James Ashford

#pixelart #ドット絵

"Dislike button." Fucking grow up

Star Trek The Next Generation scene. Tasha Yar, Riker, and Data stand outside with some greenery in the background, a questionably perfect blue sky backdrop, and lots of fog. Yar and Riker have a defensive posture holding phaser pistols, Data is staring at his phone. (It's a tricorder). Closed caption reads, "Spooky " 👻

Let me excerpt the concluding paragraph:

Yale lab reports mass killings in Sudan, calls for student activism The Humanitarian Research Lab was told this week that over 10,000 people in Sudan were killed within three days.

“Individuals on the ground sent a message that reached us Monday morning that 1,200 were dead,” Nathaniel Raymond, the lab’s executive director, said. “By that evening, they said 10,000. By Tuesday, we couldn’t reach them anymore. We assume our ground contacts are dead.”

it's such a joy to build software exclusively for yourself

definitely a form of self-care

I have been charged in a federal indictment sought by the Department of Justice.

This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights. I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win.

My statement on Ai from the mini-comic as syllabus i made for new class I'm teaching that starts tomorrow! It robs you of your decisions & struggles - and the joy of being surprised. We won’t to be robbed of our learning - this is essential. This & the full mini at post:
bsky.app/profile/nsou...

the most interesting anecdotes about LLMs to me have been the programmers who had no hype but earnestly believed all the marketing that it'd improve their workflow that extensively tried to implement various tools to little success, only to be bewildered by the religious devotion pro-LLM pushback.

I DONT WANT TO SAVE TIME. I WANT to obsess over every detail & decision. I WANT to look at an accidental line & decide if it makes the piece better or worse. I WANT to challenge myself to discover & grow.
"AI can save you time." It takes however long it takes. I owe the clocks of this world nothing.

Cropped and edited screenshot from Star Trek Voyager. Captain Janeway, wearing her gray tank top, is crouched on the ground holding a phaser rifle. She's aiming up and firing, the red phaser beam shooting up and out of frame. Janeway looks really tired and over it. The words "Gen AI" have been edited onto the picture so that it looks like Janeway is shooting it.

If I see one more ugly AI slop picture of people in Star Trek uniforms I stg

"We're cooked" isn't real

I tweet: "people who see 50% of their monthly paycheck go to rent don't care if a candidate eats with their hands. they want to hear what your candidate is going to do about housing." John Galt 2025 replies: "Move if the cost of living is too high."

who creates the lively art and music scenes if the rent is too high? who makes cultural life? who serves you food or washes your dishes? who creates the fancy little restaurants that draw you to urban living? affordable housing is at the heart of what makes city life worthwhile.

A wood floored, white and blue walled, room with a large wooden punt placed vertically in the centre of the image, pointing with it's bow to the ceiling. On the side of the punt, the sequence "LV 426" is written in white lettering.

A large hotel atrium, viewed from above with a glass wall and a reception desk directly below. I'm the centre of the shot is a model of a DNA helix made of stick and ball shapes with different colours for the different atoms.

Excellent decor at the Graduate Hotel Cambridge!

This whole article is fabulously smart, but this line, in particular, is its crowning glory.

Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory An intensive international study was coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC

👀

www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

Greens and lib Dems - 15% Tories - 17% Labour - 20% Reform - 26%

Highest. Ever. (Yet.) 🚀

Let's go! 🙌🏼

Source: YouGov

Join.greenparty.org.uk

@leftiestats.bsky.social

"Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here." Anna Bower Monday, October 20, 2025, 5:40 PM Share On: f X inK My Signal exchange with the interim U.S. attorney about the Letitia James grand jury.

EXCLUSIVE: One Saturday afternoon in October, my phone lit up with a notification.

I glanced down at the message.

“Anna, Lindsey Halligan here,” it began.

So began my text exchange with the woman who is prosecuting the president's perceived political enemies.

www.lawfaremedia.org/article/anna...

exwife-of-frankenstein on tumblr: Youtube is full of ads, spotify is full of ads, tumblr is full of ads, pinterest is full of ads. Everything uses ai. Every new update makes the website/app worse. Youtube auto translates almost every video I want to watch. Sometimes pinterest only loads ads for me. Check out this new ai feature. Here's a new update that breaks ur laptop. Here's a new update that breaks ur phone. Why are u complaining about ur phone, just get the newest iphone lol. Join my patreon. Join my membership. Pay a monthly membership to get all features. Upgrade your membership to get even more features. Subscribe to netflix. Subscribe to disney. Subscribe to amazon. Subscribe to hulu. This content isn't available in ur country. This content was removed. This website was removed. This feature only exists for apple. This app only exists for apple. U need to a WiFi connection to play this game. U need an account. We need your email to finish creating this account. We need your number to finish creating your account. We need your id to finish creating your account. In order to delete your account please write an email. In order to delete your account you need a laptop. Oops our database was hacked and ur information was stolen. Ur data was sold from this random website u used once 10 years ago. Spam call. Spam call. Spam call. #IM GOING INSANE #NOTHING WORKS NOTHING

I would laugh if this wasn't so true 😭

An actual, real life, nuanced discussion about Brexit!!

This is a self-serving view in both its preening tone and in ignoring actual *studies of* generative AI’s effects on reading, writing, research, and thinking.

It is quite possible to be informed about AI and reject it. Insisting otherwise is just being a missionary : “Have you heard the Good News?”

Todepond dot com

I wrote a blog post about eco-populism

www.todepond.com/sky/eco-popu...

When we write or draw porn or erotica, we get banned from having a bank account and our livelihoods get seized even if we give it away for free.

When billionaires steal what we've written or drawn to churn out a slop-approximate of porn, they're allowed to charge for it.

A post from an academic on blue sky that says: "I'm learning about "prompt engineering" when asking LLMs to extract data. I now add this to all instructions: Style Be concise, analytic, and specific (cite page/figure if provided). If essential info is missing, keep going but flag Unclear and exact data needed. Never invent data. #academicsky"

Seeing people nonchalantly post stuff like makes me feel like I'm going crazy honestly.

A new week - and a new huge milestone!

@greenparty.org.uk now have 100,000 members!!!

We are absolutely on track to next overtake the Tories - let's make hope normal again!

Join.greenparty.org.uk

What Machines Don't Know Imagining Language Without Imagination It's important to acknowledge that Large Language Models are complex. There's an oversimplified binary in online chatter between the dismissive characterizatio...

I've been re-acquainting myself with NNs, transformers and LLMs this week, so these are early thoughts. But I am starting to think about language without the capacity to imagine language, i.e., an LLM unable to imagine itself participating in language. mail.cyberneticforests.com/what-machine...

This is truly grotesque. Teachers should not be using this stuff. If a school was pushing it on teachers who work with kids I care about, I'd make a big effing stink until they stopped. We have to not give into this.

I prefer “anti-fascist“ for a host of reasons and this is a nice practical one.

A screenshot of a Garmin connect run log. The map at the top shows the route of the Oxford Half Marathon 2025, snaking through the city centre and branching up to Summertown and Marston. The text fields below list the distance (21.39km) and the time taken (2:08:15) which averages out to a 6:00 per km pace -which I'm very happy with! The calorie information I consider pretty suspect. My heart rate averaged 183 BPM and WOW I felt that!!

Photograph of a very sweaty me, with messed up dark brown hair and a wide grin on my face. My glasses are slightly steamed up. I'm wearing a bright yellow shoulderless running top, and holding up my participant medal, which is a the shape of an archway in light blue, with the words Oxford Half written over a silhouette of the Radcliffe camera skyline. I'm holding a water bottle in the same hand as the medal, which is full (but was emptied very quickly after the photo!). There's a large crowd of runners behind me, all looking quite tired. The street behind is lined with dark green leaved trees behind me, as well as a metal railing, on the left, and a cream stone angular modern building on the right.

woe. knee pain be upon me.