I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. My antibodies are for ensuring the free marketplace of ideas stays open.

Belgium having antifascism is completely understandable. It was occupied multiple times by the Germans, there are still neo-nazis dotted around, and colluders back in the 40s. It makes sense that these antifacist antibodies still exist, I just don't have sympathy for peacetime assassinations...

Nobody can tell me that I am prohibited from debating and engaging with the opinions of whoever I damn well please. As long as we're in a conversation about politics, free and open debate must be the standard, and killing your opponents must be met with staunch and hardcore opposition.

I'd describe myself as both a classical liberal in peacetime, and a conditional antifascist for wartime.

But antifascism during peace undermines liberal democracy more than it helps it. "if you have two nazis at a table and a third person joins, you have three nazis" is corrosive to open debate.

We have to accept that left wing radicalisation is and has been a thing online. The second you say "this person has oppressive, harmful beliefs, and therefore it's OK to celebrate killing them", you're in much more harmful territory yourself than those you disagree with.

that abo is going to be a great collectors item in years to come 🤩

My question to you: you knew as a subject expert that definitive measurement is impossible with current data collection, but you wrote "a powerful modern racial myth has been exploded" - how do you reconcile that belief with said data issues? Why present uncertain evidence as myth busting certainty?

Thanks for responding - much appreciated. You're an important voice in this conversation, and I think we'd all benefit from hearing your answers to people challenging your writing for the sake of intellectual rigour rather than nasty backlash, especially as you're cited on p126 of the Casey audit

Hi Ella. Only replying as you were so influential in the national debate and this is your first public comment I've seen since the Casey audit - why did you write definitively in the Guardian that perpetrators were 'most commonly white' when you knew the data isn't uniformly recorded nationally?

Always a lovely away day when Arsenal win!

Anyway, Beatles ranked by artistic merit:

1. Paul McCartney
2. George Harrison
3. John Lennon
4. Ringo Starr

Social media tools and platforms are ultimately what we make of them. While there certainly can be toxic elements, there's also immense value in being able to "listen in" on experts discussing their fields and sharing learning paths they wish they'd had when starting out.

I'd bet Arteta would swap Merino and Rice around based on the competition

Giulia’s French has hit a new level. We’re in Paris, she’ll speak French and they’ll respond and not get annoyed. I’m in awe. With me they then respond in English (fair)

From what I can gather, this kind of platform is more liked at FOSDEM than Twitter, so I want to take the time to say that the Low-Level AI, as well as the Robotics and Simulation devroom were top class yesterday

Honestly that second brain one needed way longer than the 5 mins! The room was absolutely packed for the lightning talks, then was half empty for the longer talk straight after 😅

was a great room today!

Some more silverware 😉

Kieran Tierney to leave Arsenal for Celtic move Exclusive: Scotland left-back close to an emotional return to club where he began his career

Tierney goes down as one of my favourite Arsenal players ever. Huge respect to him for choosing to go back home to Celtic instead of going to Juventus for his future. Just wish he could win some silverware in London before he leaves...

www.telegraph.co.uk/football/202...

Might have to give this place another try. Can't really abide by Nazi salutes.

I loved twitter for three things - football (has been one of the best places to talk about football maybe ever), tech (the AI stuff is insanely good), UK politics (kept me up to date well).

lots of people also want to exclude Arsenal's corners from xG. Why? Do corners somehow count less than open play goals? Excluding penalties makes sense, excluding corners is simply manufacturing a narrative

Arsenal actually underperform at corners...! 7 goals, xG of 11.53 - that's unsustainably low

Sorry to be that nerd but Arsenal's results are mostly being unlucky. Last two PL games were 1-1 and 0-0:

Fulham 0.15 - 2.43 Arsenal
Arsenal 1.42 - 0.17 Everton

That’s 1 goal from 3.85 xG
and 1 goal conceded from 0.32 xG

Another day you could win both of those 2-0

to read: to LOOK at and comprehend

to listen: to give ones attention to a sound

Wrong. Audiobooks count as listening. Orwell teaches us that the definitions of words matter if you wish to maintain critical reasoning. If you comprehend the same meaning, great - you are still a 'reader', I guess. Audiobooks count as listening if the comprehension remains the same

It’s extremely lame to be in a self soothing bubble where you think all that matters are books and individual statements of resistance. The singularity is coming, computers are about to overtake humans, you’re focusing on the wrong (self centred, selfish) problems

Changed my mind about this place. It rocks. Where else can you tell thick nerds they’re stupid and be right without mods deleting your posts anymore

If words truly had no inherent meaning, how are we having this conversation? The fact you expect me to understand your explanation about linguistic descriptivism shows words do have established meanings

😂 how many strikes do I get in total? Because in my usage, “strike” means “a great point” via linguistic descriptivism

Very funny 😂 why would I look it up if “words do not have meanings”? I can just pick whatever meaning feels best to me based on the context

The performative repetition around audiobooks undermines real discussions about accessibility and learning differences

We could be talking about how different formats serve different needs - instead we're doing this weird social dance of pretending words have wrong meanings, which helps nobody

Sure, I’m not anti audiobook, wasnt my point. I think all this performative stuff around “audiobooks count as reading!” is people trying to publicly perform inclusivity whilst butchering the English language. No amount of repetition stops it being listening instead of reading, nothing will stop that