Lovely day, today

Owned: The Kick Inside Bought myself: Xanadu

I'm honoured to get the Amnesty Award, but honestly this was a group effort. Thanks to the crew, fact-checkers, lawyers, journalists, and the team at Nebula who helped bring this scandal to light. And thanks to @jessothomson.co.uk for collecting the award on my behalf! Here’s my acceptance speech:

WE WON. Amnesty named me People’s Human Rights Champion for exposing a scandal in British healthcare. My team and I found abuse, neglect, conversion therapy, and deaths, all ignored by NHS managers. See the story: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S5w... Support our work: www.patreon.com/c/Philosophy...

"play the five tones"

In 2012 I took a comp ling course that went deep into language models as AI. The professor dropped a quote that I think about probably once a week now: “building a computer model of language and expecting intelligence is like building a computer model of the ocean and expecting to get wet”

“There is no reason for a society to sponsor the suffering of minorities through legal provisions that result in discrimination and stigmatization.” Peru’s Supreme Court recently affirmed that being trans is not a mental illness. This ruling is a powerful reminder that laws should enable trans joy.

In honour of the day...

So, friends: I promised I'd tell the story. Now I shall. Let a (former) psych nurse tell you the true (gods help us) story of a night in a big-time NYC emergency room: and the arrival of The Man With The Bloomingdales Bag. (1/n)

Banning gAI will (very slowly, unfortunately) become the norm, that is and always was the one true "adapt or die". Given enough time, an "infinite content machine" is not desirable anywhere and is bad for everyone, it's just Spam 2.0.

It's absolutely amazing how quickly the free speech absolutists move to utter outrage the moment that it's speech about something they support. Almost as if they never actually believed in free speech in the first place -- unless it was for them.

Time to speak about meeting Streeting. The 24 page response I sent back to the DoH, including 55 questions, is on my blog. It says it’s a 40 minute read…I don’t think it’s that long. Anyway, it’s there for reference if you’re interested. Ask your questions. Article by @wearequeeraf.com out now.

I think about this all the time.

What the data (from 2024) says about the risk of violence for Jewish People, Muslims & trans people. Almost 1:53 trans people were assaulted, yet, rather than increasing protection for us as it has - rightly - done for Jewish people, the government is implementing measures to make us less safe.

Hire either a Viking or a Basque fisherman to help me introduce cow pox to the Americas. With a sufficient disease reservoir, there’s a chance smallpox does not wipe out most of the population 400+ years later. Otherwise, I dunno, die in childbirth like everyone else.

The arc of the universe bends towards trans women making a diy version of everything around medical transition (I'm fairly sure it's not the 1st of it's kind but I feel it's the 1st of this quality and polish that I've seen) www.scd31.com/posts/diy-ha...

A couple people are asking if they need to play BG3 first, and the problem here is that if you play BG3, this book is “wow, it’s the tragic backstory!” If you don’t play it, the book is “wtf, why did Kingfisher write a book about this vampire being tormented that has such a downer ending?!?”

A glorious Beltane to all who celebrate. 🔥

👍

Pic from yesterday, a grandstanding heron...

But, also, cause, those are interesting and, I think, revealing things: No matter how much you can justify certain actions, they will always be, at some level...wrong. Anyway go...fucking read the Vorkosigan series already, start with Shards of Honor, there's a chronological list on goodreads.

Been trying to make a little time for myself, so I'm getting a 4D printer.

The most protected group of people on the planet.

Okay, musing about the implications of a "flat Earth"... Gravitationally, it's interesting. Common depictions of a flat world show the seas running off the edge, but that neglects the gravitational effects, which act towards the centre of the disk. Assuming a relatively uniform, massive disk...

I saw this yesterday. I love when words have multiple meanings.

I bought a French duck I was going to cook in a Cantonese-style barbecue sauce; but the duck escaped, covered me in the glaze, and forced me into the oven. I was hoisined by my own canard

omg we’re back wiltonsquarebooks.com/products/wel...

Drop something from the 70s...

You're in her DMs, I'm in her Uggs. I think they're more comfortable...

Afternoon walk, today...

My attention has been drawn to this delightful image.

I’ve been hearing so much anger and disappointment from frontline workers about the BBC investigation into fraudulent asylum claims. One of the most damning responses has come from one of the experts they interviewed, solicitor Ana Gonzalez. It’s really worth reading her response in full:

sorry

This thread is going to be slow, but this process is slow, as you well know. Far better people than me have explained this better than I will, so go read @nataliereed84.bsky.social's essay while you wait. It could save your life! freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/... I just read it again myself! 5/X

I feel it is important in these trying times to post this IMPORTANT WIZARD from my IMPORTANT WIZARDS album.

Have now joined the elite fibre brigade (ahead of the full swich over, next year). No more copper wires, no more landline

Copy and paste the bunny, putting something else in their hands... (\_/) (*-*) />🧠< Zombie bunny is having a snack...

This Is Just To Say I have turned off the AI features that were in the update and which you were probably hoping to monetize Fuck you they were stupid so unnecessary and so annoying

Why does Starmer giving a speech, always give me the same vibes as that woman in Spinal Tap talking about "Dobly"

Is it just me sees a vague image of a T rex about to munch on a capybara, in this...?

Oh my god, you're in for fun. Have you seen the tapdancers yet www.youtube.com/watch?v=td-_...

Crow Fact 🔪 #Art by Emi Boz

Just thought of the killer AI app: Make it write the "AI efficiency gains" reports for the CEO...

Benjamin “The Thing” Grimm of the Fantastic Four and Raphael of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, caught in a real Eisner of a downpour, by Jon Bogdanove & Fernando Peniche.

I've ranted about LLM "AI" elsewhere, and in replies, but to reiterate it in a thread that I can pin now: One of the fundamentals of computer science is "Garbage In, Garbage Out". I learned this as a child, learning to program, over 40 years ago. You cannot put bad data in, and get good data out.