Neil Ward-Dutton

We often hear of big anniversaries of Big Albums by Big Artists - but how in the jiminy blazes is it 30 years since the release of Aimee Mann's I'm With Stupid?
In the genre of wry American singer-songwriter melodic indie, it is an absolute end-to-end banger btw.

When an eel in la France
Does a self-employed dance
That's a moray

I'll get my coat etc

Yes yes yes. This is a lovely film.

O. M. and, may I also add, G.
I am currently preparing the largest of sighs I can possibly muster

Cartoon by Stephen Collins for the Guardian, here's the script: [Scene is the inside of a SOUP. Some CARROTS and BITS OF BROCCOLI are floating around and a STOCK CUBE and a BAY LEAF have just been dropped in.]  1 STOCK CUBE: Alright lads - this is Bay Leaf. My colleague from the spice rack. 2 BROCCOLI: Hi Bay Leaf BAY LEAF: Yuh yuh hi 3 CARROTS: You up for getting proper blended with us later, Bay Leaf? BAY LEAF: Nuh mate, getting scooped out before soup stage. 4 CARROTS: Oh! So… you’re not being eaten then? BAY LEAF: Eaten! Haha 5 BAY LEAF: Not allowed mate. I’m afraid I’m a lil’ bit *toooo intense*... 6 BAY LEAF: Just here for the flavour hit. Special forces, y’know. That’s why there’s just one of me. 7 BAY LEAF: Over-deploy and you’d have this whole soup stiiinking of bay leaf… 8 BAY LEAF: You might wanna stand back actually. This place is about to get preeetty bay leafy... 9 [Silent pause] 10 CARROTS: Are you doing something BAY LEAF: Sure am mate. 11 BAY LEAF: Suuuuure am. 12 BAY LEAF [Getting scooped out by chef’s spoon]: You need training to perceive it. CARROTS: OK

I’m convinced this is how a bay leaf would talk

“The price of progress” amirite?

Humbly offering Opportunity Frocks as an alternative

My brain was already melting by the end of the first paragraph. How on earth did that end up being published?

Yeah but we all know that all French speakers are satanists

popcorn.gif

I'd guess, beef tongue

#POSIWID

Is it fair to say this has all the hallmarks of something that will go extremely badly?

Ah, Germany. Nothing like being in a taxi blasting up the autobahn to Frankfurt airport at 170km/h while the driver is simultaneously trying to fix the charging cable for his mobile phone

Outstanding work

Isn't this basically what early Big Country was supposed to sound like?

Bloody hell, let's hope so. How long?

Surely Zelenskyy must be weighing up the costs of just grinding out the war for another 3.9 years in the hope of a better ally

Bristol, Chichester… Canterbury’s museum has a lovely display of Oliver Postgate stuff if you are old enough to remember Bagpuss, Clangers etc (though I suspect you might not be!)

Oof, Ed Does Not Hold Back

thank you for sharing, lovely! Makes me think of a hung-over Rufus Wainwright

Jeepers.

I wonder whether part of the story, though, is that DeepSeek has been released in a way that enables anyone (with the right level of skill) to deploy it themselves on their own (quite modest) equipment

If I didn't get an invitation to attend the WEF at Davos, am I even an #AI thought leader? I'm having a crisis of confidence now...

Shill, baby, shill

Chapeau. No notes

Indeed, Occam suggests (I reckon) that the underlying problem here is that the LLM doesn't "know" that 27 < 32, or indeed, that "knowing" that "fact" would help it give a correct answer

Ahahahaha more prosaically, I remember before we had kids, we were going to only have wooden toys in the house, only cloth nappies/diapers, ... we had so many plans for how pure we were going to be! Lasted about 3 weeks

Yes - way to the left of the chasm!

Completely agree. I remember first coming across smart fridge concepts when I was researching "pervasive computing" in 1999. The tech of course is now way more capable but still - it's tech looking for a problem that just doesn't need solving (if there is any meaningful price premium)