Ruth Hibbert
@ruth-hi.bsky.social
Training: philosophy, history and philosophy of science. Profession: libraries, scholarly communication, higher education. Interests: many. Expertise: minimal. Left wing, vegan, militant pedestrian. Habitual pessimist with a taste for utopian dreaming.
When illustrating the tragedy of car dependency, getting groceries is amateur class. How else are you supposed to meet criminals and walk your dog? These are the real questions.
Author Lynda La Plante banned from driving for six months
The best-selling crime author is disqualified from driving despite saying a ban would end her career.
bbc.co.uk
I thought doing more less well was the definition of success in late stage capitalism. Assumed this was a feature not a bug. Scientists using LLMs will ‘do more, less well’, modelling study predicts www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Scientists using LLMs will ‘do more, less well’, modelling study predicts
Research suggests that the combination of incentives to publish and the use of large language models will lead to more papers, but they will be less refined.
nature.com
Sure GenAI could have been a source of optimism and excitement if 1. It wasn't being sold to us by stone cold sociopaths and 2. it came at a different point in capitalism's death spiral. As it is, I'm sick of coming across new aspects of the polycrisis that it's accelerating to warp speed.
35 UK universities have joined the Defence Universities Alliance and will receive funding to “support the UK's future defence capability.” Universities must not become conveyor belts into industries that profit from death and destruction. Sign the petition 👇 peopleandplanet.org/petitions/st...
Stop universities from joining the UK war machine | People & Planet
Add your voice, sign the petition.
peopleandplanet.org
I couldn't go vegan/sell my car/stop buying shit I don't need. People might think I'm weird! But also I'm a maverick, I don't follow the herd, and I don't care what people think.
Ruth Hibbert@ruth-hi.bsky.social · last wk.So many candidates for the aspect of human nature most likely to kill us all, but the massive gap between realising something is the right thing to do and actually doing it has to be a strong contender.
So many candidates for the aspect of human nature most likely to kill us all, but the massive gap between realising something is the right thing to do and actually doing it has to be a strong contender.
These dystopian taps have been in place for years and I never see them advertising anything except themselves
Politicians are all for austerity with our finances but never with our natural resources. Where is the scolding that if and when we have the energy and water "budgets" for data centres we can turn ourselves into cognitively and emotionally de-skilled potatoey lumps all we want, but not before?
Almost autumnal scenes in London's hot dry weather at the minute
It's not that I'm against a thorough and widespread philosophical education for AI; I just think humans should get that too. Don't act all surprised when the robots form a more functional society than ours. We're setting a low bar right now.
Why big AI labs are hiring so many philosophers
The technology presents all sorts of thorny problems—a philosopher’s favourite kind
economist.com
And now he's chancellor, and the cartoon schoolboy got defence. I'm not exactly reassured.
Ruth Hibbert@ruth-hi.bsky.social · 2mo agoSaw a headline about a resignation over defence spending and thought "Someone in Starmer's government has a principled objection to spending vast amounts of money on killing people, rather than health and housing and welfare? Sounds unlikel...Oh."
I'm not a scientist, but consider me alarmed. Also nice use of em dash in the title — I see what you did there. ‘Humanizer’ tool can erase signs of AI-written text — alarming scientists www.nature.com/articles/d41...
‘Humanizer’ tool can erase signs of AI-written text — alarming scientists
Tool directs text-generation systems to remove constructions associated with artificial intelligence in research papers and grant proposals.
nature.com
Sometimes I think this whole technology thing has just got away from us a bit www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Whoops! Most arXiv papers contain information never meant to be shared
Passwords, GPS coordinates and private conversations have all been found in the metadata and source files of millions of preprint submissions.
nature.com
Finally realised the second reason every city I visit feels like a ring-roady nightmare (the first being the obvious): Accommodation is cheaper outside the ring road and everything I want to do is inside, so I spend the whole time crossing it. Even that couldn't ruin Leicester this weekend though.
Trophy hunting has gone mad round these parts; it's a disgrace.
When you tell them you're vegan and they panic and give you batshit crazy salad. (No hate; this was actually very nice).
On holiday hiking Hadrian's Wall. At a massive 73 miles long, it's so big you can see Space from here.
Finally someone identifies the true victims of carspreading. Won't someone think of the parking spaces!
Bigger cars could cut London parking, study says
Larger cars could strip London of about 100,000 on-street parking spaces by 2040, a study warns.
bbc.co.uk
Somewhere a sustainability steering committee is busy forming a panel to decide the membership of the working group that sets the parameters for proposing a motion to move a recycling bin 3cm to the left. Meanwhile, we are literally on fire*...
Nailing that cocktail of FOMO and existential dread with a chaser of nihilism. Too bleak not to share is clearly the marketing strategy du jour. And it works, so that's where we're at.
"I would rather spend an evening listening to a gentleman explain railroads" is generally true tbh. That's a fair portion of my youtube subs.
Treating factory farming like the absolute scandal it is youtu.be/iRfQPY7S3uc?...
Does The King Know About This?
YouTube video by Project Slingshot
youtu.be
Nice long hike today. As a car hating vegan, "livestock" sheltering under a main road is pretty grim all round. But also cute.
When numbers representing amounts of money get to a certain size, they give me the urge to laugh hysterically. The lowest number to do that is way less than a trillion. Just absurd.
Saw a headline about a resignation over defence spending and thought "Someone in Starmer's government has a principled objection to spending vast amounts of money on killing people, rather than health and housing and welfare? Sounds unlikel...Oh."
"Always Christmas but no Doctor Who" is my personal "always winter but never Christmas".
See also "You’re a Londoner when you start saying you’re a Londoner – when London feels like home." secretldn.com/how-many-yea...
We Asked Secret London Readers How Long It Takes To Become A Londoner – But Not Everyone Agrees
We wondered just where some people draw the line for who is and isn't a Londoner - how long do you have to live here to become a Londoner?
secretldn.com
Doug Gordon@brooklynspoke.bsky.social · 2mo ago"To act as though there is some quintessentially New York thing that some are simply born with is a joke, and it should be treated as such. Anyone should be able to become a New Yorker, and anyone should be able to become an American."
