GJ Charles

YouTube video by Amazon Web Services Announcing AWS DeepComposer with Dr. Matt Wood, feat. Jonathan Coulton

The launch of AWS Deep Composer always amuses me. Not an obviously fail or glitch, but quite possibly the most underwhelming tech demo / launch ever. You can even feel the underwhelm from the audience (presumably Amazon staff) who start off pumped, end up dumped. www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH2E...

Making British homes affordable again Politicians have long blamed a housing shortage for soaring prices, but it is tax reform that can make the market less dysfunctional

“A substantial rise in supply could probably only unwind a small fraction of the huge rise in house prices … This suggests that politicians’ primary focus on supply may be fundamentally misdirected.”

Is the argument high house prices are solely due to supply finally falling apart?

ADDITIONAL BUYER'S STAMP DUTY Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty (ABSD) Rates before Apr 27, 2023 Rates on or after Apr 27, 2023 Singapore citizens First residential property 0% 0% Second residential property 17% 20% Third and subsequent residential property 25% 30% First residential property 5% 5% Permanent residents Second residential property 25% 30% Foreigners Entities/ Trustees ird and subseque sidential proper 30% 35% 30% 60% Any residential property 35% 65% Housing developers 35%^ + 5%^^ 35%^ + 5%^^ ^ Housing developers may apply for remission of this ABSD, subject to conditions ^^ This 5% will not be remitted and is to be paid upfront upon purchase of residential property Source: Ministry of Finance, Ministry of National Development and Monetary Authority of Singapore

If you want to make housing more affordable, implement, a Singapore style stamp tax

Foreigners pay 60%

Corporations pay 65%

Citizens pay 0% for first home

20% for 2nd homes and 30% for 3rd homes

Ban politicians from being domestic real estate speculators or landlord’s conflict of interest

www.instagram.com/carlabusutti...

Carla is a brilliant artist. Reach out., she would love to hear from you.

www.instagram.com/carlabusutti...

Brilliant artist.

The artist is Carla Busuttil

The artist is Carla Busuttil.

An @abeba.bsky.social tweet turned into a protest banner artwork at BCU MA graduate show. Brilliant!

This is true, even when considered in purely ‘Western’ terms. Zoom out to thinking more broadly/globally and it becomes more intensely true. We should be cultivating diversity and plurality of practice.

One of the great embarrassments of music academia, to me, is that we are constantly producing musicians who think that their knowledge of classical music supersedes the knowledge of practicing musicians from completely different genres or traditions.

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

Hey, remember when the Panama Papers were released and they showed how basically every wealthy person on the planet was avoiding taxes by offshoring their money and nothing was done about it except the reporter who broke the story was murdered with a car bomb?

Almost can’t believe this happened… At a (quasi) academic conference?!?. Solidarity with @abeba.bsky.social

My Fellow New York Jews and I Know Zohran Mamdani Does Not Threaten Us It's time we all speak out against Jewish self-victimization and not fall into the trap of Islamophobic tropes.

@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social’s Zionist accusers can’t even describe how it is that he’s supposed to threaten Jews. That’s because they can’t, since he doesn’t. They also can’t accept that in our socialist, anti-Zionist politics, there is real Jewish community. New from me in @zeteo.com:

The Bleeding Commons

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

I gotta say I find a lot of AI discourse around higher ed very confusing. "if ChatGPT can write your essays is college even worth it?" did people think math teachers were assigning problem sets because *they* couldn't figure out the answers?

Also, famously…. no white spirits exist under socialism. 😅

you know when I knew the US was in deeper 💩? that debate moment when Biden and Trump started arguing about golf scores.

There is no plan. There is no 3D chess. The president has a toddler’s understanding of the economy and will continue to just do things (and then undo them, and then do them again).

IQ is like dick. those possessing very little obsess with it

At Google, I asked why they were fixated on building THE LARGEST model.

Why are you going for size?

What function are you trying to achieve?

Why is the thing you were upset about that you didn't have THE LARGEST model?

They responded by firing me 🤷🏼

The impossibility of automating ambiguity (Birhane 2021)

These people are your enemies

The Limits of Data Policymakers want to make decisions based on clear data, but important factors are lost when we rely solely on data. A philosopher writes:

Great piece from C Thi Nguyen on ‘The Limits of Data’ and quantification of every aspect of life.

issues.org/limits-of-da...

Opening paragraph…. daft

Embarrassing on all levels. However, does reveal:

a) They think (and will legislate) largely in sporting terms, and
b) Consider nations simply as individuals in competition with one another for ‘spoils’

Daft.

In my world of music, the term DIY has been taken too literally, because it’s always been Do It Together. Grassroots creative collectivism has been replaced by antisocial rugged individualism and the result is just plainly going to be worse music.

Exactly this. When you think of ‘AI’ deployment in terms of advertising logics, the whole endeavour takes on a new hue… in terms of both the aesthetics of generated text and images, as well as the business practices that underpin them.

The old money at least was honest with themselves and thus became an aristocratic patron class, largely because they also received an education in humanities as was standard in the prep to Ivy pipeline. The new money focus on STEM alone denies them this lonely self awareness until it’s too late.