LLM advocates still don’t seem to be able to comprehend that ordering the machine not to ‘make stuff up’ doesn’t help. It doesn’t know when it’s making stuff up, and it couldn’t change that even if you told it to. (In fact it’s always just making stuff up, and is only ever true by chance.) Part […]

This is horrible reasoning. Thinking back to books I read as a child, in plenty of cases I was just oblivious to when they were set; it just wasn’t relevant. (As a child in the 90s I probably wouldn’t have noticed if a book was written/set in the 70s or 80s and […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

'smart' headphones not as smart as they think they are i start singing along, conversation detection activates and turns the music down NO that is the opposite of what i want

RE: https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/116606671571378694 the thing is i've also never understood why vs code is so popular anyway? it seems extremely average. like don't get me wrong it's fine but not good enough to justify the massive adoption. so i can only put it down to a) microsoft […]

#cycling to meet friends after work. Stopped at a red light, carefully letting the taxi behind me know that I’ll be turning right in front of him. good thing i took care with the junction because then some dickheads in a mercedes ran the red light in front of me.

[gbpol, labour/greens] Mum+sibling got a leaflet through the door from Labour claiming that Greens will 'legalise heroin and crack cocaine', 'disband NATO', and 'ban privately rented homes'. First of all those are all excellent policies and I'd fully support the Green Party implementing them […]

It's Stevie Nicks' and Jeremy Corbyn's birthday today so I'm listening to Crystal Visions and looking forwards to Thames Water getting nationalised.

Anthropic co-founder: “How can we ensure the gains of AI are shared globally? We do not have a mechanism for this.” Yes, we do. But you aren’t going to like it. (And the US government has spent much of the last century murdering people around the world to prevent it.)

[gbpol, transphobia] Labour is managing to maintain its undefeated streak of pissing off absolutely everyone, because the transphobes they were trying to win over are furious that they still claim to think trans people have rights; whereas anyone with a moral compass is rightly disgusted by how […]

First time out on the bike in ages today, taking some stuff for recycling. Nice day for it (though a bit on the warm side). Might even try cycling to work at some point. #cycling #cyclinguk #BikeTooter

[gbpol, transphobia] Wrote to my MP about the EHRC 'guidance'. Based on past performance I anticipate that he'll reply in about three months with some mealy-mouthed excuse for doing nothing at all.

Forgot to post this earlier but we’re hiring. Mid-level developer (3+ years), primarily #ruby, hybrid in London https://unboxed.co/about/join-us/creative-technologist-2026/ #fedihired #getfedihired

[gbpol, transphobia] The Labour Party needs to spend less time thinking about strangers’ genitals

[gbpol, green/labour] Not only do I think it's anti-democratic for Labour to expect the Greens (or any party) to stand down for them in Makerfield, but I also think it would be anti-democratic for the Greens to do so themselves. Should Green supporters vote Labour to keep Reform out? Maybe […]

I’ve started to realise that when I type capitals on the left of the keyboard, I curl my left thumb under my palm to hit the left shift. Doesn’t seem ideal. Despite typing for like 18 hours a day for the last 22 years I’ve never actually learned to type properly.

I'm cautious about over-interpreting particular writing quirks as evidence of LLM usage, but one that's been grating on me recently is overuse of ‘quiet’ or ‘quietly’. I don't know how to put my finger on it, because clearly they're just normal words that can be used by humans too, but maybe […]

[gbpol] "Labour can't just change the voting system, the House of Lords would block it because it wasn't in their manifesto" Sounds like the first step is to abolish the House of Lords, then!

[gbpol, olympics] As a northerner living in London (since before 2012) I absolutely do not want to inflict an Olympics on the north. Can we not just have the investment without all the pissing about? […]

[gbpol, labour party] ‘Burnham voted for Keir Starmer, who went on to win, in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election, saying in an interview with The Guardian that “Keir is a brilliant man”’ ok then

The fash got fewer people to join their little fash rally than most rallies would in London on a bad day The antifascist counter-demonstration was so much bigger

after reading That rust PR, I can see what they were *trying* to say, but if you lead your big controversial post with “comments raising ethical or legal concerns will be moderated, technical concerns only” then absolutely the only thing anyone is going to talk about is the alarming ethical and […]

[LLMs] RE: https://chaosfem.tw/@Athena/116579221010443932 This feels like a common (and dishonest) approach: rule out broad swathes of the arguments against LLMs as off-topic or otherwise out of bounds, and then go ‘see? you don’t have any justification for your opposition’

My one goal this weekend is to finally fix the flat tyre that I've been meaning to fix for the past several weekends (and that I'd already been putting off for much longer than that). Wish me luck.

RE: https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission/116567730336906833 This is good as far as it goes but is still non-binding. Disappointing if that’s the best they can do.

I keep hearing people say AIs are "better at coding than people." First of all, no, they're FASTER at coding than people, which is not at all the same thing. Second, am I the only one who remembers when what folks in this industry do was called "software ENGINEERING," which is not at all the […]

“So really tigers are the king of the jungle, and lions are the king of the savannah.” Appreciate this dad’s efforts to combat the misinformation being directed at his three-year-old.

[gbpol] “Starmer hopes to regain momentum with unveiling of dozens of bills in king’s speech“ says the Guardian this morning. Unsurprisingly it's exactly the same right-wing authoritarian claptrap that they've been spouting all along. Digital ID; more police; more military; more ‘AI’ nonsense […]

[gbpol, labour party] Wes Streeting was a Blairite as a teenager and quite frankly I think that says everything you need to know about him.

[gbpol] One good thing about no longer being a Labour party member is that I don’t have to pretend Burnham is a plausible option as leader. Like, everyone wants to keep Streeting out but seriously, that’s all you can come up with? His supporters are acting like he has a right to any seat he […]

Week 3 of Couch to 5k (at least, the NHS version) always feels weird. It’s building up the proportion of running time, like weeks 1 and 2; but it’s also 4 minutes shorter overall than week 2. And then week 4 continues the increasing proportion of running time, but is 5½ minutes longer than week […]

What kind of justice is this? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

[gbpol, labour, palestine] All the Sensible Labour centrists coming out of the woodwork on Bluesky to defend genocide.

[gbpol, labour party] "[w]e have a hard job ahead to win back trust from the electorate. … We must focus on that. This is no time for a leadership contest." Bold to assume it's possible to win back trust with a leader everyone hates who has refused to change anything.

jesus christ, apparently the company that we use for timesheet software has signed me up for their mailing list (i don't care, i have no say in this product decision nor do i want to) and is now spamming me about their AI integrations.

[gbpol, labour party] Shabana Mahmood apparently calling for Starmer to resign, as if she's not top of the list (with Streeting) for people who absolutely have to be removed if the party has any hope of ever redeeming itself.

Oh no Gitlab management has caught AI

He keeps saying over and over again that he takes full responsibility, and then going on to explain why that responsibility should be entirely free of consequences.

"I wish I could spend less time thinking about AI" *monkey paw finger curls* *i spend the weekend posting furiously about electoral politics instead*

[gbpol] Seen on Bluesky, a political journalist claiming that the solution to all Labour’s problems would be for Starmer to announce plans to rejoin the EU. On what planet? The party was always divided over Brexit, sure, but that absolutely has not been the cause of its decline. Its constant […]

[gbpol] 'Listening to voters', notably, appears not to include actually changing anything based on what they say. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/08/election-results-left-right-uk-keir-starmer

[gbpol] Greenwich has gained a reasonable number of Green councillors, making them the second largest party (13 in total, ahead of the Tories with 6 and one Reform freak in Eltham.) Plus good results in Lewisham, Hackney, and Waltham Forest. But absolutely shambolic result in Sunderland […]

[gbpol] not all results for greenwich published yet but notable that in the next ward over it would be reform's policy to deport at least two-thirds of their own candidates.

[gbpol] Looks like out of 30 Labour seats that were up for re-election in Manchester, they've kept ... 6 Of the remainder, 17 went to the Greens and 7 to Reform. (Labour remain in control of the council on the basis of the seats that weren't up for reelection this year.) […]

[gbpol] Worth noting that the Labour Party could have prevented the success of Reform quite straightforwardly, by simply not being shit and useless.

github's an absolute joke at the moment. real poster child for vibecoding.

[gbpol] I know that voting in local elections technically has no bearing on national policy, like Labour’s transphobia, its racist immigration policies, or its support for Israeli genocide in Gaza or the illegal US war on Iran. But also, Labour are shit and useless locally too, so good […]

Honestly I think universities should just stop offering economics degrees. They leave their graduates patently unequipped to deal with the real world. They should focus on practical subjects like gender studies instead.

love that we kick-started a mini news cycle making fun of autocratic tech oligarchs for not understanding how their own products work 😋

[gbpol, green party, corbyn] Very transparent how the press, politicians, etc, are just speedrunning 2015–19 to find absolutely anything they can to demonise Polanski. If it wasn’t already clear that every accusation against Corbyn was entirely made up it should be now.

[gbpol] Not content with prosecuting anti-genocide campaigners https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/may/05/four-palestine-action-activists-convicted-of-criminal-damage, Rainy Fascism Island is now also charging their barrister with contempt of court […]