It’s not like “Dave” has a great recent history in UK politics
I must decline, for secret reasons. www.linktr.ee/harkaway
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It’s not like “Dave” has a great recent history in UK politics
Ech. I got taken to task over reposting that story, and I think probably rightly. The full version is stupid but a lot less discreditable, IIRC. As I said: waiting.
I’m wary because the level of crazy I witnessed in my brief time as a member was high! So when he talks about leaving NATO I worry he’s a plausible loon - but the reporting on his positions seems so Gotcha! already that I also no longer trust it. Waiting to see.
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Labour’s delusion, across leaders, is that there’s a large chunk of the population which inherently belongs to them, and if they remove any temporary barriers it will swing back to them naturally.
* particularly
I would like to think they’ll draw the right conclusions from this. I don’t.
🥰🥰🥰🥰
Maybe they just got absolutely rinsed in 2022.
It’s a bit weird. I suspect it plays well with a particular sector of the Greens internally, but I really would like to never hear it again.
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Okay. Polanski won the Greens. He’s good in a lot of ways. A note of caution is probably appropriate, though. bylinetimes.com/2025/05/08/g...
Yeah, running a local - circumscribed - system seems like the obvious choice, but a) it multiplies the resource problem and b) government culture feels very much geared to push the other way: acquire as much data as possible.
Ah. Flow. Design. Not real time control.
At this point I’d be happy if a government would accept the basic notion of privacy in the digital space.
Heh.
The public discourse is so hyped that the terns of art are a bit broken. ML vs AI vs AGI etc. Say, then, that eg an AlphaFold for traffic flow seems plausible to me, but I’m concerned about the quality of human social data.
*crying* 🤣🤣🤣
And certainly I’d be hesitant about whether an individual MP - already under-resourced given the gravity of the job - has access to the necessary staff, data, expertise & compute. Maybe a group?
But it’ll take work and sensible governance! So… maybe.
But… traffic flow for public transport? School places? Health risks and hospital beds? All kinds of things seem plausible, with good data and an awareness of what the system can and cannot do with it.
Maybe. It wouldn’t be the Gen variety, but you might be able to do some interesting stuff with a more serious application. Trouble is it’s likely to be messy - like the crime prediction systems which basically replicate our prejudices.
Of course, that would require MPs to behave with decency or risk losing their writer. You couldn’t… I don’t know, go on Newsnight and spout crap about refugees and trans people, because then I’d bin your speech.
There are a LOT of pro writers - including me - who would give their time to write speeches for an MP they believed in if, let’s say, that MP’s budget wouldn’t stretch to a speech writer even part time.
You could almost treat the question as a litmus test of whether someone is a good MP.
It slightly depends on what they think their job is, doesn’t it? If it’s “spouting plausible rubbish” then Gen AI is spot on. If they’re actually looking to do some proper work, then probably not.
:) I fear it’s now seventeen years…
I’ve no interest in going through the hell of radical societal upheaval - if we can even get there - only to deal with Red Tsars instead of White ones. We need better and more.
Songs of experience… But my position isn’t derived from optimism - I don’t think. I just believe that the new track we need has to be more than simply toppling a bunch of bastards and putting new bastards in their jobs (under new job titles).
Ech. Maybe. But in the end I believe in restorative justice, truth & reconciliation, and so on. I think violent punishment initialises the horror engine for the next round. Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s not like we haven’t tried the bloody version before :(
“The integrity of X” Divine. 🤣🤣🤣
I’ll check it out :)
Looks fun! :)
I've said this before and it bears repeating: One way we'll know if and when a real machine intelligence happens is that it will create art that is an artifact of its own intelligence, not ours, and it likely to be absolutely incomprehensible to us human on first approach. How cool with that be.
I just… I remember being SO excited by Blair after the growing up under the Tories, and then what that turned into, and now this horror show. And just… screw it.
I realise I actually knew that dynamic, I’m just overloaded on Cruel Britannia 2.0. I talked myself into joining the Labour Party in… 2022? 23? Dunno. And they turned into this and I had to quit. Regrettably, given the number of things I would like to quit over, one can only do so once.
o fuck me
Back to work. No time. Better to put it in the book anyway. Ffs.
I dunno. I can say that I stopped with dystopias after Gnomon because I felt I was playing catch-up.
I mean… there’s always this: bsky.app/profile/twee...
I can’t think of anything to say that’s nastier than the announcement
Welllllll yes, they are, but also… bsky.app/profile/sean...
"The tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster." -- @nickharkaway.com in 2008 already saw what was coming...
Just finished Sleeper Beach by @nickharkaway.com . Great stuff, even better than Titanium Noir.
Good sourdough is amazing, and you can use the discard to make really incredible crumpets and waffle thingies. Bad sourdough is, of course, bad.
Wow. Check this out. Politicians actually trying to solve problems can achieve a lot! www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solu...
Yeah. Although... given the political positions in the tech world, I would be unwilling to rely on that going forward :(
Not until after 2014, it isn't :)
... although it occurs to me I should have tried just copying and pasting the hint. That actually might be the answer. Too late now.
I don't think it's even over-estimation. It's just a complete misunderstanding of what is and is not a permanent reference.
Verily, it is the age of idiotech.
Oh, seriously? I can type albiet instead of albeit and autocorrect couldn't be less interested, but yesterday we went from "for no good reason" to "gif no hood reason" because the second is OBVIOUSLY more sensible.
And so we give thanks to the gods of sanity that Intel Macs are basic things and you can just erase them and start again. Albiet in about six hours when the download finishes.
And yet, dear reader, the combination of cryptic hints and obscure facts does not, in fact, immediately trigger an AHAH moment in your correspondent. In fact, I can safely say that 2011 me is an arsehole for imagining that it would.
I'm looking at the password hint I set up on an old computer and thinking: at some point I evidently considered this obvious. Indeed, I worried that someone else might get it. I did not consider the possibility that I would not.
Freud did not have to contend with the possibility of an external influence composed of statistical likelihoods and therefore mirroring common prejudices, obsessions and neuroses.
This delights me. Even the devouring machine taps out at summarising my nutso novel.
That’s it computers are shit now and I’m sending all messages via quill and pigeon.
GIF NO HOOD?!?! “For no good reason” and honestly WTF?
I see this and instantly and gif no hood reason think: O I SHOULD LEARN THAT
Well, strictly speaking I should but I don’t have to. Bsky’s implementation is, erm, unenthusiastic. It’s easily circumvented. But if I’m doing it for Fortnite, it’s the same service. It makes my tantrum a bit more overtly pointless :)
Hah! Yes. I may need reading glasses. Or a lorgnette.
:) It was Gnomon. But no, the verification thing is a UK age verification law which requires me to prove I’m not twelve to get DMs. It’s… mildly absurd and I’m being childish about it.
And I’ve just found the “your reposts” tab, so you can do it even if you lose the original post in the churn. Jeez, though - would a “confirm” setting be so bad?
O god that’s exactly what I’m worried about - how do you undo?
Coleridge reference! Nice.
*le sigh* Since I’m complaining about digital stuff today: is it me, or is there now like a 50% chance that you’ll repost something while trying to scroll past it on the Insta app? Do I just have horrible thumb control?
I think there’s certainly a truth in the idea! But not all accounts of evil and error have to unify. There can be many, alas.
I've noted at speed and I'm pressing on - deadline waits for no one :)
And AI Slop and so on are - ironically enough - a reification of those fears. But the other bits are worse, at least for now. Huh. I feel like I should go read my own book. Thank you. 4/4
To go with that, you have a new dream crushed down onto everything which doesn't mesh with the truth. Anti-science, ideological economics, blah. Metaphorically, obviously. So I guess, without wanting to blow my own trumpet... It feels relevant because those things happened and here we are? 3/n
I saw it in terms of "professionalisation" - the instinct in late capitalism to strip away everything that is not part of a particular government role, job, or corporate product, and do ONLY that pure iteration, when it's often the peripheral, unwritten functions which keep everything working. 2/n
It's a very interesting connection you're making, and one that hadn't occurred to me. My nightmare in 2007 was of making stupid ideas real, of forcing the sharpness of theory onto the frailness of human life and cutting off the overhang like Procrustes' bed... 1/n
Yeah, you're not wrong, I just obfuscate habitually - I get the weirdest collection of accurate and bonkers online ads - and as I say: I have an irrational annoyance about this specific thing which I'm obviously going to put aside BUT SULK LOUDLY ABOUT :)
That was my starting point :)
Ohhhh... I don't know. Too long ago. Ask me when I have a bit more time and I'll try to piece it together. War on terror, reification in my degree... one of the ideas which became TGAW was that they were pursued by the shark from Jaws across the broken world... that didn't gel until Gnomon...
It all depends a bit on your threat model. My concern comes out of the war on terror years and the trend for UK governments to suppress protest and police opinion, plus now the shift in the British right towards open authoritarianism. There's a lot of lists I'd rather not be on in 2030.
I mean, I should stop writing them...
I live to give blurb writers migraines...
Oh, I work around it already, I just realised there's no point if I'm doing the thing anyway :)
(Because we are mapped SO MUCH and it isn't good for us at all.)
It's irrational. I'm basically an irritable nine year old with a grudge who routinely connects through a VPN because I once wrote a novel about surveillance and never got over it. (But literally everyone should use VPNs for everything, clear their caches and obfuscate as much as possible.)
Hh. If I was at a loose end I'd do one of them in a heartbeat. As it is I'm banking both, with a slight preference for one, and it can fight my superhero/Frankfurt School crossover that no one will EVER publish because: superhero/Frankfurt School crossover.
Frankly I'd be sympathetic. Which also suggests to me that it wouldn't run.
Free associative moment: I sat with my back pressed against a safety barrier in Edinburgh and watched Chappell Roan on Wednesday and that was pretty amazing. Also they had great pizzas - really good crust, even if the tomato mix was waaaay saltier than necessary.
And it makes not sense to do it for Fortnite and refuse to use the same verification for Bsky. I mean, it sort of does maybe but I'd be *really* stretching the borderline between principle and making one's own life needlessly annoying.
I sense that you are intentionally NOT helping, Rowan :)
Grok? Is that you?
Here's a wrinkle: I've been being pissy about verifying myself for Bsky messages and now I've come to the cliff edge because it looks as if I can't play Fortnite without doing it and that's one of my kid's fave things to do together...
Honestly wasn't sure if this was in response to the new ideas thing or my post about an alien invasion being potentially something I could get behind. And obviously I do but also JOHN I HAVE SO MUCH WORK TO DO AND MY BRAIN IS... very... me-ish.
FFS I want to point out that the word is "thinky". Not "think parts" although that is fine but "thinky parts" and autocorrect is even more aggressive than it used to be and I hate that.
I hadn't and I'm a child so I LOVE it.
Bluesky is fucking dangerous. I am DEEP in a novel and on a deadline and you fuckers just sparked not one but two TOTALLY NEW AND IRRELEVANT book ideas and now my think parts are chasing after them like whippets after phase squirrels.
I'd definitely want to know more about the alien plans for us before I committed to a side. "Oh, no, the Martians are going to impose a terrible regime of equitable taxation and access to justice!" Don't invade me with a good time, you alien bastards...
Crickey. That’s a pretty dark “in case” :)
That seems like an evergreen post
Justice, Equity, Freedom, Representation, IIRC. So: yes.
(I realise that may not actually be true - it just sometimes feels as if my long gross firefight has changed my digital profile forever. It wasn’t even that long…)
I think I currently get alerts from two places if my passwords are compromised on my email accounts etc :) But a Facebook group on which I’m an admin was under sustained attack from porn bots for a while and my Insta had never been quite the same since 🤣😱🤣
Ooh - handy