Kathryn Rose

necks were a mistake

Reeves and her ministerial colleagues privately grumble that the OBR could and should have reviewed its productivity forecasts earlier. If it had done so while the Conservatives were still in power, Jeremy Hunt's pre-election cuts to national insurance contributions might have looked unaffordable.

Really? Did anyone who was paying attention actually believe that Hunt's cuts to NI were affordable? And if the OBR's assumptions about productivity have always looked optimistic, why base your fiscal strategy on them?

As I said a couple hours ago about a different fake video, you don't need to feel stupid if you fell for it.

The entire internet is drowning in this AI shit. And there's no easy solution. We're just fucking cooked as a society.

St Francis gets a mention, actually!

If you are worried about the climate situation or the political situation or both, read this book.

You'll probably still be worried afterwards, but you might have a better idea of how to respond.

This is AI.

In the UK you can buy the book online and support your local bookshop at www.hive.co.uk/Product/Chri... or even better, go to an actual physical bookshop if you have one and ask for it there.

Chris does not shy away from the severity of our predicament or the scale of the challenges ahead, and I think that is why, despite the rather dark prognosis, I find this book ultimately encouraging and hopeful.

The academic side approaches the limits of what I can take in without having to do some background reading myself; my brain is full. Nevertheless, somehow the book feels like a really good chat by the fire rather than a formal lecture in some hall. My brain is full, but so is my heart.

These insights come from both his wide academic understanding and his own experience of living in various shapes of community and producing food and fuel for local needs; theory grounded in practice. And as ever there is a kindness in his writing, and a gentle humour, which I find endearing.

I will say that Chris Smaje doesn't offer his readers a tidy blueprint for solving problems or One Weird Promethean Trick for saving the world, but instead with nuance and care offers important insights on how we might ground and align ourselves and our local communities.

Thoroughly enjoyed "Finding Lights in a Dark Age" by @chrissmaje.bsky.social, which for unknown reasons arrived with me before the official launch date. I might try to write a longer review at some point, but not tonight.

Worth looking at ventilation and masking if you haven't been doing that recently, too, because lower eligibility for boosters could make this wave pretty bad.

I just copy-and-pasted "NO AI. EVER." for every answer.

were you looking at the "discover" tab?

An awful lot of people suddenly seem to know a lot about Venezuela and María Corina Machado who haven't been posting about any of this previously.

(I don't know a lot about it either, but I will be very interested to see how things work out for Guyana.)

applications are still open if you are interested in working with me and @robarmstrong.bsky.social on the Unhedged newsletter

main task is to try and make me look clever and to compensate for my woeful inability to make nice charts

job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io/financialtim...

i'm not really concerned about people at home running their 3-5 tokens a second, but ~0.0000% of AI users and advocates and apologists and "but it's useful for" guys are doing that

LLM AI exists to crush labour. That's not even my surmise, the people paying billions of dollars to fund this stuff are extremely open and explicit that this is their goal.

There are no ethical use cases for LLMs at this point in time. Maybe when the bubble has popped thoroughly. Not before.

Wait until they find out about what bears do in the woods

I try to avoid polyester clothing,at least, since they shed microplastics into the air and water.

Then I wear a meltblown plastic respirator to avoid getting whatever airborne crud is going around, sigh. Hopefully that doesn't shed too much but who knows?

I read somewhere that we each consume about a credit card worth of plastic, on average, every week, but a) I can't remember where and didn't chase citations and b) I suspect there might be a Plastics Georg in there who should not have been counted.

I try not to think too hard about it, and find more ways to limit plastic use,for all the good that does.

I feel like surgery is honestly always a bit of a crap shoot, so personally I would want to be very very certain that it's treating the cause of a health problem, rather than causing a different health problem that has a side effect which mirrors societal expectations around health.

As I’ve said before: it’s a digital poll tax with the proceeds going to mobile phone companies and Amazon

Googling "How does atmospheric scattering work, and can we stop it?"

Government to consult on digital IDs for 13-year-olds There has been a backlash to the announcement a UK-wide digital ID scheme will be introduced by 2029.

So… smartphones for teenagers are going to be *banned* in schools, but *mandatory* everywhere else. Got it. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Here's the citation for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

www.nobelpeaceprize.org/articles/nob...

Yes please

And the liver isn't a huge problem, just definitely less exciting than a whole chicken.

When the produce treadmill slows down I will fish all the liver out of the freezer and cook it and mince it and put it back to throw into whatever.