Are these socks damp or cold? The eternal debate when removing items from the drying rack.
At some point it would be nice if politicians would start pointing out that many of the problems we have as a nation are because we chose not to spend money in favour of fiscal discipline and that the latter is an abstract concept that does not improve lives and, say, plentiful housing does.
this is good on the hollowness of using AI for art even if it produces results that we respond to. www.epochliterary.com/blog/on-ai-i...
On AI, in EPOCH and Elsewhere — EPOCH
Human beings are made to be moved. We respond to patterns. AI generates patterns. When there is nothing of substance there, we use our imagination to fill in whatever will give us what we need. It’s n...
epochliterary.com
Author: my short story "The never ending World Cup" was a warning. Infantino: www.theguardian.com/football/202...
Gianni Infantino hints at expansion to 64-team World Cup before 2030 event
Fifa officials will look at the possibility of expanding the World Cup by another 16 teams before the 2030 event, Gianni Infantino said in an interview
theguardian.com
Gribben says: “Private equity investment is inherently long term. Private equity firms hold investments for over six years on average.” Long term should at the very least be longer than the lifespan of the animals your business cares for and six years is not. www.theguardian.com/business/ng-...
Good for business – or profit at any cost? The controversial side of private equity – a visual explainer
The use of private equity in essential services is attracting scrutiny. Here we examine some of its more contentious elements
theguardian.com
The title of this comes unbidden to mind at least once a week and today via @mattmuir.bsky.social’s excellent WebCurios. It used not to apply to me as I was a one pair at a time person but these days I regrettably acquire shoes at a gently accelerating rate. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp4G...
Johnny Boy -You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes &
YouTube video by fabtonerecords
youtube.com
I went on holiday, I wrote some chaotic notes on what I did, there are some links exo.org.uk/blah/japan-i...
exo : japan in four hundred thousand steps
exo.org.uk
“in order to survive, a 200-kilo shark has to consume the calorific equivalent of one and a half chocolate digestives a day” The most remarkable idea here is half a chocolate digestive as a viable unit of measurement. They are indivisible, you cannot consume a half www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Katherine Rundell · Consider the Greenland Shark
I am glad not to be a Greenland shark; I don’t have enough thoughts to fill five hundred years. But I find the very...
lrb.co.uk
What are the properties of social media that makes it less harmful at 17? Just ban algorithmic feeds.
After extensive testing I have concluded that the Muji maple baumkuchen is the best Muji baumkuchen
The level of free stuff in Japanese hotels is remarkable. So far over various hotels we’ve had rice, evening noodles, sake, beer, pastries, tea, coffee and biscoff. All of them have also had umbrellas you can borrow. This applies as much to fairly standard hotels as fancy ones.
A junction in a tunnel is a novel and not entirely welcome bit of road design, especially when you can’t read the road signs.
One of the interesting things about Japan is how many things you can pay for with travel cards. Our restaurant this evening took Suica cards for payments. Some places seem to take them and not contactless credit cards and that’s certainly the case with most vending machines
In a random park in Tokyo and partner can connect to eduroam which is one of the unspoken benefits of being an academic
We can barely manage a fast train line and the Japanese are building star gates
It turns out 4am is when most of the shops at Edinburgh airport open. I would prefer not to have learned this.
This is good on the work we think AI is acceptable for notesfromasmallpress.substack.com/p/a-problem-...
A Problem with AI Policies
But first:
notesfromasmallpress.substack.com
While trying to remove cat hair from the duvet cover while that cat chases the lint roller around is entertaining it is not terribly effective
I realise it’s much more civilised for everyone doing the counting but personally I much prefer the model of waking up and absorbing the results in one go over a slow ratcheting of anxiety over the day
I think about the sort of things described here a lot on bike rides. Because I ride through the same places all the time you really notice how many pubs, and shops and cafes, are closing especially in smaller places. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
‘Now the village is dead. It’s awful’: why was one of Britain’s best pubs forced to close?
For 400 years, The Hare and Hounds in Bowland Bridge offered a warm welcome to locals and travellers. Then the rent doubled. With two pubs a day closing in England and Wales, can the community save th...
theguardian.com
We are looking for a @societyworks.org developer (deadline end of May) and a @mysociety.org user support officer (deadline tomorrow) to join us: www.mysociety.org/about/careers/ I think it’s a good, fun place to work, with good dev processes, but I would say that :) Happy to answer any questions
Careers
mySociety provides technology, research and data to help people be active citizens, in more than 40 countries around the world.
mysociety.org
If I look at your website on one device and then shortly after see an ad for your stuff on insta on another device you understand I don’t experience that as positive reinforcement?
As ever the replies to this are incredible for the well actualising. No insights commemorated here other than it remains not a place of honour.
Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 3mo agoWhen Einstein developed general relativity the closest thing to a practical application that could even be imagined at the time was a slightly more precise description of where to look for the planet Mercury in the sky, and yet now we’d all be literally lost without it. Anyway: fund basic research.
