Ryan Vance

My least favourite sci-fi trope: cramming technobabble into every line to give the illusion of complexity, for readers who want a puzzle more than they want a story. And I get that the puzzle of understanding the context of an AI story from a human perspective is a good puzzle, but it’s not a story.

I want to know the evolutionary advantage of restless leg syndrome, like did Neolithic hunter gatherers stride out into the night to shake it off and inadvertently keep the next rung of the food chain healthy by walking into a cougar den or something.

I believe we’re going to see the death of the rule of three in our lifetime as a result of people avoiding sounding like AI but I don’t think we have a good enough understanding of why it works to be able to replace it with something equal or better, it’s like the Anthropocene of language.

Your mileage may vary depending on how irritated you get by almost imperceptible differences, but I Love Hue, where you unscramble a colour gradient, has been getting me through many a commute.

We also need to do something about the commentators, France took the gold in the couples and the verdict was, “so smooth and so effortless it was almost as if they weren’t wearing skates”, ma’am if they had not been wearing skates it would’ve been slapstick they are on ice what do you mean.

Ban spectators clapping out of time to the music during the figure skating, skaters are allowed to use their skates to hack off the hands of anyone found clapping, why are you trying to clap along to Rachmaninoff anyway, weirdos.

Friends fear he’s one last lacklustre night out from organising his own mid-00s electroclash event that starts at 7 and has everyone tired out in time to get the last subway home for a reasonable bedtime on a Saturday.

Good connectivity options.

Is it just me or is the pick n mix kinda giving Saddam Hussein’s hiding place?

Gurlic
Gr peppes
Hags potato chips
Cabbagl

Oh no! More grotesque ceramics!

I’m thinking of painting these a nice bile yellow to tongue pink ombré, just need to decide if they’re rosy at the base or round the hole…

Good for Mary, honestly.

She still swears to this day it wasn’t her that sent it, but honestly, I sort of was the kind of horrible difficult confused mortifying sort of teen boy that only a mother could send a pity valentines to, so if it wasn’t her, I do worry for whoever *did* send it.

Valentines Day is a humbling day for me, because when I was 15, I got my first and only valentines card, and went on a rant to my mum, disparaging it for having terrible spelling and grammar, and then a few years later I realised it was probably sent as an attempt to boost my confidence *by* my mum.

Instead, we repurposed the crane we’d built to inspect the gorge emanating intoxicating fumes, into a trebuchet with which we flung the bodies of Cuboid infiltrators over the gorge, into their encampment by the mech. The Frost Shepherds arrived first week of Winter. We probably deserved it.

I know the cards prompt you in this direction, but it was startling how quickly the story turned from nature-loving fashionistas inventing whiskey from first principles, to drunken militias perpetuating war crimes against folk who dressed funny. We did *try* to build a school, honest.

The Quiet Year recap: our swamp people were abundant with snakes, scarce on wood, glass and peat. Snakeskin boots were in style, a merchant called Slops scammed us good, we turned a cuboid cult from friends to rivals, and draining the swamp revealed a mech, a temple and a radioactive greenhouse.

Every time the UK changes their border rules it just makes Irish passport holders more powerful

Well aye, but like I don’t want to be a narc, but it is weird, right?

At what point does a white van parked in a residential area for over a month with nobody checking in on it become a bit sus? Just thinking aloud. Not at all because the view from my living room is currently, and has been since Christmas, a white van. Total coincidence. It’s very ugly.

I’m the Joust Man!
Jou-Jou-Jou-Jou Jou-Jou-Jou-Jou Oust-a-oust
Jousa-jous-jou-jou Oust-a-oust
Jou-Jou-Jou-Jou Jou-Jou-Jou-Jou Oust-a-oust
Jousa-jous-jou-jou Oust-a-oust
Jou-la-jou-jala-la-la-lance, jala-la-la-lance
Jou-Jou-Jou-Jou Jou-Jou-Jou-Jou Oust-a-oust
Jousa-jous-jou-jou Oust-a-oust

Anything that comes off my to-do list disappears from my sense of what I’ve done in a day, in a baby-brained object impermanence sort of way, so I also keep a have-done list, so that when I start to feel burnt out, there’s some objective record of why.

Anyway, if you need me today, no you don’t.

I'm sure there's some famous worms, among wormkind.

I also don't think anyone who died before I was born should count - mine has few turn-of-the-century bishops and politicians scattered among the mid-century sporting heroes, then seems to have given up trying to produce fame around 1980.

Heartbreaking: it's been so long since I've been to an indie disco, that claims it plays bangers from every era since the 50s, but actually it's just someone who could be your da playing the same top fifty 70s punk songs, that Another Girl Another Planet came on the radio, and I actually enjoyed it

China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that it's turned this 'biological void' into a carbon sink Huge-scale ecological engineering around the edges of one of the world's largest and driest deserts has turned it into a carbon sink that absorbs more CO2 than it emits, research suggests.

Good news! I dunno, I just want good news today. If any smartarses know why this isn't actually a good thing, keep it to your damn self.

www.livescience.com/planet-earth...

Any of the usual trouble you'd get from being in prison, you could just say, look, I literally have billions, don't shiv me in the shower and I'll wire you some when I get out, cheers pal.

Would this count as a "people find their own uses for tools" post?

Banker chooses jail in ₦1.5bn bank error case - TheStar A First Bank customer, Ojo Eghosa Kingsley, has been arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) after the bank mistakenly credited his account with ₦1.5 billion, which he alleged...

This guy has the right idea.

www.thestar.ng/banker-choos...

And as always, though it’s not the immediate concern, I do wonder how NI and the Good Friday Agreement might force a revision or retraction of these plans or, if the government find a loophole for Irish citizens in the UK, at least expose the racist ideas the plans are designed to enforce.