Ben Cooper
@btcooper.bsky.social
Senior data officer at Dogs Trust Research. All about R, data viz, stats, hillwalking, Warhammer and a whole host of other nerdy pursuits!
Latest mad thing to be carried on my cargo bike - 35kg of plywood in ~1m long chunks. Interesting effect on the handling - *very* stable above ~10km/h but basically could only be steered like a ship. Incredibly loud over any slightly rough road surfaces... But all in all, great success!
Thor living up to his name during last night's thunderstorms
Game: Majora's Mask (2000) Moment: You save the world, you reunite lovers, you help countless folk heal and rebuild. Then the world ends, the game resets, everything is forgotten. Learning: Doing kind things is important even when you cannot be there to see the outcome. /4
Majora's Mask: Final Day Moon Crash
ALT: Majora's Mask: Final Day Moon Crash
static.klipy.com
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... This is shoddy reporting by the BBC, and stuff like this will massively contribute to the problematic hype around LLMs and AI. Makes it seem like they just said "Hey ChatGPT, design me a vaccine".
'World-first' vaccine designed by artificial intelligence
Cambridge scientists say they have, for the first time, tested a vaccine designed by AI.
bbc.co.uk
Little known fact - he also moonlighted as a @bobgooday.bsky.social impersonator.
Working Class History @workingclasshistory.com · 2mo ago#OtD 5 Jun 1868 Marxist industrial unionist, James Connolly was born in Edinburgh to Irish parents. An advocate of Irish independence and a member of the @IWW Connolly was executed by British authorities following the unsuccessful Easter rising of 1916 stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/1053...
I for one will continue to use single sex spaces, and if any so called 'defender of women and girls' tries to stop me from using the toilet, I will gladly piss on their shoes 😤
This is the problem. A pitch to voters "turning to Greens and Reform". You have to actually choose between the voters who want what they perceive as a socially liberal socialist environmentalist party and the ones who want fascism. You can't appeal to both, and now they all hate you.
The Guardian@theguardian.com · 3mo agoKeir Starmer makes late pitch to voters turning to Greens and Reform
Deepfakes are everywhere, but digital forensics investigators are fighting back. Learn more: https://scim.ag/42dMPBg
I'd forgotten how terribly laid out Leeds station is. If you have a platform 0A, something has gone terribly wrong
This year’s “Woman you should know about” for International Women’s Day is Josephine Baker. Dancer, singer, actress, civil rights activist, pilot and recipient of France’s highest order of merit, the Legion of Honour. 🧵 1/22
Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh, once asked me if I had ever seen anyone die. When I responded "No", he said "Well, it's only a matter of time" and walked away.
Kayla Cromer Official@kaylacromer.bsky.social · 5mo agoTell me a random fact about yourself that sounds fake but is 100% true.
A letter to Martin Rhodes, my MP, regarding the recently-announced budget cuts to astronomy and other curiosity-driven science in the UK. (Full text in on my blog, apologies that I couldn't fit it all in alt text: daniel-williams.co.uk/2026/02/10/l...)
Incredible for a BBC article to just drop this nickname in there with absolutely zero context on who he is (other than "shark expert") and why he has that nickname. No notes.
Are you a data scientist who wants to help improve dog welfare? Come and join my team! R or Python, fully remote within the UK, £37k, closes 29th January. Please reskeet! careers.dogstrust.org.uk/en/postings/...
Data Officer
Job Opening: Data Officer at Dogs Trust in Home-based.
careers.dogstrust.org.uk
Are you a data scientist who wants to help improve dog welfare? Come and join my team! R or Python, fully remote within the UK, £37k, closes 29th January. Please reskeet! careers.dogstrust.org.uk/en/postings/...
Data Officer
Job Opening: Data Officer at Dogs Trust in Home-based.
careers.dogstrust.org.uk
Additional escalation in my "what's the maddest thing I can transport by cargo bike?" This is a track saw in the panniers plus 2.4m of tracks. Additionally, more bikes should have a rudder to aid steering :D
We've been through this. There is no shame in easy mode. There is no shame in reading/watching tutorials. Some people have 80hrs/wk to pump into gaming. The rest of us have families & jobs. A built in "Fuck, how do I get past this so I can start having fun again?" button? Sure. Let people have fun.
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 7mo ago“The patent describes the idea of a ‘ghost’ character upon whom players could call in times of need; when summoned, the ghost could step into the player’s metaphorical shoes to either demonstrate what they’re doing wrong or just complete the challenging section for them.” 🤦🏿♂️
calling a military tech company Anduril: honestly, solid name, vibes of Aragorn's sword positive calling a data company Palantir: sinister, but at least in a way that makes sense calling your home security company *Sauron*, a cartoonishly evil villain famously undone by poor threat monitoring: ???
TechCrunch@techcrunch.com · 7mo agoSauron is appearing on the scene as concerns rise about crime among the most wealthy.
Something worth noting: Rockstar is leaning HEAVILY on the excuse that the unionising employees were "leaking private company information" They want people to assume this means game info or assets. But I will bet you CASH MONEY this translates to: 'they were comparing salaries and work contracts"
PC Gamer@pcgamer.com · 9mo ago"Rockstar, Rockstar, you're disgusting, we charge you with union busting," the protesters declared.
Imagining a situation room somewhere under Buckingham palace where they're sliding little figures of nobility and clergy around the country, trying not to let the paedophilia become too concentrated in one area
Henry Morris@mrhenrymorris.substack.com · 9mo ago'Moving Andrew well away from Windsor was clearly felt the better option. More live, infantilising graphics as we have them.'
Incredible thermal inversion over Edinburgh from the pentlands this morning. Taken from Carnethy hill looking north-east, you can see Turnhouse, Castlelaw, Allermuir and Caerketton hills. What you can't see is any of the city of Edinburgh! @threadinburgh.scot @secretedinburgh.bsky.social
since we're talking about The Other Place, one now pointless gripe I still have is that actually it could have remained a fair bit more pleasant and usable and useful if more people just used the non-algorithmic timeline and I'll never understand why they didn't just do it
Just because an LLM can produce a report with various figures & charts doesn't mean it is good at statistics. Because good statistics is not about producing code. It's about deep knowledge of study design & conduct. In my opinion, 95% of all data science problems come from poor questions & design.
Terry McGlynn@hormiga.bsky.social · 10mo agoY'all. I just got ChatGPT to do everything in R for this manuscript. I mean EVERYTHING. And it's all legit and reproducible. I'm shook. How are we mentoring our trainees in statistics now? Who needs to learn coding in R line by line, and who doesn't? scienceforeveryone.science/statistics-i...
Newsletter: This is The Case Against Generative AI, a comprehensive analysis of a financial collapse built on myths I’ll dispel, the markets’ unhealthy obsession with NVIDIA's growth, and the fact that there is not enough money in the world to fund OpenAI. www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...
The Case Against Generative AI
Soundtrack: Queens of the Stone Age - First It Giveth Before we go any further: This is, for the third time this year, the longest newsletter I've ever written, weighing in somewhere around 18,500 wo...
wheresyoured.at
