Thanks for this! I was having to consider getting a DVD player, this is much easier

I read it too fast! Every ten minutes I could get in the day I'd be pulled back in, there's such a density of thoughtful reflection of a world that's sometimes alien to me, sometimes all too familiar. I'm impressed that you got to a place to be able to write this, it hits hard. Thank you

There is love in that alt text, great stuff

Btw, looks like Birlinn aren't sending to Europe currently for your 'rest of world' link? I'm ok with e-book but don't want your sales being thwarted by them not having their shit together

Thanks for sharing this, the honesty alongside the slightly haunting pics of 21 year old you facing into everything changing hit really hard. I'm glad you found the real you through magnificent toil, I'm off to order the book.

Wow social media is such a time suck. Off I go from here for another few months while I work out how the fuck to make my monkey brain deal with 1000 people shouting interesting things at me daily. Or should it even try?

'Politeness doesn’t just disguise injustice, it makes injustice feel reasonable, and resistance feel extreme'. Illuminating stuff, well worth a read if you're a polite Brit

The allure of LLMs slowly eroding my critical faculties is feeling a bit more real today - used Gemini to summarise all the morning news (having already read it) and then dig into longer term drivers of some of the stories. Impressive, but also infantilising. The next few years are going to be weird

US Veterans peacefully protesting Trump’s military birthday parade arrested at Capitol Hill. This is the moment a 80+ year old US veteran is taken away in handcuffs for practicing his 1st Amendment right. #3E #NoKings #NoKingsProtests (🎥 @gregjstoker.bsky.social )

Listen to these Germans. They lived through it. They know how it works.

Oh I see - underperforming schools get made into academies and put under a trust with a 'strong track record'. Victorian discipline ensues?

Ooooh hadn't realised it was UK only, presume it's also the only place to be enjoying delights like 'floor lines'. Ouch, that's bleak

This is something I wasn't aware of, thanks. I'd venture social media may also factor into this, through both presenting curated versions of what other students are doing and for encouraging constant concern about peer approval - 2015 tracks as the start of widespread adoption.

Algorithms are the antithesis of serendipity. It’s why the tech bro cult of optimisation is so corrosive - the Internet was supposed to broaden horizons but the idea that there’s a ‘best’ meal, a ‘best place to stay, a ‘best’ partner, ultimately just shrinks our world and reduces our experiences.

I'm thinking we need a CAPTCHA but for awful vs sound people. Perhaps some sort of charity micropayment to be able to post each time, to a charity they don't get to choose.

LLMs just allowed me to set up hibernate on a Linux laptop (Framework! They are excellent). It might not be AGI but it can be pretty useful when it works - I'd tried this before multiple times and ended in miserable failure

ngl I really miss seeing live acts, thanks for showing it can be done. I'll get there eventually

100%, I wish more of their style of articles were integrated into standard education, demystify the material world around us a bit and make everyone a bit more grateful for the whole tech tree we sit on

One easy way to boost the grid: upgrade the power lines Upgrading power lines — “reconductoring,” in the biz — enables the electricity grid to transmit more power and leak less of it. In this episode, I talk with a CEO and a researcher about the national p...

What is this "reconductoring" magic? Basically it's replacing the lines themselves with newer high-tech, high-capacity lines, which don't weigh substantially more & thus can string along the same towers. Lots more here:

It was particularly disgusting for Archbishop of York to contrast the allegedly Christian values that won the war with ‘godless’ Nazism. He’s apparently unaware that the first organisations banned by the Nazis were humanist ones and Hitler gave a speech boasting he’d stamped out atheism for good!

Same! I think part of being a futurist is also having a deep appreciation of the tech tree that got us there and recognising that there are trade-offs. I was amazed to be playing a vinyl pressed 54 years ago yesterday, I think it's a feature sometimes that it forces a progression of songs

I imagine this is the algorithm mindlessly optimizing for engagement and happening upon some dark exploitation. If so it's more concerning as that doesn't require people to be fiendishly plotting this, it just happens, meaning this will be far more wide reaching.

A second attempt at bluesky, having just burnt my Twitter accounts to the ground. I'm sorry I took so long, them Skinner boxes are compelling