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A reader. A coder. Against certainty. A one-time London marathon runner.
2,415 followers 988 following 2,847 posts
view profile on Bluesky
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Conway: You don’t have to be ..smart to be an authoritarian,” “All you need is a complete lack of conscience and restraint, an insatiable desire for control, worship and revenge, and a simple understanding of what makes people afraid. Trump’s reptilian intelligence meets that inglorious standard.”
DoD to become DoW. A renaming of the Department of Defense to Department of War in a demonstration of toxic masculinity. How will this affect the Dow Jones?
I imagine stone masons, through the centuries, making caricatures and grotesques of their boss in high up places. It's all about making a mark.
This is especially true if you're an old Harrovian called Walter Duranty
But the combination of camouflage and hi-vis sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. One or the other, never both together
In an urban environment the hi-vis jacket is a cloak of invisibility. No-one pays attention to people in hi-vis. A sniper in hi-vis is invisible to most people.
Hugo Dyson had the right opinion - 'not another fucking elf'. I read Lord of the Rings when I was 11. It damaged me. Too many elves. I have not seen the films.
Which organ will be bypassed? Has DJT got a heart?
Is AI inflating another economic bubble? When few companies have seen economic benefits from AI is this the irrational exuberance,and wishful thinking, of crowds? If AI succeeds in removing labour from capital, immiserating swathes of people, who is going to buy the goods & services AI makes?
🧵 In the wake of numerous reports of interactions with AI chatbots that resulted in deadly consequences, the Center for Democracy & Technology's Dr. Michal Luria says AI firms should stop designing products that pretend to be human.
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And lo, AI was born from a summer project
The hyphen, en dash, em dash, minus sign, and how to write them in LaTeX.
Epitome
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Trump just is not that clever.
Need a book? Bookseller Crow excellent indie bookshop proprietor Jonathan is gravely ill and they need all the business they can get. booksellercrow.co.uk They’re on bookshop.org too.
The whole list of things asylum seekers are allowed, or not allowed, to buy is offensive, ridiculous, and cruel. Give them money, more money, and the opportunity to work. Give them the right to spend their money however they want.
Why do you appreciate unions? I’ll start: Weekends off Paid vacations Work breaks Sick leave Paid holidays No child labor Safer working conditions Health care and retirement benefits
Frankenstein is the scientist, the creature is the creation, the monster is Byron.
Come and join the Parallax Corporation
My local river, the Trent, has several rowing clubs. As well as rowing they also go out on the water
Do bears need to ask permission to enter? No. Wait. That's vampires.
Using this piece by @reallygoodwizard.bsky.social in my introductory lectures for my design students.
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Hooray, an @xkcd.com about tides! Although only little ones, round here we can get a tidal range of 10 *metres* . xkcd.com/3135/
![[Single frame, with Megan and Cueball standing at a coastline with grass, with water and waves visible. They are looking at the ocean and are standing together.] Cueball: Hey, where's that big island we were looking at this morning? Megan: Oh, it's underwater. The ocean's depth here goes up and down by like ten feet every day. Cueball: What? Megan: It's because the planet has a big moon orbiting near the surface. It causes weird gravity effects. Cueball: What??? [Caption below the frame:] People here are used to them, but tides are one of the weirdest and most sci-fi elements of life on Earth. Transcript thanks to explainxkcd](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:d67aicqw6nicsf7cjauvzuo3/bafkreibnctesneis67q7qz6tgdszao5vn2zzjlqzdblcy4h6vygipyclni@jpeg "Click to view full size")
My daily affirmation.
You go back far enough and Texas is Mexico. And then there's the First Nations. It's all stolen, or to quote FotUS 47 'stollen', land.
Unions for all. Unions forever.
Well done. 341 today. Parkrun is a great way to include everyone in a community. The barrier to entry is minimal. Have a pair of daps (trainers), can run.
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Never bargain with authoritarians
It's like the death of Stalin (2017) youtu.be/Yg48GsMJeaE?...
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Eurotrash with Jean Paul Gaultier and Antoine De Caunes seems a perfect home
The US is at a very scary crossroads. The test will be if the US can leave the crossroads with its progressive spirit undimmed, and a phenomenal talent on blues guitar.
The Nereid Monument. The three stand alone statues, at the other end of the room to the monumental temple, are exquisite. Nereid Monument | British Museum share.google/pkMrzrHUqUri...
No-one believes a submarine can fly
Acronym alert. Farage's company is TITS Ltd. That sounds like a bad joke, just like F himself.
The late nineteen hundreds is the 1990s, or so I'm told
It's London's St Pancras Eurostar Railway Station.
Percival Everett's The Trees is a good revenge tale, following on from the murder of Emmett Till.
Conservatism in a nutshell
Authoritarian Development Notes. By age 5 your authoritarian should convince a younger sibling that the only acceptable vegetable is the potato. Fried potatoes. Roast potatoes. Baked potatoes. Hash browned potatoes.
Not my president. Never my president. No-one is receiving a 'POTUS in a bicycle accident' message about this POTUS. That makes me sad.
Just another sad dictator lying about his aims
I enjoyed the Tate's Sargent and Fashion exhibition in 2024. The Gertrude Vernon picture still had its older, patriarchal, name. Sargent and Fashion | Tate Britain share.google/RR0EPinILsRY...
How can you lie back and think of England when you don't know who's in the team? The question was asked by a Mr William Bragg.
Thanks for mentioning Umberto Eco. Umberto knew how to live a good life with a good library, antilibrary.
Many are the crimes of this PotUS
And flying a Chinese made flag honouring a Turkish knight
Calvinism, of course, gave us Calvinball, the game with constantly changing absurd rules.
Remember Inkling Hugo Dyson.
Read on.
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A reminder for future generations….please don’t let this kind of music die out.
In his like of the humiliation ritual Trump is very like Ghislaine Maxwell's father, Robert Maxwell. A little bit of history repeating
More ignoble than IgNobel. The ignominy of such sycophancy. Any emperor needs a jester, a fool, to stand up and proclaim 'the emperor's naked'. It's a bold Nome who'd say that out loud.
ICE do not like green eggs and ham
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
I'll believe a corporation is a person when Texas executes one
Farage is a pariah in my household.
Would that be the bear who went up to a bar and asked for 'a gin and tonic, please'. The bar server asked, 'why the big pause?'. I'll get my bear suit.
Whatever happened to treating all people as you would want to be treated? People need to read John Rawls and make policy based on the veil of ignorance.
Is Trump's revenge on wind because the wind displaces the signature Trump comb-over hairstyle?
Sycophants. Who will tell the Emperor that he's naked? Sometimes even the President of the United States has to stand naked - and be told that he's naked.
Always good to have a good library
And a big thick honk of cheddar. It's great.
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Yes. This administration hates everyone outwith their nepo cohort. The way this administration, made up of nepo babies who've never got a job based on a resumé and interview, believe in *merit* based appointment is absurd. There is no meritocracy.
Cartoon law says that you will continue on your current path until you realise you're running on air. It's only once realisation hits you that you stop and then plummet back down to earth
Exactly. A safe city is a city that has vanquished what the UK social scientist William Beveridge called the 5 evils: Want Disease Ignorance Squalor Idleness When everyone has enough for a decent quality of life then crime falls.
Reminds me of a pub with cheese and onion rolls kept on the bar under a glass dome. A big honk of cheddar, and thick cut onion, in a crispy cob. Advertised as *Fresh cobs*. That was true-ish. Delivered every Tuesday. Cobs would still be on the bar next Monday lunchtime.
Making cities safer does not require an armed military force. It needs money, facilities, and good social infrastructure.
That would be the Hugo Boss who designed uniforms for the SS and the Wehrmacht. No change there, then.
Looking at this from the UK, it seems as if Trump wants to remove black people, and black women in particular, from public life. And this is very much a bad thing.
Trump is desperate for the golfing pedigree of Kim Jong-Il Kim Jong-Il -- North Korea dictator left behind laughable golf legacy - Page 2 - ESPN share.google/58SfG9xSQg9k...
Would Trump ever say 'I am not a crook', as Nixon did? youtu.be/sh163n1lJ4M?...
An identical rhyme is perfectly valid. Imagine a poem with an ABAB rhyming scheme. If the first B is the same word as the second B then it would be wrong to proclaim a lack of rhyme. A poem with repetitive rhyming words may be criticized, but, like history not repeating, it still rhymes.
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Has Nigel been busy overnight? Sorry. I forget that Nigel's only been there on election night
Class plays a big part in this. The UK military is still class based. The non-commissioned ranks are working class and the officer class have often gone to private schools and university officer training corps. Those who serve and those who lead come from different backgrounds
It's blatantly for other people's children. The people advocating this are not talking about their children. 'Working in fields is an educational experience' is the sort of offensive suggestion I expect from Fox.
Forecast: grunge with a lingering aroma of teen spirit
You don't need to be *smart* to go to private school.
Other Rolling Stones songs are available to be turned into government policy.
Niche. Nook. Cranny. Somewhere the Wheeler Jump is explained
In a family of Fredos it takes a special talent to be the Fredo of Fredos.
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Yes. If you treat it as a mathematics problem then a word can be compared to itself.
Can a word not rhyme with itself? Orange will always rhyme with orange - so the old question that there is no word that rhymes with orange is untrue if self rhyming is allowed.
That caption is a homage to Birmingham's Black Sabbath and the song War Pigs: 'generals gathered in the masses / just like witches at black masses'. Or it's just a crap caption.
The manipulation is the message. Or, in the words of Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, the medium is the massage.
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I think about this a lot when I think about the mess that we’re in.
We saw Pere Ubu (RIP David Thomas) do a great live soundtrack to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). That wasn't a silent film but it was a great new soundtrack.
Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wilde is a magnet for misattributed quotes Oscar: I wish I'd said that James McNeil Whistler: you will Oscar, you will
Good set of bands there. We first saw Misty's Big Adventure as a support act. We last saw them playing a live soundtrack to Nosferatu (1922). Brilliant. Accidentally bumped into The Wedding Present playing in a Brighton record shop. That was a great night.
My first ever gig, a long long time ago in 1978, was AC/DC supported by British Lions (most of Mott the Hoople). My dad's mate kicked himself for missing the support, thinking it was cool to poll up just for the main band. The support can, sometimes, be better than the main act.