Mark Masterson
@mastermark.me
Trying to do better. A hell of a lot less clever than I used to think I was. Recovering male human. CEO of Ito (itoworld.com)
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What a fantastic thread, on what is clearly a devastating report. As someone who is on the receiving end (or would argue why I think we should be) of a tiny portion of funding like this, it lights up starkly how bizarre the end result of HMTs actions become, at the coal face...
Giles Wilkes@gilesyb.bsky.social · yesterdayQuotes: "during our period of study (1993-2024), mechanisms designed to regulate spending tended towards input control and short-term decision-making, struggled to support strategic investment and often failed to deliver sustained improvements in outcomes."
"The idea of society may sound appealing, but it's old men who will take the hit, planting trees under whose shade they might never sit."
USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · 2d agoOpinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.
Love drone footage of new builds in exurban Texas, gives me a very particular kind of dread to look at that is hard to replicate with other photos.
Dancing banana upstages far right in Manchester While thousands celebrated Trans Pride in Manchester, latest Charlie Kirk wannabe, Restore Britain’s Montgomery Toms, drew twenty onlookers a mile away, comprehensively beaten for attention by a dancing banana searchlightmagazine.com/2026/08/danc...
Dancing banana upstages far right in Manchester | Searchlight
While thousands celebrated Trans Pride in Manchester, the latest Charlie Kirk wannabe, Restore Britain's Montgomery Toms, drew twenty onlookers a mile ...
searchlightmagazine.com
This was (by far) the best thing Marvel ever did, in TV or cinema, in my view... Moon Knight was good, this was much better
IGN@ign.com · 2d agoWonder Man's showrunner confirms that "contracts were signed" and "schedules were cleared" before its abrupt demise. https://bit.ly/3TxJ08Y
"We meticulously set down and agreed upon strict limitations on face-eating, I can't believe the leopard would still do this!"
Seeing news of Google DeepMind killing AplhaFold and people rightly pointing out how it fueled hype of general AI, and cannot help think back of the mansplainers in my mentions about this post 🙄
Iris van Rooij 💭@irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 3w agoProtein folding is intractable in general, so the barrier cannot have been broken algorithmically in general. Where is the scam hidden? Either algorithms consume super-polynomial resources or they are simply not solving the problem reliably. There is no other way, unless P = NP So which is it?
One thing about math proofs (and software, etc) is that they're checkable to some extent by deterministic software. There's still need for humans in the loop, but an LLM and a deterministic checker feedbacking on each other is much more powerful than an LLM alone.
…are as powerful and as capable as people claim, and more, their integration and use would likely spell tdo deep and lasting damage to human expertise. Ceding hermeneutical, heuristic, & all-around epistemic authority to systems which do not care about knowledge or truth or fact is Not Good For Us.
Jesus me beans... I was today years old when I learned that authors are starting to have to think about having (and providing) proof of work, and... Just... This timeline sucks
Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway.com · 5d agoI’m probably further down that road than most - I’ve basically put together a non-Microsoft, non-Apple, non-Google software environment to write my next book in, in part so I can say clearly that I’ve routed around AI, and I couldn’t *prove* non-use.
Imagining the reaction (say, by the likes of the Daily Mail) if this was an imam trying to share their views on their own religion in this way...
Hemant Mehta@friendlyatheist.com · last wk.Evangelist Whitney Lynn says she preaches on planes because she loves “a captive audience.” She's not alone. It's becoming a trend. If spreading your message requires listeners who can't escape, maybe it's not as compelling as you think. www.friendlyatheist.com/p/christian-...
"A concentration camp, in its most basic definition, is a place where a targeted civilian population, not necessarily accused of a crime, is detained and at least some of their basic rights are suspended," writes @jwashing.bsky.social. "That’s precisely what’s happening in the United States today."
Don’t call them ICE detention centers. Call them camps | John Washington
I’ve spent a decade reporting on immigration enforcement. The word ‘camp’ best captures the political function of these facilities
theguardian.com
So this week I discovered there is a wood in N Wales that requires caution from the tree surgeons still because it was the fake Liverpool in WWII and deliberately attracted German bombs.
Holiday in the climate emergency. No that’s not AI or edited, just a snapshot I just took with my phone on Lacanau beach in France. What future will this boy grow up in? It is in our hands, but time is running out.
Some tedious Tory spinner is RIGHT NOW trying to gin up some "funny" line about how Labour has appointed more Chancellors called Healey than blah blah blah and I'm here, ruining the joke in advance
Andy Burnham is about to fix UK fiscal problems by hitting the craziest Kalshi parlay the world has ever seen
Tuffy@smtuffy.bsky.social · 2w agoIt is beyond comical that allegedly serious people refer to this slop gambling platform as a legitimate source of insight
Ah I wish I could type reliably correctly spelled text on a damn phone. But alas, I cannat
Great thread... It's the Mahmood stuff that is frightening me. That would be a change from the image he projected here in MCR
Jennifer Williams@jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 3w agoAB, a 🧵
Or Oldham and Bramhall (the latter being me)
Jennifer Williams@jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 3w agoI don’t know how he combines all of this with a message to London, but he managed to speak to both Withington and Wigan in his time here. Plus I’m sure Londoners must feel a sense of a broken contract too, and a lack of accountability. So we’ll see
There is simply NO WAY to make a Londoner understanding what an immense thing the Bee Network is, and how much of Burnham's goodwill is derived from it. God knows I've tried, but it just never makes sense to ppl who grew up with TfL (for better or often wort) on their doorstep...
Jennifer Williams@jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 3w agoWhat got buses fixed? Ultimately it was Manchester persuading ministers that it needed the power to fix it. If you don’t have rubbish bus services - which are generally the rule and not the exception outside of London - you wouldn’t know why it mattered. From here though, it was a HUGE issue.
If Burnham actually has arrived in London and decided that where Labour have been going wrong is that they were insufficiently willing to crack down on foreigners and undesirables so once we signal that we're doing that extra hard we'll be grand (too early to tell but signs are not good)... yeesh.
Interestingly a couple of people in the comments from Irish dairying families recall grandparents keeping back milk for their own use - but boiling it before it was used
Conor@ernekid.bsky.social · 3w ago‘Raw Milk’ has never been a thing in Ireland! Ireland led the way tight regulation of Dairies! It was one of the first things that the Independent Irish state did.
Yeah, the total non-response to what has definitely been a genuinely massive event (as someone who lives here) is just... Stunning...
Paolo Sandro@paolosandro.bsky.social · 3w agoNow compare the complete lack of action by Greater Manchester authorities
Otoh, I was today years old when I learned of the existence of CUMS, so, you know, there's that...
Prof. Pam Birtill@diervilla.bsky.social · 3w agoToday I will throw away the 30+ year old Cambridge university musical society (yes, it is called that, yes, there’s an abbreviation…) wind orchestra jumper that I use when decorating. It’s memories, it’s stuff, but it’s not coming across the world with me…
Zero political benefit in spending £25 billion (!) on zero net migration (harming growth, making debt the defence plan less affordable) to cut controlled migration below net 150-200k While preferring performative polarising asylum comms with little impact to real plans to close hotels, reduce boats
