I'm learning from the replies that I may have been the only child who avoided their beginner electronics Christmas gift because they were put off by the appearance of resistors

Resistors have the ugliest standardized appearance of any human invention

This South Park scene has been living rent free in my head for months. It completely shifted how I think about habitual AI users. youtube.com/shorts/r_gtv...

In related news, I fried my first Arduino yesterday

Reading about electricity, and the glorification/narcissism of 18-19C scientists is unreal. There is a unit named after someone for every conceivable mathematical transformation. For example, siemens, named after Ernst Siemens, is literally just the reciprocal of ohms, named after Georg Ohm.

My partner and I have different views about the ethics of accents (in England). I think that you should *actively* adjust your accent to where you currently live, she thinks that you should keep your accent about where it was when you left school.

I'm gaming out a few possible (drastic and all quite different) career changes, and they all involve getting a cheeky masters. But, I'd rather not get caught in a dying industry again. What are everyone's tips for feeling out the job prospects when shifting industries?

I'm gaming out a few possible (drastic and all quite different) career changes, and they all involve getting a cheeky masters. But, I'd rather not get caught in a dying industry again. What are everyone's tips for feeling out the job prospects when shifting industries?

I think academics more than most people are prone to consider what people say as expressions of beliefs and thoughts rather than as speech acts that should be interpreted primarily by looking at what the expressions aims to achieve.

For a decade, congressional GOP have used the gap between what Trump literally said and what he communicated, interpreting Trumps mob boss doublespeak as charitably as possible. Now the admin is doing it in reverse with Kelly, interpreting claims as uncharitably as necessary

The most pernicious language-related fuckery in politics is not changing how we talk (sorry Orwell and anti-political correctness folk). It is instead in the selective interpretation of a speech act and what was implied by it. Those in power determine what someone else meant.

going through my bluesky followers/following list since becoming a section editor 👀

weird question, but does anyone have an unabridged print edition of the oxford english dictionary that my family could borrow for a few weeks?

Psychology in the 2000s was wild

In papers at the intersection of epistemology and philosophy mind of a certain era, it's "if System 1 is operating, System 2 cannot be operating"

French pre-dreadnought battleships have to be the most AI-core things ever created

French pre-dreadnought battleships have to be the most AI-core things ever created

I don't understand the Euro defense buildup. Ukraine has shown Russia would get its teeth kicked in in an open war, even without US support. Are they expecting Russia's strategic position to improve? Are they expecting an escalating hybrid war? Is it secretly to posture against the US?

New Year's resolution: Gonna mix it up, try something new, stunt on the skyline a little less dipshit, more cumclown

I am reasonably confident that today I became the first ever person to eat Chicago-style pizza on the moors of the UK's Dark Peak. (The pizza was out of frame, unfortunately)

I adore these things. They are so big, and so beautiful, and so unexpected when you come across them. Just incredible that they exist

"Did you see what Mark Cuban posted? Oh did you see the clapb—" You shake yourself awake in the cold North Atlantic water. You are not online. It is July of 1858. You are a baleen whale, and you have changed your mind. The future most not come to pass. The telegraph cable must break.

A little thread of ideas for your Boxing Day Walk (Trespass)

Why is it that box office profits are public and updated in nearly real time while Netflix viewership numbers are kept in a locked box in the Mariana Trench whose precise location is only known by a blind crone that only speaks in riddles?

Started my 2026 weekend project early, trudging through wind, clouds, and heather to check off my first 5 entries in Pat Cunningham's 3(!) volume "Derbyshire's High Peak Air Crash Sites"

Oh cool, despite not saying it literally anywhere online or in any correspondence, Editorial Manager requires a version of the R&R with tracked changes. Guess I know what my next 2 hours is going to be!

The last thing before Christmas break just happens to be my old friend, Editorial Manager.

Idea for a TikTok series or late night show segment: Ask a bunch of 12 year olds what they'd do if they were president, mix them in with real news items, and then quiz people on the street: "12 year old or Trump Administration?"

Idea for a TikTok series or late night show segment: Ask a bunch of 12 year olds what they'd do if they were president, mix them in with real news items, and then quiz people on the street: "12 year old or Trump Administration?"

The Rochdale Pioneers started business at Toad Lane, Rochdale, on this day 1844. Co-operative retail store run by its working-class members, part of a wider growth of mutual self-help organisations in Victorian times, including friendly societies and trade unions.

It's that time again. I'm seeking UK based #postdoc opportunities. I'm a multispecies ethnographer specialising in wildlife trade, distant multispecies linkages and loss in the Anthropocene. Mostly known as the civet lady. Please share 🙏 @ehrh.bsky.social @academic-chatter.bsky.social

Sure, interdisciplinary research sounds cool and useful, but no one thinks about that inevitable moment, 15 months into a project, when you realize that you may not have adequately translated the conceptual space between literatures.

{ggview} can print plots to Viewer (Rstudio or Positron) with true scaling. Adjust plot settings and see the final proportions immediately. Save the plot once 👌 e.g.: ggplot(...) + ggview::canvas(width = 220, height = 220*2/3, units = "mm", dpi = 300) per @nrennie.bsky.social #datavis #rstats

This sounds terrible for science, but let's not pretend many social scientists are using Qualtrics Panels in the first place. The true market for AI panel members are marketing departments staffed by managers who don't care about data quality or are susceptible to hype and don't know any better

Now my favorite part of writing any paper: repeatedly recompiling ggplot graphs to get the text size right #rstats

Finally watching Andor S2. "Who Are You" (the one in the square) is maddenly close to a sublime episode of TV. Except: they made the first shot a false flag. They sacrificed the fidelity of the political commentary to preserve the moral purity of the Ghorman cause. I hate it.

Finally watching Andor S2. "Who Are You" (the one in the square) is maddenly close to a sublime episode of TV. Except: they made the first shot a false flag. They sacrificed the fidelity of the political commentary to preserve the moral purity of the Ghorman cause. I hate it.

Congrats to the first AI-specific vocabulary to go mainstream! A derogatory one at that! May there be many more.

Because Mamdani appears to be more sewer socialist than revolutionary Marxist, I've wondered whether the narrative on the right would be "his policies aren't socialist" or "these policies we'd otherwise support are bad actually". Looks like I have my answer

If there's a war on Christmas, Christmas won in a rout during the Obama administration

Get prepared everyone, this spring we are going to live through another round of Discourse about whether Orwell was critical of all leftism.

Get prepared everyone, this spring we are going to live through another round of Discourse about whether Orwell was critical of all leftism.

We got the PhilPapers feminist philosophy of science category philpapers.org/browse/femin... moved up from "miscellaneous" to "general philosophy of science" proper 🎉 Combatting disciplinary marginalisation and recognising the strength of feminist work on sciences! #philsky

The GOP seems to be falling into a trap that UK privatization did: requiring busywork and institutional knowledge to access basic services. Like comparing energy tarrifs in the UK, Trump accounts and health savings accounts create new time and energy requirements to access promised savings.

The GOP seems to be falling into a trap that UK privatization did: requiring busywork and institutional knowledge to access basic services. Like comparing energy tarrifs in the UK, Trump accounts and health savings accounts create new time and energy requirements to access promised savings.

A new circle of slop hell just dropped - webpages designed to inject information into LLM responses. Everyone please welcome AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) gizmodo.com/ai-scam-phone-numbers-2000697589