this appears to be part of what's going on: making physical-world robots is really hard and expensive as compared to pushing LLM tech as the antidote to everything (which correlates to why the MAGA/techbro set now increasingly believe everything worth caring about happens Online, not Offline)

Happy 210th birthday to George Boole! Boolean logic gates now form the building blocks of all digital computing devices, including the one in front of you.

People who received an mRNA-based Covid vaccine — it didn’t matter whether it was Pfizer or Moderna’s — up to 100 days before starting immunotherapy were twice as likely to be alive as those who either didn’t receive the vaccine or got it outside that time window. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

This poll is close to Amerimaidan territory. If the poll averages get to this and then decline further from there, Dear Leader is fucked.

Our little *checks notes* President of the United States is growing up so fast!

The other thought it raised for me is the extent to which both the Left and centre have become over-reliant on academic visions of reality and politics, be those technocratic or radical, but which in either case can be resistant (or at least not conducive) to pluralism of the sort described here

Remember when Farage talks *about* work he is largely talking *to* people who have retired from it

it's what remains utterly fascinating to me about those uk social contract memes a party of pensioners who have cooked their brain on mumsnet and X who think that they're actually the real choice of the youth and working class vote

It’s not that we (meaning the broader we) decided we didn’t like the solution. We decided we didn’t like the accuracy.

It's nearly impossible to make a living entertaining children in a sewer since Stephen king's "It"

One of the reasons that we valorise manual labour is that we mistake the justifications people have to make to avoid going completely oogly-goo ('we were up at 4am every day in minus 40 temperatures - but we loved every second!') for what they'd say if they were free to think and feel what was right

I’m seeing people saying “ah, they’re all just revealing who they were all the time” and it’s simply nonsense. I’ve seen people I know radicalise online and they genuinely weren’t like this before.

Word of the Day: ANTIMETABOLE - a rhetorical device when words are repeated in successive clauses, but swapped. For instance JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country", or Snoop Dogg's "With my mind on my money and my money on my mind."

In our polling with YouGov, since the start of his second term Donald Trump's net approval has fallen 17pts among white Americans (+17 to -1), 28pts among Hispanic Americans (-9 to -37) and 38pts among black Americans (-36 to -74)

Bumped into the sister of my arch enemy yesterday. My nemesister.

Beaver Mower United States, Census, 1910

One of the silliest “what has become of our country” posts in the immediate aftermath of the train stabbing was a former Dr Who writer who decided to post the events of October 1995, to show how far we’d fallen as a nation. The trial of serial murderer Rose West started October 3rd 1995.

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain." This James Baldwin quote is hitting harder than ever.

It doesn’t matter what I think. Also, none of this would ever happen. But if I had a zillion dollars: 1. Run a “we do hard things” campaign across southern and rust belt states. Invest heavily in local, state and regional social infrastructure. Sponser later hours at a library, build a skate park…

yes yes yes to all of this. material politics is the way forward and that doesn’t mean slogans it means the very difficult work of being a real presence in the lives of the people who you want to trust you.

The four branches of the British military: Army, Navy, RAF and the Liberal Democrats

just saw Herbie Hancock at the Strathmore. played almost exclusively progressive jazz, went ~1 hour over time, much of the overage stemming from a nearly 40m lecture on evolution, compassion, & futurism done entirely via vocoder, and saved almost all the accessible fusion for post-lecture. the GOAT!

A friend told me that her American dad got in touch to talk about some news he'd seen on Facebook: there are riots in England over DEI, and the King dramatically burst into parliament to tell Starmer off, and then Prince William did the same to Sadiq Khan. AI really is inventing bold new universes

3 November 1919 | An Italian Jewish woman, Frida Misul, was born in Livorno. A Singer. In #Auschwitz from 16 May 1944. No. A-5483 She was liberated in #Theresienstadt. She passed away in 1992. --- Women at Auschwitz. Podcast: https://youtu.be/ijTxtbNlJO8

You've invented the Diogenes Club.

Health officials in Gaza say Israel has handed over the bodies of 45 Palestinians. It comes a day after Palestinian militants returned to Israel the remains of three Israeli troops taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023.

Noticing the sty door open long after the pigs got loose—WSJ sounds alarm at GOP-MAGA Jew-baiting "If conservatives—and Republicans—don’t call out this poison in their own ranks before it corrupts more young minds, the right and America are entering dangerous territory." www.wsj.com/opinion/the-...

some jazzers have been griping about Hancock’s vocoder ad-lib segment, which he’s been doing every set. Allow me to set you straight. Herbie Hancock is one of the greatest musicians ever to live and in the context of music if he makes a choice then that is the right choice. Hope this clarifies

Explaining the Dune sequels

Fun! Rapey, Archie Bunker-brained, nepobaby bankruptcy junkie. Coke-addled, rhino-killing, crypto-cultist failson. Muppet-limbed, Dollar-Store-Goebbels sister strangler. Bee-stung, abuser-banging CECOT fetishist. War criming, dumb-as-snot chat host with more Norse ink than Ragnar Lothbrok.

www.espncricinfo.com/series/icc-m.... The USA humiliates the UAE. *Wishful metaphor, wishful metaphor*.

This reminds me of the single funniest post I have seen since joining Bluesky It was @dov.bsky.social pointing out that defeating Yoon Suk Yeol's coup attempt was aided by Yoon (literally nicknamed "the incel president) having a "support base of no one who leaves their house"

Its genuinely fascinating how this applies to almost everything: the forces in the UK now lean left, as does (the player base at least) rugby union and the Church. The participants of the worlds most Tory things are now left because theyre A) young B) leave the house

On any given day, it's six-to-five and pick them whether Trump knows who his wife is.

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

a genuine problem is that a lot of this stuff is just completely alien to the mass media elite like who else besides weirdos like me take time to analyze what the intellectual righties are saying

The right has correctly identified the professional-managerial class as the class with the most revolutionary potential in the current period and have directed all their energies to destroy it before it becomes aware of itself and its own power

Reading WHEN THE KRAKEN WAKES with my son - it moves a little slowly for his tastes, but I love how we shift abruptly from "an English novel of people talking to each other and watching television" to "gruesome sci-fi horror" and then back again past the halfway point.

Meet one of Syria’s “shadow warriors.” Hassan Al Hariri risked everything to help smuggle more than a million documents out of Syria during the war. They include evidence of war crimes that could one day hold Bashar al-Assad and his top officials to account.

Have the Japanese LDP somehow taken over the UK? Actually, even with all the bridges to nowhere in Japan, they'd've probably had the whole damned network built by now.

Completely fascinating and helps to explain how HS2 costs more than any other train worldwide. Also, I don't think there's enough about how much of this is driven by corruption. A series of powerful interest groups with revolving door employment arrangements ensuring expensive work for all involved.

Yes, I was reading a post by someone with Reform in their bio who complained that the train didn’t immediately stop, but continued to the next station. These people are both nasty and morons.

Anyway, stoked to see how the political tendency that has spent decades cutting mental health funding, advocating for driverless trains and mocking attempts to ban big knives deals with a train driver and guard’s swift action helping end a mentally ill man’s rampage with a big knife.

James isn't wrong on any of this, but it is slightly crackers that the UK has managed to get a high tax burden (tax/GDP is the one that's used for this fact) whilst having actually done quite a few tax cuts in the last 15 years. Spectacular acts of political mismanagement!

"Broad-based" tax rises can ALSO collect a lot more from the people who really DO have a lot. Remember Rishi Sunak, the actual PM, getting away with paying less than 25% tax on TWO MILLION POUNDS of income, because most of it was "capital gains"? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Yes the EU and UK have problems and are struggling with pressure of internal and external crises. But they also represent the greatest concentration of economic and military power after the US or China and alongside India. Analysis that forgets strengths won't solve weaknesses

I find this performative European self-flagellation baffling when the US air traffic control system is breaking down and China's economy is struggling with inert domestic demand. What are held up as US or Chinese external strengths are often symptoms of their internal crises

Did you happen to leave your @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk purchases on the Metropolitan line yesterday? Did one of your friends do this and send an anguished message to the group chat? If so, Darren has just done you a very good turn. 👇

This is true, would add though that the left versions are far better as generally are honest about costs of proposals. Ludicrous as to how we pay for in he long term. But admits it. The right are utterly in denial there is an economic cost to favoured policies. They might as well believe in fairies.