Amazing how quickly things drop out of the news these days.

It’s like all my special interests are colliding (zoonotic outbreaks/remote expedition cruises/women’s health concerns being dismissed by medical professionals)

Wish we could nominate people whose jobs would be taken by AI

herald subeditor: oh hey u guys are back early kevin mckenna: glasgow's woke herald subeditor: what? kevin mckenna: *loading a pistol and getting back on the rocket-ship* glasgow's woke

YESSSSSSSSSSSS

This whole story is absolutely wild, and so sad. I was on this exact journey, same company, same ship, in 2023, and went with the same ship to the Arctic last year: both absolutely incredible trips. Can imagine how terrible this must be for the passengers and the crew.

Oof. I have been on this ship (twice) and can really imagine what this must be like.

like the global geo-political climate, public discourse around AI is fast deteriorating and I feel it everyday 1/

Just a quick reminder that having a hereditary head of state is still retrogressive and undemocratic, even when he is very gently rebuking a despot who is allegedly our ally

Weird that I’m so focused on this, but what a strange thing to say to someone three years younger than you

I hear Iran are just weeks away from developing a ballroom.

Some sort of social enterprise focusing on literacy and developing a culture of reading for kids from 3-12 or so

She went back in time to kill Hitler. She didn’t know she would fall in love … Coming this holiday season from Fox Searchlight, Kirsten Dunst and Jeremy Strong in 'Chancellor of a Lifetime'.

I wrote about why we should keep reading and writing www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

Yeah, Mackenzie Scott is a fascinating case. She is literally ignoring the SOPs of philanthropy in order to give away wealth as quickly and efficiently as possible and she’s still getting richer. At her level it is impossible not to make money. Tax billionaires, A LOT.

4 backers needed!!!!

Took me a long while to understand this too. Without wishing to blow my own trumpet (toot toot) I am great at prose and characterisation but broadly terrible at plot, which is why my first two novels were basically me colouring in a true story.

DOGE turbocharged the deficit. budgetlab.yale.edu/research/wea...

first in my bloodline to see someone get excommunicated by a community note

Starting to feel like we are all involuntary participants in a D/s relationship with a humiliation fetish

This is such a great thread, and also highlights the extent to which the “male loneliness epidemic” is actually a sense of thwarted entitlement to women’s time, emotional labour, and bodies

Okay Yeongno, it’s time

Hey America, maybe time to give up on the old “moral leadership” canard and just try being a normal country for a while?

Starmer should immediately & unequivocally ban access to British airspace to US warplanes. The UK should not be accomplice to a US President who is threatening more war crimes. Period.

My fellow writers might not want to hear this, but AI is a useful tool for certain aspects of the craft, like for instance when you’re engaged in the process of being a talentless shitbag hack who is too lazy to do any fucking writing.

[reading a book in first person] i dont remember doing any of this

This shit is bleak but also I will continue to write novels from my actual brain until said brain is soup because crafting a novel is one of the single greatest joys in my life, and I will continue to read novels crafted by humans because if I didn’t I would wither and die.

idk guys when i see a lot of similar headlines insisting that editors & authors are all already embracing AI, i don't assume these things are true. i assume there are a lot of very rich people with an unpopular product pushing a particular narrative in my industry!

"All authors are using AI now! No, of course they are, they're just not saying so yet, but *everyone* is doing it so it's totally okay. You don't want to be left behind, do you? You're not uncool, are you?" --the slop shillers, sounding increasingly like drug pushers in a 1980s kids TV show

Lolsob. "Iran's president remains Pezeshkian" is such an understated burn.

This is so good and so evocative. "When I think of my homeland before 2023, [...], I think of my wedding, where we invited a group of ‘foreigners’ and they found this country they knew so little about would become one of their favourite." <3

There are currently more bananas on Orkney than there are people. “Tesco is also arranging to send bananas to the outer isles” ahhhhh www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Yessss PUT IT ON A BUS it's the only way we'll learn

Education can save lives.

wouldn't it be funny if EVERYONE blocked this Attie AI account @ bsky.app/profile/atti... before they could do anything with it

"As Sovereign Nations, we need not participate in the extractive colonial systems of generative AI and hyperscale data centers or their false, predatory economic promises at the expense of our lands and waters, communities and economies, security and sovereignty" nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/...

Does it work properly? No. Are the people making it acting in good faith? No. Have they ensured it can't be used maliciously? No. Does it make people's lives better? No. Will it make people's lives better? No. Is it profitable? No. Is it popular? No. Is it harmless? No. The argument for AI.

Have had a nice chill day for once, having finally reached the place I'm going to be spending the next couple of weeks (journey started last Sunday, oof), and so of course I have been ruining it for myself by listening to political podcasts (why).

This is a long and tough read but very much worth it

Look if you are not into an open air bucket shower when it is 30+ degrees I do not know what to tell you.

Update: the guys stopped fighting, on the move again tomorrow!

This whole thread is so good but THIS especially

I am having an unexpectedly quiet day today as my planned travel northwards has been postponed due to insecurity (guys, stop fighting!*) so gonna give you some book recs because I, like many of us, have been self-medicating the apocalypse via romance novels, almost exclusively m/m ones.

(Btw hi, I am trying to be on Bluesky more, maybe I do have one more social media in me after all before I flee to the swamp forever)

I am way up in the north of South Sudan today and the scenery around here is just wild, in a stark and beautiful way that I don’t think you fully get from the ground. Half the land is underwater with islands of vegetation and skeletal trees.

I’m staying at Afex in Juba tonight, and realised while checking in yesterday that the first time I came here was May 2006, nearly twenty years ago.

its nowruz.... eid..... the vernal equinox..... rosh chodesh....... good day to make a change

They said it would take 193 years to clean London’s air. We did it in nine. 💨 London has now met legal limits for nitrogen dioxide air pollution.

Interesting/bleak read - but the suggestions students are making around formative assessment give me some hope.

This is so good, and a must-read for anyone who’s seeking to engage critically and ethically with AI.