Paul Harland

No Other Choice? I found it more off-beat, verging on slapstick even, but agree anything positive was soon undercut. Stayed pretty watchable given its length but a few samey or loose story elements took the edge off for me. I'd definitely watch it again, though. Trailer for If I Had Legs was good.

Mr M Hehir v Metroline Ltd: 6018181/2024 Employment Tribunal decision.

The driver knocked the thief unconscious, perhaps not exactly per the Good Samaritan handbook. www.gov.uk/employment-t...

collage of X posts containing images of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, inaccurately unmasked by AI

Using generative AI to "enhance" images doesn't work, but people keep trying. Following the shooting death of Renée Good by ICE, social media users attempted to "unmask" the shooter with AI, resulting in numerous images that neither resembled each other nor the actual killer, Jonathan Ross.

Really......? (Not a big mead fan, to be fair.)

That’s what I like about maths: there’s no right or wrong answer.

DM spam?

You're a bot?

Loved the bicycle in the middle but didn't spot the gorilla.

A blacker shade of pale?

of course, Vint Cerf did MoltBook first

www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc439.h...

It depends?

How ICE Already Knows Who Minneapolis Protesters Are

Wondering why I am so angry and vocal about the UK Govt building a toolkit for tyrants?

In the USA, ICE agents took facial rec for tracking ‘non-citizens’ (so grim in itself!) and then immediately used it to build themselves a database of human rights protestors. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/t...

More than 200 killed after landslide hits miners extracting key smartphone mineral More than 200 people have been reported dead after a landslide hit coltan mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

More than 200 killed after landslide hits miners extracting key smartphone mineral

But what do you (or they) mean by "ethnic" here? Which exact traditions do I need to embrace, do I need a DNA test? Is there a pass mark? Where am I from if I fail?

But the Trump Ellipse elliptical edit, they won't even let us watch that programme now.

This is the one.

Anyone for Denis? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anyone_...

comme un déchet dans le souffle du vent

Bob Dylan / Shoji Yamasakı

The waste my friend is blowin’ in the wind
The waste is blowin’ in the wind
tags : recyclage artistique #windy #philosophy #dance #performance #chanson #ecology

And I'm still using my non-reading of Camera Lucida as a stray thread in my unfinished reading around quite a different book. I must be getting nearer the end, surely? Or back to the middle, @davidgunkel.bsky.social

"I knew that at the center of this Labyrinth I would find nothing but this sole picture... The Winter Garden Photograph... would tell me what constituted that thread which drew me toward Photography."

Signage

First single from the Trash Kickers, featuring Stanisław Gunkel on guitar and production. When I first heard it, I thought it must have been early Dictators..which just means we have not heard stuff like this for a few decades. Highly recommended.
open.spotify.com/track/4eHKJT...

A search for factors for algorithm understanding results in multiple terms displayed as documents, including available, compact, and aligned. These are shown to be necessary and sufficient. Other, similar terms are shown in the background faded, like intuitive, rule-based, grounded, modular, linear, decomposable, accurate, symbolic, causal, and personalized.

Is the only way we can create algorithms that people understand to make them trivially simple? We argue, no.

People can predict the behavior of algorithms that are arbitrarily complex, if and only if they are available, compact and aligned.

arxiv.org/abs/2601.18966

I see we're at the 'arresting opposition journalists' phase of I Can't Believe It's Not Fascism!

It's uncertainty all the way down/up?

And in a way might the body be a kind of evolved guess at a model of its future environment? And maybe even a social group could be a culturally evolved attempt at producing a model of its planned niche (and vice versa)?

Prompting @davidgunkel.bsky.social

I like thinking of the gene regulatory network as an organ - a little chemical brain. And it seems reasonable to think of the adaptive responsiveness of the cell as reflecting a kind of cognition.

there's this new dynamic where the DOJ cannot win in court and is (relatedly) incapable of meeting the minimum threshold of professional legal conduct, and so an increasing percentage of its actions are purely for intimidation and content

Masked agents, face scans and a question: Are you a citizen? Inside Trump’s Minnesota crackdown The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis is providing insights into the surveillance technologies the government is using in its mass deportation campaign.

ICE stops your car, demands your paper then takes your photo for biometric surveillance; how surveillance and vast databases have become central to the Trump administration’s immigration purge. apnews.com/article/digi...

Thank you @lsereviewofbooks.bsky.social for publishing this detailed review of my book.

Have a read and remember that you can purchase globally from Cambridge University Press (bit.ly/4l1M5Gu), Amazon (amzn.to/4mZKaEm), and other vendors.

I recently saw it in the wild!