So if you pay $1bn for a Board of Peace membership, and the US provokes attacks on your soil a month or two later, can you get a refund?

There's definitely a problem with the coding practices of app Devs pervading other things. Their worst case scenario is possibly screwing up a release that needs patching and causes some bitching on forums. If I really fucked up I might be able to cause a recession.

FYI, Academia.edu has changed its terms of service to give an irrevocable worldwide license for anything uploaded to its site to be used for generative AI. I do not consent to this and have pulled all my papers.

I do think that sometimes there are things that happen in the public eye that just aren't actually good reasons to get all huffy and argumentative. Things where no one benefits from a declaration of total war on behalf of one marginalised community or another.

[me, a journalist who spends all day every day on a social media app where the discovery algorithm is personally controlled by its owner, captain birdseye] you know, a lot of people are talking about fish fingers, we should probably cover that

Not Sara's point here, but if you are someone who sees Daily Tism posts and consistently thinks, "That's nothing to do with autism, everyone is like that," then I have some news for you and your enormous Warhammer collection or elaborate train set.

I don’t really know what I expect in posting this, but maybe some people see it and can learn from it. I’ll call it “lessons from an unwilling immigration attorney.” 1/

Here is a 20-yr-old article that I have only just seen, from the days when MS was trying to create a good user experience. All the things that the author (from Microsoft) complains about third party developers doing are things that Microsoft now do themselves devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/...

For this post to be about the United States and not Russia shows that there has been an absolute diplomatic revolution.

The Greenland slogan is funny, but the hats definitely made us do a double take at first we thought they were MAGA gear. It actually stands for Make America Go Away.

New blog entry: Dustborn (game review) swaldman.dreamwidth.org/535480.html

I have never felt more pro-European.

Creepylink : The URL shortener that makes your link look as suspicious as possible. creepylink.com

Trump administration is asking universities for lists of Jews on campus. (Good on Penn for refusing, but it won't be just them that were asked) www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Just as importantly, I think, is asking payment processors like Visa and Mastercard why they are still accepting payments for Grok and whatever Elon calls the paid version of X these days

New: Trio of Dem senators urge Apple and Google to enforce their own terms of service and ban X, Grok apps for their flood of nonconsensual sexual imagery. I've repeatedly asked both Apple and Google about this for three days. They're completely silent, seemingly hoping the question just goes away.

youtube.com/watch?v=a1Yo... I once again find myself admiring the Daily How's ability to tackle serious topics and make them funny without trivializing them. "Brought to you by people who want to go outside without being shot" Thoughts are with friends in the US, especially those in Minneapolis.

Drove past this church today. "Due to ICE activity in our community, the Holy Family is in hiding." Remembering the reason for the season when your president is Herod.

The Embassy staff of Germany, France and the United Kingdom sing Schedryk in the Kyiv underground. Wonderful!

www.reuters.com/technology/i... Uh oh. The Roomba is the only smart appliance in my home which depends completely on the cloud for core functionality, such that I'd care if it lost thst connection.

*blinks* (I haven't verified, since that would entail logging into X)

terrifying if true! Wondermark #1020; The Unknown Knowns

Five years of social media history? Ten years of email addresses? Looks like I won't be going to the states for a long time

Sans serif typefaces are woke now.

blessed be the henry

Trump says reporting on his health is "seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean 'THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.' They are true Enemies of the People, and we should do something about it."

re:the NHS Fife case it's fun that the same media institutions that constantly bitch and moan about how nobody trusts them anymore will just come out and say the literal opposite of the truth. that's not institutional bias in reporting it's *just* lying

"Tribunal rules that employers do not have to exclude trans people" goodlawproject.org/sandie-peggi... Not that you'd know it from the media coverage, which is almost entirely "Partial victory as Peggie wins on some procedural matters"

Oh look, given a mix of judgements both sides claim victory. But one side has all the press.

This was my instinct with it as well: it's *hard* and it takes a lot of work, but that's because the tools are shitty. Like, you can make great art with limited resources - sometimes it even helps! - but genAI is almost actively working *against* artistry because of the way it's created.

HR departments countrywide need to start treating gendercrit employees as potentially hostile. As soon as you are required to interact with one, you dust off the rulebook, you dot every eye and cross every t, and you assume bad faith at every turn. They are a threat to every organisation.

They should invent a university that prioritizes teaching and research

At what point in December is it acceptable to start wearing Xmas jumpers to work?

All of the companies that make the software I use are increasing their prices, to account for an "investment" in AI. I'm sat here imagining how my clients would feel if I added 30% to each invoice, because I "really got into gambling".

This is a Good News story. But it says so much about how the transphobes are bankrolled by "her" that it got this far - most trade unions try not to go to Tribunal now as it's so risky and expensive. Oh, and she's going to appeal. Again, something most employees can't afford to do.

If you're dating lots of people but you couldn't pick them out of a crowd, that's Wallyamory

Something which feels relevant here: The grad student is a trans woman. Not that this affected her conduct - the essay should obviously have failed, and the feedback given was really generous - but it may give some necessary context for the university's response...

just a reminder that *lots* of countries have universities, and (to my knowledge) none of them but the U.S. treat their universities as largely minor league sports franchises

My favourite detail from the life of Maximilian I of Mexico is that, having been tried and condemned to death, a plan was hatched to break him out of jail before his execution by bribing the guards. He refused "because he felt that shaving his beard to avoid recognition would undermine his dignity".

Our Party: not your party, nah nah nah. Popular Alliance: somehow calls to mind both the French hard-right & Monty Python. For The Many: makes me wonder who The Few are, being nobly sacrificed. Your Party: sounds like a Win98 desktop icon, but otherwise not a bad name. I suggest they stick with it.

I will note that it might actually be "working very hard". It's just that the "working very hard" and the "to get what you have" parts do not have a causal link. (feels like missing this is the main cause of the anger that results from these conversations)

FFS. I know everyone was talking about this on Wednesday, but the lifting of the two-child limit framed as solely about appeasing Labour bankbenchers by a commentator on PM just now, not about TAKING HALF A MILLION KIDS OUT OF POVERTY WHICH IS A GOOD THING IN AND OF ITSELF, just had me screaming

UNBOUND AUTHORS: Leftover copies of your books in the UK (MacMillan) warehouse will be pulped within the next week or two. DM me for a link to the warehouse stock list and contacts. If you have no dosh, another publisher (Wilton Sq) is willing to buy the books & distribute on a 50/50 profit split

www.nature.com/articles/d41... HAHAHAHA But also, conference organisers now using AI to decide whether reviews were done by AI, so it's gonna get that wrong as well.

Won't lie, the thought has crossed my mind. It's not so easy now, though, post-brexit....

There’s been a real stink of decay off Britain for most of the decade and it’s pretty overpowering now, so I imagine anyone who can go will figure now would be a good time to try their luck elsewhere. Most of us can’t go, however.

Downside of (temporarily) having a standing desk at work: What would normally be chair-dancing is significantly more embarassing when somebody looks in your office window.

I'm sure this is a metaphor, but I'm not sure what for.