It's not quite as simple as an Encyclical "against AI" www.wired.com/story/anthro...

This is so good

Not The Onion

"...or food that did not need cooking, such as oysters at three for a penny, shrimps at a penny for a half-pint, and winkles." 2/2 Liza Picard, VICTORIAN LONDON, 2005. #booksky

"...[C]ooking must often have been an anxious juggling of the cost of coal against the advantages of home cookery. It was no wonder that poor and working people often decided to buy food ready-cooked, from the street vendors and 'penny pie-shops'..." 1/2 #booksky

I really miss Eurovision but I got up early to bake bread, read, and watch the sun rise instead.

Balsamic roasted beetroot w fennel seeds, whipped fetta with honey, toasted walnuts, fennel fronds. 🍽 A bit Scandi, very Saturday

Portishead and shoulders

#SundayReads: Jessica Riskin on the history of talking machines, from their origins in musical automata to inventors’ quixotic attempts to make androids pronounce words, converse, and declare their love: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/early-androids-and-artificial-speech

'"Understanding burnout as a physiological injury, rather than a personal weakness, is itself a political act. It shifts the question from “why can’t you cope?” to “what was done to you?”' www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05...

Potato and cashew cream bake with mustard and fennel seed; spiced carrots with honey tahini dressing; rocket from the garden. Sunday lunch for two, with some Beethoven in the background

#OtD 9 May 2012 Vidal Sassoon, "anti-fascist warrior hairdresser" died aged 84. As a teenager in London he fought Oswald Mosley's fascists in the streets with his hairdressing scissors, as part of the militant 43 Group. Learn about the group in our pod: workingclasshistory.com/2020/02/17/e...

The 17th-century philosopher John Locke's method of compiling a “commonplace book”, a notebook used to gather quotes and excerpts from one's literary wanderings — a kind of personalized encyclopedia of quotations: publicdomainreview.org/collection/j...

Anyway, here is a photo from MLK Jr's speech and he didn't have to pay anyone to show up.

This morning we are sitting on the beach in a nice sheltered spot Harry is asleep beside me. We like Herne Bay very nice & I think you would too so nice & peaceful & every one so friendly love to you dear see you soon

So happy to have my first journal article published today! I argue that LLMs animate a paradox in which similarity only emerges through difference. I show how this paradox is operationalised by LLMs as they generate a natural language response (1/2) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Reminder: The deadline for the ICA survey on academic freedom and occupational intimidation is in just 3 days! If you haven’t participated yet, please do! Your response matters. ICA will donate $5 to Scholars at Risk for every completed survey. 🔗 survey.ifkw.lmu.de/ICA-AFS/

CHRISTINA KOCH GREETING HER DOG AFTER RETURNING FROM THE MOON IM GONNA CRYYY 😭😭😭

Mr. Chatterbox is a really fun project. It's not great to talk to but it's a fun demo of what you can build using entirely out-of-copyright training data It's a 2GB nanochat model - I released a new llm-mrchatterbox plugin that can run it on my Mac simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/30/...

Frontier AI companies are hiring chemical and biological weapons experts to prevent destructive misuse of their platforms, but these mitigation systems have no external oversight — leaving critical risk governance subject to the whims of the companies and market forces, writes Javaid Iqbal Sofi.

something that wrinkles my brain every time I remember it is the fact that total eclipses are only possible on earth because the moon and sun appear to be the same size in our sky, due to the insanely, astronomically unlikely fluke that the moon is 400x smaller than the sun but 400x closer to us.

Most of us know of "bubblegum" as a FLAVOR, but it's actually banana, pineapple, cinnamon, clove & wintergreen esters blended together, first formulated in 1928 by accountant Walter Diemer for his product, "Dubble Bubble." He also dyed the grey product pink.

The people just want sane and useful tech!

New research: Misleading political ads flooded social media during Australia’s 2025 federal election. Using 22,000+ ads collected directly from voters’ phones, researchers captured what Australians actually saw online beyond platform ad libraries apo.org.au/node/332660 #PoliticalAdvertising

And back home at the @qutdmrc.bsky.social, we recorded a podcast in our #ReadThemSideways series where Jean Burgess, Kateryna Kasianenko#ReadThemSideways and Luke Pearson from IndigenousX reflect on the Twitter that was and the Xitter it became.

Twitter is 20. A reminder that @nancybaym.bsky.social and I wrote a biography of young Twitter 2006-2016, its early joys, competing cultures & user innovation, and how things had gone awry well before Musk. It may contain more lessons for Bluesky than X at this point. newbooksnetwork.com/twitter

The result of my early work with @snurb.info and @jeanburgess.bsky.social, Merja Mahrt and @cbpuschmann.bsky.social might be something to read for Twitter’s anniversary + when thinking about the future of online platforms: our edited collection "Twitter and Society" www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle...

This week's episode of the Read Them Sideways podcast is a roundtable discussing the 20 year anniversary of Twitter with Jean Burgess, Axel Bruns, Kateryna Kasianenko, and Luke Pearson

Am I correct in observing that there is suddenly quite a bit more smoking in movies and TV? Except none of the young actors actually know how to hold a cigarette? I quit many MANY moons ago, just wondering if "smoking coach" could be my ticket to Hollywood.

"All day I've heard people talking about the wonders of an angle and wanting to analyse it." chaser.com.au/sport/maths-...

I concur with Karpf (so he must be right).

The New York Times is right. I don’t care! (And huge credit to the @wired.com team, whose intrepid, fearless, always fair reporting gives the tech bros plenty to be mad about.)

'I still suspect that somewhere in that great philosophical afterlife there’s a Black auntie leaning over your shoulder saying: “Baby, all that just to say people need to talk to each other and listen?”' I do but quote.

📣 Calling all early and mid-career #humanities researchers! Applications for our 2026 grants and awards are now open. Learn more & apply 👉 humanities.org.au/grants-and-a...

I've decided that instead of wasting my own time to see if Grammarly has stolen my name and writing for use their business, I'd just email them to opt out and make them waste some time cleaning up their own goddamn mess. www.platformer.news/grammarly-ex...

This was one of the most fun and interesting things I've done on AI, and I get to do lots of fun things! It brought together such creative and caring people to do something new, with children at the centre. Looking forward to more and thanks to @henrylfraser.bsky.social for great leadership!

The sooner this generation grows up and takes over the better

Sunday morning ritual. I had dim hopes for this one but it seems happy now. it's even doing that little snap crackle and pop thing. I think there's something in that for all of us

12 years ago or so the Silver Lake Chorus covered Emmylou Harris's song Timberline - as part of a tribute album if I recall correctly. It was so lovely, I haven't stopped thinking about it since. youtu.be/dQ2zFsRrEBk?...

Sources allege the Defense Department experimented with Microsoft’s version of OpenAI technology before the ChatGPT-maker lifted its prohibition on military applications. www.wired.com/story/openai...

As the article suggests (but sort of buries), members of the public want much more agency and control over whether and how AI is part of their lives; they don't want it in the hands of this cadre of techbro CEOs. (And I don't believe for a second most ordinary people are scifi "doomers").

POLITICO expanding to Australia. Well we need _something_ else. www.politico.com/blogs/politi...

The trove of files released by the Department of Justice, illuminates Epstein’s deep interest and entrenchment in the scientific community. But the files also underscore how he used his power and money in ways that kept women out of places where they might succeed. https://bit.ly/4qWgPLz

NJ lawmakers introduce the FUCK ICE Act. The bill "permits civil action for violations of US Constitution related to immigration enforcement."

A common fictional narrative shows people with nonconforming identities finding self-acceptance in towns and cities. This #LGBTQHistoryMonth, archivist Lottie Wood explores how author E. M. Barraud found the opposite, through rural work and the Women’s Land Army. merl.reading.ac.uk/news-and-vie...

🚨CFP: The ADM+S Generative Authenticity project is hosting a small scholarly symposium on Authenticity, Generative AI and Synthetic Media on 6-7 May at QUT Kelvin Grove (and hybrid node). Short abstracts due 9 March. All info and the submission form: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Really delighted to see my university make this move. There could be no more appropriate place for the journal. 📔

The liberal arts have a bright future, if by that we mean a willingness to pose fundamental questions and range widely across different fields of knowledge. But I wouldn't assume that is something we're already doing about as well as we could conceivably do it.