And then there was the time a sparrowhawk burst out of the woods, through our snowy bird feeder, scattering siskins, long-tailed tits and greenfinches everywhere, and crashed headlong into the window at impossible speed right in front of my face while I was eating breakfast. That helped.
I know you're looking for later adopters, but for me it was grandparents. One set maintained a flock of semi-feral white doves that was always on their roof, and one set had a six foot telescope in their attic constantly trained on an osprey nest at the bottom of their garden. Both magical for kids.
No media on,
no AI demon.
#palindrome
My main worry, that I perhaps didn't express so well, is how an otherwise smart person can believe *both* that AI will inevitably lead to untold suffering and mass death in the near term and also that it should continue be used.
Oh, yes, they meant LLMs for research. Tools like a spellcheck or, say, a specifically ground-truthed program that identifies microfossils from images as a research tool, no problem.
It's the error-generating conversation tools that people use that I object to, and that they were defending.
There is much said in the world that I disagree with but can understand.
I can't even begin to comprehend holding these two beliefs, and on top of that then thinking nothing needed to be done. It's been filling my brain since.
Yesterday I had a conversation in which a bunch of academics
(a) defended the use of generative AI in research and writing.
(b) expressed the opinion that "machines will take over in five years, causing mass starvation". One even saw this as a good thing.
News headline, with picture of dog in front of vets "Vets must publish prices and pet prescription fees to be capped at ยฃ21, watchdog says"
I'm choosing to believe that this is a statement from this actual dog.
All the good work being done by Miliband and his department is totally undermined by the government cosying up to data centres. Embracing AI is such a lose-lose-lose situation.
Various hydroelectric stations for me. Big noisy turbines and getting to watch the fish jump up the salmon ladder near Pitlochry.
I've infiltrated an Irish pub for Super Saturday.
Three wins from three, please...
๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ณ๓ ฃ๓ ด๓ ฟ๐ฎ๐น๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ
Or the cruel pastime of a much feted advisor to the Department of Culture.
Star arts tsar tars rats.
Right, England men. Time to buck up for next week. Get Kildunne in for an inspirational speech. Anything...
It may not be the title decider Borthwick wanted but it'll still be a title decider.
This is maybe the best Six Nations in history. And this weekend has been one of the greatest rounds the tournament has ever had.
Great article on AMOC collapse and acting to avoid even unlikely tipping points.
There is no issue preparing for/preventing disasters that never materialise, but failing to prepare for one that does would be BAD.
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/enviro...
[disclaimer - written by my sister]
The Fossil and the Find A screech unknown of old, in timeless ear, lyric. Hesitance. Storied dynast I, lying, rained on, scar-praised, end-rite so define. Stream browns and stone seethes. A mesa crumbled - be for each a cocoa. Time-travel. Linger. Either ego, or a clever sediment, or else wiser end, erases sayer. A scree chunk now. No fold in time less early riches it. Ancestor. I eddy nastily, ingrained on scarp. Raise dendrites' ode. Finest ream - brown sandstone. See - the same sacrum bled before. A Chaco-coati met, ravelling ere I there go. Oracle-versed, I mentor, elsewise render as essayer.
I occasionally write poetry, usually formal and/or heavily constrained.
This one is about interpreting ambiguous data - in this case the dying 'condylarth' and its discovered remains.
Each half of the poem has the same letters in the same order.
I've got so fed up with people refusing to believe that I'm Scottish that I've started denying their Englishness (it's always English people) by picking a different English accent from theirs and telling them that they don't sound like that so they can't be English.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
The old poem says about the land around Moffat:
"Frae Annan-fit tae Eric-stane
Man and horse lang syne hae gane
Neath greenwood gay"
For so long, the greenwood has been held back by sheep, but it is returning quickly thanks to exclusion and rewilding. Relatively low cost and effort, high impact.
What with this and the Animals of Farthing Wood, 1990s kids TV was so so much more subversive than anything you find today, and that was great.
An 18th-century coded (but actually far future) leader on a throne with a very very tall periwig, a fat body, tiny short legs and a teddy bear. He is laughing with his mouth wide open. An advisor in a long green robe with a long grey beard stands nearby.
I just watched the first episode, and this is a fun line in 2026...
Oscar: Alright, I'll bring you up to date. The bad guy is the leader of the world - Thaddeus Vent - and he's after me!
[Cut to Thaddeus Vent on a throne, looking at a screen]
Vent: Use ... the *image generator* [evil laugh]
A fleeing cartoon blue grand piano with eyes under fire by laser beams in the dark city streets.
It's a BBC show from 1995 called Oscar's Orchestra, starring Dudley Moore.
Oscar is a grand piano that leads a group of musical instruments against an evil dictator who has banned music. He's on the run, and his mere existence is illegal, but he dedicates his life to saving imprisoned instruments.
A blue cartoon grand piano with eyes and with the keys as teeth, in which are sitting a worried looking tuba, a triangle with a baseball cap, and a blonde girl with a bandana. It's a still from Oscar's Orchestra.
I have a clear, old, memory of a TV show with a blue piano and a magical triangle that could become a portal, but until yesterday could never locate it.
Turns out it was about an anti-fascist underground revolutionary group, and I watched it aged 5 or 6.
Allowing our labour to enrich the modern tech aristocrats without compensation? Keir Hardie's spinning could be a new source of renewable energy.
Oh wow! That I didn't expect! Well, I feel honoured to be considered.
If it were me reading to my son's class (year 5) I'd pick something I loved at that age that they probably hadn't read - maybe the start of The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder or The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
The exact book probably matters less than your enjoyment of reading it!
What a result!! Huge congratulations to the amazing Hannah Spencer - everyone in Gorton and Denton has just made history. This result shows @greenparty.org.uk can win anywhere, that the politics of hope can win over the politics of hate & there is no longer any such thing as a Labour safe seat ๐
Ellie Chowns did in North Herefordshire, a seat which had 63% Conservative vote in the previous election. The last non-Tory to win there was a Liberal in 1906.
Adrian Ramsey in Waveney Valley too, with an admittedly notional previous result of 62% Conservative.
The stack of books shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. These are: False Calm, Small Earthquakes, A Training School for Elephants, Moonlight Express, Is A River Alive?, Somebody is Walking on Your Grave, Cautery, Tamarin, I Gave You Eyes And You Looked Towards Darkness, A Splintering, The Two Roberts, Theft, The Girl Who Raced The World, Epic Cities, The Lost Book of Undersea Adventure, The Atlas of Languages, Race to the South Pole, and right at the bottom, the tallest book, Otherlands.
Exciting news - Otherlands Illustrated has been shortlisted for an Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award in the Children's category.
Good to see that time travel counts, and looking forward to going into @stanfordstravel.bsky.social to find out how we've done!
www.stanfords.co.uk/edward-stanf...
North pole winter sea ice is now over a metre thinner than when I was born.
There's only c. 1.5 metres left.
#ClimateCrisis
