Infuriatingly, 10+ years later, those weak safeguards for phone records and other communication metadata have yet to be addressed. In 2023, when Parliament was required to pass other reforms to RICA, we urged MPs and state law advisors to fix this: intelwatch.org.za/2023/10/06/i...
No luck.
A recent update to some old news: Paul Scheepers, a former Crime Intelligence official who was caught 10+ years ago abusing a notorious weak point in SA's surveillance laws to illegal pull people's phone records (including those of senior cops) was convicted in January. iol.co.za/news/crime-a...
To give a sense of the innate AI training bias for African languages: I recently learned that the percentage of websites using Swahili finally reached 0.002% in 2026, per @w3techs.com estimate: w3techs.com/technologies...
It's the second highest ranked African language, after Afrikaans (~0.0025%).
Referring to the stylistic tendency to "a sort of polished language with almost no facts, references, concrete claims or anything", the authors have dubbed it "Synthetic Low-Information Language".
Via Marius Dragomir / mjrc.bsky.social:
An study of 40000 LinkedIn / FB posts looked for stylistic changes after the mainstreaming of gen AI, found roughly 9 of 10 posts since late 2024 were likely AI-drafted.
"The short story: most people have stopped writing their own posts."
bit.ly/4jN5Yly
This @groundup.org.za editorial does a fine job of articulating just how outrageous the gag order against @opensecrets.org.za is. We don't know who gagged them, on what grounds, in which court, or by which judge's ruling. groundup.org.za/article/anon...
I don't know who here remembers the late, utterly loveable Siya Africa -- but I think of him every time I stumble upon a great new podcast and think, 'Damn, would've sent this one to Siya.'
It's called the Siya Test, and it's an invaluable assessment criterion for prestige audio.
A red-skinned sweet potato with a cleft that makes for very suggestive curves
Good morning. I'm pleased to share this vegetable that can be used to test automatic content filters.
Genuine question: 3 years ago, how many people realised how much dramatically *worse* the internet was about to get, and how rapidly it would get there?
We asked people who lived in homeless encampments that were cleared out in city “sweeps” to write about what object was the hardest for them to lose.
“They took my baby pictures and my moms obituaries,” a 29-year-old in California wrote.
My friend Sophie is raising funds to send 12 independent performers to the National Arts Fest this year.
Don't think of it as contributing to their transport costs. Rather tell everyone you paid for Sophie Joans's OnlyVans: thundafund.africa/campaign/182...
A Reddit post: Any advice for entertaining a 3 year old and 6 year old for a 23 hour flight? First response: where are you flying? The fucking moon? Second reply: There's a FUCKING moon?! Third reply: Yar, but she's a Harsh Mistress
The boys are having a ball over on Dad Reddit
Unmelted cheese melt
Repulsive Philly cheesesteak that looks like insoles
Weird deflated hot dog
Cheesy chips that are just.... Fries with loose slices of cheese on top
This account just posts food at British football stadiums and it's the most upsetting shit I've ever seen
I came here to find out what happened in the game, which I eventually figured out, and also found this extremely valid point about Bluesky.
I peeked in on Netflix's new Asterix series, really just to see how they'd messed it up, and am happy to report: it's *delightful*.
For those who grew up on the comics, it feels like they managed to capture the original spirit while still making it feel contemporary. youtu.be/bJnDJcoeqZs?...
But four years after the fires, getting this one small glimpse into the ongoing work of the people trying to put everything back together has also left me with deep gratitude for the untiring nerdish dedication of the librarians.
Bless em.
The archivist informed me that the David Marais collection was partially damaged in the fire, so I'd been feeling Rather Virtuous. But reading through the account of the losses -- I just feel sad. This little act of restoration is nice symbolism. But measured against the true loss to memory? Pfft.
As of that 2023 article, the full losses had yet to be fully counted, in part because the fires claimed the exact records which would helped: about a third of the catalogue files were destroyed, along with the "beautiful, redbound volumes" which gave a seven-decade record of all donated items.
You'll recall: UCT's Jagger library's vast archive of rare books, historical papers, and assorted Africana was gutted in a fire 2021. The archivists called it " tragic and irreparable loss to South African research and historiograph." www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Anyway, I didn't know what to do with the cartoon, but couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. I discovered there was a collection of his papers in UCT's Manuscripts and Archives; I wrote to them and they agreed to accept it as a donation.
A brief search established the cartoonist as David Marais, who worked for the Cape Times. (Apparently first as their Parliamentary correspondent, but they eventually started publishing his Press Gallery doodles, putting him on double-duty as cartoonist/reporter: africacommons.net/collections/... )
The image shows apartheid PM Vorster on a therapist's chair, surrounded by a cloud of ... anarchist bombers? The doc asks: "And which one do you call Centlivres?”
(The deeper meaning is lost on me, but Centlivres was chief justice in the 50s - presumably this dates to when Vorster was an MP.)
A black-and-white cartoon framed and mounted in faded mat board. It depicts apartheid Prime Minister BJ Vorster on a therapist's chair, surrounded by a pixe-like cloud of anarchists bombers? The therapist leans forward and asks Vorster: "Very interesting. And which one do you call Centlivres?”
Something moderately cool that happened to me: a while back I found this obscure (to me) historical political cartoon in a set of frames bought at a charity shop, and I've just gratefully transferred it into the care of UCT's Special Collections library.
A brief thread of useless minutiae:
The comparison is doubly true because both outbreaks are overwhelming the obvious results of a set of voluntary and avoidable choices.
According to science: your coworkers judge you for using AI in your job. pivot-to-ai.com/2025/05/10/y... via @paulmwatson.com
I realise AI product features are like CGI in films - we tend only to notice them when they're really bad. But Jesus wept, it feels like we're beset on all sides by really bad AI product features. Almost always as the default, mandatory user experience.
Who are the people who are enjoying this??
Refuses to pay his debt to society. Shellfish.
Every time I try to use generative AI for anything remotely useful I walk away feeling like it's a softserve machine that makes pretty decent ice cream 60% of the time, slightly disappointing ice cream 35% of the time, and 5% of the time it spits out liquid pig shit.
I can't work with those odds.
I'm certain with better prompts or a more powerful model I could get better outcomes. But brief excursions like this really shore up my GenAI curmudgeonliness.
I can't lose any more time on this nonsense so won't factcheck the summaries properly (some of which disappeared after I aborted the query), but even these appeared to be at least partially hallucinated. F'rinstance, Equal Education appears not to have litigated in the Makhanda High Court.