Best Of

Leon, MorrisDancer and other authors might be interested in The Rest is Entertainment's look at Meta using pirated books to train AI. Who is the mysterious "MZ" mentioned in Meta's internal communications?

Richard and Marina delve into the murky world of LibGen, the Russian illegal archive that has ripped both host's [sic] back catalog [sic] of books and the possibility that Facebook has used it to train their AI chatbot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev4CX7Qjxy4

Damn! Missed a third "sic" – YouTube's AI needs better training material! – and the edit button seems to have disappeared as well.

The edit button it still there, but it might be harder to spot, without the icon.

Bottom right of a post. Got it, thanks! ETA or top right!

Adolescence is a great piece of TV, with part 3 being the best. It does need concentration to pick up the nuances, and these might be easily missed in a school setting. Indeed there is a risk that false narratives dominate discussion.

For example, I see even the header seems to imply that Katie (the victim that we never see, apart from a brief CCTV shot) being described as a bully. That simply isn't the case. She didn't bully him, she rejected his advance when he went to her house. Only one example was cited of an Insta post where she called him an incel. This is not bullying, which requires serial events, it's simply being knocked back in the same way that teenagers always have in clumsy ways since the dawn of time.

One of the subtleties of Adolescence is how male dominance is part of the script, and deliberately so. So Jamie (the killer) perceives this single Insta post as "bullying", and "bullying" worthy of serious revenge, while the much more frequent bullying is from other boys to Jamie, or to the policemans son at the school, and goes without response at all. And no one at the school finds this remarkable.

We see this theme throughout, exposing the male gaze. So it's the dad who accompanies Jamie to the interview, it's the male detective that the witnesses address, with the female detective an afterthought and not introduced by name to many in the school, it's the male security guard who mansplains body language to the psychologist, it's the father that Jamie phones in episode 4, and ignores his mother and sister.

The script is very clever at tricking the audience into the male gaze and assumptions. This is probably too subtle for a school audience.

There are many interesting other aspects to it, particularly the female characters. It's the mother who tries to inform the police of Jamie's food intolerance (and gets ignored), it's Katie's best friend who gets punished and adultified in part 2, rather than psychological support, the female detective who picks up on the Manosphere link, and is ignored, only for the male detective to get the credit at the end of part 2. It's the female psychologist who gets to the heart of the motivation, indeed the confession by playing the vulnerable role, it's the sister and mother who have to tiptoe around the temper of the man in their life in part 4.

I think it is brilliant TV, and obviously Starmer agrees with me.

But that is not a good reason for it to be shown in schools. It is too subtle for that, and as you say, there is a risk that false narratives will dominate discussion.

Emilia Holliday who plays Katie, the victim, sings "Through the Eyes of a Child" in the closing sequence of episode 4. But not many people will pick that up. You need to be informed.

Today is US election day!

We've had two Florida Congressional Special elections, which both went Republican as expected, albeit by dramatically smaller margins than in the 2024 Presidential election. Both districts, the 1st and the 6th, were won by 33-34 points back in November. This time around, the gaps were much smaller: 15 and 14 points respectively. (Margins that suggest that, had Elise Stefanik stepped down, then the race there would have been very close indeed.)

Also up is the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, where Elon has spent an insane amount of money trying to ensure that conservative Brad Schimel beats out liberal Susan Crawford. With 6% in, it's 50:50. My gut (and it's just a gut) is that Susan Crawford wins fairly comfortably.

With 13% in, Susan Crawford is 3.5 points ahead, with the caveat that Madison (home of the University of Wisconsin and the most liberal part of the State) has counted slightly more than average. (Albeit no votes at all are in from Milwaukee.)

Big vote drop from Madison (now 30% counted) pushes the Susan Crawford lead up to close to 10 percentage points with 15.5% counted.

Based on early numbers, it looks like a number of counties that voted narrowly for Trump in 2024 are voting Crawford now: i.e. Pierce, Ozaukee.

30% counted, and Crawford is 16.5 points clear of Schimel.