Amy Peace

Screenshot text from The Atlantic: For now, money is still pouring into the AI industry. But there’s also something circular about these investments. To wit: OpenAI has agreed to pay $300 billion to Oracle for new computing capacity, Oracle is paying Nvidia tens of billions of dollars for chips to install in one of OpenAI’s data centers, and Nvidia has agreed to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI as it deploys Nvidia chips. Attempts to illustrate these circular investments have produced a series of byzantine charts that one software engineer referred to on X as “the technocapital hyperobject at the end of time.” The consensus seems to be that although this is legal, it likely cannot go on forever.

if not Ponzi, why Ponzi-shaped?

www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Oh yes, and suitably autumnal with the poignant addition of the fallen leaves amidst feathers 🍁 🪶 💀

Remnants of pigeon vs cat battle

Evidence that the pigeon lost

Nature (likely via the neighbour’s cat) obviously decided we hadn’t done enough to decorate our house for Halloween…

Reimagining Circularity: outline stage Apply for three years of NetworkPlus funding to build new capacity, strengthen community and enhance research to innovation capabilities focused on the circular economy in built environment, textiles or data and metrics. You must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for EPSRC funding.EPSRC

Reimagining Circularity: outline stage #EPSRC

Worth having a look to see if Zen Broadband serves your area. I'm just going through a switch from virgin and have been very impressed with the customer service (like a named individual you can call directly), so far...!

I cannot tell you how many tech journalists at prominent media organizations do not understand this

Hurricane Melissa looks, as Marco says, truly staggering

Our house in east London nearly flooded a few years ago after 120mm of rain – and I remember the fallout of the "great storm" in '87, top speed 135mph…

…but I can't even begin to imagine the impact of 1,000mm of rain or 200mph gusts

This from a top expert on Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier.
Highly likely that we're committing to an additional 3 meters (10 ft) of sea level rise as we speak. Yes, it'll take time to fully materialize, but when will the enormous damage that we're signing up for sink in with voters and policy makers?

….you need to read and understand your contracts. You need to have your contracts read and understood by someone who a) understands the purpose of contracts & b) has *your* best interests at heart.

Please, for the love of god, do not rely on some corporation's "AI" to "summaries" your contracts.

List of "ingredients" for doing science experiments using the book "Mr Shaha's Recipes for Wonder": RFW Ingredients one or more seeds (pea or bean ones work particularly well) balloons Piece of stiff, scrap cardboard about 20 cm by 15 cm 2 wooden kebab skewers 2 thin drinking straws (kebab skewers must fit through) 1 wide-diameter, bendy straw Sticky tape 4 round plastic milk bottle lids or similar One or more plastic drinking straws for Oboe Elastic bands Tin Foil. Marker pen Compact Disk (CD) or DVD (one that looks silver, not blue) A wine glasses Pen / pencil 15 cm length of wire (for example, from an old power cable) A cylindrical battery (AA, AAA and C batteries are all fine) 1 or more disk-shaped neodymium magnets (about 5 mm thick and 2 cm wide is a good size) 1 screw with a flat head (ideally more than 2 cm long, and check that it sticks to the magnet) paper towels (kitchen roll) Plastic carrier bag or bin bag 
 thread 3 “Pringles” or similar cardboard tube with lid. 500ml fizzy drinks bottle 2 Fruit shoot bottle Tracing paper / greaseprrof paper Pritt stick Food colouring liquid Red cabbage Fizzy vitamin tablets
 Small yoghurts String or thread 
 A metal coat hanger (preferably a “fancy” one made of thick metal, but a wire one will do) or the metal rack from an oven. Marvellous Machines Rubber bands – at least 2 big ones and two small ones Milk bottle tops – at least 4 Drinks carton 2 litre drink bottle Balloons Pen lid Blu tac Fizzy Vitamin Tablets Marble

Box of the "ingredients" needed to do the science activities in "Mr Shaha's Recipes for Wonder" including two empty pringles tuns, 2 empty 500 ml fizzy drink bottles, a ball of string, some bicarbonate of soda, a glue stick

Parents! Carers! Anyone thinking of buying a child a "science kit" for Christmas. For the same / less cost, buy a copy of "Recipes for Wonder" and put together a box of household "ingredients" which will let them do actual science and be a much more personal gift alomshaha.com/portfolio/mr...

This person is one hundred percent correct and it’s scary af. We will never “media literacy” our way out of this as a society. We are about to reap the whirlwind when it comes to misinformation, disinformation, and informational warfare.

1 Nurse: It’s become a real problem in this area 2 Nurse: We’ve seen the whole community lost to addiction 3 Show a building sign posted: Westminster ‘X’ Addiction Clinic With various Westminster people or looking at their phones outside it Nurse: Ministers, Spads, Researchers… 4 Nurse: Most mornings we’ll get a call about someone acting strangely [Nurse on phone taking a call] Ok - we’ll be right over 5 Nurse: We just have a gentle chat [Nurses approach a minister –Robert Jenrick? - standing in the Palace of Westminster Minister: I understand your concerns… 6 Nurse: Are you OK love? Minister: Yes I’m just hearing legitimate concerns from real voters 7 Nurse: That’s a robot, a Nazi and a poorly-disguised Russian [Show that the people he is talking to are precisely these characters] Nurse 2: Give us your phone, love 8 Nurse: At the clinic we put them in a Grass-Touching Pod, with a real voter to talk to [We see them back at the clinic, holding the minister's head and pushing him into a glass isolation booth with a grass floor. And it is a baffled looking woman, on a chair, ready to talk to him.] 9 Minister: YOU MUST BE WORRIED ABOUT THE COMING CIVIL WAR [woman looks baffled] 10 woman: I just want a bus service Minister: LOOK AT MY FLAG [produces a St George's flag] [ends]

"OpenAI...constantly needs fresh injections of investor cash, because its costs are bigger than its revenues—keeps announcing deals to invest billions in chip makers. Unless they invent digital god & completely transform the global economy... they’re going to run into some hard accounting realities"

Will be advertising a PhD studentship on this topic soon. Do get in touch if you are interested.

Critical materials - reducing demand and ensuring sustainability Explore a new report from the NEPC about resource efficiency and demand reduction for critical materials to support the UK’s existing Net Zero Strategy.

We need a circular economy for materials. Our critical materials report recommends improved repair, recycling and recovery of electronics to preserve valuable materials stocks like lithium and neodymium. Read now on International e-waste day: https://raeng.org.uk/critical-materials
#EWasteDay

My recommendation from this week is: if you leave a gig saying "that was so good I could see it again", it's worth checking twickets, even if it's sold out, because then you can do just that #DoubleSelfEsteem 🥳 @selfesteem.music-social.com

A family eats at a table in a garden with a heat pump in the background

Two people peer into the top of an open heat pump

This is really cool - we got bored of seeing the same stock pictures of heat pumps over and over again, so my colleagues* have started a library of images anyone can use.

(*a Nesta - Climate Visuals collaboration)
www.climatevisuals.org/heatpumps/

Excellent addition to public transport thread genre. Congratulations!
Vaguely reminiscent of cycling down the Bolivian Camino de la Muerta, starting in snow-capped mountains and ending in tropical rainforest... Except spread over a few thousand more Kms!

a man says the empire cannot win in a disney + star wars advertisement ALT: a man says the empire cannot win in a disney + star wars advertisement

Feels like it should be Andor for the timeliness and no more series. But then very much hoping future Severance lives up to past to get more awards later.

We don’t all share the same internet. The personalised algorithm has siloed us into parallel worlds

Big Fat Problems — Anthony Warner The focus on increasing consumption of plant proteins and switching to more sustainable sources is obscuring huge problems around sourcing of sustainable plant fats. Before long, we are going to have ...

That's the optimism about yeast. We can cultivate it in vats. No need to shift demand on to another plant. This is from a few years ago, but a great explainer of the problem... www.the-angry-chef.com/blog/big-fat...

Optimistic about this - yeast as a replacement for palm oil...

First Past the Post cannot handle this level of fragmentation. It will produce completely freak results.

We can grasp this problem now, or wait for the train to crash.

Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website Five years ago, Google’s climate action ambitions were the gold standard for Big Tech. Then, with power demand spikes from AI data centres, in July it scrubbed its sustainability website of its 2030 n...

In late June, Google quietly scrubbed its pledge to hit net zero by 2030 from its sustainability website as it goes full steam ahead on hyperscale data centers and generative AI.

How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart Contracted AI raters describe grueling deadlines, poor pay and opacity around work to make chatbots intelligent

“AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor,” said Adio Dinika, a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute…These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable.”

Vinted listing for ME+EM trousers

My contribution to the Angela Raynor resignation debate: The are now 70 people watching a second hand pair of ME+EM green trousers on Vinted now...

And again, things go much faster than expected: The staggeringly rapid expansion of the drying regions was surprising even for the scientists

31 NOTES I HAVE MADE ABOUT MY DAD IN MY NOTEBOOK Today's post is free but on the off chance you'd like to support my writing you can do so here, at a price of your choice from £10 per year, or via a one-off donation here. * My dad has come to an a...

If you read just one article, this week, make it this one? I've read it three times; each time my heart has been warmed and I've laughed like a plumbers' warehouse-ful of drains

31 NOTES I HAVE MADE ABOUT MY DAD IN MY NOTEBOOK

via @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social

the-villager.ghost.io/31-notes-i-h...

Timeline cleanse

Expect your mobile to go off 3pm Sunday! Be prepared for a test of the Govt's emergency alert system. Full info... www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2025/09...

LIVING WITH DOMESTIC ABUSE? If you've a hidden mobile, you the link above has details of how to opt out of the alert.

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