Ally Green

British trains are so noisy! Thank god for noise cancelling headphones.

I’m obviously not advocating for this at all! But in practice most children are born with at least one nationality via their parents (not all; my bff was born stateless and it took years for her to get any passport at all).

Wherever they had nationality presumably.

Because there's no automatic pathway to citizenship (unlike in many other countries). But agree this is horrendous. Will be voting tactically if at all next election that's for sure.

We had an AI-facilitated company-wide brainstorming session yesterday. It was predictably crap. AI still can't distinguish between a considered answer and an oops-fat-fingers one-letter response.

My daughter just started teaching at a Paris university (where she also did her undergraduate studies). I don’t think she sees any major differences in her students vs her own (2019) cohort. Of course some adjustments to assignments since then - but in France most assessment is in person anyway.

Kinda surprised no one just picked it up and put it on the road, where an autonomous vehicle should be.

"How Do You Avoid Hitting People with your Car" mini guide.

Now in French! 🇫🇷

I feel your pain. We had a similar saga of repeated fault codes followed by plumber visits during which we couldn’t replicate the problem. Eventually turned out the max water temp was set too high. Has to be said that both the fault codes and the boiler manual were spectacularly unhelpful.

The problem is that when it’s bad it’s catastrophically bad. Until recently my mum, age 89, had not seen her GP since before Covid (and not for want of trying). At one point she gave up even trying to get an appointment and just resigned herself to waiting until really sick and then calling 111.

Mine was far more random. Pitched up as a temp on the trading desk, got taken on as a junior analyst, a year later someone dumped a heap of CIA (no kidding) reports on the Russian mining industry on my desk and a new career was born. I look back fondly on 1980s recruitment practices!

How long does he think it will take to rejoin? Much as I agree with him on the principle of rejoining, believing that is a near-term solution to the UK´s problems is also magical thinking.

Guy who claimed he could make boobs grow with the power of his mind says he can also perform magic with the economy.

This is completely unsurprising, why are people acting shocked.

I read regularly just don’t post much!

UK set to limit refugees to temporary stays Shabana Mahmood is expected to say the era of permanent protection for refugees is over, in major changes to the UK's asylum and immigration system.

I came to this country as a child refugee. No English, no certainty, no idea what my life could become. Britain gave me refuge.

Not on a timer, not with conditions attached, but with a chance to grow roots.

A thread 🧵 1/8
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I would always vote tactically if necessary to avoid a right-wing party getting elected. But while I am the Green by name and by politics, I have major issues with the UK Green Party (nimbies, anti-nuclear plus I will never get past the ghastly boob thing).

Agree, this is a deal breaker for me - and I am a natural Labour supporter with no other obvious home for my future vote.

Yes - don’t disagree with the point about what is a high income (in London) but I grew up in an extremely middle-class family in London at a time when property was still affordable and I had exactly one friend with a five bedroom home (and her dad was a Tory politician FWIW).

Tax policy on the British left is pure "anti-bedtime left". Bizarre idea that you can have a big social democratic welfare state without everyone contributing properly www.economist.com/britain/2025...

I’ve just discovered that: “The term captcha—Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart—was coined by researchers in 2003.”

From @charlesarthur.bsky.social’s morning newsletter.

Crazy. Been incredibly sceptical about reading tests for young children since my oldest, already a fluent reader, flat-out failed a reading readiness test in her French primary class...

Actually lol-ed at this. Entirely consistent with my personal experience of AI! Is this what we are burning our planet for? We deserve go extinct.

Yes, she would actually like to do more hours! (Her research contract means her teaching hours are limited).

Sitting too much is bad for adults, let alone 5 year olds! My adult daughter says one of the things she likes most about being a teacher rather than a student is that she can stand up during classes.

It’s so they don’t have to employ check-in staff. I’m almost at the point of no longer using the central London Premier Inns because of this. If the booking is made through a third party eg a work travel agent, it’s almost impossible to check into a room you have paid upfront for.

Home grown strawberries on a kitchen counter

Garden strawberries in November 😲

It's 1€ train weekend in Occitanie. Heading into Toulouse, just because. Platform was rammed - good to see lots of other people taking advantage of cheap fares rather than driving!

*will take the opportunity to go bouldering and see my son

My almost caricaturally Parisienne French daughter speaks a foreign language at home. Admittedly she does sometimes use her foreign language if talking in public about assholes, which is probably why assholes object to having neighbours who talk furrin.

I’ve experimented with using an LLM for the bits of my job I like least (writing press releases that will get through the corporate comms review process) and the result was garbage. And I tried using one for the part of my job I like (the research) and it just made shit up!

I don’t think they are that radical; certainly when in power locally they have been surprisingly conservative in a nimby way. Ànd they seem to object to most things that could radically change CO2 emissions, like infrastructure projects (rail), nuclear energy, and land-use changes.