Timeless, imho

This firehose is an underestimated resource for Bluesky AI discourse. I don't know who's running it, but it does a good job of flagging interesting papers.

This is just incredible. Someone made not just a computer, but an *entire working LLM* out of (438 million) minecraft blocks www.tomshardware.com/tech-industr...

As a matter of morality I’ve treated the Simpsons as if it was cancelled long ago and yet the *movie,* which came out deep into the period where I was doing that, came out 18 years ago.

I *know* this will be of interest to some in this bailiwick: www.nybooks.com/articles/202... @nybooks.com

He did, yes.

Say if you get pipped for a promotion or award. It's fair to interrogate whether biases played a part. But if you see minorities as inherently inferior, the brain jumps to conspiracy. It can't be that your book's mediocre, it must mean everyone is captured by woke and EDI.

I think part of it is that we still have a regressive culture - BUT we allow minorities limited opportunities. So if a person with a regressive mindset fails, or is criticised, cognitive dissonance insists it can't be their own fault.

It explained a lot. The smart serial killers targeted the marginalised and DNA testing wasn't a thing. Even now - a black trans sex worker won't get an ounce of the coverage that the death of Madeline McCann did.

Nor on disordered eating continuing for decades after rationing and shortages stopped. Everyone with grandparents of that age knew who was the hoarder, who couldn't ever enjoy a sit-down meal, who always made sure others were fed to over-full.

Didn’t Troughton Jr play the same part in New Tricks as the killer of James Bolan’s wife?

Dan Brown's new novel contains a chapter that is entirely an advert for Starbucks and I'm so mad about it

Might be of interest to some in this bailiwick: www.gnu.org/software/mdk/

I mean, lads: what did they think a society where the basic unit of exchange was a female slave and where lineal patronymic family names got established earlier than almost anywhere in NW Europe was like?

Might be of interest to some in this bailiwick: www.abebooks.com/first-editio...

Personally always up for short story anthologies with autobiographical vignettes - re-working through Waldrop's stuff and it's like nectar. Also think short story adaptations way better than movies, not sure what publishers are smoking

Indeed. The stuff of dreams.

Jim From Neighbours again! A deleted scene would have given him the last line of the entire series, but even with that cut, he still gets a couple of borderline insane moments for an only in one previous two parter character.

See? That's what I thought. We had one because dad worked in London.

(apparently not actually true)

If the internet has taught me anything today, it's that they used to sell live lobster at Walmart. Cultural norms are already in chaos.

Phew! I panicked for a moment. My dad bringing home a SodaStream was one of the most exciting things ever, second only to our first VHS player.

Hang on, I'm assuming owning a SodaStream was fancy? Or was that just when they first came out?

Someone from the UK has to run interference and tell them it's all about whether they grew up eating white bread and owning a Sodastream before this gets out of hand.

oh Christ lads the yanks have discovered "who is working class" discourse. it's going to be a lot worse than ours because the poor bastards don't even have all that many words for a bread roll.

My son loves his DofE volunteering - young leader with cubs - and has carried it on after the required time but I do have doubts about this plan

The only plus is that it never works.

Indeed it is not

Which is not ‘volunteering’

The plan is that they’ll have no choice, like it or lump it.

Why... Why would anyone have thought it would be?

you also reminded me that the shockingly, weirdly horny novels of Fr. Andrew Greeley were a thing that existed during that time as well, so good to know that knowledge still lurks in my brain from college

I did not like Tampa or Houston but Branson, Missouri made me madder than anywhere I've been in the US. I got lost walking in Milton Keynes once; that was pretty aggravating too.

Seattle. we lived there for the most miserable 16 months of my life. a cursed city.

Path to citizenship

But would you have enjoyed it? I would have fucking hated it

Not magistrate, a marquis.

No, the important thing with the home office is to say one thing and do another so they will say a scrappy signature in a notebook is enough and then 9 years later demand , oh I don't know, something on the Blockchain signed by a magistrate

Well, sure. But you know how everything is with the Home Office. A scrappy signature in a paper notebook that you spent 3 years volunteering will be enough?

D of E volunteering for teenagers, which is probably where they have got the idea from. Which personally I also think is bullshit. (Fortunately in my day I think D of E was only done by a handful of outward bound type weirdos at my school)

100% canon

In the UK, there is a tendency to ignore the damage caused by WW2. Yes, there is some acknowledgement of the effects in Troops and even the Blitz on the city declared, but I've not seen any research into the effects on those evacuated.

… so what’s going on now? There’s a cultural meme/ virus about mass shooting being something that you can do, availability of powerful weapons, a US culture that values traits of sociopathy, white male entitlement… parts of the mix seem like the sort of thing that SK explanations mention.

There’s a mode of explanation that the US in those years was a perfect storm of untreated PTSD parenting, cultural misogyny, frontal lobe damage from lead, and disorganised law enforcement that meant serial killers could rack up numbers before even being noticed. I buy it up to a point…

The similarity between that crime and Ted Bundy’s Gainesville murders is one of the reasons I wonder whether the spree/ serial distinction is as hard as we’re led to believe

resolved: sandwiches taste better when cut diagonally

Five of my "Autobuy" authors: 1. Elizabeth Bear 2. Kate Elliott 3. Martha Wells 4. Adrian Tchaikovsky 5. Charles Stross

Ppl saying that Bluesky is dying and should be ignored but also compulsively lying about what is posted here

IFBIT

Look, do we know for sure that it wasn't Batman erotic fiction about Japanese indigenous religion?