A gripping an informative read about the Bayesian tragedy. apple.news/AR34nk51RRVy...

The owner of and absolute unquestionable algorithm controller of a preferred communications channel of the UK Government calling for violence and the overthrow of the Government. www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Marx and sparks

Would love for FKA Twigs to win this year’s Mercury, having been blown away by her All Points East performance. Would be happy with CMAT too!

@jim.londoncentric.media seems like today is the real start of “commuter chaos” - much worse than yesterday for me. I wonder why that is - was Monday an inset day for some kids? WFH?

What am I to make of LLMs as a Psychiatrist? On one hand, they might make some of my admin tasks a bit easier. On the other, they amplify delusions and have been linked to psychotic murder-suicide.

It turns out AI sycophancy is a major problem when the person’s ideas that ChatGPT is encouraging are suicide or in this case a murder-suicide. There will need to be major changes in safety protocols across the industry and I’m curious how Open Source LLMs will address this problem.

I've just spent a week and several million pounds at the Edinburgh Festival. Here are a few types of comedians I think, with every respect, we have enough of now.

"While the number of independent schools still rose slightly over the same period, from 2,421 in January last year to 2,456 in January this year, the increase would likely have been higher were it not for the introduction of VAT on school fees ..."

"According to the government, almost half of the working-age population — about 18mn people — are not saving anything for their retirement. Only one in five of the self-employed are saving into a pension, down from half in the late 1990s." "Yikes" doesn't cover it!

"We have to entertain the notion that Trump is a moderating influence on a movement that will become much more doctrinal once he is gone. He approaches the world through personal relations, which are malleable, not ideas, which aren’t. on.ft.com/46eU139

Penniless and homeless, Raynor and Moth Winn found fame with their story of their 630-mile walk to salvation. The Salt Path became a global bestseller and was adapted into a major film. But we can reveal it wasn’t the whole truth. @chloehadj.bsky.social Read more:

This is, for me, where the Nazi/fascist parallels work best. ‘Good’ people did nothing as the awfulness escalated because they were justifiably terrified of getting their heads kicked in or killed. It’s about comparing similar points in the process as opposed to comparing end days with early ones.

Every so often I remember that interest rates were below 1% for 12 years. I realise this is not "news". Nor is it news that, during that decade-plus, we failed to use the potential of dirt-cheap borrowing to invest in infrastructure projects that we belatedly realised we desperately needed. Hmph.

Impressively this may well end up costing more than the original policy due to increase take up of the pension credit after the original announcement (H/T @stevewebb1.bsky.social)

Jeremy Bowen spells out the problem for Israel trying to deny war crimes: its own ministers have admitted to them www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

What a damning indictment of the legacy of austerity, from this IFS video: all public services, except schools, were performing worse on the eve of the pandemic than they were in 2010. www.youtube.com/live/SCqRbpg...

"It’s a chaotic bunfight. There’s no strategy or plan. It’s seemingly random what is getting funded." Not a hugely reassuring vignette of the inner workings of Government... on.ft.com/43HhQ1H

The promise of democracy for those who built it wasn't that it would make them richer. It was that it would make power answerable to the people. It would protect voters against tyranny, recognise the equality of all citizens, uphold human dignity and amplify the voices of ordinary people.

Call me naïve but I think that Labour should do what they sincerely think is best for the country and after 5 years the public can tell them whether that was good enough 🤷‍♂️

🚨🚨 Excellent piece by @chrisgiles.ft.com making a very substantial case for #brexit's failure on its own terms (it's the economy stupid!) and why this experience should be sufficient reason in itself for not following down the same path. /1

God this is endlessly sad. If you don't understand that a core aspect of friendship is someone who can choose not to be your friend, you are missing something very important in your life.

Just incredible

god this is so comically awful it actually made me burst out laughing, what the everliving fuck

Why are we not doing this? Never seen a more "no brainer" policy. Even people who are the most strongly opposed to immigration tend not to object to top scientists coming here.

Incredible how a) American Online this is and b) largely irrelevant to local government spending of which the vast majority is on social care.

Reminder that the term 'silent majority' originally referred to the dead.

The simple truth is that Trump believes that, if we send money to a county in exchange for stuff, we've just lost because now they have our money

Elder millennials watching traders freak out about a global economic collapse that will wreck tens of millions of lives and livelihoods, possibly irreparably

Lots of very understandable focus on the negative economic consequences for the UK of what the US is doing (direct impact of tariffs on exporters, indirect hit to largest trading partner, tighter financial conditions as equities fall, increased uncertainty). We shouldn’t miss the (genuine) upsides:

It’s one supply chain, Michael. How long could it take to recreate? 2-3 months?

"With so much at stake — and our own markets plunging — isn’t it finally time to stop arguing about fish?" I hope a rapid reset of our trading relationship of the EU is one silver lining of this crisis. www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Can anyone explain why countries feel compelled to retaliate to these tariffs, other than "an eye for an eye"? I'm sure there is an economic rationale, but I can't quite grasp it. The risk of a vicious cycle seems high, especially with Trump.

Comedy is legal now, but not at the expense of dear leader.

Hi. I’m an expert in modernizing legacy government software systems. This is profoundly stupid and will definitely fail, and it’s just a question of whether our social security system fails along with it.

From the nation that brought us the Marshall Plan, we now have this proposal for the “Trump Plan” for #Ukraine. Where the Marshall Plan embraced enlightened self-interest by America, the Trump plan is predatory, and basically an extortion bid against the people of Ukraine. 1/7

🧵 1. The new official poverty stats came out at 930 Astonishingly bad numbers confirm the UK is in the grip of a building crisis of penury www.gov.uk/government/s...

If this were an *actual* war this opportunistic photoshoot would be a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Folk who know their history will remember that it was initially the brown shirts of Ernst Röhm who smashed their way through dissent while the rest of the state sat back and appeased it.

Hey, this is a nice little thing in the Spring Statement: "Higher-earning parents will soon be spared the hassle of having to file a tax return to pay back child benefit [and] will be able to do it through their payslip instead". www.thetimes.com/business-mon...

"She has much left to do in the autumn if she is to avoid this government going down in history as one that did not quite enough to avoid being an awkward interregnum between those of Rishi Sunak and Nigel Farage." With Biden's loss to Trump in mind, this is chilling. on.ft.com/4livcsi

This is, in reality, the fault of Labour for rushing through something as important to their MPs and base as welfare reform to try to make a spreadsheet balance. It’s not the fault of the OBR.

This is an astonishing story. Weapons-grade incompetence. (But Hillary’s emails!)

The US is heading for a huge financial crisis. Tax cuts plus lower compliance seems likely to push their debt to unsustainable levels *even if* they make the spending cuts they talk about.

“One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor. He said, ‘I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.’ I believed him. *** He “began to whimper,” as his head was roughly shaved, “folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell.” He “asked for his mother & cried as he was slapped again.”

The ONS is a case study in how if you hold down wages for over a decade then keep making people chose between moving home or moving job, you don't get to keep the people you need with predictable results

One of the most interesting conversations I had this year was with Matt Clifford, who is advising the UK government on AI and had just written a report on it. He claimed never to have heard of AIs being trained on stolen copyrighted material.

Reminds me that we were advised to take burner phones and essentially empty laptops if we were to travel to China…

I think there’s something in this… www.thetimes.com/article/1e7a...