An excellent piece by Yasmin Khan in @theguardian.com – and I’m very relieved the preposterous case against her has been dropped. www.theguardian.com/food/comment...

Monty Python's People's Front of Judea sketch but for Under 14 Girls' Chess Championships

Wrote a short piece arguing that higher ed must help steer AI. TLDR: If we outsource this to tech, we outsource our whole business. But rejectionism is basically stalling. If we want to survive, schools themselves must proactively shape AI for education & research. [1/6, unpaywalled at 5/6] +

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Claude Opus “soul document” Opus 4.5 was indeed (confirmed) trained with a “soul document”, a prompt included in both supervised & reinforcement learning that defines and influences certain core aspects More (official) details coming soon www.lesswrong.com/posts/vpNG99...

This is rather brilliant: 1. Word of the year is 'rage bait' 2. Here is some 3. Step back and enjoy

Australia just recorded zero cervical cancer cases in women under 25 for the first time since records began in 1982. The amazing result of HPV vaccination.

GOOD NEWS! Researchers have made a HUGE breakthrough towards a UNIVERSAL antiviral. By targeting sugar molecules found on the surface of many viruses that SHARE structural similarities, they identified FOUR compounds that successfully BLOCKED infections from SEVEN different viruses.

These posts from @alanbeattie.bsky.social and @davekeating.substack.com were juxtaposed in my timeline - Pope advocates monogamous heterosexual relationships - Same-sex marriage to be recognised throughout EU I checked. The Vatican is not in the EU. Did not know that before.

BREAKING: This is huge news, the EU's equivalent of the 🇺🇸Supreme Court's 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. 🇪🇺Court of Justice just ruled all 🇪🇺countries must recognise same-sex marriages granted in other member states. This effectively legalises gay marriage across 🇪🇺

This is interesting parasocial parasitism. Like a lot of comedians Jeff Arcuri has built his reputation and audience by sharing crowd work. Now some audience members are interfering & undermining his performance. They go planning to get clipped onto his YouTube and TokTok, ruining it for others.

concerning

Watching The Black Swan documentary on iPlayer. On Episode 2. It's gripping, but I am really having to reconsider my aversion to exposition in drama. Criminals just describe their current and future crimes in detail along with the structure of criminal enterprises, with past crimes as context.

I just tried @mikecaulfield.bsky.social's excellent SIFT framework fact-checking prompt as a Gemini Gem for Gemini 3. It works very well. Worth considering alongside Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. I cancelled my Claude subscription so very pleased to see it working on other LLMs Thanks Mike!

@samfr.bsky.social @stephenkb.bsky.social May I ask a question? Ministers are responsible for their own policy choices, of course, but is this government being given options by a civil service with views shaped by 14 years of Conservatism? Should Labour have had more of a clear-out ?

Watching Pluribus. My husband, who hates sci-fi and horror, is unimpressed so far. I find myself saying, 'Everyone loves this. Fernando, once you understand how wonderful this is...'

If you believe either that Franklin discovered the double helix, and / or Watson and Crick stole her data, ask yourself how you know this. Then take a read of this article.

If anyone wants it, the official Jamaican Government site to donate in support of disaster relief is this: supportjamaica.gov.jm There are lots of fake sites and videos on social media, so this government site is probably the best option to actually help.

I'm struck by how inessential so many of these services are. People could use this opportunity to review and cancel some subscriptions

What it's like to vibe code with Claude Code

Last night I heard of another friend of a friend who has been lost to a rabbit hole of online propaganda. We need to start treating this as a serious public health concern.

Just found out that Episode 2 of Traitors aired this evening. Very happy that BlueSky let's you mute keywords for 24 hours so I can avoid spoilers until I catch up

Five words is excessive. I can do it in two words. If I'm really pressed for time, I can do it in one word with fewer than 5 letters.

Abelha Bo Bardi Oscar Beemeyer 🐝

I long for the day when this podcast is no longer relevant. But if you're still trying to understand sex testing and gender in sports, I made this for you. There are transcripts on the site if you don't like listening to stuff.

Parabéns

The UK really should make corruption illegal.

These are all fantastic. Lucky students

Just binge-watched the C4's The Jury. Amazing TV that we paused to discuss about every 15 minutes. It's alarmingly like The Traitors - very worrying when you consider the real-life significance - but with much less duty of care towards the jurors. Also, sadly, almost exactly like most HR meetings.

Ever had a bad work day or a Zoom call that ended badly? Imagine flying an F-35. In a scene out of Die Hard, suddenly the plane thinks it's on the ground not in the air. You call Lockheed Martin. After 50 minutes nothing can be done. You bail, leaving the $200 million plane to crash in a fireball.

If any news event should bring @mrjamesob.bsky.social back from holiday it's this: A power plant providing electricity through osmosis: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Saying you have to shut down and restart the Alan Turing Institute is in some ways a tribute to Alan Turing himself.

It looks like there are some quality issues with GPT5 Tried to use it properly in the last couple of days. It's very lazy, actively avoids complex tasks and just stopped work a couple of times. Top tip: if you go to cancel a Pro account you get 50% off for a while. Maybe they'll sort out the bugs

Another afternoon with the world's best coding AI

I think a new version of Claude is coming. I just had one chat that solved a five-day programming and architecture problem in about two steps. All its code ran first time. Solutions were elegant and creative. Then this really quite magical chat ran out of space and I went back to normal Claude 😠

Despite being dorkily irritared by some minor incongruities with the original that seem sloppy rather than deliberate, really enjoying Sandra Newman’s “Julia,” a retelling of Nineteen-Eighty Four from her perspective.

Forests may look quite resilient to changing conditions if trees are still standing, but if they're not regenerating there'll be nothing to replace the old trees as they die. They are dying on their feet And if they're not regenerating already, at 1.5C...

I was always a little concerned about confidentiality with regards to WeTransfer. The idea that they would ingest user files to train AI models is appalling. Today's reversal and 'clarification'still does not promise that they aren't snooping.

Why would I want to invite my driver to my online business meetings?

This is lovely from @jonnelledge.bsky.social as ever I see a parallel with Iceland's homelessness strategy, which is to house people first then sort out other issues With obesity, why not solve the weight issue first then make lifestyle changes after? It's easier to go to the gym when you're slim

I got curious about how much of 'Project 2025' might already have been implemented. Here's how the US Government is progressing in implementing ideas the 'Mandate for Leadership' document. I used ChatGPT o3, and I'll provide the prompt at the end. ✅🕒❌ indicate task completion, not approval. 🧵👇

If you're ever wondering how Mark Gatiss is so productive, we have the answer: Time travel. Totally explains his interest in Dr Who. This Sun article explains that Mark Gatiss married his husband Ian Hallard in 2018 after meeting on a dating app in 2000. Or is The Sun's Caroline Peacock AI?

We have our Hue lights set up so that the whole room syncs with the TV. It's fun and immersive. Watching Wimbledon I was expecting them to be greenish most of the time. But there's a surprising amount of pale pink. The reason? Crowd shots!

Whilst this is unethical, it is a counter to unethical reviewers who should not be using LLMs to write their reviews.

Teachers - did you know about I'm a Mathematician/I'm a Scientist? You can book a free online chat with your class and a real life mathematician, statistician, or scientist to ask them all about their job and career. Bookings here: imamathematician.uk/book-activity/

I don't normally post work stuff here but my company, @1827marketing.com has just published an article about the uses of AI video in marketing. This little animation, made in Midjourney using an image also generated in Midjourney, is so cute that I wanted to share it again.

This viral video of Indonesian boat racing finally reached me. I had no idea that this was a thing. About to spend my lunch break goind down a rabbit hole.

"entering a lottery to be allowed off your doomed island" feels a bit on the nose

Nearly at the finale of Handmaid's Tale. I love the writing, directing, world-building, and of course Elisabeth Moss and Yvonne Strahovski. It used to contrast Christian Nationalist oppression with liberal feminism. Now it's more about rival interpretations of Christianity. When did that shift?

Having a "The food is terrible - and such small portions!" experience of #Murderbot This show is terrible - and such short episodes!