I saw a chart about commitment to AI, and unsurprisingly the US was far in the lead, and it really drove home an key emotion driving the grift. The *idea* of the U.S. as number one is so powerful that we have effectively made up a category we can be number one in, and it MUST BE TRUE.

And "accommodation/accessible" does not mean "make the thing easier" and it definitely doesn't mean "make the thing so easy it's meaningless." It means "meet the student's access needs so that they can engage with the material in the same way as their peers, as far as is practicably possible."

Somewhere in a Roman brickyard, around 1800 years ago, a fresh tile was drying ahead of firing - until a dog trotted straight across it. Centuries later, the tile has made it into a museum: not because of an emperor, but thanks to one dog who accidentally walked his way into history.🧵1/2 📷me

A powerful thread (and it’s not that long):

Excellent thread as always. As many have been saying for years now, we were *all* failed - kids, disabled people, everyone. Our leaders and govts failed us, and they've been trying to make it our fault ever since. That's part of (not all of) why everything Feels Bad. Denial just makes it worse.

THIS, I've been screaming about it for years and got nothing for it but more shrugs, so I'm done giving my take. I'm so, so, SO fucking tired. Of being sick, of having no way to move forward, and of everyone going "huh, wow, sucks to be you!" while they clearly struggle in the same ways.

You always reach a point in the brilliant writings of @sarahkendzior.bsky.social when you realise this is what American journalism at this moment should be like, and instead it's mostly bog-standard corporate hackery. And that's the "good" stuff.

So take this in. Straight from the NATO meeting after Russia’s attack Britain’s primary military town, Salisbury, Boris Johnson flew unofficially to party in Umbria with a former KGB officer working for the Kremlin. Can anyone tell me how this has been forgotten? It is Profumo on stilts

Introduce yourself with five concerts you've seen: Paul McCartney (x5) The Who (x2) U2 (x2) The Frames (x5) John Mellencamp (x2 1/2 - my view was a bit obstructed the first time; I was in utero). Then again, as a wheelchair user, my view is *usually* obstructed, but that's a whole 'nother thread.

I, like many, think about this every day, and I'll never get used to the defensive reaction others have of "LOL oh well, at least it's over!" I understand it's a psychological defense so they don't break, but a lot of disabled people "broke" 6 years ago and few have noticed. Two different worlds.

... the image of Graham Linehan sleeping in a racing car bed is going to be one of those that floats around in my brain in glorious technicolor, surfacing at random inopportune moments as I stifle a chortle of horror. Genuine thanks to my brain for picking a PG element to latch onto! 🤣

Possibly one of my more controversial opinions, but Lord of the Dance is an excellent modern retelling of (some bits of) Irish mythology, actually. I'd take a performance of Lord of the Dance over an evening of hearing Tolkien any day.

Unless and until Pete Townshend launches a regular radio show along the lines of Oobu Joobu, the only correct answer here is Pete Townshend. Quite frankly, it might be the only correct answer regardless... the man has so much squirreled away, listening to it would be a full time job!

I've always explained the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade to non-American friends as "America's version of Eurovision," at least in terms of gloriously weird moments and their tendency to occasionally enter the general zeitgeist.

The Beatles Anthology review – the incredible audio shows exactly why the world fell in love with this band

For those who need alt text, this is a black and white photo of Gerry Marsden, John Lennon, George Harrison, Fred Marsden, Ringo Starr, and Paul McCartney, sitting in a row and laughing/grinning at the cameras. Nice to see one including Fred - those're a bit thin on the ground relative to the rest!

‘Enshittification’: how we got the internet no one asked for – podcast

I've been thinking a lot about how the Covid cautious, the chronically ill and disabled have all been shoved to the side of society. We're walking ghosts, living in parallel universes that only intersect when we're running errands, soley because we don't want to be statistics before our time.

I reviewed Chris McCausland: Seeing into the Future - a mind-blowing doc that does a great job of showing how tech can transform disabled people’s lives (but could do more on the tension in how much of it is made by The Worst Men On Earth). www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Anecdotal supporting evidence for this argument: This fella generally only watched Doctor Who, but if Smokey Robinson or The Who were on tv, he'd sprint over to pat and coo at the screen while they performed.

This is outrageous from Keir Starmer. ‘Russian links to Reform need investigating’, he says. So why is his government still fighting case now in Grand Chamber of Strasbourg court refusing to have such an investigation into Russian interference ?? news.sky.com/story/starme...

He said "Amen" straight into the drop Lmao Pope Leo threw a rave for an archbishop's 75th birthday this is kind of incredible

Let’s talk about unfinished parts in medieval and early modern manuscripts. Why would you chose to not finish, for example, a figure on an illuminated manuscript page? The lower body part of the man on the left is only drawn, no colours at all… #bookhistory

The end result of hours of fiddling and cleaning heads, pinch rollers, potentiometers, replacing dead transistors. The sound is incredible. Hope Bluesky doesn't garble up the audio with compression.

Welp, as a disabled person who's known quite a few people with polio and post-polio since *very* early childhood, that's enough internet for me today. Solidarity to anyone who feels the same. We've got to look after ourselves and each other, cause these clowns keep beclowning themselves.

On behalf of my dead friends, my ruined health, and my mother's two heart attacks and cancer, fuck *all* presidents who say "we did a great job with covid." Indeed, fuck all of those referring to covid in the past tense. Ignorant ghouls, all.

Yep. I was happy to see this, but not at all surprised. He doesn't always get credit for it in the moment, but Paul is frequently one of the first to speak out on issues such as this. At the same time, he's a bit of a technophile, so his words carry more weight with tech-loving musicians.

The chasm between the spectacle and the implications of everything that is happening is vertigo inducing. I laugh, then I realize, and then I laugh, and then I realize again. It all leaves me feeling nauseous.

So they officially want their livers eaten? Good to know.

...ideally, yes?

Our new paper: protocol for a NEW kind of systematic review of mask efficacy. link.springer.com/epdf/10.1186...

When A.I. has stormed out and walked home alone from a high school party on a cold night in a not-warm-enough jacket and kicked a bottle off the sidewalk while glaring at the moon through the bare winter branches because even the moon doesn't understand it, then I might listen to one of its songs.

Hi, folks. I wrote about my buddy @leslieleeiii.bsky.social. He had #LongCOVID and passed away this week. Thanks for reading. adamumak.medium.com/leslie-lee-i...

Thinking not-so-fondly of the three cardiologists and two pulmonologists who snorted "I don't know about THAT," when I tried to show them a paper on LC and microclots a few years ago. (No, they didn't bother to read it - and they assumed I hadn't read it either. Oops.)

1/ People treat willful ignorance like it's harmless but it's literally how atrocities happen. "I didn't know" becomes "I didn't want to know" becomes "I knew but it wasn't my problem" and suddenly you're on the wrong side of history wondering how you got there

I wonder how many employers might actually refuse to hire the post-ChatGPT generation or they might end up fired because they cant do the things their degrees say they can do Id be very angry with universities for hyping gAI the way they have, if I was a student or parent, tbh.

NEW: Welcome to the Great AI Bubble. Yes, it’s here. And yes, it’s going to burst. It’s also got way more in common with the Epstein scandal than you really want to know. open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

Another trip around the sun. Can year 44 please suck less? Between the global moral injuries coming thick and fast, 80% of my friends being dead, mom’s cancer, and my own shit health, it’s hard to reach for more. Since there's no one left to come to a party, I'm throwing a party for one at 3:30am...

The coarsening of society due to the unmitigated ableism ouroboros has already killed people and I am scared it’ll get worse, but we get called hysterical for even thinking about it.

This being the last post Alice made for herself makes me incredibly sad. We need more spaces for us. We need more places where voices like Alice’s are uplifted so that others can learn from the wisdom that needs to be shared.

Pete Townshend Brings ‘Quadrophenia, A Rock Ballet’ to NYC on His Own Dime, Dedicates U.S. Premiere to Late Choreographer Paul Roberts

Respect Alice Wong’s call here: “When I am in public spaces and see most people unmasked either because they think the virus is a hoax, that masking is virtue signaling & a sign of weakness, aren't thinking about it, or that they simply don’t care, I feel like an expendable burden not worth saving.”

Living with Long COVID often feels like living in a horror movie. Along with your disease comes a creepy Hive Mind refusal to acknowledge the dangers of COVID infection. In Vince Gilligan's new Apple TV show Pluribus, the Hive Mind comes to life: www.thegauntlet.news/p/pluribus-c...

Pete Townshend Extended Interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 11/12 #TheWho www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukBw...

would you like to see the ancient medieval wooden winch that Durham cathedral used to hoist great tonnes of stone up several stories to build the nave? silly question, here it is

along with the heinous literal crimes i think a lot about how there's a kind of moral, national crime in subjecting all of us to this, to this consuming our politics, committed against us by a number of powerful and connected people up to and including the president

"The Democrats negotiate with the GOP the way Charlie Brown negotiates with Lucy for the football" has been a recurring 'gotta laugh or we'll cry' joke since at least 1994, to my recollection. One would think Dem leaders would be eager to try NOT falling for it, and yet, here we are again.

There will be 12 gazillion columns this week but the real takeaway is that the strategy of people with all the money + power telling everyone to shut up & wait in line isn’t delivering as it once did because they got so drunk on their own hype they starting using cruelty and violence for the lulz /1

i call this view 'reactionary centrism' - the problem with it is that modern fascism *cannot* be appeased; they don't want a few compromises in women's sports, they want a total social transformation and the end of liberal democracy you give them a bone, then another, then they want your arm