East Croydon tribute act 💀

Impossible to disagree with a single word that Ben Rhodes (Obama era NSC official) is saying here:

I would believe *other entities* will end up spending similar amounts on training and inference, but I suspect we rapidly get to the point where marginal cost of improvement gets so astronomical (in part due to a lack of clean training material) that foundation models just stop improving materially.

What "autistic spectrum" actually means

Last week, I wrote about the difference between a psychological trait and a neurological one. This week I want to address something that makes that distinction harder to see: a widespread misconception about what "spectrum" means in the context of autism.

🧵

This is a really beautiful way of expressing this that captures the deeper semiotics of Mamdani's political messaging. It's about returning dignity and humanity to people and jobs that have been overlooked, except for the brief and long-forgotten moment of the pandemic.

Well, from a given perspective, given the problem of Government by Senior Citizen, I reckon they do...

Ah, sorry. Appreciate your patience

Subs?

And finally, 'can't it be a bus' is a fair question from DfT/Treasury. The fact is that making buses frequent and reliable in Leeds would have 4x the connectivity impact of Phase 1 of its tram extension.

Trams have capacity/permanence benefits, but they shouldn't preclude lower hanging fruit.

An Explanation (Which I Would Be Very Grateful If You Took The Time To Read) What follows is a minor modern horror story.

THREAD.
Substack is evil. I can't emphasise this enough. Their line that anyone can leave easily & take their subscriber list with them is bullshit. I left & it cost me a large sum of money. It forced me briefly back onto Substack to try to clear up the mess... tomcox.substack.com/p/an-explana...

a man and a boy are posing for a picture and the man is wearing a shirt that says aero Alt: a man with egg on his face. A boy laughs in the background

Oh! 😄 Of course

Ah, meant to copy
bsky.app/profile/rike...

It is (and I say this as a combat veteran of the 101st), but also...
bsky.app/profile/rike...

Yeah, I am...

That's home. That's us.

This image of home just came down from the Artemis II crew.

Taken after their translunar injection burn, there are aurorae at top right and lower left, and zodiacal light at lower right.

Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman

nasa employee: oh hey u guys are back early

astronaut: Office365 in spaceship

nasa employee: what?

astronaut: *loading a pistol and getting back on the rocket-ship* Office365 in spaceship

The Artemis rocket launches with a chyron below that says: Weather presenter Carol Kirkwood leaves BBC after 28 years.

Dramatic scenes at BBC Breakfast.

Floormaxxing

This thread is a glorious collection of Irish history nerds in consensus on their hatred for Cromwell.

This made me lol. I read the op and was like:

What a lovely 🧵

Pic of Utrecht from 1982 to now

I put "trams" as one of my interests on my name badge at #atmosphereconf as a joke, but this before/after of Utrecht in the Netherlands is why...

Urban spaces in North America are mostly awful, and traditional 19th/early 20th century spaces were torn down or filled in for highways

OMFG. I served under a lieutenant in 1990 in Iraq with the 101st who... Would have been this guy. This is a terrifying thought... It will happen

painted sidings at 9th and Washington: a colorful, NYC graffiti-style “no ICE”

painted sidings at 9th and Washington: hearts, a cherry blossom, “love over hate” and “no such thing as they, just us”

painted sidings at 9th and Washington: a really cute 开心每一天, with a stylized 每 that looks like a smiley face

painted sidings at 9th and Washington: ‘GO BIRDS’ and ‘DON’T BE A NEUTRAL ASS BITCH’

love, peace, go birds, no ICE, don’t be a neutral ass bitch

Schroedinger's DEI

DEI computing...

Great reply thread on why Kharg is a delusion that will probably cost a lot of lives for nothing.

I absolutely fucking hate the way our reality produces situations that even the most deranged, cocaine-addled science fiction author couldn't come up with.

Like, nobody could have such low levels of faith in humanity required to even imagine such a grim scenario... yet there it is.

2/3 This is what democracy looks like in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, county seat of #BucksCounty. #NoKings #DefendDemocracy Photos by @mikemaney.bsky.social

Whoof! I dunno. Seems kinda harsh ... On McNamara