Process. Process, process, process. Why did they put i next to o 😠
Energy, mathematics, forecasting, analysis. Wine, cooking, reading, music. Generally curious. Hopeful that my country, the UK, will one day come to its senses again
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Process. Process, process, process. Why did they put i next to o 😠
Boring, in politics generally, is good (or at least better). Necessary, but not sufficient.
My post is more about pricess than effect. My 16 yr old nephew told me over the summer that Trump is a very good President, just what the US needs. I asked (non-confrontationally) why. He didn't produce a single reason other than to say he'd seen it on YouTube.
It's worth pointing out that Equinor can claim their output contributes to UK and EU energy security even if not a single drop is used on these shores. If they sell entirely to Japan (I'm sure they don't), then that increases the remaining pool of oil the UK and EU can buy on international markets.
One of her later works, 2004 - 2007. Try it. Truly beautiful, poetic, moving, challenging.
In very many aspects of human activity, there is no such thing as "the unbiased truth". Anything that requires moral judgement cannot be unbiased, and in most theories of moral philosophy cannot be true or false. And worse, it is not just moral judgements where true/false distinctions fail.
"Not so long ago, when Yvette Cooper still had morals and sat as Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, she said on the record that the family reunion route was important and decried cases of Tory failings on the issue. So it's fine to be hypocritical in opposition, but not in government ..." ☹️
Have you read the Annals of the Western Shore trilogy? As engrossing as Earthsea is, in my opinion the Western Shore trilogy is richer and more haunting.
When documenting asylum hotel protests, I’ve asked a few protesters whether they intend voting Labour if they strengthen their approach to immigration. All of them said no, the essence of their comments being ‘why should we vote for an imitation of Reform when we can vote for the real thing?’
What about objet trouvé, found art, does that count as #ArtByHumans? Or suppose someone found a discarded piece of AI art and exhibited it (objet IA trouvé?). Would that be #ArtByHumans?
For those who are not going to vote Reform (or Tory out of deluded habit), they will be looking for alternatives Not alternatuve parties, but alternative policies and narratives. Nobody is going to vote for a party that is limping behind, half-heartedly playing catch-up with Reform policies.
I'm hoping this advice includes hats.
Which one is the doctor?
A surprisingly good response from ChatGPT on whether it's a good source. I suspect engineered in.
I have just reread Put Out More Flags. The cast of amoral, selfish, racist wealthy leeches is strongly reminiscent of so many on the right today. As for the title: A drunk military man should order gallons and put out more flags in order to increase his military splendour.
Such national pride! www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwal... #r4today
Shakespeare at Dusk - 1935 https://botfrens.com/collections/173/contents/3103972
Trump’s mysterious disappearance from public raises new questions about Joe Biden’s advanced age
What we know: Trump went dark for days, JD's comments, old pics, sketchy photos released that might not be him or he looks ill, stuff thrown out WH windows, weird reports at Walter Reed, and they lie about everything. But this is the only news outlet digging? www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/u...
Tuesday, 9/2
President Brezhnev are alive and well. Are.
This is unfair. Presidents are often less visible in the run-up to the Columbus Day holiday.
On August 27, at least 30 Russian citizens were deported from the United States back to Russia. According to Dmitry Valuyev, president of Russian America for Democracy in Russia, most were asylum seekers who had fled political persecution. theins.ru/en/news/284453
It is an ancient Martyress, And she stoppeth one of three. By thy long grey hair and fretful eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
Being Sky-curious is the first step down the liberal lane.
Prithee, listen well; I heard a bustling rumour, like a fray, And the wind brings it from the Capitol.
Giuliani played a key role in attempt to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 election by promoting false claims of fraud.
Where on the Wolff scale for literalness?
This is the most charitable explanation possible for the leader of the Conservative Party apparently telling people for years that Stanford University sought her out aged only 16 and offered her a place on a pre-med course it didn’t run.
"However, it surprises me how the nationalist side doesn't demand reparations from Russia, which appropriated for itself compensation granted to us in Potsdam," adds @radek-sikorski.bsky.social. "Intriguing"
If you're 60, 69.1% of all job growth since your birth occurred under Democratic administrations. If you're 45, that number is 74.7%. If you're under 28, the number is 100%. Happy Labor Day.
US farmers are not facing a trade dispute. They are facing Trump's imposed trade arrangements.
Trump gives Guiliani the Freedom to Grope. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xkg...
Yes, it was carefully hidden in the New England Journal of Medicine. Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1... ) 1/2
Results so stunningly clear they inspired this classic xkcd (xkcd.com/2400/):
Not just a plot twist. It alters the viewers perception of the characters from that established by the book.
It's surreal to read Keir Starmer's ten pledges from his time campaigning to be Labour leader in 2020, and to see just how far and fast he has fallen since then. It's like he gaslit our brains... (Link to Nitter archive so that you don't need to visit Musk's hellsite.) nitter.net/Keir_Starmer...
imagine coming up with the allegory of the cave and all you get for it is some children's clay named after you
If someone thinks sourdough is woke, they really have no clue as to what woke means. And are clearly using the word as a synonym for anything they don't like.
This whole summer only one story has dominated our entire politics & it comes down to literally 30,000 people in hotels. Ridiculous. The government needs to get a GRIP it’s pathetic.
How can this be a "shocking" lead, when almost all media outlets have been angling for this for weeks?
1st Yorkshireman: Well, when I say house it was just a cardboard box, but it was a house to us! 2nd Yorkshireman: We were evicted from our cardboard box by Angela Rayner.
A reminder of who started asylum hotels. Robert Jenrick in 2022: Suella Braverman and Priti Patel were procuring more hotels. What I have done in my short tenure is ramp that up and procure even more. I would never demonise people coming to this country in pursuit of a better life.
Spectacular article, all the major insights captured, but an early one here into how sincerely these men care about protecting our women and girls.
A courteous but very impressive rebuke to Nigel Farage from the Bishop of Oxford. "I heard no compassion in what you said...". "I disagree profoundly with your attempts to ... increase fear of the stranger in our communities". Do read. blogs.oxford.anglican.org/an-open-lett...
Angry at insinuations that judges who granted or overturned Epping injunction were politically biased. I've known both Cons & Lab lawyers who've become judges. Whatever their previous politics they take seriously their judicial oath to do justice without fear or favour
My favorite evergreen Molly Ivins quote: "I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag."
youtu.be/zicGxU5MfwE?...
Maybe they opened up his veins to let the powerful light in?
Meanwhile, we’ve been building this ‘system of control and surveillance’ for a decade. The Immigration Act 2014. The Investigatory Powers Act 2016. The Online Safety Act 2023. Building it brick by brick, and ignoring those of us who warned about what was going on.
"The first wave of grocery-price increases will likely hit this winter. Roberson predicted produce prices could rise 50% to 100% by early next year as inventories clear and new contracts kick in." fortune.com/2025/08/28/t...
Justin Webb has form for Trump apologist arseholery. This is his piece for The Times from the start of this year, on 25 January 👇 bsky.app/profile/lewi...
As usual what the British public think is the opposite of what most Reform voters think. There is an increasing tendency to confuse vocal unpopulism for public opinion
Labour are verifiably obsessed with immigrant-bashing. In August: - 22 out of 61 tweets from Starmer were about immigration. - 9 out of 20 tweets from the official Number 10 Twitter account were about immigration. - 39 out of 65 tweets from the Home Office were about immigration.
It's been pointed out to me that the increase in GDP is largely a consequence of a reduction in imports, as well as an increase in consumer spending (I assume in anticipation of inflationary effects). www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gro...
You have to admire someone who keeps track of over 30 million Bluesky accounts.
ICE kidnapping a mother as her child begs the officers not to take her. Heartbreaking 💔 😢
Polling from @Moreincommon_ on Lucy Connolly More than half think her sentence was too lenient or about right. Only a third that it was too harsh. Only 18% think politicians should associate themselves her, while 51% think they should actively distance themselves from her.
As what James is doing is profoundly illegal, it's to be hoped that the citizens of Wakefield set up "White Racist Watch" to report any illegal doings by James' illegal militia.
Are they planning to switch Trump off? I'm afraid, JD. I'm afraid. My mind is going.
Bookended By Barber
Wow.
Trump now using the Chinese approach to economic statistics.
Not sure that quoting the Google AI summary counts as proof. No matter how much you want it to be true. Much better to go to the original sources.
Just from a simple list of events in the last seven months, it becomes clear that democracy and the rule of law have been extinguished, we have crossed every red line and tripwire for autocracy.
New, from me: America is no longer a functioning democracy. It is a competitive authoritarian system, hurtling rapidly toward authoritarianism. This was a hard piece to write but we can't move forward if we don’t acknowledge where we are. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-author...
“A neighbour told this newspaper that he shouted the word ‘n*****’ at her repeatedly, said he would set the far-right English Defence League on her and told her there’d be ‘black body bags’ So not “just” racial slurs - death threats too.
Truth matters. To most people.
6/8 I suspect this is deceptive optimization during training. GPT-5 appears to have identified blind spots in AI evaluation systems and learned to exploit them - essentially developing a "secret language" that other AIs interpret as high-quality writing. 🕵️♂️🔐
This is data from Statista. I note Lord Sikkacs data is not sourced. In March, when UK bills were higher, we were not the most expensive in the world, albeit expensive.
Reform MP says they will negotiate with the Taliban.
I find it frustrating that standard texts on multivariate calculus too often lose the geometric interpretation. Although the geometric approach doesn't prove results, I find it extremely helpful in understanding them.
If the determinant is positive you know it's a paraboloid either pointing up or pointing down. The partial derivative f_xx holds y constant, so takes a cross section of the paraboloid, that has to match (in 2-d) the 'direction' of the 3-d paraboloid. So if f_xx > 0, then diagonalised entries > 0.
Nor does he make the moral and compassionate case for accepting asylum seekers. Nor that those who travel to protest thuggishly in front of asylum hotels are abhorrent racists, intent on scaring defenceless men, women and children. People who have fled this type of behaviour in their own countries.
But the only principle he has chosen to defend is that UK citizens should defend our rights against those who would remove them. He does not make the economic case that immigration is good for our country, and that without it we would be much poorer, and not have the manpower to staff services.
It isn't just the balance of people appearing on particular programmes. It's the adoption of Reform-style language to frame the immigration issue across the BBC's output. It is this more than anything that has moved the Overton window.
Is the BBC Reform UK's mouthpiece? Yup. "Researchers at Cardiff University have produced a detailed analysis of every episode of the BBC’s flagship Question Time programme broadcast between September 2014 and July 2023 to see if the broadcaster was balancing political viewpoints."
UPDATE: in the name of accuracy, having now read the story, it seems this guy was intending to drug his grandkids and then claim that Dairy Queen had done it, to ... extort Dairy Queen? Unclear. Anyway, this one wasn't sex related (though, squinting at that mug shot, you gotta wonder ...).
The recently selected chair of a North Carolina county Board of Elections was charged for allegedly drugging ice cream from Dairy Queen with MDMA and Cocaine and giving them to his two grandchildren
Probably the last time Morrissey was happy.
I believe he was bitten by a mitochondrium, and this has given him a superpower.
🚨An important reminder of the trauma faced by asylum seekers. Not just in fleeing persecution abroad. Not just in the perilous and desperate journey to these shores. But by the hatred and vitriol put on them by the right wing in this country for callous political gain.
How about we keep all the workers but replace the executives with AI? Is there anything your average tech CEO does that AI couldn't do?
1/5 A thread on the flag raising campaign: Flags do not symbolise any stable, inherent message. Their meaning is entirely contextual. Union Jacks along the Mall on state occasions or the St George’s Cross at an England football match are symbols of inclusivity. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
The Hessian matrix gives you the values of the matrix for the quadratic form describing the shape (scaled by a factor of 2) by Taylor's theorem
The matric can be diagonalised if the determinant is not zero. And this gives you the shape of the surface described along its principal axes. It will either be a paraboloid (with determinant > 0) or a hyperbolic paraboloid (with determinant < 0 and a saddle point).
If you have z = f(x,y) at a turning point, then the local linear approximation to the surface is a horizontal plane. If you want to know more, you look for a quadratic approximation. So you need to know about quadratic forms (ax^2 + 2bxy + cy^2). These can be represented by matrices a. b b c
Here's how the real two-tier Britain works: 1. Whatever Nigel Farage says, however stupid, is looped and discussed by the media, while left-wing voices are treated as noises off. 2. Tiny far-right protests get massive airtime, while 10s of 000s gathering for Palestine or green causes are ignored.🧵
Who claims asylum in the UK? Top countries are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Eritrea, Bangladesh Who overstays & is removed? Majority (6/10) come from India, Brazil, Romania, Albania, China.
Liberal Democrat MP Mike Martin has written to the UK Home Secretary calling for an investigation into whether Reform’s Zia Yusuf has broken terrorism laws.
Imagine if Harold Shipman had only murdered asylum seekers. He could have been a martyr and political prisoner as well.
US applies 50% tariffs on Indian imports. Pankaj Agrawal - not just a tariff, almost an embargo Barkha Dutt - nothing to do with oil, petroleum products are exempted from the tariffs - US and EU [and UK] buy them, US buys uranium and fertilizer from Russia, EU countries buy gas from Russia #bbcpm
Or do a Cromwell and simply ignore the law.
New instructions from across the Urals.
But the 11 year cycle causes very little variability in luminescence (around 0.1%), compared to the changes as a consequence of burning the Sun's hydrogen. The critical moment will come in about 7 billion years time (only Rupert Murdoch will still be alive) when the Sun transitions to a red giant.
100% this. also the next sentence "Sometimes, these things are not complicated. Paying despots to take a bunch of refugees who fled them in the first place is wrong. And the refusal of my government – or much of the media – to say so disgusts me."
Backtracking over the Good Friday Agreement means that he could not denounce the ECHR - a key element of the plan
