Having watched the last video, now I see why he was able to run rings around the (rather ill informed) Sky reporter - he’s a comic and author who has worked for Armando Iannucci, BBC News and does the end of year clip shows for the topical comedy panel show Have I Got News for You. He’s intelligent, quick witted and knows UK politics alright.

Actually spoonerisms were named after Rev Spooner, who was a real person who did this a lot: “The Lord is a shoving leapard” etc.

It made me much happier today than it did yesterday. Yesterday it was being a complete pain in the neck, but today, all good.

The bleachiness is in the nose, and it’s flourine, which smells very like, but distinct to chlorine, which is in most bleaches.

You detect saltiness with your tongue, not your nose.

You are erroneously assuming that most US cops went into the police force to uphold the law and keep citizens safe, rather than to be allowed to boss black guys around and shoot them without repercussions.

Or her partner needs to see a doctor about his penis.

it’s totally understandable that if you have no idea how to approach solving 2+2, then a machine that automatically tells you 2+2=4.217 would seem really useful

So much this. LLMs are wrong around 60% of the time when I know the answer or can check it. Why on earth would I trust it when I don’t know?

I think people who trust LLMs trust them because they don’t know any better.

Either there are some circumstances when you want it to be a human or there aren’t.

If you don’t care whether it’s human or computer that makes the art, why not get an LLM girlfriend or boyfriend and a fleshlight or dildo? That way you can have the companionship, the flirting and the sex, and you can get the LLM to be the ideal partner.

I’ve found the Starship’s Mage series by Glynn Stewart very entertaining.

Premise: interstellar flight requires you to have at least one mage on board who uses their magic to move the star ship by a light year but then needs to sleep off magical exhaustion for several hours.

How and why mages developed and where they fit in society is revealed later.

No, no, it’s just false.

they haven’t actively and personally killed people

“just following orders” … “they’re just customers, its not our business to judge”… “bottom line is the bottom line” … “I’m just a clerk, they’ll do it whether I’m processing the paperwork or someone else does” … “I’m sure that if we didn’t provide the software that enables ICE to target and tear apart families in a clear and flagrant breach of the American constitution, someone else would, so really it doesn’t make any difference if it’s us profiting from illegal detention and mistreatment or someone else” … “Israel are our allies and it’s good that American companies have international contracts”

Plus you absolutely do not want the entireity of the whole nation’s health data provided (not just free of charge but for negative cash) to a company with such disregard for privacy that I’ll be not just surprised but shocked if they don’t sell it en masse to insurance companies and anyone with deep enough pockets for it to be worth their while. And they’re using it with AI as part of the contract. Guess who’s going to be selling healthcare AI based off a whole population’s data provided to them at negative cost? Guess, go on.

No, Palantir is an evil, evil, evil company, the IT suppliers to fascists and it’s naive in the extreme for you to excuse all this because they don’t get their hands dirty on actual physical immigrants and someone else pulls the trigger based on their targeting data in Gaza.

They are ideologically opposed to the NHS and it’s utterly braindead stupid to hand over control of the NHS systems to people who want to destroy it.

The Onion has got me so regularly because Republicans are so willing to do crazy shit that’s obviously a Very Bad Idea Indeed and completely bonkers, just to “own the libs” that the Onion can write batshit crazy nonsense and not sound any different from trump.

my coworkers who I get along with great at work don’t really want to keep in touch at all outside of work

This could be a time-of-life kind of thing. Before I had kids, I had all kinds of time for socialising, once I had kids pretty much all my spare time was for my wife and daughters. If your coworkers have kids, they’re prioritising their family time above other things.

Reality has a left-leaning bias

It sure does, and the BBC used to have a good reputation worldwide for telling the truth and they used to flatly contradict liars during interviews. Now they just tell the truth about what opposing politicians say, which is very much not the same thing. Unsurprisingly this got a lot worse when the Conservative government appointed a Conservative political advisor in charge of the news division, but the rot started before that.

Two jobs ago, we got an email out of the blue from our “new payroll provider” telling us to log in and provide our banking details. It was so obviously a phishing attempt I thought no one would fall for it.

Except it was correct and finance emailed us all a day later to tell us to click the link in the email and follow the instructions. Heads up, guys, heads up.

Nah, I’ve worked in places where one colleague takes work done by others and claims credit for it in meetings, also badmouthing them for being unproductive and getting away with it for years because their boss took their word as gospel. Unfortunately in some workplaces, playing office politics well wins over doing your job well.

On the other hand, my brother and sister are two of the best people in the world, and we get together as a big family with all the kids absolutely every school holiday. Some families are close. We don’t always agree on everything, but we always get along well.

You see something other than evil in Palantir? Huh.

The BBC is not good at what it calls “balance” - it “balances” climate scientists with far right nut jobs, especially Nigel Farage, and “balances” people who claim you ought to be nice to people irrespective of who they are and what they’re like, (race, sexuality, gender, religion, legally protected characteristics in the equalities act), with far right nut jobs, especially Nigel Farage. They balance people saying that onshore wind power is the cheapest form of energy in the UK (it is) with far right nut jobs, especially Nigel Farage, and they balance people saying that immigrants to the UK boost public sector finances by an average of a few thousand pounds (they do) with far right nut jobs, especially Nigel Farage.

Wow, an American church standing up for what’s right instead of what’s Republican?!

I did not have that on my bingo card for this century. Well done them.