The Guardian's "how deprived is your area" interactive page is pretty neat, but the best part is this note: "A technical issue in an earlier version meant localities containing a comma produced incorrect results." No avoiding the bad data! Here it is: www.theguardian.com/society/ng-i... #databs

Latest RocknRoll Politics podcast -What happens if Rachel Reeves breaks her pre-election tax pledges: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/r...

Very excited about this...

It’s Bandcamp Friday. 100% revenue to musicians. Why not buy something? Spotify pays them almost nothing. For example, buy Katie *(@katiespencermusic.bsky.social) Spencer’s new CD, out today. katiespencerofficial.bandcamp.com/album/what-l... It’s wonderful.

“Countless experiments show that around 10 per cent of the public don’t understand simple percentages” — Prof @bobbyduffy.bsky.social, quoted on Peter Kellner’s blog. kellnerp.substack.com/p/ignorance-... He could have said one in ten , but I guess Bobby is a take-no-prisoners kind of a guy.

Superb episode. Really insightful. Steve at his best.

This week’s episode of Steve (@steverichards.bsky.social) Richards’s Rock’n’Roll Politics podcast opens with a really insightful analysis of Kier Starmer, making the case that the seeds of present troubles were sown right after the Hartlepool by-election. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/w...

Apertus: A fully open, transparent, multilingual language model www.swiss-ai.org/apertus I continue to think LLMs are a dead end, but this initiative looks fantastic, and might be the start of a route towards a more ethical, responsible, and less US-centric family of LLMs. Bravo.

Conversations with Claude 1 (The HTML Glossary) njr.prose.sh/claude-gloss.... Or: Why is the bullshitting bullshit generator bullshitting me?

Lothian Buses retired their old bus app recently, and forced people onto the new one. I find the new app absolutely incomprehensible. It seems to me to be a disaster in terms of app design, usability and functionality. The old app was really good. It's a shame. @lothianbuses.bsky.social

I almost never link to LinkedIn, but I wrote a piece there To Chat or Not to Chat www.linkedin.com/posts/njradc... about whether or not I should run my draft, nearly-ready-to-submit book on test-driven data analysis through a chatbot to see if it can help. Interested in views. #LLM #ethics

Obscure Public Service Annoucement: I put up the manual for Halfords Smart Battery Chargers Manual (for cars), since I have one, and it has a baffling interface, and all the links I could find online were scam sites. njr.prose.sh/halfords-sma...

It is amazing to be a part of the freelance data consultant community. I have never felt that I am in competition with any other consultant. Every consultant I have met is fully and actively supportive of my work (and vice versa). I'm just in awe of this community that wants us all succeed. 💜

The basic argument against private schools and private health has always been ‘if they’re not good enough for you and yours, who are they good enough for?’

The most extreme version of this that I’ve heard of is an American private school where parents have to sign a form declaring that their life outside school is also smartphone-free. And I heard this from the CEO of a company that makes a very successful smartphone app, who sends their kids there!

Important article from Bruce Schneier on the need for high-integrity syystems (which he calls itegrous). The Age of Integrity www.schneier.com/blog/archive... The TDDA ideas I go on about address part of this, but more the SNAFU parts than the actual security and attack-detection/prevention parts.

Free, unsolicited advice for physics students: many things will go more smoothly for you if you can derive and explain the simple harmonic oscillator in your sleep

I was interviewed by the journalist Jessica Nordell for her newsletter. We discussed some deep questions related to AI touching on humanities, politics, & dualistic assumptions underlying the conception of "intelligence" in AI. I hope you will read it! jessicanordell.substack.com/cp/166912581

‘We are perilously close to the point of no return’: climate scientist on Amazon rainforest’s future www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Latest RocknRoll Politics podcast: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/r...

This blog post is almost 3 years old but I still use these #rstats tips in my work to this day. :) cghlewis.com/blog/dict_cl...

tdda.serial: Metadata for Flat Files (CSV Files) www.tdda.info/tddaserial-m... New blog post on an old topic on the TDDA blog.

LLM product placement and search optimization is here and it's as dystopian as you expected.

Seems like a good time to re-up @katecrawford.bsky.social‬'s brilliant coining: "hallucitations".

This is really well written. I'm sure everyone who follows me agrees with the sentiment, but worth reading just to understand it all further and maybe have the vocabulary to challenge others in your life who may not understand it all the same.

GPT-6 will have the intelligence to open a bakery instead of doing a PhD

tech.lgbt/@Natasha_Jay... ‘I finally found a plumber that works around the clock.’ Badum-tis!

Good from Tina He: AI, Heidegger, and Evangelion fakepixels.substack.com/p/ai-heidegg...

Excellent from @xkcd.com, as always. xkcd.com/3092/ Though the octave shown spans 14 semitones... Need middle C to D♭, or possiblly C♯ to D.

Scott Hanselman (@scott.hanselman.com) very good on Half-Stack Data Science podcast with David Asboth (@davidasboth.com). Meaningful uses of AI, with Scott Hanselman halfstackdatascience.com/s4e1-meaning...

"When all knowledge is made effortless, it’s treated as disposable. There’s no awe, no investment, no delight in the unexpected—only consumption." Oooooh this is a great article by @joanwestenberg.com

Obscure PSA for iTerm2 users on Sequoia (MacOS 15.x): iTerm2 Context Menu njr.prose.sh/iTerm2-conte... If you find yourself accidentally causing a context menu to pop up when hitting RETURN in iTerm2, this tells you how to fix it. #iTerm #iTerm2 #MacOS #Sequoia #terminal #shell

Vibe Coding with Claude njr.prose.sh/vibe-coding-... #LLM #VibeCoding #CHOP #ChatOrientedProgramming #AI #ArtificialIntelligence

Apple Trifecta: @joanwestenberg.com: Apple’s Diet of Worms www.joanwestenberg.com/apples-diet-... @siracusa.social: Apple Turnover hypercritical.co/2025/05/09/a... @gruber.foo: Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino daringfireball.net/2025/03/some... The worms are turning.

Two decades of climate tipping points research: Progress and outlook by @davidamckay.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Latest RocknRoll Politics podcast- podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/r...

Literally none of these solutions are real

A review of Blue Machine, by @helenczerski.bsky.social. njr.prose.sh/blue-machine One of the best books I have ever read.™ #oceans #physics #ecology #biodiversity #sustainability

We obsess over the angry young men going Reform. But what of the anxious young women going Green? — Gaby Hinsliff, The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... Thoughtful article from @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social. Should be essential reading for Keir Starmer & Morgan McSweeny. Won’t be.

🚨 1 day left ! Register as a speaker for PyData Paris 🚨 pydata.org/paris2025/cfp

I expect you’ve seen it already, but if not, do take 15 minutes to listen to @carolecadwalla.bsky.social’s new TED talk. broligarchy.substack.com/p/speaking-t... She was right last time, and she’s right this time. Here’s the latest proof she’s right: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Let’s knock down social media’s walled gardens — www.ft.com/content/79d2... Excellent article from Tim Berners-Lee. Unfortunately (and ironically) paywalled.

Quote Origin: The Tree Remembers What the Axe Forgets Shona Proverb? G. Fortune? Maya Angelou? Wolfgang Mieder? Anonymous? quoteinvestigator.com/2025/02/20/a...

There are only 5 days left, but if you want to give input to the UK government's proposed changes to allow AI companies to train on copyright data unless rights holder opt out, you can do so here. Deadline 20 Feb 2025. ipoconsultations.citizenspace.com/ipo/consulta... I did, naturally.

Orwell's 1984 is a seriously great book. So much in it. So many concepts. I'm taking so many notes #booksky

Quote Origin: There Is No Point in Using Exact Methods Where There Is No Clarity in the Concepts and Issues To Which They Are To Be Applied John von Neumann? Oskar Morgenstern? W. Edwards Deming? Michael A. Jackson? Apocryphal? quoteinvestigator.com/2025/02/13/e...

Awful, cruel, and a complete disregard for the principles underpinning the refugee convention. freemovement.org.uk/good-charact...

How to always, punctually, with no exception, be on the wrong side. Good job Italy.

Really great day today visiting the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. Gave a seminar talk and chatted with students, postdocs, and faculty about lots of exciting research. More meetings & a public talk tomorrow!