Psydetracked

To be honest, I haven’t trusted Stephen Colbert ever since he conveniently abandoned all his right wing views as soon as he got hired to host a network talk show

In Honor of Joanna Macy, 1929-2025 I write while staying in one of the great forests of British Columbia, a forest in which the inextricability of life from death is gorgeously evident. Several kinds of fern spring from this soil, some...

www.meditationsinanemergency.com/in-honor-of-...

Oh, what a wonderful obituary.

I think the Duolingo hate is because it's so obvious how it could be better than it is. Add back the grammar lessons and forums. A better, clozemaster-style vocab tracker based on word frequency, an LLM-fuelled random sentence generator to practice vocab, and then standard lessons.

Made it almost halfway through a year of Duolingo, and I'm starting to pattern-match Arabic words rather than sound them out, and pick out a few words when using a translator. Can't remotely speak it, but it'd be a huge leg up if I started seriously learning, and that's better than social media.

It’s every parent’s nightmare, isn’t it? you check your child’s bulletproof backpack and find a picture book about gay penguins

Sahil Lavingia @shl Jun 24 Didn’t expect that working for DOGE would get me banned from a science fiction writing community I was a part of

Turns out that SF writers don't love people who volunteer to implement the Torment Nexus nitter.net/shl/status/1...

At no point in this study did I use AI. This includes the literature review, logical organization, writing, analysis, and proofreading. I do not cite any studies that use AI, to the extent that it is possible to know.

Yesterday I used this "AI -Free Statement" in a conference talk for the first time. Still trying to figure out the exact language.

Feel free to borrow, modify, etc.

Just looked at the DASS, and it's got an obvious benefit over the PHQ and GAD in that it is much clearer about effects on functioning, motivation, and bodily symptoms, then ends with more emotional questions. Excellent work.

“If you get annoyed at Deliveroo...how will you feel being told to wait a year for a knee operation?...A failure to modernise risks this generation walking away from the NHS"

1. *limping* away, surely.
2. I am once again begging Labour to understand, courier services are different to healthcare

And in the current climate, the idea of "shopping around" is stunningly out of touch. People who have the resources and knowledge to shop around are usually just grateful to see any doctor - or any professional - at all.

Putting an LLM hat on CCG ratings and patient.info leaflets is just packaging, if a question is too complicated, nuanced and personal for the above to answer then LLMs are not reliably there yet. Grok's "white genocide" phase was like a month ago. "Put glue on pizza" was like last year.

Feeling sick? Use ‘ChatGPT of the NHS’ first, patients to be told ‘My Companion’ will allow people to shop around for their preferred doctor or hospital in ‘an evolution of the 111 service’, says Wes Streeting

www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcar...

Incredible to say a "computer says no" culture worsens outcomes, then plan to replace this with a "computer says yes" process

It's a wonderful feeling, feeling blessed by good fortune, and then reflecting on how some of that was one's own work and decisions rather than just luck. Yes, a lot of people and factors got me to a place - but I got me there, too.

It's, y'know. It's nice.

Dismay as council removes Pride flag in Derbyshire after Christians complain LGBTQ+ standard disappears from Matlock high street as Christian bookshop manager says they are ‘not happy with the gay rights situation’

After one local Christian complained, a Pride flag was banned from the high street in one Derbyshire town.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

"I asked ChatGPT" "I asked Grok" ok well I asked Gandalf and he said he has not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a witless worm

Like I've said before, if you have any doubts about climate change, just go to a super-boring insurance conference and listen to the super-boring panels where they dryly talk about the growing threat of disasters so catastrophic and unpredictable in scope they simply cannot be insured at any price.

Rock Odyssey (1987) [Restored] (1) Dailymotion video by toadypie324

Let me introduce you to the visual treat that is "Hanna- Barbara's Rock Odyssey." Considered a lost film for years this 1987 gem never had a theatrical or DVD/Vhs release and never aired on TV. It was Scatman Crothers's final film before his death.
www.dailymotion.com/video/x93vm5c

Robin gently and smilingly passing a stray youngster through a portcullis to Little John after abandoning his own escape to save her while wolves with halberds charge him down

I love all sorts of Robin Hood stories but jiminy Christmas, rewatching the Disney one to work on this poster, I guess I forgot just decidedly this Robin is the purest iteration. SO many of his interactions are bringing material help to the poor; the rest are playing tricks and doting on his lady.

Animation is a medium, not a genre, and, like any medium, there are some concepts that can only be properly portrayed using it. House of Leaves is an unfilmable book, the wizard Ekh in the 1983 short "Wow, a talking fish!" Would never have the same impact without being animated.

A few hundred Americans of all ages standing in dappled sun with flags and signs

Hello from Berlin where a few hundred Americans are outside the embassy, currently reading aloud from the Declaration of Independence. #nokings

Séamas O’Reilly: Ballymena violence is the result of politics based on scapegoating any ‘other’ "The central perversity of treating these people as anything other than racist thugs is only more transparent in Ballymena because they have so few migrants that any other excuse is patently absurd."

Referring to events in Ballymena as "disturbances" is a euphemism too far. We are witnesses to a pogrom. And it behoves us to say so, loud and clear.

www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...

This would go some way to explaining the $3,600 a month on candles

Ableism teaches us to abandon each other.

Racism will disable you.
Transphobia will disable you.
Long COVID will disable you.
Genocide will disable you.
Climate change will disable you.

Do not obey when told to abandon the vulnerable.

Resistance & communities must be rooted in disability justice.

This is just a reminder that while you survive The Horrors, check in with yourself to see if you need to:

Eat! Any food is better than no food.

Hydrate! It doesn’t have to be plain water.

Take meds! Hell yeah, science.

Touch grass! Nature is cool.

Play! Fun is self-care and fuel for the fight.

I've spent well over a decade meckering that Les Mis should have kept James Fenton's pointedly socialist lyrics, so this political moment feels very vindicating.

Here is a list I post from time to time. My answer to a reader who asked me: what could journalists do NOW to break with some of their more corrosive habits. Defense of democracy seen as basic to the job. Symmetrical accounts of asymmetrical realities seen as malpractice. “Politics as strategic game” frame seen as low quality, downmarket, amateurish— and overmatched. Bad actors with a history of misinforming the public seen as unsuitable sources and unwelcome guests. Internalizing of the “liberal bias” critique seen as self-crippling, a historic mistake in need of correction.

Here's something I post from time to time. My answer to a reader who asked me: what could journalists do NOW to break with some of their more corrosive habits.

About seven years ago, Nick and I wrote a Black Mirror spec where people had a personal AI device called ChooseU that helped you make the best decisions for yourself, gradually transforming you into a complete narcissistic sociopath who’d do anything to get what you want.

Anyway, they’ve made that.

dead kids in Memphis are a price Elon Musk is willing to pay to run a robot that will tell him he’s cool