half of their revenue Monopolies gonna monopoly. Now that Amazon is so dominant that many online retailers feel like they …
: The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give …
: What causes the Overton Paradox? Brilliant.org has a fun interactive explainer of the Overton Paradox, at least as enacted in the US. …
: 🎮 Currently playing The Battle of Polytopia. It’s a world-domination strategy game vaguely …
: My Microsoft Surface laptop decided not to recognise that anything was plugged into its USB ports …
: 🎙️ Listening to The Studies Show podcast. A couple of science writers I’ve followed for a …
: Last week, while checking the device of an individual employed by a Washington DC-based civil …
: Liz Truss is writing a new book 😟 After winning the record for being the only UK Prime Minister with a shorter lifespan than a lettuce …
: Over here I wrote about some research from Pew comparing what Twitter users say they do vs what they …
: 🎶 Listening to Hell Is A Teenage Girl by Nessa Barrett. Nessa is a Tiktok star. Perhaps a true …
: This looks like a handy comparison guide to free and open source photo libraries for anyone …
: The corporate jargon being most forcibly injected into my ears in recent days: HMW: how might we …
: MusicBrainz Picard fixes your musical MP3 tagging woes MusicBrainz Picard is a great utility to clean up your computerised music collection if like me you …
: More data leaks Another day, another mass data-leak. The one that caught my attention most recently was that the …
: Q by Christine Dalcher reminds us of the dangers of taking meritocracy too far 📚 Finished reading Q by Christina Dalcher. Set in in a United States of the (near?) future, this …
: TIL: There’s a version of chess you play on a hexagon shaped board made up of hexagons. It …
: Experiencing the Dream Machine Last week I got to go experience the Dream Machine with a friend. The nature of the experience is …
: The trials and tribulations of installing Linux Mint alongside Windows 10 Over the past couple of days I’ve managed to install Linux Mint onto my Windows 10 computer. …
: Treating obesity can save lives An important point for any debate about treatments for obesity that’s often missed or …
: When some of your personalities go blind Following on having been inappropriately surprised that a person with dissociative identity disorder …
: Russia's moon-landing attempt fails, but there's plenty more coming up soon I’d totally missed that there’s a substantial amount of landing-on-the-moon activity …
: Twitter's habit of deleting or undeleting your posts at will In the latest reminder that things you upload to the various big social media services aren’t …
: Getting real SimCity vibes from the view today.
: We’re up to 91 felonies now in terms of how many criminal charges have been brought against …
: When only one of your personalities has allergies 📧 Reading John Medina’s Substack newsletter. He’s a developmental molecular biologist, …
: Maus: The Pulitzer-prize winning graphic novel that portrays the horrors of the Second World War 📚 Finished reading: The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman. This is a comic book portraying the …
: 📽 Watched Interstate 60. Fun coming-of-age-roadtrip type movie about a young man who is torn between …
: Please let's not fight the next election on who can damage the environment the most The clowns are at it again. When Sunak took over the British premiership from the last Conservative …
: From PC Magazine: For 16 years, Jeremy Vaught had control of the @music account on Twitter. But no …
: Turns out the UK’s Electoral Commission has been hacked for the past couple of years. At the …
: 🎙️ Listening to Brad & Will Made A Tech Pod. The name is pretty self-explanatory. Lots of tech …
: The call of Linux I’ve been feeling drawn to the Linux operating system recently, partly under the guise of …
: TIL: There’s an estimated 3 million shipwrecks dotted across the ocean floors of our planet. …
: A new paper re-affirms that plant-based diets are far less damaging to the environment A new paper from Scarborough et al. looks again at the level of environmental impact that different …
: Many of us have seen those adverts for smartphone games, often embedded inside other annoying phone …
: Paper notes: How much food tracking during a digital weight management program is enough...? Below are notes I took from reading the paper: How much food tracking during a digital weight …
: Should one have the need to mass-download their Kindle books from Amazon without a ton of clicking …
: 🎶 Listening to Endless Summer Vacation by Miley Cyrus. Came to it via the ultra-viral hit Flowers …
: Somehow only today did I realise that you can use if statements directly within R’s dplyr …
: WormGPT is an AI chatbot designed to help commit crime Inevitably some bright spark has developed a large language model AI chatbot whose explicit purpose …
: Very unexpectedly, something about the apparent inanity / insanity of its plot makes me actually …
: Mary Pilon reveals the real story behind the monopolising of Monopoly 📚 Finished listening to The Monopolists by Mary Pilon. As far as board game creation stories go, the …
: Is it worth trying to increase your physical activity if you only have time to even think about it …
: Terrible AI-written books hit the Kindle Unlimited best-seller lists Another upsetting outcome of the inevitable coming together of the generative AI infocalypse, …
: The new New Conservatives faction has no new ideas New(ish) Conservative party faction just dropped. Let’s welcome the “New …
: Following some big companies such as Samsung banning or putting limits on their employees' use of …
: From the i: Nigel Farage has criticised the Home Office’s decision to paint over murals of cartoon …
: The latest deranged volley in the Conservative Government’s extremely inhumane and extremely …
: I’ve been looking at options for Network Attached Storage recently, to help me be more …
: Conservatives only like law and order when it suits their interests Frank Wilhoit succinctly encapsulates how at least a subset of conservatives - I suppose he would …
: The US Federal Trade Commission is investigating OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT et al, in order to …
: Learned that you can work in two branches of the same local git repo at once without problems via …
: PC Part Picker seems to be a good site for seeing a summary of what, surprise surprise, parts of PCs …
: It’s increasingly apparent that relying on the ability to reliably access or even link to …
: The 'Redact' app lets you delete all those social media posts that you regret writing For anyone who is sick of either whatever the latest “rich person ruins social network” …
: In “I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a cop” Adam Mastroianni makes the case …
: Twitter’s whims can break other sites too It’s increasingly apparent that relying on the ability to reliably link to or access internet …
: Australia becomes the first country to legalise the use of certain psychedelics in controlled …
: TIL: The US isn’t the only country to officially celebrate American independence on July 4th. …
: 📚 Finished reading 11.22.63 by Stephen King. Jake Epping, a down-on-his-luck teacher, is recruited …
: 📚 Finished reading Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow. In this novel, Martin Hench is an almost-retired …
: This week is London Data Week - ‘Data in the public, for the public’. Join us at London …
: Providing the greatest educational resources to people who do well on tests isn't the only option I’m sure Yglesias' post in response to the recent SCOTUS ruling against affirmative action …
: Absolutely obsessed with The Password Game. All the fun of trying to pick a computer password …
: A trip to the Van Gogh Immersive Experience A couple of weeks ago I went to the Van Gogh Immersive Experience in London. Here’s the …
: Mya Gosling provides what turns out to be a handy guide to the 7 Shakespeare plays that might …
: Huge shock to the system today when I saw what appeared from a distance to be a dead human body on …
: Living in the dumbest timeline as we do, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship has …
: A day of musical fun in the sun, perhaps to be banned in the US It’s been a couple of weeks since I had a wonderful day out in London with a well-connected …
: Intrigued to learn that the RStudio folks are actively working on an integration with the GitHub …
: US residents can join class actions against Google and Facebook's abuse of their data Anyone in the US who did a Google search between 2006-2013 might like to sign up here before the end …
: Jenara Nerenberg asks us to consider a different type of diversity in "Divergent Mind" 📚 Finished reading: Divergent Mind by Jenara Nerenberg. This book encourages us to consider a type …
: The Partygate report is here New Boris Johnson report just dropped. Yes, it’s the Partygate findings from the House of …
: The UK is once again experiencing a heatwave, a situation likely to become ever more common whilst …
: Boris Johnson has stepped down as a Tory MP after claiming he was “forced out of …
: The bronze elephants of Spitalfields I spotted a herd of elephants around Spitalfields, London, this weekend. It turns out they’re …
: TIL: Last year scientists discovered a bacteria of such relatively huge size that it’s easily …
: A further 7 federal charges have been laid against Trump, some related to his having illegally …
: Learned that the built-in fc command is a quick way to check if 2 files have the same contents using …
: Leutner et al. provide evidence of a link between having obesity and later developing a diagnosed …
: On another AI note, Google is going to introduce adverts to its generative AI search/chat feature. …
: Noticed a couple of newish ChatGPT features. Firstly there’s an official iOS app, available …
: 🎙 Listened to Tech Won’t Save Us podcast. I came to it for an antidote to the recent AI …
: 📺 Watched season 8 of Brooklyn 99. Released in 2021, the final season of the surprisingly funny …
: Cannabis is now legal for recreational use in 22 US states A couple of months ago Delaware became the 22nd US state to legalise recreational use of cannabis. …
: Chanced upon a panel from another infinitely evergreen marvel published by The Nib, RIP once again. …
: Rclone looks to be a super useful utility for anyone who works a lot with cloud storage providers. …
: Over here, I wrote about whether Artificial Intelligences really are developing scary new emergent …
: 📺 Watched Star Trek: Picard season 2 and 3. Dwelling here only on season 3: if you grew up in the …
: ChatGPT enters the courtroom A lawyer is facing potential sanctions for using chatGPT to create inaccurate legal documents in …
: 🎶 Listening to This Is Why by Paramore. A pretty different sound to some of their past albums, …
: From Ars Technica: 96% of US users opt out of app tracking in iOS 14.5, analytics find When …
: Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter in a tumultuous $44 billion deal completed last October, the social …
: I was sad to hear that The Nib, the “publisher of political cartoons and nonfiction comics …
: Naomi Kritzer, author of Cat Pictures Please et al, produces an annual list of recommended gifts to …
: Meta has received the largest fine for a GDPR breach ever seen - £1 billion - for the way it’s …
: 📺 Watched Chernobyl. The catastrophic disaster that followed after the Chernobyl nuclear power …
: 📚 Finished reading Cat Pictures Please and Better Living Through Algorithms by Naomi Kritzer. These …
: 📺 Watched Shadow and Bone season 2. Given at the end of the last season our heroes were under the …
: The rise of private GP practices in the UK Following years of Conservative government mismanagement and un-resourcing of the rightly-venerated …
: A few sites that offer blog hosting Something of a return to blogging seems to be in the air, at least in some circles. Whether inspired …
: Somewhat astonishing that what Popular Mechanics is talking about in its article headlined …
: Did GPT-4 develop artificial general intelligence? A team of Microsoft Researchers think that GPT-4 might have developed artificial general …
: ChatGPT gets access to the Internet Up until recently, ChatGPT only “knew” about things that happened before 2022 based on …
: The forthcoming changes to England's student loan repayments are highly regressive A briefing by London Economics reveals that the change to UK student loan repayments being …
: Anyone who’s ever wanted to experience the often under-paid and over-stressful job of …
: Golems as Artificial Intelligences Whilst separated by hundreds of years, I keep noticing distinct parallels between modern conceptions …
: Ofsted school inspections appear to be dangerous and ineffective The Observer reports the extremely chilling fact that the stress caused by Ofsted school inspections …
: Updating Visual Studio Code with winget I’ve recently been using using Visual Studio Code to interface with remote Github Codespaces …
: The crowning of King Charles III King Charles III’s coronation day. The sort of religious and military inspired wild spectacle …
: Yesterday much of the UK saw local elections taking place. Counting is still in progress but so far …
: They’ve made King Charles' coronation interactive. Presumably in an effort to promote …
: Will generative AI in forthcoming office software be a world-changing development or the next Clippy? One additional reason why it’s possible that generative AI technology might permanently infuse …
: 🎶 Listening to Trustfall, by P!nk. This was one of those occasions where I was curious what one of …
: Nate Silver implores us to adopt Bayesian thinking in order to distinguish signal from noise 📚 Finished reading The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver. Nate Silver describes efforts to …
: Knitted crowns aplenty outside the shops today, no doubt in anticipation of the forthcoming …
: The fragility of the computer chip production infrastructure 🎙 Listened to “The Most Amazing - and Dangerous - Technology in the World” from The Ezra …
: A day with a huge personal revelation: adding some ground black pepper to a cup of standard black …
: Less than 30 years ago most Americans disapproved of interracial marriages The increase in the percentage of the US population who approve of the idea that people of different …
: 📺 Watched The Last Of Us. I’m not normally a big fan of zombie shows, but this one was getting …
: An AI sings a song Bobby Geraghty, singer and songwriter for former band Breezer, got bored of waiting for the 90s …
: The makers of Stable Diffusion release an open-source AI chatbot, StableLM Stability.ai is the company behind AI text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion. This was the first …
: Unlawful Killings: Insights into the life of a Crown Court judge from Wendy Joseph 📚 Finished reading Unlawful Killings by Her Honour Wendy Joseph KC. Former Crown Court judge Wendy …
: Last year an AI-generated picture won an art competition. The technology has of course only got …
: 📺 Watched season 12 of Death in Paradise. Everyone’s favourite vacation paradise / murder …
: Rome et al analyse the costs of newly-launched pharmaceuticals in the US. They discover that the …
: The arguments for prison abolition: thoughts from "We Do This 'Til We Free Us" 📚 Finished reading We Do This ‘Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba. In this book, Mariame Kaba …
: Viewers Can Watch Prince Harry Talk to a Trauma Expert for $33.09 The ‘Give me privacy’ …
: Might AI chatbots exacerbate suicidal tendencies? Euronews.next reports on a tragic case where a man killed himself, his suicidal thoughts allegedly …
: 📺 Watched Wednesday. The Addams family daughter is back in this TV series following …
: With their new advert, the Labour Party have managed to do the unthinkable and almost make me feel …
: 🎥 Watched The Batman. Despite fairly glowing reviews I found this a little disappointing, with the …
: Britons rejoice: The official King Charles coronation emoji is here Only about a month to go until King Charles' coronation, and finally Buckingham Palace have released …
: Cobb et al. find that almost 10% of citations found within papers published in top psychology …
: Donald Trump as Easter Jesus: the latest unhinged metaphor Happy Easter to all those who celebrate it. This is the day where religious Christians celebrate the …
: Tomorrow’s celebrations may be expensive (along with everything else). From The Guardian: The …
: Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation of MPFC enhances humor processing. Or in simpler …
: Google contractors say they don’t have enough time to verify correct answers from the …
: A few years ago, a group of researchers spent their time looking for the world’s oldest …
: Sitting through 3 hours and 12 minutes of impeccably rendered splashy-splashy water scenes is …
: From ConscienHealth: Using Mendelian randomization they found evidence for a causal relationship …
: Meat cultivation food company Vow has created a meatball out of wooly mammoth meat. Sure, wooly …
: With the recent release of iOS 16.4, both Android and iOS users have access to the latest greatest …
: Donald Trump becomes the first ever US president to be charged with a crime. We don’t know the …
: Public support for strikes remains high, despite what it looks like on social media The UK’s cavalcade of strike action that has been taking place over the past few months …
: 📚 Finished reading Statistical Rethinking by Richard McElreath. This textbook that teaches the use …
: From a recent visit to Doddington Hall - which had surprisingly few flowers given the event was …
: I recently got access to Bard, Google’s chatGPT-esque language language model chatbot. Curious …
: Fans of the TV comedy show “Ghosts” might know that there’s considerable overlap …
: This life expectancy chart from from Peterson-KFF’s Health System Tracker is quite shocking …
: 📺 Finished watching seasons 1-4 of Ghosts. Funny, harmless, British sitcom wherein Alison and Mike …
: OpenChatKit is an open-source LLM chatbot (whilst chatGPT is ever more closed-source) An open-source alternative using a similar kind of large language model technology as chatGPT does …
: There was a moment where chatGPT was accidentally leaking the title of people’s chats to other …
: Started taking a course provided by the Analytics Engineers Club. Looking forward to developing some …
: The 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq It’s just been the 20-year anniversary of one of the more formative-to-me and likely …
: AI image generator Midjourney recently released its version 5 and apparently not-too-disturbing …
: The release of GPT-4 has led to a flurry of mind-bendingly impressive tricks that I mean to create a …
: All About Love, by bell hooks 📚 Finished reading All About Love by bell hooks. Here the author tells us to consider love as …
: A couple of years ago, Dow Chemicals, who make some of the materials that go into sports shoes, …
: Duolingo looks to be the latest app to jump on the “find some way to integrate generative …
: (Chat) GPT-4 is here OpenAI recently released a new version of their AI large language model. The famous chatGPT we all …
: Last month, Facebook announced its competitor to chatGPT, a large language model AI called LLaMA. At …
: Women tend to suffer from motion sickness more than men when using virtual reality headsets. This …
: This one might be legal, but it’s disgusting. Children who have been sexually exploited and …
: It’s not been a great couple of days for our Government in terms of managing to respect the …
: King Charles' vegan chrism oil A friend shares this incredible headline: Holy anointing oil for King Charles III’s …
: Despite the wild hype, I can’t pretend that chatGPT isn’t already useful. My favourite …
: It should be noted that whilst Snapchat might be the first major social network to let you directly …
: So that didn’t take long. Snapchat is (I think?) the first of the major social networks to add …
: Prove that you exist One of the new challenges of our era seems destined to be how to prove that you’re a human. …
: Troubles in paradise for the real life Squid Game Remember Netflix’s 2021 hit “Squid Game”, a fictional tale of 456 people who felt …
: Decided to move the more lengthy and rambling notes I’ve made on a few books I’ve read …
: Empire of Pain: the Sackler family's role in creating a deadly opioid epidemic 📚 Finished listening to Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. This is the story of the Sackler …
: The Body Keeps the Score: how and why traumatic events impact us 📚 Finished reading The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel A Van der Kolk. This reads like an very …
: Some very grim nadirs of reality TV 🎙 Listened to Unreal: A Critical History of Reality TV podcast. Part fondly reminiscing of reality …
: The inherent unpredictability of earthquakes The devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake and its aftershocks that hit Turkey and Syria earlier this …
: 🎙 This week’s Hard Fork podcast had an interesting section on the origin story of OpenAI, …
: 📺 Watched The Traitors (US version). Well it was hard to resist watching it after getting more …
: Living the provisional life Oliver Burkeman describes the apparently near-universal human experience of forever living the …
: 📚 Finished reading: Recursion by Blake Crouch. A gripping tale set in the world of approximately …
: 📺 Watched season 3 of Emily in Paris. The fluffy feel-good story of the fashionista who always comes …
: 📚 Finished reading Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall. This is a searing critique of modern day …
: Welcome to Super Nintendo World, the closest thing you can get to diving head-first inside a video …
: Cory Doctorow's theory of "platform enshittification" In a recent post, Cory Doctorow explained his theory of “platform enshittification” …
: Cognitive biases as visual illusions I’m intrigued by Adam Mastroianni’s framing of cognitive biases as being akin to visual …
: Over here I wrote about 3 papers that investigate the effectiveness of rainforest carbon credit …
: Slightly astonished to learn that there’s a 2022 series of UK Beauty and the Geek. It’s …
: The FT has a fascinating look into life as a high-ranking female spy now that for the first time …
: Human Rights Watch is concerned that the UK is increasingly turning into an abuser, rather than …
: In “products I’m really not sure need to exist” news, a company called Reviver …
: Played Into the Breach 🎮. This is a turn-based strategy game in which you control mech pilots to …
: Happy 10th anniversary to what unfortunately turned out to be the most evergreen meme of all time, …
: Microsoft has created a language model called “Vall-E” that can simulate a …
: A few of us just started the Statistical Rethinking online course in order to learn more about using …
: I’m unduly nerd-excited to have received a tote bag from the Office of National Statistics.
: Last year Europe had its hottest ever summer. Almost half of its countries broke their previous …
: Just realised that the Obsidian text editor supports MathJax. So for the mathematically inclined, …
: Coming soon: the first mainstream UK TV show based on deepfakes Prepare yourself for the ITV sketch show “Deep Fake Neighbour Wars”, the first …
: 📺 Watched season 1 of The Traitors. A reality show where by day a group of strangers complete …
: It’s getting on for four months since Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested in Iran for not …
: Today’s Observer reports that: NHS trusts with record waiting lists are promoting “quick and …
: 15th time lucky - the US elects a speaker of the House After repeating the same vote 15 times over the last week, the US House of Representatives has …
: Finished reading The It Girl by Ruth Ware 📚. A thriller set in the grounds of Oxford University, the …
: Watched season 5 of The Crown 📺. Starting to get into the years I actually remember something about …
: From the NYT: Without a speaker, the United States House of Representatives essentially becomes a …
: The Financial Times looks into why the UK’s NHS is in such a disastrous condition at present. …
: Unlike previous generations, UK and US millennials are not becoming more conservative over time There’s a widely held belief that younger people tend to start off being politically left-wing …
: Played The Pharaoh’s Tomb from Exit: The Game 🎲. The Exit advent calendar was so good we …
: Played the The Mysterious Ice Cave advent calendar from Exit: The Game 🎲. This is an advent calendar …
: Just remembered the time when The Beano comic issued a cease-and-desist letter to MP Jacob Rees-Mogg …
: Disappointing TIL: Drag queen superstar Ru Paul and his partner George LeBar own a ranch upon which …
: Covid-19 mRNA vaccines are weakly associated with Myopericarditis - but not nearly as much as having Covid-19 is A recent paper provides a systematic review of studies on the link between the COVID-19 mRNA …
: Incoming disillusionment for anyone who somehow managed to convince themselves that when the US, UK …
: 📽 Watched The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. Naughty Jack Frost tricks nice Santa into giving up …
: Behold the Lego piano! An incredibly clever piece, taking me the best part of a year to build. I …
: An aspect of the eternal insufficient UK housing supply crisis that I hadn’t been aware of …
: The independent Pay Review Boards are not very independent One of the drivers of the huge number of strikes the UK is currently in the midst of is that many …
: 📽 Watched The Santa Clause 2. Shamefully I’m not a great fan of Christmas movies as a genre, …
: Listening to Love Sux by Avril Lavigne 🎶. Astonishingly, it’s the 20 year anniversary of …
: The moral disaster of the Qatar 2022 World Cup The recent Qatar World Cup final was apparently one of the best ever matches to grace the …
: Health chiefs made the remarkable intervention of asking people to avoid getting drunk during the …
: Enjoyed seeing the pretty Christmas lights on a recent visit to Lincoln. Probably could have …
: Mental illness as a 'sane response to an insane world' One idea that has been circling around my head a lot recently is how we commonly treat the recent …
: Finished playing Danganronpa : Trigger Happy Havoc 🎮. Monokuma, from the Danganronpa wiki. A visual …
: Frosty webs 🕸️. Hadn’t realised quite how many spiders resided on the fence before now.
: The UK Statistics Authority has once again been forced to reprimand the Conservative party for …
: Cookie paywalls: would you pay money to not be tracked on the web? Morel et al. write about a new-to-me website phenomenon I’ve not come across yet - …
: The iOS Kindle app has finally made it easy to send an article from your iDevice to your hardware …
: Remember the good old days when you could waste office time playing the secret flight simulator game …
: Listening to Fear Of The Dawn by Jack White 🎶. Jack White, of White Stripes fame, with mega guitar …
: 🎶 Listening to Wet Leg by Wet Leg. Hard to describe this one, although you’ve probably already …
: StackOverflow bans "fluent bullshit" chatGPT answers I’m slightly amused that the AI-driven chatGPT chat bot has been banned from being used to …
: Listening to Dawn FM by The Weeknd 🎶. The conceit here is that you’re listening to a radio …
: Listening to Mainstream Sellout by Machine Gun Kelly 🎶. At some point in my youth it felt like there …
: An understandable epidemic of strikes in the UK The UK is currently experiencing a whole lot of strikes. There’s at least one a day from now …
: Finished reading The Prestige by Christopher Priest 📚. I really enjoyed this part science-fiction, …
: Finished reading Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling by Rex Kline 📚. A good …
: Over here I wrote about a Microsoft Excel / Google Sheets function I only just discovered - …
: The Economist’s model of the recent US midterms, where the Republicans did a lot worse than …
: Paper notes: Self-Monitoring via Digital Health in Weight Loss Interventions - A Systematic Review Below are notes I took whilst reading the paper “Self-Monitoring via Digital Health in Weight …
: Watched My Cousin Rachel📽. Fairly captivated by this tale of doubt and obsession and its tense …
: Exciting news about the next version of R’s dplyr library! v1.1 will introduce non-equi joins, …
: This is a great reference, giving guidance and citations around common statistical myths. For …
: The 2021 census reveals a sizeable shift from people identifying as Christian to instead having no religion The 2021 England and Wales census results are out now. Most headlines are focussing on the fact that …
: Some Elon Musk Twitter takeover miscellany In the excoriating misery that is the “Elon Musk bought Twitter” discourse - an …
: Nerd accomplishment: made my first R package today. Super rough around the edges but it works. So …
: Finished playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 🎮. This game created something of a …
: Listening to Hold The Girl by Rina Sawayama 🎶. Whilst the album’s approach was purportedly …
: What happens on your iPhone no longer stays on your iPhone The rule of thumb that, in exchange for having expensive seeming prices and usage restrictions on …
: Anyone who occasionally has to reference journal papers etc. may find the DOI Citation Formatter a …
: I learned a lot about eating poo this week. Apparently it’s well-known that rabbits eat their …
: The relationship between dog years and human years isn't linear There’s a common idea that you can translate the age of a dog to the equivalent age of a human …
: Finished reading All Our Relations by Tanya Talaga 📚. Starting out by focussing on a suicide …
: Unflatpacked some garden furniture today, just in time for it to be far too cold outside to actually …
: The Conservative Autumn Statement seems short term...progressive? I’m somewhat shocked to feel this way given the source, but I don’t hate all the …
: Watched season 12 - the final season - of The Big Bang Theory 📺. It’s mostly more of the same, …
: Listening to the If Books Could Kill podcast 🎙️. Peter Shamshiri (of 5-4 cohost fame) and Michael …
: The British Museum, London, inside and out.
: The wellbeing agenda, with its focus on milder problems, can lead to great statistics in a way that …
: Some context as Hunt prepares to unleash horrendous spending cuts and tax increases on us: Liz …
: The regressive nature of rewards credit cards A recent paper quantifies the economic inequities exacerbated by the way that credit cards that …
: Listening to Midnights, by Taylor Swift 🎶. In possibly the coldest take available on the internet …
: For anyone thinking to join the relative masses in signing up to Mastodon in protest to Elon …
: Immigration to meet unfilled medical staff needs is a popular policy Things like this are exactly what cause me angst about joining the Labour party. To be fair the …
: Witnessing the Lincoln Chorale, accompanied by the Lindum Baroque Orchestra, honouring the king with …
: Recently learned that I’m just one degree of separation from one of those accidental Bitcoin …
: Finished reading: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 📚. This one is a real …
: Watched The Power of the Doctor Doctor Who special 📺. So I liked it, but I love Daleks and Cybermen …
: Matt Hancock, the former Conservative Health Secretary who previously had to resign that position …
: The Exorcist is a true story (maybe) Happy Halloween! My current favourite recently-learned spooky fact is that the infamous film The …
: The most overdue library book ever A descendent of Captain William Humphries has finally returned “Red Deer” - a book by …
: Elsewhere I’ve recently written about Dries Depoorter’s creepy art project “The …
: Llandudno's lockdown goats are back Everyone’s favourite group of Covid-19 lockdown defying goats are back at it again. Originally …
: Another probable first: our new Prime Minister is substantially richer than the King. The Sunak …
: The Information Commissioner has warned companies to avoid using AI-based emotion detection …
: Derek Thompson writes about Britain’s economic decline over the past few years. In the midst …
: New Prime Minister, new lectern There’s a recent tradition that each new Conservative Prime Minister gets to help design their …
: What does the Labour party stand for these days? I’m not a member of any political party at the time of writing. This is the UK norm, with only …
: Another day, another British Prime Minister. Now the UK is to be led by Rishi Sunak who was selected …
: Watched season 2 of The Capture 📺. Another pretty gripping season of this thriller, following DI …
: Listening to The Unraveling of PUPTheBand by PUP 🎶. One of my favourite albums of 2022 so far, from …
: Watched No Time To Die 📽. 2021’s James Bond film, containing most of the classic Bond tropes …
: Incredible to imagine that if the Lib Dem motion to disallow anyone from becoming Prime Minister if …
: Liz Truss finally decided to quit as Prime Minister, after 45 days in office, acknowledging she …
: I was curious what % of the UK electorate is a member of a political party. Turns out just 1.5% of …
: Austerity policies kill people So the UK has yet another new chancellor - Jeremy Hunt - thanks to Liz Truss' latest enforced …
: Yet more ramblings about AI generated art Ever since learning about the prevalence and progress of AI-generated art, mainly via such a piece …
: A friend informs me that the Daily Star is running a livestream of a lettuce to see whether it can …
: Channel 4 created a show where they purchase artwork from “controversial” artists such …
: In an event that definitely isn’t straight out of a Stephen King horror novel, a huge flock of …
: Another study associates increased step count with several positive health outcomes A new paper examining the links between the average daily step count (as measured by Fitbit) and the …
: Watched season 1 of The Capture 📺. A thriller in which a man is first freed from jail thanks to …
: Finished listening to: A Special Place for Women by Laura Hankin 📚. Somehow I’d gotten the …
: Otavio Cordeiro just released an Obsidian plugin called Micro.publish that lets you post directly to …
: In a piece arguing that the start of the ‘current era’ began with the dual inventions of …
: On my way back from a very enjoyable New Scientist Live show, the first IRL one I’ve attended …
: Sir John Betjeman, poet, as immortalised in St Pancras railway station, London, having campaigned …
: How Truss' rampant "tax cutting" policies actually increase your tax burden The Truss administration’s obsessive and damaging focus on reducing taxes, particularly for …
: Just to add further confusion to my plastic recycling dilemma, the Chartered Institution of Wastes …
: Should I use my plastic recycling bin? Just after I’ve upped my plastic recycling game after reading a book about the horrors of …
: Finished reading: A Book Of Secrets by Derren Brown 📚. Philosophical meanderings on how one can …
: Finished reading: Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by …
: Watched The Last Witch Hunter 📽️ Val Kilmer is an 800 year old witch hunter, cursed to eternally …
: Hugo Gye tweets results of a poll by BMG Research showing that the public supports most of the …
: Watched season 1 of Shadow and Bone 📺, a fantasy type show based on an amalgamation of books by …
: For what I think is the first time, a judge has ruled that the content social media companies …
: The wordcloud of answers that occurred when PeoplePolling asked respondents “What word or …
: New coins for King Charles III The design for new coins featuring King Charles III has been released. Within a few weeks we should …
: Seem I missed that 2 years ago McVities officially confirmed that the side of a chocolate digestive …
: A study from a few years ago looked at some results from Alaska’s “Permanent Fund …
: Behold a new entry into the cesspit that is much online marketing: ads that load podcast episodes in …
: This post by Emily Riederer is a great summary of four potential approaches to trying to infer …
: In amongst the economic chaos, voters appear to think that the Labour Party is more trustworthy than …
: The next UK crisis: mortgage payments? Mortgage payments look to be one of the next crises the UK is going to have to stare into the …
: Am excited that the Labour party finally have a plan that I both know what is, and at least on the …
: Watched Everything Everywhere All At Once 📽. A truly wild ride, following a bored woman struggling …
: Haven’t thoroughly dug into the Conservative’s latest mini-budget yet but I think a …
: Finished reading: Turning the Tide on Plastic by Lucy Siegle 📚. A very readable book that highlights …
: 🌱 For the first year ever, our apple tree has produced fruit that’s both plentiful and palatable.
: TIL: Bubblewrap was originally designed to be used as a textured wallpaper. Alfred Fielding and Marc …
: I’m one of the literally 99% of subscribers who never used Netflix’s mobile games …
: A new study estimates that there are 20 quadrillion ants on our planet. That’s …
: Accepting fewer refugees and asylum seekers in recent years has cost the US economy >$9 billion Under the Trump administration, the US instantiated policies aimed to reduce the number of refugee …
: Finished reading: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss 📚. I’d probably never have selected …
: If Disney did ruin The Little Mermaid then it was 33 years ago Earlier this month Disney released a trailer for their upcoming film “The Little …
: Per YouGov, the public’s perception of whether King Charles III will be a good king or not has …
: Don’t want to accuse the NYT of spreading fake news, but this definitely didn’t happen! No, …
: Maybe the irrationality of monarchies is why they sometimes work I’ve been something of an anti-monarchist every since I can remember, primarily based on the …
: The Queue I see the queue of people waiting their turn to see Queen Elizabeth’s coffin - now known …
: In a particularly dour sounding move, AirBnB has introduced “anti-party tools”. This …
: Finished reading: How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS by …
: The polio virus re-emerges in the US In case you haven’t had enough of awful viruses yet in 2022, it seems that polio is back in …
: A paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that between 19-29% of the decline in …
: Survey shows that young British people increasingly support authoritarian rule Traditionally, we might have expected the UK’s young people to be more liberal or left-wing …
: I'm struggling to believe the intro I have just written to a story but it's true.. …
: Saving money on your electricity bill - which devices consume the most? No UK resident can have missed the news that the cost of electricity to the consumer in the UK is …
: Started watching Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power 📺, the LOTR prequel Amazon created. Probably …
: In one of the stranger rituals following the Queen’s death, the Royal Beekeeper has been sent …
: A random downside of connecting too many things to the internet: A server error meant that some …
: How your expectations affect the way your body processes food - summary of a chapter from The Expectation Effect I recently read The Expectation Effect, a fascinating book looking at how what you expect influences …
: Finished reading: The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World by David Robson 📚. …
: No paper published yet so tbd, but researchers claim to have developed a smartphone app that can …
: Queen Elizabeth II died today.
: Not long after the UK temperature hit a horrible new high, a new study reports that the prevalence …
: A colleague introduced me to Super Auto Pets 🎮, so now I’m addicted. Line up some cute animals …
: It happened…we’ve got a new Prime Minister, Liz Truss 😩. Her victory speech felt …
: It’s known that performing acts of kindness makes both the receiver and the giver happier. But …
: From today’s Guardian: Shown calculations that her planned reversal of a recent rise in …
: Jason Allen won an art competition with this picture, which was generated via the Midjourney AI. I …
: One of my favourite charts found in the wild, both in terms of subject matter and presentation.
: Watched EastEnders 📺 for the first time in maybe a decade. Astonished to see that I recognise almost …
: Learning how to drink scotch in Edinburgh Had a great time visiting the Scotch Whisky Experience in Edinburgh. Thinking we were going for some …
: Contrary to the stereotype, new research involving frequent cannabis users finds no evidence of …
: The R library installr provides a super simple way to update your version of R to the latest if …
: I’m sure I’m late to the party on this one, but if you’re a Substack newsletter …
: For the past 3 months, Germany has been trialling a scheme where for €9 a month people can travel on …
: Started watching season 3 of Locke and Key 📺.
: Forbes reports that more than half of all Bitcoin trades are likely fake - wash trading, and that …
: Seeking the world's best ice-cream - a trip to Pizzo Whilst on vacation in Calabria, we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to take a trip to the …
: A trip to Tropea Another place we visited whilst in Calabria was Tropea. Legendarily founded by Hercules, it’s …
: A brief trip to Capo Vaticano We made a quick visit to Capo Vaticano. It’s a beautiful spot on the Italian coast. The colour …
: Finished reading: Sherlock Holmes and the Mayfair Murders by David Britland 📚. As a big fan of the …
: Finished reading: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism by Cory Doctorow 📚. In which the author …
: Celebrating Ferragosto in Italy By happy coincidence, our holiday to Calabria encompassed the Italian national Ferragosto holiday. …
: A delightful holiday in Calabria, southern Italy For our first travels abroad since the start of the Covid pandemic, we recently decided to go …
: Well, this photo from an article in the Guardian today about a drought officially being declared in …
: If ever you felt the desire to have a 3D representation of your Github commits in the form of a city …
: I’m enjoying the “Standard eBooks” site as a source for out-of-copyright books for …
: The deconstructed murder mystery novel I recently learned of the existence of the Cain’s Jawbone book 📚. It’s a murder mystery …
: Don't over-interpret Pearson's correlation coefficient 'r' Needed to remind myself today that there is no neat practical interpretation of the Pearson’s …
: Watched Primal Fear 📽 over the weekend.
: Less than 6% of offences reported to the police lead to a charge Recorded crime in the UK has reached a 20 year high in the first quarter of 2022, with 6.3 million …
: Finished reading: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy 📚. A fairly short, often …
: Over here, I wrote about why the majority of England’s Covid-19 deaths are now from vaccinated …
: Liz Truss, the odds-on favourite to be the British Prime Minister in a few weeks time, appears to be …
: My current stats nerd learning focus is structual equation modeling. It’s something I’ve …
: Finished reading: Oblivion: Stories by David Foster Wallace 📚. Rolling Stone quotes him as wanting …
: The internal climate migrants of the US As a reminder of the increasing salience of climate change, it was interesting to read about the …
: I’m enjoying the “Moriarty - the Devil’s Game” podcast. In practice …
: This outrageous weather led me to discover that frozen grapes are an amazing ‘I’m far too hot to …
: So as today is the hottest UK day ever, I’m grateful for the Jay et al. study “Reducing …
: As highlighted by Tom Hamilton’s juxtaposition of a couple of recent newspaper front pages, …
: The UK is still on course for a record-breakingly high temperature this week. Already the air feels …
: The weather enters the culture war In an unexpected twist, the latest front in the mostly-meh-version of the culture war that UK …
: Temporarily paused watching the incredible Mr Robot show after season 2 to let it all sink into my …
: Finished listening to The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis 📚. I enjoyed it a lot, but I also …
: The next version of iOS gives Apple devices a lockdown mode designed to repel even the kind of …
: A report from BCG suggests that plant-based meat alternatives are the most effective things to …
: The UK is too hot and only getting hotter Yesterday a friend sent me this absolute horror show of a temperature forecast map for the UK. …
: Most of us might not recognise our next Prime Minister The Conservative leadership contest is progressing with all the charm and grace you would imagine. …
: The R package "todor" lets you efficiently find all your remaining #TODOs If, like me, you often record ideas for potential improvements to your R code by leaving comments in …
: I had fun over here, exploring a great dataset that Tim Durrant of the Institute for Government …
: A leak of Uber’s internal files reveals that they knowingly broke the law, put their drivers in …
: The Lancashire Telegraph reports that, following his resignation yesterday, Boris Johnson - wax …
: In another awful twist to 2022 reality, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been shot to …
: Bigquery Data View is a nice Visual Studio Code extension that lets you view BigQuery table schemas, …
: I’ve discovered one can kind of directly write SQL within Google Sheets to produce tables, …
: 60ish resignations later, the main deed is done. Boris Johnson has announced that he’s …
: Quite a day in UK politics, with more and more Conservative resignations since it was all kicked off …
: Barcoding the Queen's head - the new(ish) British stamp Earlier this year Royal Mail released a bunch of stamps, wherein the queen’s face is …
: Imagine being so unimaginative that after hacking the British Army’s Twitter and YouTube …
: It didn’t take long for the harrowing post-Roe vs Wade stories to come in. Just 3 days after …
: The UK's carbon emissions trading scheme actually paid polluters last year The UK has an carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) such that, within certain industries, companies …
: Continuing my mostly subconscious attraction to media that has a “is anything real?” …
: Finally got around to trying out Fall Guys 🎮. It’s a multiplayer battle royale type game …
: Just learned that the “Do Not Track” setting many web browsers have does …
: 100 books you'll never read Each year since 2014, there’s been a Future Library ceremony in a young Norwegian forest, …
: Vancouver’s Kiss Radio has apparently been playing Rage Against the Machine’s classic …
: Amazon is finally going to let you “Send to Kindle” digital books in epub format, the …
: A new study estimates that Covid-19 vaccines saved 14.4 million lives (95% CrI = 13.7 - 15.9 …
: I enjoyed The Haunting of Bly Manor 📺 more than I’d expected, so now moving on to watch …
: The Conservatives lose Tiverton and Wakefield big-time Flickers of joy amongst the desolation of 2022 can be felt through a good amount of the UK as the …
: Absolutely incredible Bad Chart doing the rounds on dataisugly et al today, from the app version of …
: Pleased to see some very legitimate anti-SCOTUS sentiment making its way into Glastonbury this year. …
: Stuart Ritchie discovers that there’s not much scientific evidence either way for the commonly-held …
: Recommendation for the 5-4 podcast 🎙 - which should presumably now be renamed 6-3 - as a place to …
: Saudi Arabia bans rainbow coloured objects In one of those policies that might almost seem hilarious if it wasn’t entirely based on …
: The US Supreme Court undoes decades of progress in a single week What can one say, even as a citizen of another country, other than to share the anger and sorrow …
: The UK Department of Transport comes up with a new definition of "median" Herald the entry of a new statistical misadventure from our government, never shy of fiddling the …
: Amazon aims to replicate your dead relatives Amazon has apparently created the ability for its voice “assistant” Alexa to simulate …
: A .gitignore file tells the Git version control software to stop tracking files you never want to …
: Check how a website is tracking you with the Blacklight service Recently I have been playing with the Markup’s privacy-checking tool “Blacklight”. …
: Our government didn’t really like the decision the European Court of Human Rights made with …
: Weekends are more fun, even if you're unemployed I came across an interesting paper “Time as a Network Good” which looks at how both …
: Started watching The Haunting of Bly Manor 📺. Supposedly a modern(ish) day retelling of Henry James’ …
: See how trackable your web browsing is with the Cover Your Tracks service The EFF’s tool “Cover Your Tracks” seems a great way to check how well defended …
: Convicted fraudster Anna Sorokin (of Inventing Anna fame) has made the…curious decision to …
: Finished reading: The Dispatcher: Murder by Other Means by John Scalzi 📚. What happens in a world …
: Here’s a great copy-and-pastable summary of why if your study ends up with a p value of > …
: TIL: the first ever dotcom domain to be registered was symbolics.com, purchased by a computer …
: Boris Johnson’s ethics advisor has decided to resign. That’s the second one in two …
: I’m still struggling to get my mind wrapped around the incredible case of Blake Lemoine, a …
: Matter, one of my favourite apps for storing things I intend to read later - articles, PDFs, tweets …
: Currently reading: Oblivion: Stories by David Foster Wallace 📚. No more small-sample testing; no …
: Finished reading: The Rise Of Communism by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius 📚.
: Elsewhere I wrote about using a multi-armed bandit approach to experimentation.
: Maybe we’re a little further on with the dream of driverless cars than I’d thought. San Francisco …
: Not a sentiment I necessarily often feel, but our royalty apparently have at least one very good …
: Whilst Queen Elizabeth celebrated being on the throne for 70 years last week, she’s still …
: Like apparently the rest of my country, I’ve recently been enjoying the Sex Pistols' …
: A new study was recently published which adds to the previous evidence I read that coffee may be …
: Some data analyst truths in musical form. Am considering sending relevant snippets in place of …
: juicr looks like an awesome easy-to-use R package for automated and manual extraction of datapoints …
: In other software updates, Storygraph, which I find to be a nice non-Amazon competitor to Goodreads …
: Apple revealed its plans for the next version of iOS at WWDC yesterday - the most exciting of which …
: Somehow Boris Johnson survives to squander another day with a mere 40% of his beloved colleagues …
: In “unexpected things I learned recently”, the UK’s Gender Recognition Act 2004, …
: It’s amazing how unproficient I can still be after studying something for a solid year. To be …
: Finished reading: The Trial by Franz Kafka 📚. An absolute fever-dream of a book.
: The Gun Violence Archive reports that the US has had 227 mass shootings so far this year, where a …
: From yesterday’s paper: Boris Johnson is heralding a “new era of generosity and …
: Everyone has their own special goals and dreams in life, and it’s good to know that sometimes …
: Perhaps this is less surprising than it should be, but it turns out Twitter illicitly misused the …
: In what I’m sure must just be a tremendous coincidence, our prime minister, who is currently …
: This slide from Dr. D’Agostino McGowan is one of the best summaries I’ve seen of what exactly …
: An insight into how business is conducted in the modern era. Meanwhile, Musk’s relationship with …
: I enjoyed the most recent Normcore Tech newsletter, with its discussion around the unreasonable …
: Just came across the R package conflr which lets you post R Markdown output (including images) …
: In a continuation of the odd tendency some companies seem to have to see activities described in …
: 7 years behind the rest of the world, I’m just starting to watch Mr. Robot 📺. Choice very much …
: Coffee, Caffeine and Health - a summary of the paper by van Dam et al. I was recently searching for information as to in which ways coffee might be bad for one’s …
: Some days the world surprises you. Other days the Bored Apes dating club shuts down because only …
: Florida bans math textbooks to save students from ‘indoctrination’ Somehow I’d missed the fact that Florida recently banned 41% of proposed maths textbooks from …
: DuoLingo, an app I use to learn Spanish, informs us that a single sentence can potentially have over …
: Currently reading: The Trial by Franz Kafka 📚. It’s probably about time I read the original …
: Has Texas just outlawed content moderation? Has Texas - admittedly a state that is not shy of creating harmful and unworkable laws - really just …
: Am loving building the Lego piano set. The attention to detail is awesome. Gotta build the Lego …
: Some longer-form thoughts on the Roe v Wade leak with relevance to data privacy. Honestly, however …
: A friend reminded me that Boris Johnson’s critique of working from home as being a series of …
: Our Prime Minister is against working from home on the basis that: …you spend an awful lot …
: Incredible visualisation from Our World In Data showing the flow of human existence, from birth to …
: Currently reading: Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move by Reece Jones 📚. From the …
: 🎥 Watched Dune. Let the modern incarnation of the spice battles begin.