Buy a pair of glasses from Specsavers and I get nagging emails for ever more. This one starts "We haven't seen you..." which invites a sarcastic reply.

Smoke gets in your skies. Current view 90km inland from Bordeaux.

I am passing through Bordeaux. The air looks smoky and smells smoky. The sun shines through a filter of smoke. I wouldn't want to live in this atmosphere for long. It's bearable but cannot be healthy.

Decades ago I wrote regularly about an earlier generation of AI, and had some grasp of the subject. But in the current machine learning boom, I have no sense of how people make investment decisions. Take a problem like developing new metamaterials. What is that going to require? 1/n

You'd think the Russians could find a stretch of water closer to home than Plymouth for naval gunnery practice, but apparently not.

Burnham axes 5% VAT on GB domestic electricity bills. Apparently VAT will still be charged on gas. The crowd-pleasing "pay less" headline hides a gentle incentive to switch from fossil gas to more renewable energy sources. But gas remains relatively cheap. www.gov.uk/government/n...

New PM cuts tax on household electricity bills to give breathing space on cost of living

New Prime Minister takes immediate action to cut taxes on electricity bills to give millions of households breathing space this winter.

gov.uk

@duncandixoncoffee.bsky.social you any relation of the famous blues singer Big Bill Toupée?

No shade on NASA's people and the Apollo 11 crew but the summer of 1969 also saw incredible new frontiers being explored in a New York recording studio. Human achievement comes in many forms. (More in the ALT text).

This Many Years Ago@thismanyyearsago.bsky.social · 2w ago

57 years ago, on the 20th of July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon, as part of the Apollo 11 mission. The last time humans were on the moon was in 1972. #otd #history 🗃️

Up our tree picking figs ripened by the Sussex sun. Listening to amazing trumpet/fluegel player Yazz Ahmed who sets a very chill and meditative mood. music.youtube.com/watch?v=VOiF...

Growth should not be used to hide inequality. But UK could probably do with some growth. Which sectors of the economy we grow? That's a choice. North Sea oil and gas is a shite choice.

BBC North America editor Sarah Smith is no longer disguising her exasperation with Trump's ramblings. She's like, how long do I have to go on reporting this shit?

>10 years ago I took one look at a vividness test and thought, wow that's dodgy as hell. Respect to the people who have now done a proper scholarly job and reached the same conclusion. It's just so easy to leap to wrong conclusions about imagery and aphantasia from self-reports.

Ben Hayden@benhayden.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Wow 🔥🔥🔥 link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Long thread summarised: it is a terrible idea to put these $57k humanoid robots into classrooms in place of teachers.

Julie Carpenter, PhD@jgcarpenter.com · 3w ago

Look at how Sally is described: "lifelike appearance," silicone skin, long brown hair, an adult woman's likeness. That's not a neutral pedagogical choice. That's the same narrow, hyperfeminine embodiment template Realbotix has been refining for its companion products, repurposed for kids. 8/

So I am trying to learn to play a song. My music streaming app can't believe I want to listen to the same song repeatedly, and return repeatedly to certain passages. It's always like, hey, enough of that, here's another song you'll like!

I have read some Gibson, not all. Expended a lot of mental calories on Turvey 😉. So I am talking about things which may have discouraged me from digging deeper into eco psych.

Double shock. The duplicate mailing isn't DEC inefficiency, it is my fault for using two different versions of my name. The Disasters Emergency Committee appeal is a great way to help Venezuela.

Tfw the doctor seeks consent for last-chance surgery.

Sitting on the floor pretending to row a boat is something people did at the office party in the 1990s after a few drinks. No Norwegians required. Didn't everyone do that?

Infinite scroll of an algorithmic feed is the work of the devil. Infinite scroll of a timeline is a human right. #BBCradio4Today

I was about to lay into someone on here, a professor no less, who described research on spatial perception as about 'math'. I suspect they misinterpreted the reason the research was cancelled, too. Then an inner voice said get a grip😮.

Stories you would rather not be dining out on, no.79: "The time the police decided I was some kind of weirdo, and accused me of murdering a politician."

It's now a business, but back in the day, it was a very interesting scientific project. An example of what you might call sensory transparency - the way the brain wants to know what is going on around it, but is uninterested in, and often wrong about, the details of how it acquires that knowledge.

The vOICe vision BCI 🧠🇪🇺@seeingwithsound.bsky.social · 4w ago

There are parallels between aspects of consciousness and The vOICe sensory substitution: "Access consciousness" ~ The vOICe gives functional vision & "Phenomenal consciousness" ~ does/can The vOICe yield the qualia of sight, with light etc? Cf. www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1Kt... by @kanair.bsky.social

Gardeners face hosepipe bans while data centres get all the water they want. Data centres also use extreme amounts of electricity. And power stations, in turn, need water. It's us and our gardens and the wildlife they support, vs the AI lords and their overclocked GPUs. Not a hard choice surely?

We did our bit and educated you. Your side of the deal was to get filthy rich. What I hear every time my alma mater asks for donations.

Paramedics find elderly people with radiators on and windows closed in a #heatwave "unaware of the risk". Or are they are literally unaware of discomfort, having lost the physiological capacity to thermoregulate? Like the way some people fail to drink because they have lost the sense of thirst.

Another summer, and our cactus Dizzy puts on another show to attract giant moths, bats, hummingbirds or whatever it is that ought to be pollinating Dizzy but definitely won't be, here in northern Europe.

Off goes P to the dentist, debit card in bag. By not making dental treatment free at the point of use, when the NHS was set up after WW2, Britain decided to be one of those countries where you can tell how wealthy someone is by the state of their teeth.

Justin Webb, BBC: What is your appeal to the people of Clacton? Count Binface: I am not Nigel Farage

Trump's intervention was shocking, but normal for Trump. What's the point of hosting the World Cup unless you win? 🇧🇪 defeat of 🇺🇸 was karma but not end of story. FIFA still has questions to answer over the way it caved in to the orange toddler. Maybe Europe should collectively withdraw from FIFA.

Don't want to hear another politician say "we have rooted out antisemitism" if they cannot add "while protecting legitimate support for Palestinian rights".