Andrew

I am very much not a medievalist so may be missing something here, but that's the best I can guess as to what the 1425 reference is to. Any clarifications greatly appreciated.

... which was solved by declaring the dukedom was never really revoked in 1399 because "creation of this kind of dukes or earls, or other dignities, pertains solely to the king, and not to parliament", therefore he was Duke again, please now stop fighting.

The best explanation I can work out is that in 1399, a Parliament under Henry IV annulled a big swathe of actions by Richard II, including the creation of the Duke of Norfolk in 1397. Then in 1425 Norfolk's son had a fight over precedence...

Bill to remove Mandelson's peerage likely to be general one aimed to rogue peers, Jones tells MPs In the Commons Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, told MPs that the legislation planned by the government to remove Peter Mandelson’s peerage (see 4.40pm) would probably be a general bill, not one specifically targeting Mandelson. Jones said: The government’s preference is to bring forward legislation that could be applied to any peer who is subject to breaching the rules and bringing the other place into disrepute. He also said he was told a “bill of that nature has not been brought before Parliament since 1425”.

Going to get buried in everything else, no doubt, but this is promising: it's always been a bit baffling to me that the government of the day can effectively create as many peers as it wants but no-one can practically sack them again.

Can't work out what the 1425 precedent is, though.

Apropos of nothing, the proposed Artemis III landing will require SpaceX to launch a lander (not yet built) into orbit (not yet achieved) and refuel it (not yet demonstrated) with an indeterminate number of tanker flights (as above).

Anyway, that's all scheduled for 2024, uh, 25, ... 26? 27? Yeah.

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

All of the above from sixty years ago, February 1966. At the same time, the Huddersfield Examiner hit upon an amazing pun for their record reviews section - DISCO-TAKES. This feels ... a lot earlier than I would expect to see "take"? (and pretty early for a "discotheque" pun as well.)

@loweringthebar.bsky.social

'1. The issue in this case is whether “gold pieces” as a form of wealth in a video game constitute property within the meaning of s. 4 of the Theft Act 1968.'

(Answer: Yes.)

R v Lakeman [2026] EWCA Crim 4 www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWC...

SANDIE SHAW certainly warrants a high Top Ten position with her latest in a long line of Chris Andrews compositions, Tomorrow. I am amzed that Sandie can manage to get so many completely different kinds of song from the same composer, WORTHING TOP TEN 1 (2) Michelle, Overlanders (Pye) 2 (5) Spanish Flea, Herb Alpert (Pye International) 3 () These Boots Are Made For Walking, Nancy Sinatra (Reprise) 1+ (7 Love's Just A Broken Heart, Cilla Black (Parlophone» 3 (D 1 Four «.ts Hang On Seasons (Philips) 6 (1) Keep ()rrlrml‘trilnning. Spencer Davis Group (Fontana) S 7 () Tili The End Of The Day, Kinks kP_ve) BRSO 8 (4) Tears, Ken Dodd (Colum- bia) 9 (9 A Must To Avoid, H man's Hermits (Cotu bia) You Were On My Mind, Crispian St. Peters

TOP TEN IN LEICESTER 1 (3) On My Mind Crispian Peters (Decca) 2 - Kind The Mind- (Fontana) The 4 These Walking Nancy Sinatra 5 (S) Just Broken Heart Cilia Black Spanish T ana - To Herman’s (Columbia) (7) Let’s Hang On— T () — (Columbia) (-) Sandie Shaw (Pye)

Pop' Scene MID SOMERSET TOP TEN (From information kindly supplied by local retailers). 1 Michelle—The Overlanderc. 2 Keep On Running—The Spencer Davis Group. 3 Spanish Flea—Herb Alpert. 4 A Must To Avoid—Herman's ' Hermits. 5 Daytripper—The Beatles. 6 You Were On My Mind— Crispian St. Peters. 7 Love's Just A Broken Heart— Cilia Black. 8 Till The End Of The Day—The Kinks. 9 These Boots Were Made For Walking—Nancy Sinatra. 10 Let's Hang On—The Four Seasons.

PONTYPRIDD’S TOP TEN— Tuesday February 1 Published in conjunction with Mr Fred Fey (Fountain Record Shop) (2) MICHELLE The Overlanders (3) (1) KEEP RUNNING The Spencer Davies Group (7) (8) LOVE’S JUST A BROKEN HEART Cilia Black (2i (-) THESE BOOTS WERE MADE FOR WALKING Nancy Sinatra (1) (9) YOU WERE ON MIND Crispian St Peter (3 SPANISH FLEA Herb Alpert (4) (5) MUST TO AVOID Herman’s Hermits (4) (4) LET’S ON The Four Seasons (5 (6) SHIP IS The Walker Brothers (7) 10 (-) MIRROR MIRROR Pinkerton's Assorted Colours (1) Last s positions are in brackets the left Figures right indicate that each record has been in the charts

A thing I did not discover until today but somehow makes perfect sense: in the 60s local papers would report their own local record charts, by the same method as the national ones: ring up the shops (sometimes, shop) and ask what's selling well.

Hate-filled fake videos about London are everywhere. We've obtained a recording of a TikToker confessing to secretly filming Londoners in their homes for clicks.

He says it's not political. He just wants to make money from far-right anger.

Read what he says: www.londoncentric.media/p/london-tik...

Gung ho (/ɡʌŋˈhoʊ/) is an English term with the current meaning of "enthusiastic or energetic", especially overly so. It originated among World War II-era American marines, who borrowed it from the Chinese 工合 (pinyin: gōnghé), understood by them as a slogan meaning "work together". The Chinese term in fact denotes a kind of labor organization, being an abbreviation of 工業合作社 (pinyin: gōngyè hézuòshè), literally "industrial cooperative".[1][2]

Delighted to learn that the phrase "gung ho" was borrowed from Chinese by someone who did not check the meaning very carefully.

This is another reason why I think the information retrieval push, even pre-LLM, to shift from 10 Blue Links to retrieving contents, answering questions, etc. may be a mistake. We lose important things when we unmoor information from authorial & organizational grounding (and cites aren’t enough).

"Rob, you once spent a day following Peter Mandelson round Blackpool. Did you take any pictures that, even at the time, you thought might one day come in handy?"

The real reason I'm leaving The Great British Baking Show Trump is threatening bombing the likes of which Tehran has never seen Prue Leith

the Spectator accidentally recycled a subhed from a previous day’s article about Tehran

Peter Mandelbrot. It’s just infinite scandals the more you zoom in.

I used to do a thought experiment with students. The Devil appears and offers you a deal: your 2.1 is now guaranteed, but you will never learn anything more in your life. How many people, I asked, do you think would take that deal?

Typical answers were 60 to 75%. I think my students were right.

YouTube video by BobDylanVEVO Bob Dylan - Sara (Live at Boston Music Hall)

Today's pleasant discovery: the 1975 version of "Sara" had a better verse youtu.be/4OM_rsm04fk

(Sleeping in the woods by a fire in the night / you fought for my soul going up against the odds / I was too young to know you were doing it right / but you did it with strength that belonged to the gods)

At Candlemas Marion Angus Lang syne at Candlemas At first cam o’ the mune, I, a bit lassie, Hame-gaun fae the toon, Fell in wi’ a stranger Frail as ony reed, Wi’ a green mantle Hapt aboot her heid. Haste, I wad haste me, The whinny road along, Whinny, crookit road Faur the grey ghaists gang. Wi her een fu’ o’ spells, Her broo runkled sair, She micht weel be the witch O’ the Braid Hill o’ Fare. Here cams Candlemas, A wan deein’ mune, Eh! bit I’m weary. Cauldrife wis the toon! Yon’s a blythe bairnie Soople as a reed, Rinnin’ wi’ a hankey Tied aboot her heid, Hastin’, hastin’, Limber-licht fit, Doon the crookit road Faur the grey moths flit. Quo’ she, ‘Ye’r sma’-bookit, Yer broo’s runkled sair, Er’ ye the auld witch O’ the Braid Hill o’ Fare?’

Today, 2 February, is Candlemas. As well as being a Christian holy day, it is one of the four Scottish Quarter Days, when rents were due.

The Scots #poem “At Candlemas” by Marion Angus (1865–1946) is a typically unsentimental look at how swiftly youth turns to old age:

“s of last fall , You, Only Virtual was not yet profitable. It recently launched a free version of the product and is exploring ways to gain revenue from nonpaying users, perhaps by requiring that they watch a short ad before interacting with their dead loved one’s Versona, perhaps by integrating a marketing system into the interactions directly and having the bots drop targeted advertisements in the midst of their conversations. “It would not be crazy at all if there was a new John Wick movie coming out,” Harrison said, and “my mom made mention of it to me.” They were both fans of the franchise,”

“Alex Quinn, the CEO of Authentic Interactions Inc., the parent company for the video-deadbot-generator StoryFile, told NPR in August that he is “absolutely interested” in finding ways to generate advertising revenue from interactions between living users and AI generations of the dead. He mentioned the possibility of inserting traditional advertisement breaks into the conversations, as well as training the bots to “probe for information,” such as a user’s favorite athlete and which jerseys they are most interested in buying—data that could then be sold back to advertisers.”

Folks have joked about this, but some people making these bots have actually considered it—targeted ads from your dead relative or loved one.

Roland Huntford has died: was very struck by the detail in this obituary that he stumbled into polar history by accident while the Guardian's Scandinavian correspondent in the seventies. observer.co.uk/profile/obit...

Maybe mandatory disclosure is working better than I thought! (All the more reason it should be mandatory everywhere, in that case...)

But I'm still concerned about *what* is being disclosed; the devil is in the details there and I think we're still seeing signs of people downplaying it.

Having said "substantially undercounting"... hmm. It's tricky to do a distinctive-vocabulary check on a small group of papers, but at a quick test it looks like 2025 LLM use might be anywhere from 8% to 14% depending on your assumptions. The lower end of that is not far off the self-reported 6%.

Interesting as well to see the breakdown of disclosure types. The ratio of people saying "correction or refinement of language" is about 12x that saying "manuscript drafting". But in direct author surveys (eg Nature 2025) that ratio is about 3.5x - a lot more admitting to drafting.

All credit to JAMA for mandating disclosure (all journals should, IMO), and it's definitely managing to get people to declare AI usage, but I wonder how many quiet omissions there are.

Interesting to see the disclosure rates here - ~3% overall and ~6% by October 2025. A lot better than some of the "indexed acknowledgements" based analyses suggested, but probably still substantially undercounting actual rates of usage

New report: a serious unintended consequence of the Government’s tenancy reforms.

Hundreds of thousands of ordinary tenants will be dragged into an annual stamp duty calculation and filing regime.

Joseph Heck, was summoned for 11s. 3d. for the same Rate. When asked why had not paid, said because it is a most hobnoxious tax. But finding the liability to pay a tax did not depend on its being palateable to the party, he then took an objection on account of excessive rating ; in fact, he said, was rated higher than any one in Coventry. On reference to the rate-book, it did not appear so to the Bench, and he was ordered to pay the amount, which he tendered ; but on being asked for 2s., the expence of the summons, it appeared more hobnoxious than the tax, and would not pay it on any account. After a little advice from one of the Magistrates, he very reluctantly paid the whole, but said would have a receipt for this hobnoxious matter; did not want Parson or Clerk to pray for him, and it was very hard to pay for it.

Mr. Allan Sprigg objected to pay 35., assessed on premises occupied by him at Harnall, on the ground that Harnall a separate village, and not liable to the Vicar’s Rate for the City of Coventry. Mr. Twist produced an Act, giving power to assess all premises of the value of 20s. per annum, in the City and suburbs. Mr. Gregory, the collector, produced the rate made the 3d of April last, in which Mr. Sprigg is assessed at .£l2, for a House in Harnall Place, back of Gosford-street ; had demanded the rate and was refused payment. He said Harnall Place was in the suburbs. This Mr. Sprigg not only denied, but said Mr. Gregory did not know what suburbs were—he did not even know the meaning of the word.

Taxpayer disputes, Coventry, 1837

Timeline for the AI skills report is ... interesting.

* begun November 2023
* surveys Feb-Mar 2024 / Mar-June 2024
* report conpleted March 2025
* placed in drawer for a year?

I can't see any reason the nation's level of AI skills & familiarity might have changed since early 2024...

on that first definition, it feels a bit like writing a report on home internet access in 1996, saying "well, teletext is really a kind of computer information system, isn't it?", and then concluding reassuringly wide familiarity.

AI Skills for Life and Work: summary report

the AI skills report today, hmm. starts off by defining AI as inclusive of "the autocorrect function on smartphones" (1.2), and on that basis 73% of people used it in the last month (1.3) but nonetheless "73% of employees report not having used AI in the past month" (3.2) www.gov.uk/government/p...