How I'm leaving 2025

😍

Anyway. As it has baby Jesus in it briefly, binge catching up (a couple of years late) with 'Mrs Davis' (on ITVX) might be the most christmassy thing we watch this holiday. Enjoyably bonkers throughout, with a very satisfying ending (given current AI imposition), 8/10

Did anyone bother to take an interest in what Bardot's thoughts on politics (or indeed anything at all) were while she was young and beautiful?

"When effective, models and idealizations are... felicitous falsehoods that exemplify features of the phenomena they bear on. Because works of art deploy the same sorts of felicitous falsehoods [as the sciences], she argues, they also advance understanding." Interesting thread!

In an attempt to better get in the spirit of things we decided to watch a film this afternoon but chose a sci-fi which begins with the earth blowing up, leaving the last few remaining humans stranded on their space station, and by the time we get the hang of Xmas again it will be over, won't it

On our annual festive six mile hike to my mum's for christmas dinner, a man on his phone walked past saying "...and she cried when I gave her that gift..." So, naturally, we spent the rest of the trip trying to work out what it could have been, e.g. her beloved pet, taxidermied 🤔 Merry Xmas!

Overheard on the way to the bakers: Lady #1: Are you ready then? Lady #2: Well, we have no turkey, and we've no meat... Me: 🤔

‘what if the patients most health professionals actively seek to avoid, people with “medically unexplained” or functional symptoms, were those who hold the key to a more successful, more rewarding and more just system of medical practice for all?’

"Philosophers of science have much to learn from the history and philosophy of art and artistic representation."

With apologies, but... Shite Christmas

My partner did some serious baking yesterday and now my body is about 20% mince pie

"every snowflake is buffeted by changing winds, sunlight and other variables... As each crystal submits to the chaos of a cloud, they all take on slightly different forms"

"Your sacrifice completes my sanctuary of one thousand testicles."

I've been thinking about chatbots. I don't use them myself so can only imagine why people anthropomophise them (a friend calls 'hers' Norman, for ex). But isn't it discomfortingly like knowing 100s of 1000s of slaves have done all the graft, yet only crediting the slaver via their algo-locum?

A couple of ways to support the four Palestinian hunger strikers. Sign the petition to force the govt. to act: goodlawproject.org/campaign/sto...

I've just started reading this v. interesting book, and though I'm only 40 pages in I have questions already...

See also: UKRI ?

it is friday, yes?

The 1930s Technocracy movement is one hell of a fully-automated rabbit hole to go down. I think I recognise the "we must embrace <thing> because it's happening anyway" mentality in a pamphlet published in 1939. (archive.org/details/Tech...)

"it might feel shocking to learn that the brain is estimated to be 60 percent fat" 😮 Also interesting to learn that "Alois Alzheimer documented abnormal fatty deposits in brain cells, but he also saw other pathology (amyloid plaques and tau tangles) that have attracted most of the attention since"

This graph.

"Evidence indicates that many people living with dementia can make valuable contributions to research on topics that directly impact their lives" - *and beyond*

Yes. Though my first thought is always, what weird German thing is this now? Every time...

"national policymakers set vague aspirations for “world-class” status, uni admins translated these into ranking targets, deans passed them down as publication quotas... [LLMs] arrived into this context, offering a faster way to produce the artifacts the system rewards" We're all on the same train

Show me how your 2025 went

"The advent of photography in the nineteenth century offered snowmen a form of extended life, refrigeration through frozen light... Photography is the medium of snowmen’s dreams"

Hodge is clearly a supporter, and there are good points in this report but... Visual arts are mentioned 3 times in total - compared to theatre 23x, music 19x... An example of visual art as 'catalyst for regeneration' is Angel of the North. 👀 Disappointing.

As one of the 95% of 10,000+ people (who spent hours and hours responding to this consultation) opposing "government’s ‘preferred option’ of handing AI companies the work of the UK’s creatives for free,” I am, of course, delighted that Liz Kendall is taking it so seriously 🤨

"The texture combinations are truly fantastic, a sublime mix of soft & creamy over crisp & crunchy. Hot apple pie, smothered in cold ice cream w/ crunchy wafer biscuits is 1 such experience. Parts of the composition produce the synaesthetic perception of eating through a bag of Liquorice Allsorts"

"...la silhouette d’Eric Sadin apparaît, figure d’époque en retard sur le sommeil avec ce quelque chose d’amusant à mi-chemin entre Doc de Retour vers le futur et le Magicien d’Oz." I'd have said more Doctor Who meets John Cooper Clarke. Or the philosopher as rock star. I mean, look at that suit!

Oh come now, we can do better than that! St Lucy (1472) by Francesco del Cossa

When migraine auras expand, do they cease to exist once we can no longer 'see' them (out of sight, out of mind) or are they still spangling away somewhere beyond 'view'? Or, WTF are migraine auras anyway?

Or perhaps scientists will be doing the work anyway, but under NDAs and for peanuts via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk)

What do we want? An end to titles with stupid questions in them! When do we want it? THE ANSWER WILL NOT SURPRISE YOU

“This is exciting research on the potential of immunomodulatory effects of vaccines for dementia prevention, and possibly maintenance of neuroimmune health in older age more generally,” [said] Pascal Geldsetzer, [who] presented new data suggesting that the shingles vaccine helps stave off dementia"

As MPs can't even manage to listen to their own desperate mothers, what chance the rest of us

"astrocytes have an intricate architecture with many branches that extend into tiny, delicate structures, called leaflets" 👀

"What I want to suggest here is, first, that science is often not a competition between theories but a process of narrative creation in which the paradigm tends to be set by the most persuasive narrative—which is often the one that has the most intuitive and compelling metaphors."

Catchy

And its face scan age verification option does not work for everyone. 0/10

I've just learnt that the source of the (horribly designed) Starmer image below is an interview in The Observer (address in alt) There's a lot can be said about it, but I'm just going to ask: why would a man who truly believes this quote be permitting the destruction of HE on his watch?

🫣

Very good obit

Did someone switch on his remote control butt plug

Scene: The bedroom. Me asleep, he drinking tea. Me: Hahahahaha He: ? Me: Did you just say 'ping pong'? He: No Me: He: Tea?

Common sense on trans rights. Could swear this was the norm also in the UK until like 5 years ago.