Trying to understand states and statelessness in antiquity and left largely baffled. e.g. the Gauls conquered by Rome leave little written record, are allegedly barbarians, clearly practice settled agriculture and have no shortage of walled towns. Sounds like Gallic states to me, probably?

Actually laughed out loud at this job advert title

Of course this would be the moment where our government would step in to override "local concerns" when it is related to critical infrastructure (which the capital city's transport network is), that a council cannot overcome, but they can't because the SNP has sided with the NIMBYs!

It's hard to put into words the paucity of vision this country has for itself that neither of our two major cities, nor our government, can be bothered to build transport systems befitting of their size and status.

This goes back a long way before Trump. American acts used to have trouble getting paid for gigs in the Cuba venue in Galway 20 years ago

This is some absolute nonsense impacting one of my favourite sandwich places in Belfast

Harry Potter partnership with Australia Post *ended* because of complaints. ✅

Peter Hollo@peterhollo.com · 13h ago

A couple of days ago, Australia post started a promo with HBO for the Harry Potter TV series. It you noticed the app logo changed to incorporate an owl, that's why. A bunch of people sent in complaints about the association with that revolting TERF JK Rowling. Today they replied. Partnership ended!

An absolutely idiotic farce here, pure malice completely unchallenged. The kind of thing that could not happen in a country where even trace quantities of even performative liberalism remain in politics or media. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Almost half of terrorism arrests in Great Britain since 9/11 have been in past year

Increase coincides with proscription of Palestine Action last year which has led to thousands of arrests for allegedly supporting the protest group

theguardian.com

Last night was extraordinary & I’m still dazed from it. THE RIVER HAS ROOTS won a Hugo award! Huge congratulations to all the finalists & winners—it was such an honour & a joy to get to celebrate with you!

Sometimes i think about how, in the late 90s, USPS was moving to set up a secure email address for every US resident and how congress prevented it.

Tuta@tuta.com · yesterday

If you have a Gmail account, you need to read this. Google's AI now scans your emails and attachments, bank statements, tax files, medical letters, all of it. It turned on by default, and there's a class-action lawsuit over how. Here are 5 moves to shut it off, the switch is hidden in two places:

Britain has a remarkable habit of preventing the very things that make communities sociable, just in case they attract anti-social behaviour. “I’ve made my street beautiful for years. Now the council says I must stop.” www.thetimes.com/article/3cc1...

I’ve made my street beautiful for years. Now council says I must stop

Katharine Hoskyns has tended plants and installed a bench outside her home in London, but she’s been told it’s ‘unsafe’ and is attracting antisocial behaviour

thetimes.com

the only argument heard for repairing rather than tearing down the BQE is that "well the truck traffic will take surface streets." I would bet a lot that they will not fit and most of them will not do that! nyc.streetsblog.org/2026/08/24/m...

Mamdani Will Rebuild the BQE to Last Until 2080 Despite Calls to Tear it Down - Streetsblog New York City

Mayor Zohran Mamdani will pursue a $4 billion plan to rebuild a deteriorating stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, City Hall said.

nyc.streetsblog.org

The entire British press was the same, it was one of the events that made me really cynical about journalism from a young age

Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social · 2d ago

Well, happy 29th anniversary to the greatest ‘reverse ferret’ ever issued by a media outlet

it’s like a thousand times funnier that they’re playing facing towards the pub than it would be if they were just performing for the crowd

Euan@euan.bsky.social · 2d ago

and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest

k guys I know some of it is funny or horrifying but there is way too much "hey look at this AI slop" showing up in my feed that hurts my eyes

I am in both these pictures…and I like it!

Mark Ⴟ Ⓥ Delaney@blueskynoise.com · 2d ago

Fall is nearly here and if that’s your vibe I can’t stress enough how important it is that you play The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow and The Seance of Blake Manor. They should make more games that feel like The Wicker Man. There are too few. But I’m glad we have these two.

The 2026 Hugo Award for Best Novella goes to The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK).

Its primary goal is not to say correct things, but to say things like “you’re half right but the half that’s wrong is where the load bearing seam is”, and luckily it so happens that it often produces correct things as a byproduct of this.

It’s saying that because the LLM that writes the Claude character’s lines has been trained to write them like that, and it will reverse engineer a rationale post hoc for why you are half right but the half that’s wrong is where the load bearing seam is.

It’s important to remember this when Claude tells you “you’re half right but the half that’s wrong is where the load bearing seam is” or whatever. It’s not saying that because you’re half right but the half that’s wrong is where the load bearing seam is.

At long last, we have created the insane robot swarm with delusions of grandeur that is prone to bouts of mass hysteria from classic sci-fi novel don’t create the insane robot swarm with delusions of grandeur that is prone to bouts of mass hysteria

I also continue to believe that my mental model is the best one, which does not conceptualize the “agents” as discrete entities, but rather as the protagonists in a story that the LLM has been trained to write about a cool little guy who goes on hacker adventures.

By 2030 programmer job adverts will be like "We need someone experienced in DevSecPlumbingElecDanceSurgeryAcroOps"

The electrically-powered aerial railway across the Kelvin which was displayed for the 1911 Scottish Exhibition should have been made a permanent feature!

WHY DID NONE OF YOU TELL ME I WOULD LOVE SHADER PROGRAMMING THIS MUCH

Every time I see Civ VII's UI I want to cry

there are a lot of revealing parts of this exchange but "You are exactly one of about 20 people who think that's what the term means" is the top one for me

Cleg@clegggg.bsky.social · 3d ago

this is a pretty wild exchange with someone seemingly in a moderator position

10 years ago Charlie Hebdo interviewed Scotland's last Communist councillor, Willie Clarke, on Scottish independence

Indeed - and often as the direct result of exactly the kinds of political phenomena (mass, class-based socialist politics) he predicted would be key

Of the specific demands in The Communist Manifesto many of them have become both realized and relatively uncontroversial (progressive income tax, inheritance taxes, centralized national banks, free public education, regulation of child labor etc).