He also, despite his intellectual prominence, didn’t spend his time flying on the private jet of a billionaire pedophile.

UK supreme court hearing interrupted by history podcast played from judge’s phone Proceedings briefly halted after audio from The Rest Is History broadcast over the courtroom speakers

Lord Briggs will forever be kicking himself that he didn’t say, as he turned off the podcast, “The rest is silence”.
www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb...

Farewell, CIA World Factbook; you’ll be remembered most of all for your weirdly precise estimates of country’s Population.

Tautologous headline: King Harold coins could ONLY come from 1066!

…. Too soon?

Thailand suspected money-laundering scheme investigation pulls in World | Biometric Update Authorities in Thailand have seized several of World's iris biometrics scanners from a partner as part of an investigation into money laundering allegations.

World has unexpectedly had their orbs seized in Thailand. www.biometricupdate.com/202601/thail...

This is indeed fantastic news. My daughter ended up in ICU with a complication of Chicken Pox. If other kids (and their parents) are spared this, I’m delighted.

Happy “When is Bin Day” Day to all who celebrate.

Sorry! But, thanks for sharing! And thanks to @marcusolang.substack.com

You’re right on the cause (and, by the way, what a depressing career for someone able to write eloquently in their second or third language).

But that doesn’t take away from the brilliance of that piece from @sirosenbaum.bsky.social! So much now about Kenyan English makes sense now!

Appreciate this piece from Marcus but the piece that’s missing from this essay is the fact that Kenyans and Indians are the primary content moderators or “clean up crew” for the commercially available AI data sets. So yes, he’s right to be upset at the implication but the next step is asking “why?”

Die Hard with a Vengeance is also a Christmas movie.

Yes, it’s set in summer, but it has endless Christmas references, jokes, Characters humming carols etc.

Dear Ars Technica,
I wish to draw to your attention the error in the image for this article.That’s no moon.

You’ve earned enough credit by now that I let “favourably quoting the guy who wrote 1421” slide.

Wish I had an interesting anecdote for this. My own career path is just so cliched, you’re seen it a thousand times. (lecturing in North African history at a Tanzanian University/road safety charity in Huddersfield/privacy NGO/civil service).

We’d miss you, Gary!

I might be being unfair, given that the name:
A) originated, as I understand it, with African Americans;
B) it is appropriate to have a name so closely linked to a particular time and place as Thom shows; and
C) Charles Lindbergh’s views weren’t known at the time.

But: I’m sorry, I have trouble getting over the name, and the grim irony of something so wedded to African America experience and the Harlem Renaissance is associated with an America First Nazi sympathiser.

Maybe a rebrand is in order?

A tour-de-force on the history of the lindy hop, written with an infectious joy that appeals even to someone like me who can barely manage the Hokey Cokey.

This is good news! The weapon we have against the AIs conquering the world isn’t military resistance, or that humans are capable of love: it’s cat memes.

And if there’s anything the human race is good at, it’s producing inane nonsense on social media. The world is safe.

I originally included a footnote on this very issue in my PhD on the political history of Kilimanjaro. However, I followed the advice of a friend and removed it.

I have regretted it ever since.

Apple News headline on a click bait article featuring a oharoh’s anus

I don’t know what to worry more about:
A) the subeditor who decided that “Pharoh’s anus” would make it click bait; or
B) the algorithm that decided I was a Pharoh’s anus kind of guy.

Today in anonymisation is hard:

bsky.app/profile/waff...

Was a picture of a larger weevil also submitted to the contest; did they choose the lesser of two weevils?

Update: no.

Will I be able to understand MacOS 26 if I’ve not seen MacOS16 to 25?

Clever people of BlueSky, help me out:
a) Putnam’s ant on a beach drawing a caricature of Winston Churchill is disturbingly similar to an AI Chatbot, but why isn’t it? And:
b) does that mean I’m a brain in a vat or not?

They’ve also gone to lengths to capitalise the ‘W’, putting it at the start of a verb-less sentence - grammar be damned - after what clearly should have been a colon.

My daughter ended up in the ICU after one of the rare complications to chickenpox. While she made a full recovery, I’m delighted that no other kid has to go through that. Brilliant news that the vaccination will be offered on the NHS!

Great stuff. I know that these are in no way have personalities, but I do find it amusing how often AI comes across as just being really lazy.

For LLMs, it’s always Friday afternoon, with a hangover, in a job they hate.

Hehe President POO-tihn.

Yes, I have been spending the a lot of time with my 5-year olds this summer holiday, why do you ask?