siofraf.bsky.social

Tragedy is when I am criticized on social media. Comedy is when you are dismembered with a bone saw and die.

Books Upstairs | Dublin’s Oldest Independent Bookshop Dublin’s Oldest Independent Bookshop

Worth noting that

1) Books Upstairs is an amazing bookstore, a real gem of Dublin

2) They do have an online store you can order from to help them out.

3) They do deliver internationally

booksupstairs.ie

Photograph of a double bed with an excel themed bed cover and matching pillow cases

Spreadsheets

Let's just be clear on this.

600 billion dollars is enough money to decarbonize the entire US power grid.

But somehow our species is spending that money on trying to build a machine which pretty nobody wants, except like the 5 richest guys in the world.

www.nrel.gov/analysis/100...

@trishyb.bsky.social

Ah here. I hadn't noticed that and NOW I CAN'T NOT HEAR IT.

BUT NOT LIKE THAT, DIANE

They say he's demoted but they're just going to move him to another server.

I don't trust it when the UK has a Bank Holiday weekend that we don't. What are they getting up to with all that free time?
Colonialism probably.

Google's Gemini AI tells a Redditor it's 'cautiously optimistic' about fixing a coding bug, fails repeatedly, calls itself an embarrassment to 'all possible and impossible universes' before repeating 'I am a disgrace' 86 times in succession

I'll admit, I was skeptical when they said Gemini was just like a bunch of PhDs. But I gotta admit they nailed it.

Crowds throng along a street. Do not as yet have a picture credit

Hundreds of thousands of people are on the streets of Tel Aviv to protest against Netanyahu.

One of the less known aspects about the Easter Rising is that Indian students at UCD also took part & were then deported by the British authorities for it. Among those students was V.V. Giri who became president of India and said “when I am not an Indian, I am an Irishman”

The Invention of “Sesame Street” Renata Adler’s 1972 review of the program that revolutionized children’s television.

“Small children from poor or middle-class families who watch ‘Sesame Street’ do better on cognitive tests and in first grade than children who do not watch it,” Renata Adler wrote, in 1972.

Conversely, normal decent people suffer from "pluralistic ignorance" -- because the assholes are so loud & ubiquitous, decent people don't realize that most other people share their decency. They don't realize they're in the majority.

the excel spreadsheet would almost certainly be legible to humans across the recorded history of the species, from a sumarian scribe to whatever techno organic collective that emerges as our evolutionary successor

This is Mariner. He was born completely deaf, which means he gets to enjoy fireworks with all the sparkle and none of the boom. 13/10

New research from MIT found that those who used ChatGPT can’t remember any of the content of their essays.

Key takeaway: the product doesn’t suffer, but the process does. And when it comes to essays, the process *is* how they learn.

arxiv.org/pdf/2506.088...

Woman dies from rabies in UK after being scratched 'very slightly' by puppy in Morocco in February Yvonne Ford was on holiday in North Africa in February and only fell ill two weeks ago.

The family of a grandmother in the UK who died after contracting rabies said she was scratched “very slightly” by a puppy while visiting Morocco in February.

http://jrnl.ie/6736799

Internet ad for “Condescending tumble dryer” for £70.

“Be sure to set me to ‘delicate,’ Alison. It’d be a shame to ruin that sweater, you know, in case it ever comes back in style.”

An Oral-B login screen.

I have been logged out of my toothbrush.

A map of Europe indicating countries where non-voters would have been the strongest political entity in the most recent parliamentary election between 2021 and 2025. Countries highlighted in red are those where the percentage of non-voters exceeded the vote share of the leading political party. Countries in green indicate that the strongest party received more votes than the number of non-voters. A few countries are shown in grey, likely indicating missing data.

Countries where non-voters would be the strongest voting bloc / party

A reminder that if the minimum wage had kept pace with worker productivity gains since the 1960s, it would now be nearly $26 an hour.

A photo of a mummified hand with skin and nails still in tact. The hand is gently closed, and the skin is a dark brown. The specimen is in remarkable condition despite its age.

The hand of Old Croghan Man, a 2000-year-old bog body that has been naturally mummified in a peat bog. The man's apparently manicured nails led to speculation that he was not someone who engaged in manual labour. Based off the man's arm span, he stood approximately 6'6'' tall.

Marc Andreessen says when AI does everything else, VC might be one of the last jobs still done by humans. It's more art than science. There's no formula. Just taste, psychology, and chaos tolerance.

AGI is coming for all of us. It will write symphonies, direct movies, and author the best novels.

The only thing it won’t be able to do is VC investing, which must be reserved as a task only for the most-special people

Do you know of any large old Elms in Ireland?
We're looking for really big old elms which have survived elm disease, despite it spreading everywhere across the country.
Please visit our dedicated website and let us know about any veteran elms out there!
www.wych-hunt.ie

By implication, what we must *truly* fear is when they womble free

Netherlands launches fund to lure top scientists, like those fleeing the U.S. As political pressures and funding cuts drive some researchers out of the United States, the Netherlands is moving to position itself as a refuge for top scientific talent. Education Minister Eppo Bru...

It won’t make up for the loss of science funding and positions in the US, but other countries would be stupid not to try to lure American scientists to their institutions right now.