This is worth reading thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...

@evansmithhist.bsky.social thnx for following back. You might be interested in @allouryesterdays.bsky.social

We must imagine Simon happy…

In reality, all we’ve created is a bot which is almost perfect at mimicking human-like natural language use, and the rest is people just projecting other human qualities on to it. Quite simply, “LLMs are doing reasoning” is the “look, my dog is smiling” of technology malwaretech.com/2025/08/ever...

Relevance deprivation syndrome www.statnews.com/2025/11/07/j...

Wait, women get written out of the official histories? There should be a word for this, and a movement against it... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_G...

40 years ago we’d have congressional hearings falsely accusing metal bands of putting backwards messages in their songs that told kids to kill themselves & now we have a planet-killing chatbot that’s all like “bet you won’t commit suicide chickenshit bitch” & the government is like here’s $5 billion

THIS IS BRILLIANT. READ, SHARE, PLS lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

How ever since Labour came to power, the British media has started to notice a whole series of problems they spent the previous 14 years completely ignoring www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/the-great-...

I had never seen this one. Genius. www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_KR...

If you know your history, you will ... not be surprised by Your Party... Piss-ups in breweries, etc etc www.theguardian.com/politics/198...

You can’t afford a coal mine. You can’t afford a gas turbine. You can’t afford an oil rig. Only fossil fuel states and billionaires can. But you can afford a solar power station on your roof. Now, ask yourself why you encounter so much anti-renewable energy propaganda.

We underestimated Southern Ocean outgassing by 40% around Antarctica >40°S "Substantially underestimated winter CO2 sources of the Southern Ocean"; www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

If I see one more stupid Rosalind Franklin take I'm going to lose my mind. Thank god for @matthewcobb.bsky.social and @nccomfort.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"Could he make a picture, and get them all to fit?" Paul Kelly, one of the great Australian poets, in his 1987 song "To Her Door" www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6FF...

I did some sixes again! (I am slowly learning how to juggle five balls. If I throw the first ball up again and catch everything, that's a six...) Minimum 15 minutes a day, every day. I really REALLY wish I had learned to juggle as a wee child. If you have kids, try to get them juggling!!

Bob Hawke being severely butt-hurt that he wasn't invited to the G7 meeting in London in 1984.

Gonna have to steal this (from a 1988 briefing note to That Woman).

“Insects/invertebrates of all kinds play a crucial role in protecting our agricultural environments & food security. Urgent action is required to remedy their declining numbers or there will be dire consequences for our food production". The web of life matters also for its own sake, not just ours!

FOIAed.

The smoking cyberman photo is awesome, @tristanstrange.bsky.social Meanwhile, you might be interested in @allouryesterdays.bsky.social

Academics as obsessed with titles, status and all that? Whatever gave you that idea...

Utterly scandalous that climate activists are prevented from mentioning climate change in their defence Even worse when one group is and another isn't, yet they're accused of the same offence Our legal system is being turned into a joke

60 yrs ago today (Nov 5, 1965), the 1st US government report to warn about climate change was published. "Restoring the Quality of Our Environment" included warning of C02 build-up and sea-level rise/melting ice-caps. allouryesterdays.info/2025/11/04/6... 1/n

Extremely tasteless Onion Story theonion.com/soot-covered...

"The world's most comprehensive public database on oil and gas companies shows an industry pouring money into new fossil infrastructure, much as it did before the Dubai agreement, widening the gap between climate pledges and reality. Short-term expansion is up 33% since 2021."

You laugh, but this is how the exododus went extinct

As warming increases, we are already accelerating past some well-known #climate tipping points - points of no return - while others are approaching fast. These tipping points mark critical forks in the road. Until now most changes have been manageable, but… 1/

Feb 9, 1983 - Margaret Thatcher's liaison committee meets, discusses various draft papers. On the one about energy - "References to underground storage of nuclear waste should be deleted; they could be unduly controversial."

See also, "punditry" mucilage, a layer of slime that develops on the surface of the water due to the proliferation of phytoplankton

What?!

"I’ll never forget the night I discovered that the morose senior officer hanging over the end of the club bar was a one-star general who had made the mistake of taking a reporter along when he went up in a helicopter for some target practice—and using a peasant and water buffalo as targets."

Most of the way through this book - it's not *quite* what the title advertises, but still very very useful. Multiple blog posts to follow riffing on different quotes from it... archive.org/details/back...

On the other site, an 18-year-old Zohran canvasser described the legendary Wallace Shawn as "the actor who plays Dr. Sturgis on Young Sheldon" which is honestly adorable

Absolute perfection. #Reform

You will never, ever satisfy the centre-right. There isn't any actual, material, clearly-defined goal they're seeking. Their goal is to send everything onto the far-right travelator. Their dissatisfaction must by definition be permanent

palimpsest parallel

one of my favourite words en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimps...

If the asshole previously known as Prince is looking for a rental property, and a landlord who doesn't bother too much about all that paperwork stuff, I am told Rachel Reeves might be a no-sweat good bet

Academic tradecraft - if doing interviews, always always have two devices. Did an hour long (golden) interview yesterday, and my lead device only captured about half of it, for reasons I don't understand. My back-up? Worked...

Yeah, the Times, that famous newspaper of record. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I’m sorry, if someone has a birth certificate that proves they were born here but a mobile app with face recognition software disagrees, they will side with the app? What?

Nicely done by Douglas Rushkoff. archive.rushkoff.com/articles/the...

Sorry I can't get over this but it's just so funny to say "The test starts off with giraffes and elephants but the questions get way harder than that"

UK-based followers. Is any of you privileged enough to live in a constituency still held by the Conservative Party? If yes, would you be up for contacting your MP to see if their response to a short question is similar/the same to one I just received from *my* Tory MP? If so, please DM me.

@jim.londoncentric.media Re: Buxton and internet marchudson.net/2025/10/27/m...

Just saw one of the worst films I have seen since The Phantom Menace - Raw Deal, a 1986 Aaahnold Schwarzenegger (in his "condom stuffed with walnuts" period). Everyone else in this terrible film could act. Not that this saved it. Eye bleach time. Thanks for nothing, @drtermagant.bsky.social