Jon

Britain Lost 14,000 Third Places. They Were Called Pubs. Is Your Local Next? How private equity reshaped the local and the postcode tool that shows the pubs most at risk.

My brother wanted a London pub crawl. The result? My new Substack post: "Britain Lost 14,000 Third Places. They were Called Pubs. Is Your Local Next?" How private equity reshaped the local, which pubs are most at risk and most importantly what to do about it.
open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

Headline: "Scientists discover emperor penguin colony in Antarctica using satellite images"

Yesterday it was cows using tools, today its penguins using satellite imagery.

I quite like Population Needs Assessments, but again, vague. I think the challenge is that they often try to be all things to all people.

Is it about strategic planning, commissioning, spatial planning, resource optimisation or asset optimisation? Often all of these things simultaneously.

Joint Strategic Needs Assessments, maybe? (Am a little bit sorry)...

Adding alt text to this because this is fucking amazing and everyone deserves to read it.

The first rule of Crossword Club: tank told it's messed up to keep mum about (4,4) Crossword Club.

Clip..... Clop....

Gondor’s leader was of course driven insane by overuse of social media.

BBC report that police are focussing on a 'ladder placed against the side of the Louvre' while investigation a recent theft from the art gallery.

Very wise.

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]

That would be a blessing. At least it's quick.

In 1916 the BMJ published an article about the work done by James Shearer, an American physician working in the British Army as a sergeant (because he had no British qualification). He had described a "delineator" which was better than x rays for portraying gunshot wounds. This caused a sensation and a lot of interest — but on investigation the work was found to have been invented. The BMJ published a retraction, but Shearer was tried by court martial and sentenced to death by firing squad.

Next time an institution tells you how seriously it takes research misconduct, ask them if it's *this* seriously. www.bmj.com/content/297/...

I love it. It does not love me. To an explosive level.

Is 1. a choice or digestive necessity?

1. Aubergine
2. Nocturnal Animals
3. Sound of Music, hard to choose, probably Goatherd.

Non-ironically my favorite genre of writing these days is a syntactically awkward student paper that is nevertheless brimming with ideas they’re trying on

YOU CANNOT DISCOUNT SOMETHING SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY PERCENT DOES NO ONE UNDERSTAND HOW NUMBERS WORK ANYMORE

Yeah, was not ready for that landing out of nowhere.

*gasp*

Hope you get the job, Steve!

Back when Twitter was good.

I have never understood this argument: LLMs are here to stay. So we need to learn how to use them.
The whole reason they have proliferated in the last two years is because you basically have to learn nothing to use them. Open a web browser and start asking plunking things into the prompt field.

I’m not saying we’re cooked as a culture, but the left are wrongly convinced that Keir Starmer is going to sell all our digital ID data to Palantir and the right are convinced it’s a ploy to enrich Euan Blair.

Joey and Phoebe meme. Phoebe instructing Joey to say "Fix the economy and public services" with him at the end instead saying "Digital national ID cards!"

I'm just a girl, sitting in front of a computer, begging you all to learn just the slightest amount of nuance before you apply the marketing term AI to all forms of machine generation and analysis without understanding their fundamental differences

I ran out of characters on the last post.
And now the world has lost another character.
Dickie was an eccentric and one of life's true innocents. Everytime I met him it was if my childhood had returned.
Universally treasured in Yorkshire where we do not always agree on everything.
RIP old mate.

There's a good T. Ocellus joke here somewhere, but I'm not good enough at image editing.

I find this really difficult. Have been rewatching Rebels with my 8yo and he loves it beyond most other telly that doesn't have Dragons in. I couldn't be happier about the SW direction at the moment. Does it matter that the film belongs with the show?