"i just do math" is something a cs phd student studying AI at stanford said to me once. i think about him a lot.

new scam going around where they hire you for a job but pay you less than the value your labor produced

Guy In Philosophy Class Needs To Shut The Fuck Up https://theonion.com/guy-in-philosophy-class-needs-to-shut-the-fuck-up-1819568055/

Very sad to learn of the death on 18th July of Margaret (Maggie) Boden, a titan of cognitive science and AI. I met her many times, and respected her greatly. www.theargus.co.uk/memorials/de...

Our sweet, silly cat Beemo died yesterday. One of those slowly-then-quickly illnesses turned out to be an irreversible kidney problem. She was loving, easygoing and vocal, and a dear companion to us both. We’re in bits – but this is the price of love. Hug your nonhuman friends, all.

I am begging for a Hollywood movie or TV writer to make something that features realistic 'artificial intelligence'

Only now noticed that Aftersun is on iPlayer for the rest of the year. It broke my heart at a parentally significant time of my life. Deeply recommended. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Anywhere you can get to on a Transport for Wales train is a part of Greater Wales

This Boer/Grok fiasco is funny, but it previews how AI chatbots will be used more subtly to manipulate public opinion. They present decontextualized authority: unsourced, unauthored, always confident. And we are being trained to trust them as objective or as the Wisdom of Crowds.

During a recent interview with Theo Von, Zuckerberg admitted a startling revelation. While talking to his daughter about the news, he realized understanding politics and law is important to fully understanding technology. What a discovery! www.disconnect.blog/p/mark-zucke...

any excuse to repost the greatest Tetris story ever, when a reporter went to cover early e-gaming championships and discovered that his wife was unknowingly *the world's greatest Tetris player* by a huge margin archive.boston.com/news/globe/m...

Every now again it’s useful to repeat advice about accessing papers that are behind a paywall that excludes you. Email the author. My estimate is that 90% of academics are so thrilled that a living, breathing, possibly even reading, person shows interest that they will swiftly send you a copy.

I posted this on twitter ~3y ago and it struck a chord. Still relevant?

Babe are you ok? You've hardly touched your actions willed in such a way that they could become a universal law

‘How much Weltschmerz is too much? We ask five people who’ve scrolled so much that they’ve cast aside any prospect of personal happiness and instead wallow in the pits of other-directed despair.’

I gave some thoughts on skeuomorphism for Digital Frontier, a new magazine on humanity & technology. Kudos to the writer and mag for engaging with the term’s actual meaning (a once-functional feature retained ornamentally), not just parroting the false equivalence with physical metaphor.

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

It might seem madly decadent just now, but planting seedlings, reading, walking, birdwatching, getting into some kind of exercise or craft, making models from a kit, perfecting the world's best tomato sauce, making music, sketching are all actually extremely important, joyful things to do

Good news guys

One reason to write: it forces even the most terminally hypertextual thinker to form linear, coherent opinions. Sometimes that’s enough to justify the effort.

Someone please pay me $1/word to write a weird and earnest piece on Rory McIlroy as moral archetype, proof of the banishment of evil etc

Opening day of the cricket season. Usually I’m quad-layered, shivering, clutching an outsized hot chocolate. Today, 21 °C, sunburn. Hasn’t rained in a month. Early April. Probably fine.

Married ten years today. Life tip: marry the kindest person you know.

OpenAI's move to allow generating "Ghibly stlye" images isn't just a cute PR stunt. It is an expression of dominance and the will to reject and refuse democratic values. It is a vulgar display of power. https://tante.cc/2025/03/28/vulgar-display-of-power/

Alright dorks, it’s official—I’m doing this. wil.to/megamanathon/

Do you hate your job as a designer or do you hate capitalism

Trying to min/max your degree for employability will just potentially make you miserable and ruin what could have been one of the best times of your life, and there’s no guarantee it will even work. But otoh you should pick up some basic skills that will be useful while your mind is malleable.

they made an ai game where you can talk to the patients but forgot to add in prompt safety controls

Glad to receive a copy of Universal Methods of Ethical Design, feat. 100 methods and frameworks to help designers consider ethical impacts. Obviously, responsible design needs policies, processes & infrastructure too, but IMO this is now your best resource for versatile tools. Recommended.

Rewatching Twin Peaks S1 and here’s my controversial claim: this deserves to be watched with motion smoothing well and truly ON.

20k a month for a bot that's frequently paralyzed by anxiety and gets completely sidetracked by disciplinary minutiae seems quite expensive

No, this is the most ashamed you've felt as an American *so far*.

As an out trans sportswoman, I can no longer get a visa to travel to the USA, because Republicans think I have an unfair biological advantage. My sport? Chess.

Every major UK newspaper - left, right, broadsheet, tabloid - is running a front page campaign against copyright carveouts for AI training. I can't remember the last time any political cause had such broad support, let alone one so anti-big tech and so economically consequential.

The fact that this communication is now necessary ... for conferences happening in the *US* ... shocking.

My read on Severance: the moral separation modern capitalism urges us to adopt – i.e. that we can & should accept different ethical standards in business life vs. personal life – is actually a splintering of the self. Integrity doesn’t just mean honesty: it means wholeness.

The AI Action Summit “confirm[s] AI’s status as not just an expansive set of technologies, but as a valuable, and hotly contested, political imaginary.” Great analysis from @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social. blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...

‘So while fabrication is an architectural by-product, it’s also a consequence of the values big AI companies have chosen to promote and deprioritise.’ cennydd.com/writing/hall...

The UK had a really good thing going being the grown-up in the room on AI. It played perfectly to UK soft power and diplomacy skills tied to a solid tradition of AI ethics and responsibility. This sudden switch to AI growth, growth, growth is like putting all their eggs in a disintegrating basket.

I do think it’s funny when the car companies are like “we may be divided but now more than ever, I think we can all agree: car ❤️”

Afternoon talks @ IASEAI in Paris really taking off, starting with Maria Ressa’s brutal, necessary truths about the tech-aided murder of journalism & democracy, then @mmitchell.bsky.social giving us a lolsob slide about the fantasy AI data grinder that magically churns out global prosperity

2025 will go down as the year when all the subtext became text

My Fulbright group chat is aflame, speculating whether this spells the end of the programme. Certainly plausible, if this article is accurate. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

One of my favourite stats is that there are at least a dozen UK universities with bigger revenues than the entire British fishing industry

Yes; it’s very much “there’s no monopoly on powerful AI.” Not “AI is overhyped/useless.” The bubble is deflating because there is no moat.

Punxsutawney Phil vibes today. Did you think the tech sector (and job market) was about to recover? Looks like six more weeks/months/etc of winter from here.

Because nothing says ‘human flourishing’ quite like ‘global technological dominance’

You don't say www.psypost.org/transgender-...

I pledge my eternal loyalty to any UK microbrewery that dares to heat its taproom beyond like 18° C