Haven’t been posting much, but I would like to confirm that I am still masking and still haven’t been reinfected with covid (funny how that works)

None of us play, but we would like to buy a piano keyboard for our kids: shouldn’t be top-of-the-line, but shouldn’t be junk, either. Any tips appreciated!

Copenhagen, 2024

🚨New AI Safety Course @aims_oxford ! I’m thrilled to launch a new called AI Safety & Alignment (AISAA) course on the foundations & frontier research of making advanced AI systems safe and aligned at @UniofOxford what to expect 👇 robots.ox.ac.uk/~fazl/aisaa/

Apes smart enough to figure out the various disciplines of complex science explaining how deeply they are screwing up the thin eggshell of biosphere that is their only plausible home, yet too dumb to do anything about it

I just got my Covid booster, and you should, too!

Multilayer pony My little perceptron

Covid is still out there, and masks still work

5,290 papers will be published at NeurIPS this year. If you could still get the proceedings in a book, it would be like 50,000 pages long. That’s 14.5 papers a day to read each and every day until the next NeurIPS

Danes keep assuming I am foreign because I am wearing a mask and TBF they’re correct

This one always gets me going

Counterpoint: if you are not pregnant, please also get a Covid vaccine

The first song from the first album of the first dancehall DJ—first and best

I think it is possible to be very sceptical and resistant to the integration of LLM technologies into every aspect of education and scholarship… while also recognizing that the tools *do* have uses. I think thoughtful proponents could work harder to make those cases to e.g other humanists 1/n

New single from Stand High Patrol is hot

More than a dozen cyclists waiting at the lights ahead of me—cycling is quite big in Denmark!

After nineteen years, I am living near the ocean once again, and it feels like the cancellation of a debt

Have now heard the full version of the Linehan Audio, and surprised that people were more bothered about his weird "I'll kill {inaudible threats to unclear person" than the fact that he just straightforwardly says to the cops that kicking trans women in the balls is good and asks if they wouldn't.

There is no email I am reading faster than one that begins “X would like to recall the message…”

my fave type of harrassment i receive is when transphobes accuse me of autogynephilia.

The longer I am off it, the clearer it becomes to me that it was profoundly unhealthy for me to be on X/Twitter

I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset. In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia. In 2005 I started medical transition. (1/13)

Just took 6YO and 9YO down to the beach for pizza and icecream. Speaking hypothetically, how bad would it be if I phoned it in at work for, say, the next ten or so years

One thing you see a lot in Denmark is cargo bikes transporting *adults* in the front (that is, two adults to the bike), which I think is fantastic

Hugh Mundell was tragically shot dead in 1983 aged only 21—what a loss

Love this cover of one of my favourite songs

Dennis Bovell hitting this groove for six

Martha and the Vandellas have long been my favourite motown act, and their hits run as deep as sin. Check out this killer track from the amazing album “come and get these memories” youtu.be/r8vpoVzNPTw?...

wild how people want to get rid of autistic trans people and think that the Internet would still work

To try to tackle the gastro issues I have suffered ever since getting covid in 2020, I have started on a low FODMAP diet—it really seems to be working AND I get to eat oats three times a day!

Society has not become "polarised" over covid. The position of our side—that covid poses long-term health risks, that masks work and that vaccines are fantastic—is both backed up by the science and has remained unchanged since 2020. It is the other side that has headed off to conspiracy theory land

Increasingly I feel that what once was considered the political mainstream in the U.K. has completely lost its moral compass. When did the question about concentration camps and mass deportations become one of practical feasibility?

9YO really REALLY wants to play D&D (and is, I think, ready for it). Can anyone recommend any resources suitable for kids?

This is the first pop song that made me feel something (at age 11) and today I introduced it to our kids who said it was “good”

Does vibe coding produce solutions much faster than simply doing the task manually? No. But does vibe coding produce robust and reliable code that can be reused across many future tasks? Also no. But does vibe coding lead to deeper understanding that can unlock personal development? No again

Before we had kids, I didn’t think it was possible, but you absolutely can correctly identify your kid’s particular crying sounds even at considerable distance

1. Biological risk is both multifaceted and additive. Any of the following individual risks would be concerning; when combined, they effectively constitute a powder keg waiting for a spark:

Trans people warned us about what Starmer would become, and they were proven right. Trans people are warning us about Newsom today, and we should listen

Do the Republicans have a successor that can hold Trump’s coalition together?

I love these easy carrot buns! • 200g plain flour • 100g rolled oats • 70g sunflower seeds • 3 tsp baking powder • 1 tsp salt • 150g grated carrots • 80g butter, melted • 260ml milk • 2 eggs • 2 tbsp maple syrup Add wet ingredients to the dry, then ladle out blobs and bake at 180°C for 20 minutes.

One of my favourite ways to relax is to sit with a big box of unsorted Lego and to just build… something

As a cyclist who has never owned a car, moving to Aarhus has made such a huge difference to my quality of life: safe and beautiful bike paths everywhere have finally stopped me feeling like a second-class citizen

Just absolute nightmare stuff both the story and the language used by the bbc

Funny story: I moved to the UK in 2006 because I wanted to live in a more cosmopolitan, progressive nation. Actually that’s not very funny

b a n g e r

Some classic Dennis Brown to start your Friday off right

It is a (dire) fact that the number of publicly-trans academics is… tiny (a fact due to structural factors). How many of those academics would even have applied to these JRFs? I really can’t understand this trans-exclusionary policy as anything other than an ugly political statement.

I am an Official Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and I condemn the trans-exclusionary policy of Newnham College, Cambridge

Vote for me and I will make it illegal for the best blackberries to be just out of reach