Bad idea #3442: a Ringworld and Dune crossover novel called Ringworm.

I had reason to look something up on my LJ and found how I used to write whole entire several-paragraph blog posts multiple times in one day and now I hate short-form social media and algorithms even more. Remember, fellow kids? Remember how it used to be? 😭

We’ve seen a small step forward - allowing some asylum-seeking doctors to work after 12 months. But in a country facing staff shortages, why are we making people wait at all?

Engineers, researchers, carers - everyone has something to offer.

One of the things that stuck with me from one of the many UBI pilots is how people started talking with each other more in person in the community, and the reason was because people felt they would no longer be asked for money. And so UBI increased social cohesion by making sure everyone had money.

It looks like the rooftop protest episode of any prison drama from the 1970s.

I wear noise cancelling earbuds at work and people assume I'm listening to music, so don't talk to me. Truth is I'm listening to long podcasts covering centuries of war crimes and genocides in horrific detail because even they aren't as depressing as my day job.

A chalkboard with text: A WISE DOCTOR ONCE WROTE [indecipherable squiggle]

I needed cheering up today, and this board on a wall in a pub in Aberdare has done the trick.

I used to comfort eat a lot. When a large takeaway was delivered I would open the door whilst shouting to my non-existent partner 'Rob' that our dinner had arrived. A man in Sainsbury's once asked how many children I was feeding. I said I was having a party.

Two hooded figures come to a house.WE HAVE COME FOR THE CHILD. Mother: SO SOON? WE COULDN'T SEE THE HARM! WE ONLY WANTED HIM TO ENJOY READING! FOR MOST, IT ENDS THERE. OH LORD! WHAT HAVE I DONE! WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE GOT HIM A LIBRARY CARD! WHAT IS DONE CANNOT BE UNDONE. IT IS TIME DO NOT CRY MOTHER I AM A WRITER NOW.

Cartoon by Tom Gauld.

It would be lovely to see our former Westminster MP Beth Winter occupying one of these seats as a community independent. I made up my mind yesterday to cast my vote for her, and I'll see if I can bring some of my friends to her side as well.

'St George for England and St Pancras for Scotland' - magnificent joke in the Magic Roundabout which took me about 25 years to get.

If you bought five hundred million pounds worth of broken 486 computers, you'd get a better return. You'd at least have the boxes they were delivered in.

The Faragists are set on trying to represent the past as a theme park we must return to, same never-never nostalgia all the rw populists sell as their soma. Utter shower of shysters.

To be honest, I thought Shakespeare's birthday was tomorrow.

and tomorrow.

and tomorrow.

Overheard train chat between two tough-looking youths:
Youth one: “I got déjà vu, man. I saw this dog and felt like I’d seen it before.”
Youth two: “That’s not déjà vu. You just saw a dog twice.”

An excellent choice!

21.00 iCLAUDIUS The new emperor has only been in power for six months but already requires charging every four hours and is clearly overheating when he shouldn't be. But the staff at the Pomum Store aren't interested.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

The NASA 'Hello World' photo shows an Earth interconnected with the cosmos Apollo 8, Apollo 17 and Voyager 1 all took iconic photos of Earth from outside: Earthrise, Blue Marble and Pale Blue Dot. They inspired and...

It takes more than a photograph to change the course of a capitalist system which views planets as resources to be extracted and sold. #EarthDay

Screenshot of a tweet by Senator Mark Kelly (@SenMarkKelly) pointing out that George Washington prioritized smallpox vaccination for his troops as key to winning the Revolutionary War, concluding that "a founding father from 250 years ago had a better understanding of science and military readiness than Pete Hegseth." He quote-tweets a Washington Post breaking news report that Hegseth has ended the military's annual flu vaccine requirement.

Victory favors those who follow the science.

I can't visit my elderly mother because of Covid, when we call each other on speaker phone she always forgets to hang up. I like listening to her making a cup of tea & singing and walking round the house for a while. Fesshole GOLD from 3rd March 2021

FESSHOLE LIVE TICKETS

Royal Mail invests £500m to tackle late deliveries as second-class post cut back Courier promises to meet new delivery targets by next May after being fined last year for poor record

Royal Mail scandal.

2nd-class post will be delivered every other weekday, scrapped on Saturdays.

Company hasn't met any letter delivery targets since privatisation, so regulator reduces targets.

Price won't be reduced for worse service

Promise of £500m investment by ripping off customers.

The right-wing press: power without responsibility? Behind the stirring, ostensibly patriotic headlines how much power do the UK’s right-wing press wield, and how much do the public know about it?

Behind the stirring, ostensibly patriotic headlines how much power do the UK’s right-wing press wield, and how much do the public know about it? | Jim Price

Given how lame the Bluesky management is, I kinda wanna set up another social media thing and we can call it Sunset, and it'll do the same as Bluesky except not be run by lame-asses and it'll have an edit button. Unfortunately I suspect it might cost some millions of money, right?

I changed my car insurance one month after joining a new company, purely because their hold music is AI generated slop, completely unlistenable, annoying, and ultimately, for me, a professional musician, insulting.

Govt strategy has always to been to underfund a public service until people complain, then offer privatisation as answer

Privatisation invariably provides worse service at a higher price

Eg: we have most expensive trains in Europe & public subsidy is 4x what it was when trains were nationalised

I hope you feel better soon, mate.

I JUST did a particularly loud fart that had the smell of a castle I visited in Wales as a boy. What great memories of that holiday came flooding back to me. I wonder if any one else has dropped an air biscuit that has taken them on a trip down memory lane. Steve, Spalding

subscriptions >>> shop.viz.co.uk/viz355bs

Wow, this is some repugnant Nazi shit.

Frontier AI Models Are Doing Something Absolutely Bizarre When Asked to Diagnose Medical X-Rays Frontier AI models generated "detailed image descriptions and elaborate reasoning traces" without ever seeing the images.

“The number one [takeaway] would be that just because the AI is saying, very convincingly, that it is seeing something, it doesn’t mean that it is actually seeing that.”

Holy fucking shit, just use humans.