God I wish leaders had to take a test. Know what stops the most crime for the least money? Supporting people. That’s it. That’s the solution. And it has the side benefit of making them healthier and their kids healthier and saving $ in a million other ways too. Damn.

China has the largest: - Installed capacity of wind power (absolute) - Output of wind farms (absolute) - Annual additions of wind capacity + the same %'age share of wind as the US, NZ, Norway, Italy despite being.....extremely large Wind generated 18% more than solar did in China, in 2024

The original sin of big data and algorithms, AI, the application of automated computing to data, of statistics, isn’t to instill bias and discrimination into data but to create elaborate contraptions for concealing and ignoring it while pretending the data and the patterns exist out there somewhere.

What people want to seem to use data for is to bias-wash constructed discriminations and be able to claim that the patterns we’ve created out of the world are objectively inherent to it. This is an anti-scientific; and not just when it is being used to socially discriminate against people.

Fuck this garbage. Think of all the talented artists in Glasgow who you could have chosen from to get a payday from this gig instead of the money being handed over to a slop merchant.

One of the first things anyone learns about facial recognition is that it is often wrong and that it is biased. And yet ICE is using it all day every day to determine legal status & who to detain. And now we have a high-profile example of it being flat out wrong: www.404media.co/ices-facial-...

Dr. Gladys West, the pioneering mathematician whose work laid the foundation for modern GPS technology, has died. She was 95.

New from 404 Media: ICE's facial recognition app, which the agency is using to decide who to detain and deport, misidentified a woman. Twice. ICE says results of the app are definitive and override a birth certificate; obviously this case shows the app is inaccurate www.404media.co/ices-facial-...

The allegations in this story are incredibly disturbing. Blocking kids from bedside, lying to their pastor, pushing a patient — Why are hospital staff so involved in ICE’s attempts to detain a woman in their care? sahanjournal.com/health/ice-d...

We learned in a French television program broadcast yesterday, from a magistrate, that the US government is putting pressure on French judges so that the leader of our far right, who has been convicted in court, can benefit from a double standard of justice.

"Oxford's High Street booming, bucking national trend" And this in a city where we've removed city centre parking and put in a congestion charge. Almost as if it's people who shop, not cars. www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/2573227...

These issues themselves are fine but the refusal to place immigration and the secret police terrorizing our families alongside those issues presumably means that a bunch of leadership are white supremacists and I am fairly comfortable jumping to that conclusion at this point.

"You give me money, I give you fascism, we get power over the peasents" and other deals.

German foreign minister Wadephul (CDU) living in what I can only describe as delulu land: “There is absolutely no doubt that the United States of America is fully committed to the alliance, to NATO, and also to the defense of Europe. No one in Washington has ever questioned that."

I have come to despise cleverness in political messaging. No bon mots. No highlighting hypocrisy. I want leaders with the subtlety of an anvil

Human artists, use only once piece to convince people to follow you!

There have been confirmed reports from local organizers in Portland ME that ICE is knocking on doors claiming to be from MaineCare and “offering help“

I've always liked the 'Bridled' form of Guillemot, but to get a photo of 2 together on Inner Farne in 2019 was special!. #SuperSeabirdSunday

How sad is this? The CDC closed its FOIA office, so this story could only be published because a Danish journalist provided Rolling Stone with the documents, after obtaining them through a freedom of information request to the University of Southern Denmark www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

It exposes directional alignment; you still seek to limit, not expand, who is allowed to be human. Yes, you have set your limitation more inclusively than our fascist gang of white supremacists; it doesn't mean you're not also setting limitations & they'll use your limit as long as it serves them.

I can't trust politicians who are anti-trans. Not because I'm "only searching for perfection" which is what centrists will be accusing me of for the rest of my life, it's because if you're not pro-trans you'll be garbage on lots of other issues too. Being anti-trans NEVER exists in a vacuum.

This is quite a post www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/reality-is...

This photo was taken in 1911 using glass plate technology by Herbert Ponting who was part of Scott's Antarctic expedition, The composition and detail are exquisite with the band of white snow/ice creating a perfect frame around the two people and the ship in the distance Iconic imo

I held off on this for a few weeks because I assumed I hadn't done much art in 2025. Turns out I was wrong. #hibourverse #2025summaryofart #scifi

that's the thing they don't actually want sexy pictures they want to rob her of her consent

SPPOOOSSSHHH... PHHHFFFFFFF... SSSSSSHHHHHHHH... To paraphrase Bob Ross, you have to make the noises when looking at #paleoart, otherwise it doesn't work. 2018 illustration of giant Triassic ichthyosaurs Shonisaurus, surfacing in waters that once covered Nevada. #art #fossil #paleontology #sciart

The actual story is that a family of American citizens trying to evacuate from a neighborhood that ICE had made unsafe, and then ICE tossed munitions into the car, causing three kids to be hospitalized and a six month old to stop breathing. DHS called the family “radical agitators”

NRF are the assholes who lied about "theft rings" to justify this type of shit before quietly retracting their numbers a month later (but it was too late, we are stuck with this shitass reactionary "anti-theft" legislation now)

A startup called SpaceVision tracks shoppers around brick and mortar stores and uses real-time data for targeted ads. For ex: they see that you watched a digital ad on a screen and picked up chips from the shelf. A few minutes later, a store could send you a deal for beer to go with chips.

With “Wikimedia Enterprise”, AI companies have to use (and pay for) dedicated APIs to scrape data, which helps to limit the strain on Wikimedia servers. (See eg arstechnica.com/information-...) This is a good thing for Wikimedia and for its readers.

Sure. AI companies have ALWAYS been training their models on Wikipedia content, which under the free and open access model is available to anyone — including AI companies. Agreements like these require AI companies to limit and offset the strain they place on Wikimedia infrastructure.

It is once again time to post a reminder that if you like my work and want to support it financially, this is very much something you can do! I have a Patreon and a Liberapay and handle one-off donations through Stripe .

Ice spires (around 100 metres tall) on Jupiter's moon Callisto. It is thought that these formed from an ancient impact billions of years ago. They are very slowly eroding over time, the ice subliming and dust within the ice accumulating to absorb Sunlight and continue the erosion. #sciart #spaceart

🔴 Last week the Free Speech Union got a High Court writ to prevent the publication of a list of its donors So we decided to investigate who *does* fund Toby Young's outfit Wanna see? 🫣 New on Democracy for Sale: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/who-funds-...

In a screeching u-turn from its Manifesto the Government now backs conversion therapy for trans people. That is what 'supporting' trans youth but denying them the medicine they need to physically transition means.

2nd amendment gun nuts be like: the greatest gun is actually a substack

"Nein, das Foto von fremden Menschen zu nehmen, sie ohne ihre Zustimmung in sexualisierten Posen darzustellen – sogar Kindern Kleidung wegzumontieren – das ist kein Fall von “freier Rede”. Das ist Gewalt. Und es ist absolut in Ordnung und richtig, dass Staaten gegen Gewalt vorgehen."

If you can’t make “maybe we should have a Constitution” popular, fucking resign and make room for those who will.

New: I found more than 20 deepfake videos re-enacting or re-imagining the final moments of Renée Good's life. These videos mocking a tragic death, which I'm calling "digital desecrations," are the most extreme version of a pervasive trend within generative AI of 'resurrecting' the dead.

Condé Nast forgot to renew the trademark for Gourmet and so a group of journalists grabbed it and are relaunching the food magazine as a worker-owned co-op. Love it. [gourmetmagazine.net]

It’s not embarrassing to you: Don’t you dare take that on, folks warned them and what the bulk of us have in common is relatively easy to find They wanted to “save discourse” over listening to people. And wanted their power and ability to gatekeeping over the actual function That’s on THEM

telling the secret police they have immunity to harm & kill citizens really lays bare the hollowness of decades of right-wing GOP screeching about encroaching Big Government - it was never a problem they had with government per se, just that it wasn't being used to harm the people they wanted to

Unarmed woman executed by state may have been on committee to fight against unarmed women being executed by the state

The entire birthrate freakout is a manufactured crisis created to justify the curtailing of our reproductive rights and right to public participation. It is entirely fair to be extremely irritated when supposed allies take that bait.

Fantastic palaeoart in a traditional Chinese style, used as a figure in a Royal Society publication, describing a false sabre-tooth feline, Taotienimravus songi. I hope this buckles the trend again "stylised" art in publications and press releases. Art by Yuefeng Song 🐈

操縦席

Eric Adams, former NYC mayor, launched a memecoin (cryptocurrency) today. He marketed it as an “NYC Token” and used media appearances and his social media to promote it. Within hours, Adams then drained its liquidity, apparently having scammed investors out of $3.4 million—a move called a rug pull.

They call social media "adult spaces" because anything that gives you the slightest degree of independence or ability to think outside of what your parents demand is evil in their eyes, and indeed, cutting off all external communications and isolating youth is a common tactic of abusive mothers.

It's actually worse than that. People like Kemi Badenoch hate social media because whatever else its faults, it gives children the capacity to learn something their parents don't want them to learn. They might even (gasp) see happy trans people being happy! So they must be banned from it.