Joshua McDonagh

I've put too much damn hairspray in my hair and now it's basically become a helmet... halp, it feels awful

The Creature in the Church The night was haunted. Heavy rain fell. Moonlight seeped through cracks in the dark clouds above. Below, wading through mud and dirt, a gr...

I've written a bit of #flashfiction which I've uploaded online.

If you're into gothic horror or fiction around that genre, please take a look!

www.writtenbyjoshua.com/2025/04/the-...

In my mind, I have an image of #Trump that I cannot remove. He's standing on the steps outside Air Force One after returning from negotiations with Russia. He smiles gleefully, waving a piece of paper in his hand. 'Peace in our time,' he says. It shall be anything but...

Seeing What Mustn’t ‘Will you promise me?’ the voice said calmly. ‘You must promise me.’ ‘Yes, Mother,’ came two other voices in unison—both young and tim...

Another day, another post by me shamelessly plugging a bit of #horror #flashfiction I wrote.

This one's called 'Seeing What Mustn't' and is about two young twin brothers who take their mother's advice.

If you like this sort of thing, please take a look:

www.writtenbyjoshua.com/2025/02/seei...

Petition: Tighten the rules on political donations We want the government to: Remove loopholes that allow wealthy foreign individuals to make donations into UK political parties (e.g. by funnelling through UK registered companies). Cap all donations ...

🚨Let’s protect democracy by tightening the rules on political donations. Please sign this petition

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/70...

The Decay I remember well the wonder of my ever-so-beautiful forest. It was bright and crowded with life and colour. Wonderful flowers of awesome sh...

I wrote another piece of *very* short #flashfiction:

www.writtenbyjoshua.com/2025/01/the-...

It is, I have to say, quite a macabre story that I wrote not long after my Dad died.

It deals with some quite serious mental health themes so I would like to add a content warning in that regard.

The Man on the Hill There is no light bright enough to resist being engulfed by darkness. No shine so brilliant that it cannot be obscured by gloom. No hope s...

Decided to start uploading some of my short stories online.

This is a piece of #psychological #flashfiction I wrote in 2023 about a lonely young man who becomes consumed by despair as he is haunted by a mysterious figure on a distant hill.

www.writtenbyjoshua.com/2025/01/the-...

It’d appear it’s a slow news day in my home town today…

#nuneaton #nonstory

One of my favourite seasons 😍

Eight slightly unevenly sized muffins on a kitchen counter-top.

My first foray into baking in many years. They don't look particularly uniform but they tasted good 🙂

#baking

Had the migraine of the year today... what a bloody cold I've turned out to have...

Me and my dad - Nacoa Me and my dad. My first thought as a title for this was ‘Me and my Alcoholic dad’. He was an extraordinary man.

It's addiction awareness week this week, and last year I shared my story as a child of an alcoholic with @nacoauk.bsky.social

If it's something you want to know more about, you can read it here: nacoa.org.uk/experiences/...

#addiction #alcoholism #addictionawarenessweek

Who needs Excel when you can use pandas 🥹

Actually, I would add that I also had to contend with being a child of an alcoholic at various points in my adolescence.

Since then, I've found out about the work of @nacoauk.bsky.social. They're brilliant!

I hope things have improved since I was at school. Otherwise, there will be many kids who are undoubtedly struggling in the same way (particularly after COVID).

Anyway, random contribution over.

🚨 Random post alert 🚨

I wish there was better education on mental health and well-being when I was at school.

I spent a lot of my school days suffering from quite severe anxiety. I never knew it was something I could be supported with.

#mentalhealth #wellbeing #school

Welp, I've decided it's time to deactivate my Twitter account.

It was fun... until it wasn't...

Statement from Prime Minister Keir Starmer on the sad passing of John Prescott, a true giant of the Labour movement

Unfortunately, I feel as though these key decision-makers are not yet aware of how important a task this is.

Basically, we need our politicians and decision-makers to be proactive at this stage when it comes to understanding how we can best guide technological development to benefit society as a whole.

And the things we really have to keep an eye out for are any possible avenues down which technology can harm society and act to avoid that.

This is not to say technology or AI is bad or out of place or anything like that - simply that, to make it work best, you have to factor in a lot of nuances and complexities.

For example, explainability in deep learning is an important issue, and would only be even more important for tasks like diagnosis. Simply put, if an AI model has made a significant medical diagnosis, you're probably going to want to know *why* it made that decision.

The problem is that these models are large-language models, they are not specifically trained on diagnosis data. This is, of course, not to say we couldn't use deep learning specifically for a diagnosis model, nor that it would not be useful, but simply that it won't solve all our problems.

I don't necessarily disagree, but one of the things that worries me is that certain key decision-makers have seen the power of advanced AI chatbots like ChatGPT and thought, 'Maybe we could use this for diagnosing patients'.

One of the things the new Labour government here in the UK has promised is that an increased use of AI in the NHS will be necessary to help provide better and more timely healthcare.

This brings many positives, but it can also generate significant harm if key decision-makers do not understand how AI is best used or how it should be regulated.

For example, AI and machine learning have seen huge advancements in recent years, and the impact of that on our society and our way of life is increasingly profound.

The problem is that I don't feel that our governments and legislatures best understand what kind of steps we need to take to improve how we use and handle technology.