paulsq

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Question to Zach Polanski at the leadership announcement:

"Q: How can you take on Nigel Farage when your policy on immigration is so different?"

Everything wrong with British politics and media summed up so succinctly in a single absolutely unhinged question.

Aaaarrrghghhhhhhh

Not as scary as Monochrome Thames, especially when preceding Armchair Thriller

I watched some of “Up The Chastity Belt” on TPTV last night, and was reminded that it’s one of the worst films ever made

Technical Tutor job application at Goldsmiths Uni

We at Goldsmiths, in the @mediacomgold.bsky.social department, are looking for a talented Technical Tutor for Digital Media and Animation - please share or apply here! Come and work with us and our amazing students jobs.gold.ac.uk/vacancy/tech...

The World at One: “we wouldn't normally lead our news with the policy of a party with only 4 MPs, but they have been topping the polls”
Could that have anything to do with the BBC making Farage a major TV and Radio star for the last 10 years perhaps?

Because we’re (a) not telling people about the right use cases for AI, and (b) tech companies are marketing it as a panacea. AI can’t do structure/logic very well, whereas “traditional” lookup programs easily can.

6 Music is playing Classical Gas

Time for a reality check: Britain cannot be a big player on the world stage unless we speak more languages | Sophia Smith Galer For all the talk of addressing the problem, things have got worse. Which is criminal when there is so much we could do, says journalist Sophia Smith Galer

Rant: I sat through a barbecue not so long ago; Brits and Dutch( who to be fair make a better fist of learning languages tbh) and caught the eye of a Spanish friend (who speaks reasonable English) 1/ www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

But did it make her orinoco flow #fnar

Watched Whitstable Pearl for the first time ever. Charming storyline, gorgeous scenery, and the most inspired casting ever of Kerry Godliman in the eponymous lead role.

Alpenis

A Welsh friend reported his squaddie mate's reaction to Saddam's palace in Baghdad; "like if people from Merthyr won the lottery".

“An historic”, obvs. Sorry.

You might have thought that “Pakistan” is a historic name but in fact it was invented by a Cambridge academic who used the P A K initials of the biggest regions in the area

People capable of loving some paintings or etchings or whatever can rarely do this without knowing something about the art-ist. Again, the situation is social rather than scientific. Any work of art is one halt of a conversation between two human beings, and it helps a lot to know who is talking at you. Does he or she have a reputation for seriousness, for sincerity? There are virtually no beloved or respected paintings made by persons of whom we know nothing. We can even surmise a lot about the lives of whoever did the paintings in the caves underneath Lascaux, France. So I dare to suggest that no picture can attract serious attention without a human being attached to it in the viewer's mind. If you are unwilling to attach your name to your pictures, and to say why you hope others might find them rewarding to look at, there goes the ballgame right there. Pictures are famous for their human-ness and not their picture-ness. There is also the matter of craftsmanship. Real picture lovers like to "play along," so to speak, to look closely at the surface to see how the illusion was created by nothing but an unusual human being, with hands and eyes. If you are unwilling to say how you made your pictures, there goes the ballgame a second time. Good luck, and love as always K

Kurt Vonnegut’s definition of what makes something “art” is one of my favorites I’ve seen - from a letter to his brother in 1995.

Meta is such an immoral company. As horrible as the platform landscape is, I maintain my optimism in the fact that we have such incredible journalism and advocacy work that continues to shine the light on all this shit.

Nice piece on Clippy. Years ago, I wrote a similar piece on the now-forgotten alternative to Clippy, Power Pup (www.petmag.com.br/famosos/powe...)

Oh excellent

Your regular reminder that the best public broadcaster in the UK is S4C

Dame Stephanie Shirley Podcast Episode · Desert Island Discs · 23/05/2010 · 38m

Dame Stephanie Shirley, the IT entrepreneur who came to the UK in the Kindertransport and went by “Steve” to ensure her letters were answered, has died at 91. Her 2010 interview with Kirsty Young is one of the most engrossing DIDs I’ve ever heard. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/d...

My latest @stampfans.bsky.social poem has just gone to print, and it's a bit of a special edition, inspired by the location below. To read it, sign up here: www.stampfans.com/creator-deta...

Radiohead Breezeblock 2000 > 2025 In December 2000, Oxford band Radiohead broadcast a mix on The Breezeblock, a weekly techno/alternative/IDM show on BBC Radio 1. It is available on the Internet (including on Mixcloud) but because it ...

New mix: 25 years ago, @radiohead.wastehq.social made an amazing mix for Radio 1. Whilst it has been available online since, the audio standards of the day - taping from FM radio - led to poor audio quality. So, taking a week to make, I have completely recreated it. www.mixcloud.com/paulsq/radio...

My linocut in blue of Fran Allen (woman with short hair, glasses, smiling at viewer) surrounded by green optimization diagrams (with lines, arrows and labels) from her famous 1971 paper.

Happy birthday to trailblazing American computer scientist Frances Elizabeth Allen (1932 – 2020) who made foundational contributions to optimizing compilers, optimizing programs and parallel computing. 🧪🐡👩🏼‍🔬🧮 #histsci She was the first woman to become an IBM Fellow, where she worked from 1957 to 2002🧵

New mix: 90 solid minutes of bass, beats and bleeps www.mixcloud.com/paulsq/manna...

We are looking for a Senior Manager for our Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life @leverhulmecal.bsky.social A key person in our team & a future valued colleague. Apply here durham.taleo.net/careersectio... & feel free to DM me. Also look out for our October research fellows posts.

Honestly considered a while back doing a photobook of “Pretzels that I have eaten around the world”

This is a wonderful technical dissection of a beloved film and… well, I’ll just leave it there www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/dvdrev...

A fellow Pretzel fan…? 🥨