#TenMinMerlin 7/6/26 6:00 Westfield UK; light cloud Eurasian Blackbird Eurasian Wren Common Magpie Common Woodpigeon Song Thrush Eurasian Blue Tit European Robin Great Tit Goldcrest Eurasian Blackcap Coal Tit Eurasian Jackdaw Carrion Crow Common Chaffinch Common Chiffchaff

French ACARS drama is different to everyone else's 🤠

Aye there it is bsky.app/profile/ryan...

I thought there was an entire thread on the guy in charge being a supporter of the old regime. Sure I hate AI as much as the rest of us but this reeks of a coverup

We need to think deeper: why is this unacceptable for a 17 year old but acceptable for an 18 year old - or a 57 year old? Age controls are not the real problem.

Always thought it odd that Trump wanted to be named on a memorial while still alive 🤷 Some time in the future, perhaps the US will put up something with Trump's name on it - but not as a memorial, rather a warning against electing convicted felons to high office.

Usenet with overnight "blink" between Janet and the US. That piece about a secret NASA shuttle mission where astronauts tried out various contraptions to enable conjugal relations in zero-gee space flight. US lawyers posting spam Green Card adverts into newsgroups.

Classic "so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should" 🤠

Ted Chiang brutally dismantling the philosophical fol-de-rol of Anthropic

between Lynn Conway and Sophie Wilson, essentially all electronic devices now in existence were made possible by trans women

Should be using a dissipative mat and wearing a conductive wrist-strap!

Mildly annoyed; a fun post gets popular so the poster quickly adds a reply "as this is popping off do follow for more blah blah". Tedious behaviour, and guarantees I'm *not* following.

#TenMinMerlin 30th May 2026 Westfield England GB 7:30am - light cloud Last capture March-May. Wanted to see if there's a Spring migration here; none detectable from my garden. I may drop to weekly captures going forward to get a view across the year, and plan to regularly visit a local reserve.

I’m a climate scientist. Let me fix this headline. “Nearly a century ago, scientists showed that burning fossil fuels warms the planet. Today, we know human emissions account for over 100% of the warming. Yet dark money and disinformation still work to keep Americans addicted to fossil fuels.”

#TenMinMerlin 30th May 2026 Westfield England GB 8am - sunny Greenfinch really making it's distinctive presence felt this morning, very clear calls amongst the usual cacophony of blackbird, robin, wren. Coal tit was one match, in the distance as very faint.

#TenMinMerlin 29th May 2026 Westfield England GB 6:30am - sunny Mistle Thrush is a new ident; I don't recognise it but Merlin is quite insistent. Dunnock today is also frequently matched; maybe it sings earlier in the morning (yesterday was 8am).

Another reason not to use Amazon Prime.

this fucking sucks ( from the creator of the cupcake character, lorynbrantz instagram - www.instagram.com/p/DY2v_qXIoQt )

#TenMinMerlin 28th May 2026 Westfield England GB 8am - sunny Regular haul. Of all of them, I'm not sure about the Dunnock - they're common, but just one hit in the recording and I can't make it out.

did you know that ocelot cubs sound like donald duck?

Note the headline "AI cracks..." which incorrectly implies the tool is sentient. First paragraph is much better: "An 80-year-old challenge in geometry has been cracked by mathematicians working for the tech firm Open AI using a single prompt from an AI chatbot." Never trust a headline.

#TenMinMerlin 27th May 2026 Westfield England GB 9am - sunny A bit later today. All regular matches with plenty of hits.

Preprinted! Been working on this for ~1 year w wonderful coauthors Nancy & Mark: > Understanding Artificial Neural Networks: Mysterianism about Known Mechanism is Mysticism doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Have you noticed many experts say they don't understand AI? What's going on? 🤯 Let us tell you... 1/

I want to talk about It’s A Superpower?? like an excited toddler wants to show you a new toy. The Daily Tism made an audio sitcom. It comes out in early July. It’s producer by us & @andrewhickey.500songs.com , who has pretty much now funded a mini autistic comedy industry. What a guy. 1/

And this has been clear for a long time. It's infuriating the self-styled GCs esp. the Sex Matters leaders so openly and explicitly desire elimination of trans existence, yet the political response is all "reasonable concerns", "balancing rights" - euphemisms for entertaining bigotry.

“No, I would not like to come to your sodding barbecue. Pack me up a doggy bag and bring it over if you want. I’ll be in my fridge.”

🤣😂 lost it at the "last time, her grandad..." part Why oh why can we not just say, honestly, "no, I don't want to"!

british fan chat

Caroline Litman’s daughter Alice took her own life four years ago. Caroline’s book is an important read - I recommend it - lives like these must not be forgotten www.vogue.co.uk/article/tran...

I was living in Italy when their ban started (before the UK!) and thinking no way would Italians abide by it. Overnight *everyone* complied, clear indication of full consent of the people. The only people I saw complaining were bizarrely some politicians in their parliament!

Anthropic co-founder. People who say this highlighted nonsense are true fantasists - unmoored from reality. These trained algorithms are *not* magic, *not* thinking, *not* conscious, *not* self-aware. The engines are engineered quite normally. We know precisely how they work.

#TenMinMerlin 25th May 2026 Westfield England GB 8am - sunny Regular catch 🤠 I've split the snapshots so the first is the birds that call and sing throughout the time, readily recogisable. The second set appear just a few times, and very faint - they could be right but my ears can't make them out.

AI always calling your ideas “fantastic” can feel inauthentic, but what are sycophancy’s deeper harms? We find that in the common use case of seeking AI advice on interpersonal situations—specifically conflicts—sycophancy makes people feel more right & less willing to apologize.

Hard agree. Quick search online suggests 2/3rds of the UK are active on Facebook, over 38 million. That's more than the number of people who actually voted in the 2024 GE (29m) Tie that to the aggressive bias-affirming algorithm and you get widespread hardened more extreme attitudes.

"Predictions can be weapons of power. But they only work if we believe them". Excellent TED talk by @carissaveliz.bsky.social on "The Power of Prediction" - and how we break the spell of the algorithmic soothsayers of the AI revolution. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4w...

You'll need to go for a long walk to calm down after you read how the UK got to here on trans rights. If you're only ever going to read one piece on trans people, this would be the one.

#TenMinMerlin 25th May 2026 Westfield England GB 8am - sunny Back home, a normal catch 🤠 Merlin marks the Coal Tit as unlikely but I do hear an up-down song in the recording that matches references. I'm not sure about the Blackcap though - one match that's a high trill, not like any reference.

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

IMPORTANT: The Dutch invested €595 million annually on urban biking, resulting in €19 BILLION saved in public health care costs alone. That’s how smart governments do the math on investing in better mobility. Let’s be clear— it WASTES public money to NOT do it. #CityMakingMath HT @modacitylife.com

#TenMinMerlin 24th May 2026, London England, GB, 7:30am - sunny Similar tiny catch from the hotel today, just the crow and parakeet. A bit later at the Excel waterfront, saw: Herring gull Blue Tit Coot Carrion crow Pigeon Duck (probably Mallard) Merlin only picked up the Coot and Blue Tit.

Another demonstration that the LLMs regurgitate embedded bias; sexism, racism. Since they've been trained on unmoderated data, it reflects biases within society - at least within readily downloadable publications.

NEW: The Crypto Connection. @thenerve.news brings you…Part 1 of The Harbourne Receipts. A forensic examination of the cryptobillionaire’s donations & Farage’s crypto announcements. And guess what? There’s a pattern. Starting with the now infamous £5m gift. www.thenerve.news/p/investigat... 1/

Worlds tiniest hotdog 🤠

A patient with type 1 diabetes has begun producing his own insulin after receiving a transplant of pancreatic cells. For the first time, islet cells have been edited so they wouldn't be rejected by the patient, removing the need for immunosuppressant drugs. www.sciencealert.com/first-of-its...

There it is. "Using [] and artificial intelligence..." Maybe the only way to get anything published these days is to shovel "artificial intelligence" into the piece. Or, whatever their "AI" is, it's making up stuff that's not in the data.

This really highlights who Starmer's Labour are. This visceral animosity to the Greens is self-defeating for the left. You know full well the Tories would partner with Reform UK Ltd and not Labour so it won't be reciprocated. Also implies Starmer's Labour won't touch PR with a bargepole.

#TenMinMerlin 23rd May 2026, London England, GB, 7:30am - sunny At a noisy airport so skipped yesterday; here's this morning. The very non-native naturalised Ring-necked Parakeet, common in London, was introduced from India & Pakistan as exotic pets released 1930s/50s www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/rin...

No, *you've* got something in your eye 🥹

great stuff google thank you so much!!!!

There's no way this can stand. List out the various groups with protected characteristics that make some people feel uncomfortable, and you very quickly end up in the darkest of places. This stuff is the reason why those characteristics are protected in the first place.