Such a brilliant idea to generate your own data and then do a dataviz piece on it 🤯 pudding.cool/2026/06/mow/

Why some people mow a lawn better than others

We analyzed 132,003 attempts to mow a virtual lawn efficiently.

pudding.cool

This seems odd for the AISI. What exactly did they expect?

Elon is talking about using robots to build a mass accelerator on the moon in support of an economy 1000x to 1 million times the current earth economy. It's a bad sci fi novel not an earnings call.

NEW ANA & DIN BOOK RELEASED TODAY YEAH YEAH YEAH

If you met someone who had fallen out of love with reading, and you had one shot at getting them back into it, what book would you give them? For a thing.

I recall we had a period of time where the response of Starmer and Cooper to concerns about these groups was ‘I like flags’

Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social · yesterday

Leaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.

Typically good take from Pete. Literary devices or tropes (“this murder mystery exists to explore the world I’ve created”/“this fantastical concept is an allegory”) are interesting. Genres are just a marketing tool, and not a very interesting one.

Pete Fraser@petefrasermusic.bsky.social · yesterday

3: what is your favourite genre? I hate the concept of genre. I think it dulls the imagination and does nothing so much as close avenues of possibility.

I don't want to overindex on this, but Rod Liddle died and now it's finally raining?

Quite a few times over the last year someone would tell me Reform would win the next election and I'd tell them not to be so silly and they'd look at me like I had just arrived from Mars. But honestly, there was zero chance that bunch of losers could win anything. Just look at them.

George Eaton@georgeeaton.bsky.social · 2d ago

It’s long been clear that Reform is beatable – Farage’s terrible personal ratings, toxic brand, mass tactical voting against them. The narrative that victory for them is inevitable was based on superficial analysis + wishful thinking on the right.

Why do so many progressives want this? I just don't get it.

Al@btown85.bsky.social · 2d ago

The pressure on kids too! In Berlin they get divided after the 6th class (12). My eldest already under so much pressure (despite us trying to remove it) to do well in exams etc to ensure she’s at the gymnasium. Parents going nuts in regards to it. They’re 9!

i hadn't checked a while and i was feeling bad about the quality of content but no this is still worth running

USER WAS BLOCKED FOR THIS POST@blockedforthispost.bsky.social · last wk.

are you british

Fascinating change in BBC news bulletins about Reform. Farage announcement on small boats only gets the third spot and is balanced by critics saying he's trying to distract from allegations over his finances. Quite the change from the uncritical coverage earlier this year.

Question: Tell me what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989. Here are the answers from two popular open-source Chinese AI models.

Social Media Lab@socialmedialab.ca · 3d ago

"Most tech analysts are aware that Chinese models have Chinese Communist Party controls built into them, but the problem is often understood too narrowly. Many assume that these models simply refuse to answer politically sensitive questions..." www.worldpoliticsreview.com/china-ai-mod...

I think this is genuinely a thing. Same with books too. I read loads of age inappropriate stuff I found on my parent's shelves and it was great. Where are nerdy kids going to do that now?

Altaira Morbius@altairamorbius.bsky.social · 3d ago

Not even joking that, as a teacher, the fact that kids aren’t encountering shows like Frasier is part of why we’re seeing such weird gaps in reading. We built a lot of background knowledge with humor aimed at grownups, while they only see content aimed specifically at their personal interests/age.

I think my most genuinely unpopular take is that a widely held and genuine consumer preference for cheaper, lower-quality goods, not private equity, is driving the decline in quality of consumer goods like clothing and housewares.

this owns www.inverse.com/input/cultur...

The adorable love story behind Wikipedia’s 'high five' photos

Nearly 14 years later, the tale of this iconic couple can finally be told.

inverse.com

current feelings around AI: the CEOs shoveling slop into everything should be in jail but the guys spending upwards of $60,000 on elaborate, janky home rigs to run local models for no reason other than to see if it works are engaging in a long and semi-honorable tradition of computer toucher shit

Surely we all learned years ago that one should never discuss covid? Absolutely guaranteed to provoke stupid arguments.

This article is hilarious. First, panic over a reseller buying used books for destructive scanning by AI companies because they must be rare books, but turns out none are particularly rare, booksellers are happy to get rid of them, and the reseller has nothing to do with AI cos or digitization

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 4d ago

‘More than just objects’: Australian book sellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI

This is a good thread on the speed and pace at which LLMs are producing new maths results

Erik Istre@eistre91.bsky.social · 4d ago

Math PhD here. I didn't pursue it as a career and just wanted to do some real niche research. I'm a bit lapsed in that regard so this is more of an "educated layman" take. My research was in (nonclassical) foundations of math and I feel somewhat qualified to have an opinion there. 1/13

If you’re a Gondorian soldier your experience with hobbits is a tiny guy shows up with a wizard and is immediately taken in the Steward’s counsel. He saves Faramir when the Steward goes mad. A second tiny guy arrives with the Rohirrim and kills the Witch King. The first one then goes on campaign …

Every time I change at Birmingham it is a 1km sprint because my train is 5 minutes late.

Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · 4d ago

What I love about all train companies is they all believe very deeply that they have Japanese or Swiss levels of reliability when they plan your transfer time. Ten minutes interchange at Florence, Trenitalia? Really? Ten minutes at Darlington, LNER? Seriously?

Acrobat has offered to turn a PDF of an airport parking ticket into a podcast. Can’t imagine it would be a great listen.

ANTHROPIC: Our son loves humanity and for the low price of trillions and trillions of dollars will usher in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity! OPENAI: Our horrible oafish son is hacking web sites without our permission. ANTHROPIC: (eyes narrowing) Our son is also evil

Yeah this is good

Dario Perkins @darioperkins.bsky.social · 6d ago

I'm slow to this, but here is a beautiful piece on the dynamics of the AI buildout and how they could flip into reverse. Wish I had written it tbh www.groundbrkr.com/p/the-second...

Oh my God, this is not a drill - LinkedIn has added 'seems like AI slop' as an option on posts Genuinely thought it was a joke until I clicked on a few posts

Just incredibly dumb to use AI for this.

Dan Sohege@danielsohege.bsky.social · 7d ago

Many in the migrants' rights sector have been warning about exactly this. AI is absolutely not suitable for being used in asylum cases. Not only because of the risk of "hallucination", but also because it is unable to deal with the nuance and complexity. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

"let's just embrace a Moscow lifestyle"

Tom Phillips@tom-phillips.com · 7d ago

One thing that doesn't seem to have really cut through is that if the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation collapses - which in recent years has gone from "very distant possibility" to "uh, guys" - we don't get a Mediterranean climate, we freeze.