Re discussion, above, of Slough and the bus station debate.
Slough is the beating heart of the golden triangle of Windsor, Slough and Eton. It needs a bus station which is so attractive to tourists and visitors, especially our friends over the pond, that they are drawn away from the tawdry and passing charms of Eton High Street, St George's Chapel and the Gilbert and Sullivan castle and back to admiring not only a bus station but also the Gurdwara in Woodlands Avenue and the Mars factory.
Slough still lacks a waiting room of the quality of Carlisle Station.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
And at a harder to prove level... Does beauty reduce the amount of public urination? If people's environment treats them badly, are they more likely to treat their environment badly in return?
There's certainly a link between environment and anti social behaviour; see the work of Professor Alice Coleman;
12% of Tory voters going to Labour has to be very concerning for the red team. What was the equivalent figure in the lead up to the 1997 election?
The Tories got 14 million votes in 1992 but only 9.6 million votes in 1997.
The Labour vote went up from 11.5 million votes in 1992 to 13.5 million votes in 1997.
So about 2 million 1992 Tory voters went directly to Labour ie about 14% of 1992 Tory voters. So Starmer doing less well in winning over Tory voters than Blair was.
See too the May local elections where Starmer Labour got only 35% NEV compared to 47% NEV for Blair's New Labour in 1995.
See also last week's by elections when the LDs in Somerton and Frome got a bigger swing to them than Labour did in either Uxbridge or Selby and Ainsty
If we exclude the USA from the comment it might be fair game?
I've been thinking about this a little recently. The US military might highly depends on air power - even in the USN. If, somehow, the US airpower advantage was levelled, or neutralised, then their doctrine is pretty much screwed. You cannot just call in air power to deal with a problem.
I can see armies investing much more in 'classic' mortars and artillery.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
I know the American right are not very politically correct or tolerant of quotas in the workplace but still surprised that Musk would go quite this far in tackling the problem of women working in IT. "And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds."
Americans do NOT call women "birds" EXCEPT of course when joking about our British cousins with our phony "English" accents.
12% of Tory voters going to Labour has to be very concerning for the red team. What was the equivalent figure in the lead up to the 1997 election?
The Tories got 14 million votes in 1992 but only 9.6 million votes in 1997.
The Labour vote went up from 11.5 million votes in 1992 to 13.5 million votes in 1997.
So about 2 million 1992 Tory voters went directly to Labour ie about 14% of 1992 Tory voters. So Starmer doing less well in winning over Tory voters than Blair was.
See too the May local elections where Starmer Labour got only 35% NEV compared to 47% NEV for Blair's New Labour in 1995.
See also last week's by elections when the LDs in Somerton and Frome got a bigger swing to them than Labour did in either Uxbridge or Selby and Ainsty
Redfield & Wilton have 14% of the Conservative 2019 vote going to Labour so it's not far removed. The Conservatives are only retaining 56% of their 2019 vote so that would mean over 6 million "missing" Conservative voters. 14% is just shy of 2 million and the 19% Don't Knows would be 2.6 million leaving another 1.4 million to Reform, the LDs and not voting at all.
It's far from an exact science as we have to factor in new voters and changes in turnout - I suspect turnout will drop a little (low 60s perhaps) fuelled by ex-Conservative abstentions.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
If we exclude the USA from the comment it might be fair game?
I've been thinking about this a little recently. The US military might highly depends on air power - even in the USN. If, somehow, the US airpower advantage was levelled, or neutralised, then their doctrine is pretty much screwed. You cannot just call in air power to deal with a problem.
I can see armies investing much more in 'classic' mortars and artillery.
Not so much classic artillery and mortars - the big interest is in shoot and scoot self propelled systems.
Stuff like Archer - full auto artillery. You rock up, sit in the cab, press play, and it shoots a fire mission, complete with simultaneous time on target stuff, then you drive off. Done in under a minute.
For mortars, self loading systems in vehicles - again, heavily automated.
For longer range, BAe are looking at various kinds of missile trucks - fire support that can roam around behind the line, and chuck a missile at a target on request from the front line.
I have been busy. I have had good news. I have not had time to scan the threads.
I am just coming on to tut tut loudly at -
1. Alison Rose of NatWest. Dearie dearie me. "A serious error of judgment". No shit, Sherlock. Howard Davies is Chair. His impeccable judgment was shown when he was Chair of the LSE and it decided to take money from Ghaddffi's son who, entirely coincidentally, received some sort of degree shortly thereafter. Mind you he had that idiot, Shami Chakrabarti on the Board so it's no wonder the LSE's moral compass was MIA.
3. The Criminal Cases Review Commission and its appalling response over the Post Office. We have institutional callousness, to add to all the other institutional failings pretty much every public and private service suffers from these days.
3. Police Scotland - on 16 March they launched their Violence against Women & Girls (VAWG) Strategy. 9 days later on 25 May the Chief Constable said the force was institutionally misogynistic. On 22 July a woman was violently assaulted by a man in Aberdeen. The assault was recorded on film and witnessed. The woman suffered punches to her face and arms; she has a black eye. The police have given him a warning and left it at that. Maybe they also said "maaate" at him as that insufferable weasel, Khan, has suggested in his risible poster campaign.
I am really worried about the planned redevelopment of Cardiff Centeal Station. They have released some great renders which wrap a modern airport terminal like design around the listed facade. But by the time that the bean counters have value engineered everything to 13 decimal places, we will probably end up with some tarpaulin strung between sone portacabins..
I have been busy. I have had good news. I have not had time to scan the threads.
I am just coming on to tut tut loudly at -
1. Alison Rose of NatWest. Dearie dearie me. "A serious error of judgment". No shit, Sherlock. Howard Davies is Chair. His impeccable judgment was shown when he was Chair of the LSE and it decided to take money from Ghaddffi's son who, entirely coincidentally, received some sort of degree shortly thereafter. Mind you he had that idiot, Shami Chakrabarti on the Board so it's no wonder the LSE's moral compass was MIA.
3. The Criminal Cases Review Commission and its appalling response over the Post Office. We have institutional callousness, to add to all the other institutional failings pretty much every public and private service suffers from these days.
3. Police Scotland - on 16 March they launched their Violence against Women & Girls (VAWG) Strategy. 9 days later on 25 May the Chief Constable said the force was institutionally misogynistic. On 22 July a woman was violently assaulted by a man in Aberdeen. The assault was recorded on film and witnessed. The woman suffered punches to her face and arms; she has a black eye. The police have given him a warning and left it at that. Maybe they also said "maaate" at him as that insufferable weasel, Khan, has suggested in his risible poster campaign.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
Re. Police Scotland - at least they've backed down on the beard-shaving thing. Give them their due!...
11,000 passengers stranded after 70 flights to/from Gatwick airport are cancelled in 24 hours. Causes: Storms Air-traffic control delays across Europe ‘Last-minute staff shortages at the control tower’ at Gatwick. Very few seats are available for rebooking"
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
12% of Tory voters going to Labour has to be very concerning for the red team. What was the equivalent figure in the lead up to the 1997 election?
The Tories got 14 million votes in 1992 but only 9.6 million votes in 1997.
The Labour vote went up from 11.5 million votes in 1992 to 13.5 million votes in 1997.
So about 2 million 1992 Tory voters went directly to Labour ie about 14% of 1992 Tory voters. So Starmer doing less well in winning over Tory voters than Blair was.
See too the May local elections where Starmer Labour got only 35% NEV compared to 47% NEV for Blair's New Labour in 1995.
See also last week's by elections when the LDs in Somerton and Frome got a bigger swing to them than Labour did in either Uxbridge or Selby and Ainsty
Redfield & Wilton have 14% of the Conservative 2019 vote going to Labour so it's not far removed. The Conservatives are only retaining 56% of their 2019 vote so that would mean over 6 million "missing" Conservative voters. 14% is just shy of 2 million and the 19% Don't Knows would be 2.6 million leaving another 1.4 million to Reform, the LDs and not voting at all.
It's far from an exact science as we have to factor in new voters and changes in turnout - I suspect turnout will drop a little (low 60s perhaps) fuelled by ex-Conservative abstentions.
However Redfield also has Starmer only ahead of Sunak 43% to 35% as preferred PM, which is much closer than Major was to Blair as preferred PM pre 1997. So I suspect more of the DKs will vote Tory in the end rather than stay home as they did in 1997 as will some of the ReformUK voters who might have voted Referendum Party or UKIP in 1997 https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1683514941213483027?s=20
I am really worried about the planned redevelopment of Cardiff Centeal Station. They have released some great renders which wrap a modern airport terminal like design around the listed facade. But by the time that the bean counters have value engineered everything to 13 decimal places, we will probably end up with some tarpaulin strung between sone portacabins..
I have been busy. I have had good news. I have not had time to scan the threads.
I am just coming on to tut tut loudly at -
1. Alison Rose of NatWest. Dearie dearie me. "A serious error of judgment". No shit, Sherlock. Howard Davies is Chair. His impeccable judgment was shown when he was Chair of the LSE and it decided to take money from Ghaddffi's son who, entirely coincidentally, received some sort of degree shortly thereafter. Mind you he had that idiot, Shami Chakrabarti on the Board so it's no wonder the LSE's moral compass was MIA.
3. The Criminal Cases Review Commission and its appalling response over the Post Office. We have institutional callousness, to add to all the other institutional failings pretty much every public and private service suffers from these days.
3. Police Scotland - on 16 March they launched their Violence against Women & Girls (VAWG) Strategy. 9 days later on 25 May the Chief Constable said the force was institutionally misogynistic. On 22 July a woman was violently assaulted by a man in Aberdeen. The assault was recorded on film and witnessed. The woman suffered punches to her face and arms; she has a black eye. The police have given him a warning and left it at that. Maybe they also said "maaate" at him as that insufferable weasel, Khan, has suggested in his risible poster campaign.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
1) LSE publicly praised Ghaddffi's son’s thesis that dad had invented democracy that was more democratic than that actual voting crap.
I hope they were just being corrupt whores. The alternative was that they actually were advocating fascism pebbled dashed in socialist words.
Hey @Sunil_Prasannan are you going to visit Britain’s newest railway station?
It’s a thing of beauty alright. Look at that bench. It’s our version of St Pancras
It's just a car park with a station attached. [Edit] Who wants to look at it? You can't even see anything from the platforms cos noise barriers. Or may be wind barriers. No namby pamby canopied roof for the hardy Commuters of Kent, or perhaps they are Kentich Commuters, I can never remember which. Just a few surplus shelters left over from the last but three Brexit processing camp plans.
It’s extraordinarily hideous and unfriendly. How can architects and planners still get away with buildings this bad?
As you note, there is no shelter from the weather. So if you alight from the train and have to wait for a car, taxi (highly likely) and it’s raining: tough shit
Mind boggling
I have seen worse, tbh. Stations east of That London aren't great.
It's also unnecessary now apparently, due to WFH.
But it's in keeping with the utterly thoughtless over-development which is ruining Thanet.
Ngk, I dunno. It isn't great - as you correctly point out, that flat expanse will be bleak and bitter in winter. But it's a parkway, and it's only there to serve the commuters in the local estate. It'll never be loved, but it's functional enough. It's similar to some others I've seen, and better in some cases.
Tell you what. I'll wait for Sunil or Geoff Marshal to go to it and see what they say
Also, what the fuck is this:
“It's only there to serve the commuters in the local estate”
Did the Victorians ever think like that? Did the early designers of the Tube? “Oh it’s only for the locals, put up a brick shed that looks like a prison toilet block”
No. They took care. They also wanted to sell their train lines as things to use. The uplifting or cosy or welcoming station said “come in here, let us whisk you away”
Thanet Parkway…. Does not
Which was in many ways unfortunate, as it meant the railways, particularly lightly used country railways, became much more expensive and inflexible than they needed to be.
Are you actually arguing it was unfortunate they built beautiful stations and it would have been better if they’d thrown up toilet blocks? Coz they are easier to demolish? Or what?
I am saying that if they had made railways cheaper to run by - for example - building wooden halts at regular intervals rather than Gothic fantasies at distances the economics of rural branch lines might have been rather more helpful and perhaps not quite so many of them would have been shut.
I struggle to see how that could be the case. They would surely have been closed and demolished with less fuss than their more invested-in counterparts.
But ugly stations would have added to the sum of human unhappiness, which apparently is what at least 1/3 of PB desires
Unfortunately, there is a slice of human psyche that finds satisfaction in unhappiness. Plenty of media products, factual and fictional, have grown fat on that insight.
There's also a streak of selfishness and stinginess that says that the public deserve no more than the minimal functionality.
@JosiasJessop is probably right- this was done to a budget, and that budget wasn't enough to stretch to civilising features.
Disabled people might say that being able to access the platforms is a 'civilising' feature. IMO that's what most of the complaints about the structure is: the footbridge, ramps and lifts to allow accessibility to what are already raised platforms.
Architects love this sort of thing. They would have designed a station that cost a billion pounds to build, and would have Leon flooding it with his little man-babies from as far as Lviv. The the client adds constraints. It needs to be accessible. We got fined because some scrote dropped a brick onto the head of someone below. Potential future overhead electrification means we need x amount of headroom. Most of all: we need it for y amount.
And hence architects are *really* limited in what they can do. If you want to (say) drop accessibility requirements, that would both save a lot of money and make it look a lot better. But would also lead to the station not opening because it did not meet requirements.
Again, I'd love people to come up with their alternatives.
Maybe some trees? And a canopy?
How do you get trees on an elevated platform?
Canopies: fair enough, but they are costly. And probably would not be seen on the elevation you first complained about.
I mean trees and canopies in front of the station. The elevation I have provided is the FRONT of the station ffs. Not some ugly loading bay at the back
And yes, amazingly, I like St Pancras
I actually get your point about cost. If this station had a budget of £1m I’d say well ok. There wasn’t much they could do
£35 fucking million. To produce THAT
Also, why on earth are you defending it? Aren’t you a railway geek? People will support railways if they are beautiful or fast or uplifting or impressive, not if they are deliberately depressing, joyless, mean and off putting
Ditto all developments
The absence of any form of shelter is probably deliberate, as the station is un-manned, shelter might attract loiterers.
The whole thing is a miserable, depressing spectacle.
And also toilets, which require very regular cleaning and servicing and securing, and would otherwise be a haven for drug dealers, petty criminals and antisocial behaviour.
Pretty much everything you see about train and station design now is about designing out opex cost and liability risk.
Leicester has a rather lovely station, outside of the great termini. Classic late Victorian elegance, and well located at the edge of the inner ING road, so accessible both by pedestrians and vehicles.
The exciting thing about spartan building projects like Reston station is that despite looking cheap and tatty they still cost £14zillion to build.
The money isn't going to the construction crew. Isn't being spent on materials. Isn't getting used for fripperies like design.
No, the money is going to spivs. We can't build a station. We have to have studies and consultations and considerations. Spend the money with a handful of consultants, rather than on the thing itself.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
Some of the results of the open-source models based on Stable Diffusions work are quite impressive. https://civitai.com/ (NSFW) has quite few (re)trained models and Lora's. Pika Labs is making strides in the video realm too (https://www.pika.art/)
Leicester has a rather lovely station, outside of the great termini. Classic late Victorian elegance, and well located at the edge of the inner ING road, so accessible both by pedestrians and vehicles.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
There are undoubtedly ashamed Cons hiding out in the don't knows which is why Opinium and MIC factor that into their headline result. As for most of the others well the general pattern when push comes to shove is that those 'don't knows' largely become part of the 30%+ who don't vote. A 30%+ that never show up in opinion polls. (Note that Opinium poll above suggests a 77% turnout! In 2019 it was 67%) It has always been thus and until I see it proved otherwise I shall continue to expect that to be the case.
Meanwhile only 24% on the above Opinium give any degree of approval for the PM. If you need a figure that a political party should be worried about then it is that one!
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
12% of Tory voters going to Labour has to be very concerning for the red team. What was the equivalent figure in the lead up to the 1997 election?
The Tories got 14 million votes in 1992 but only 9.6 million votes in 1997.
The Labour vote went up from 11.5 million votes in 1992 to 13.5 million votes in 1997.
So about 2 million 1992 Tory voters went directly to Labour ie about 14% of 1992 Tory voters. So Starmer doing less well in winning over Tory voters than Blair was.
See too the May local elections where Starmer Labour got only 35% NEV compared to 47% NEV for Blair's New Labour in 1995.
See also last week's by elections when the LDs in Somerton and Frome got a bigger swing to them than Labour did in either Uxbridge or Selby and Ainsty
Redfield & Wilton have 14% of the Conservative 2019 vote going to Labour so it's not far removed. The Conservatives are only retaining 56% of their 2019 vote so that would mean over 6 million "missing" Conservative voters. 14% is just shy of 2 million and the 19% Don't Knows would be 2.6 million leaving another 1.4 million to Reform, the LDs and not voting at all.
It's far from an exact science as we have to factor in new voters and changes in turnout - I suspect turnout will drop a little (low 60s perhaps) fuelled by ex-Conservative abstentions.
However Redfield also has Starmer only ahead of Sunak 43% to 35% as preferred PM, which is much closer than Major was to Blair as preferred PM pre 1997. So I suspect more of the DKs will vote Tory in the end rather than stay home as they did in 1997 as will some of the ReformUK voters who might have voted Referendum Party or UKIP in 1997 https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1683514941213483027?s=20
That doesn't mean the 35% who prefer Sunak to Starmer will all vote Conservative - some will support other parties and even those who prefer Sunak aren't necessarily going to support his party.
We don't know about the Don't Knows - there are a lot of them and at least half are ex-Conservative voters.
The Conservatives haven't led a poll since December 2021 - by 1997, the Conservatives hadn't led a poll in four years - their last lead was January 1993. Nothing Major did from 1993 onwards made any great difference - yes, he did reduce the lead but it was still substantial on polling day and Blair won a historic landslide.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
Leicester has a rather lovely station, outside of the great termini. Classic late Victorian elegance, and well located at the edge of the inner ING road, so accessible both by pedestrians and vehicles.
I quite like Nottingham, for similar reasons.
Derby station had potential, before it was demolished in ?84? and replaced with the current one. which, to be fair, has been improved in recent years. https://goo.gl/maps/ZhUJR8WGh3pPEmXYA
If we exclude the USA from the comment it might be fair game?
I've been thinking about this a little recently. The US military might highly depends on air power - even in the USN. If, somehow, the US airpower advantage was levelled, or neutralised, then their doctrine is pretty much screwed. You cannot just call in air power to deal with a problem.
I can see armies investing much more in 'classic' mortars and artillery.
Not so much classic artillery and mortars - the big interest is in shoot and scoot self propelled systems.
Stuff like Archer - full auto artillery. You rock up, sit in the cab, press play, and it shoots a fire mission, complete with simultaneous time on target stuff, then you drive off. Done in under a minute.
For mortars, self loading systems in vehicles - again, heavily automated.
For longer range, BAe are looking at various kinds of missile trucks - fire support that can roam around behind the line, and chuck a missile at a target on request from the front line.
Yes, but as we've seen in this war, the majority of shells are being fired by 'dumb' systems. Which we in the west are massively short of.
The claim is that precision systems reduce the need for arty - you can destroy the target with orders of magnitude fewer shells. That concept is currently being tested...
Well, fair play to Mr. Marshall, but for me it's two sort of overlapping "missions":
A) I've visited every station in London (Brent Cross West is still upcoming!) and B ) been on all "normal everyday" National Rail, Tube, Light Rail and Tram lines in Great Britain (new for 2023: Newhaven Tram, and the Luton DART).
Leicester has a rather lovely station, outside of the great termini. Classic late Victorian elegance, and well located at the edge of the inner ING road, so accessible both by pedestrians and vehicles.
I quite like Nottingham, for similar reasons.
Derby station had potential, before it was demolished in ?84? and replaced with the current one. which, to be fair, has been improved in recent years. https://goo.gl/maps/ZhUJR8WGh3pPEmXYA
Leicester has a rather lovely station, outside of the great termini. Classic late Victorian elegance, and well located at the edge of the inner ING road, so accessible both by pedestrians and vehicles.
A small thing, but I always rather liked that the bridge on the other side of the road is done to match:
Leicester has a rather lovely station, outside of the great termini. Classic late Victorian elegance, and well located at the edge of the inner ING road, so accessible both by pedestrians and vehicles.
I quite like Nottingham, for similar reasons.
Derby station had potential, before it was demolished in ?84? and replaced with the current one. which, to be fair, has been improved in recent years. https://goo.gl/maps/ZhUJR8WGh3pPEmXYA
It isn't too bad, but a little too town-hall for my liking. A railway station should look like a railway station - if that isn't a little too self-referential...
12% of Tory voters going to Labour has to be very concerning for the red team. What was the equivalent figure in the lead up to the 1997 election?
The Tories got 14 million votes in 1992 but only 9.6 million votes in 1997.
The Labour vote went up from 11.5 million votes in 1992 to 13.5 million votes in 1997.
So about 2 million 1992 Tory voters went directly to Labour ie about 14% of 1992 Tory voters. So Starmer doing less well in winning over Tory voters than Blair was.
See too the May local elections where Starmer Labour got only 35% NEV compared to 47% NEV for Blair's New Labour in 1995.
See also last week's by elections when the LDs in Somerton and Frome got a bigger swing to them than Labour did in either Uxbridge or Selby and Ainsty
Redfield & Wilton have 14% of the Conservative 2019 vote going to Labour so it's not far removed. The Conservatives are only retaining 56% of their 2019 vote so that would mean over 6 million "missing" Conservative voters. 14% is just shy of 2 million and the 19% Don't Knows would be 2.6 million leaving another 1.4 million to Reform, the LDs and not voting at all.
It's far from an exact science as we have to factor in new voters and changes in turnout - I suspect turnout will drop a little (low 60s perhaps) fuelled by ex-Conservative abstentions.
However Redfield also has Starmer only ahead of Sunak 43% to 35% as preferred PM, which is much closer than Major was to Blair as preferred PM pre 1997. So I suspect more of the DKs will vote Tory in the end rather than stay home as they did in 1997 as will some of the ReformUK voters who might have voted Referendum Party or UKIP in 1997 https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1683514941213483027?s=20
That doesn't mean the 35% who prefer Sunak to Starmer will all vote Conservative - some will support other parties and even those who prefer Sunak aren't necessarily going to support his party.
We don't know about the Don't Knows - there are a lot of them and at least half are ex-Conservative voters.
The Conservatives haven't led a poll since December 2021 - by 1997, the Conservatives hadn't led a poll in four years - their last lead was January 1993. Nothing Major did from 1993 onwards made any great difference - yes, he did reduce the lead but it was still substantial on polling day and Blair won a historic landslide.
Preferred PM numbers are generally even more accurate than voting intention, especially in terms of where DKs and waverers go in the end.
In 2015 for example the lead Cameron had over Ed Miliband was more accurate than the neck and neck voting intention figures, as was the lead Major had over Kinnock as preferred PM more accurate than headline voting intention Labour leads in 1992 too
Doncaster station has recently been revamped, clearing the tiny car park, adding some shelter at the front and generally tidying up the joint. The station building itself is surprisingly basic considering its historic importance but isn't terrible, although the platforms are a bit of a jumble.
Sadly they can't do much about the hideous 1960/70s shopping centre or the more recent bus station next door, whatever they clad it in. The 60s road layout doesn't help, either.
12% of Tory voters going to Labour has to be very concerning for the red team. What was the equivalent figure in the lead up to the 1997 election?
The Tories got 14 million votes in 1992 but only 9.6 million votes in 1997.
The Labour vote went up from 11.5 million votes in 1992 to 13.5 million votes in 1997.
So about 2 million 1992 Tory voters went directly to Labour ie about 14% of 1992 Tory voters. So Starmer doing less well in winning over Tory voters than Blair was.
See too the May local elections where Starmer Labour got only 35% NEV compared to 47% NEV for Blair's New Labour in 1995.
See also last week's by elections when the LDs in Somerton and Frome got a bigger swing to them than Labour did in either Uxbridge or Selby and Ainsty
Redfield & Wilton have 14% of the Conservative 2019 vote going to Labour so it's not far removed. The Conservatives are only retaining 56% of their 2019 vote so that would mean over 6 million "missing" Conservative voters. 14% is just shy of 2 million and the 19% Don't Knows would be 2.6 million leaving another 1.4 million to Reform, the LDs and not voting at all.
It's far from an exact science as we have to factor in new voters and changes in turnout - I suspect turnout will drop a little (low 60s perhaps) fuelled by ex-Conservative abstentions.
However Redfield also has Starmer only ahead of Sunak 43% to 35% as preferred PM, which is much closer than Major was to Blair as preferred PM pre 1997. So I suspect more of the DKs will vote Tory in the end rather than stay home as they did in 1997 as will some of the ReformUK voters who might have voted Referendum Party or UKIP in 1997 https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1683514941213483027?s=20
That doesn't mean the 35% who prefer Sunak to Starmer will all vote Conservative - some will support other parties and even those who prefer Sunak aren't necessarily going to support his party.
We don't know about the Don't Knows - there are a lot of them and at least half are ex-Conservative voters.
The Conservatives haven't led a poll since December 2021 - by 1997, the Conservatives hadn't led a poll in four years - their last lead was January 1993. Nothing Major did from 1993 onwards made any great difference - yes, he did reduce the lead but it was still substantial on polling day and Blair won a historic landslide.
Preferred PM numbers are generally even more accurate than voting intention, especially in terms of where DKs and waverers go in the end.
In 2015 for example the lead Cameron had over Ed Miliband was more accurate than the neck and neck voting intention figures, as was the lead Major had over Kinnock more accurate than headline voting intention in 1992 too
"Preferred PM numbers are generally even more accurate than voting intention"
Nigelb: Governor Burgum shouldn't have made those donations. That said, I stand by what I wrote: He "looks as if he would make a good president". (I am not sure who you were quoting, but it wasn't me.) If you skim through his Wikipedia biography, you may understand why I wrote that -- whether or not you agree with me.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
Edit: found one! This slice of schlock won $300 at the Colorado State Fair. Eat your hearts out, puny human limners.
Jeez. That was years ago. Try this
Less than a year ago for the 'painting'. I think we've already done the fotie and wondered how King Charles's sausage fingers snuck their way in.
Nonetheless, it fooled the judges. Who thought it was poignant and beautiful
Everyone's a critic, but imo even if it had been an authentic photo it would still be absurdly ersatz, trying to sythesise the portents of a century ago.
Where are new railway stations being built, or revamped now?
The South East Region used the same steel frame - concrete panel system used in Notts for our schools, which have a design life ending around 2020-2040. Are they all being rebuilt?
I wonder how much of the KCC cash contribution to Thanet Station came from the surrounding housing developers.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
Edit: found one! This slice of schlock won $300 at the Colorado State Fair. Eat your hearts out, puny human limners.
Jeez. That was years ago. Try this
Less than a year ago for the 'painting'. I think we've already done the fotie and wondered how King Charles's sausage fingers snuck their way in.
Nonetheless, it fooled the judges. Who thought it was poignant and beautiful
Everyone's a critic, but imo even if it had been an authentic photo it would still be absurdly ersatz, trying to sythesise the portents of a century ago.
The hands are rubbish (not good King Charles sausages, the one stage left looks like jerusalem artichokes), and don't match. Pretty confident I would have rumbled this.
If we exclude the USA from the comment it might be fair game?
I've been thinking about this a little recently. The US military might highly depends on air power - even in the USN. If, somehow, the US airpower advantage was levelled, or neutralised, then their doctrine is pretty much screwed. You cannot just call in air power to deal with a problem.
I can see armies investing much more in 'classic' mortars and artillery.
Not so much classic artillery and mortars - the big interest is in shoot and scoot self propelled systems.
Stuff like Archer - full auto artillery. You rock up, sit in the cab, press play, and it shoots a fire mission, complete with simultaneous time on target stuff, then you drive off. Done in under a minute.
For mortars, self loading systems in vehicles - again, heavily automated.
For longer range, BAe are looking at various kinds of missile trucks - fire support that can roam around behind the line, and chuck a missile at a target on request from the front line.
Yes, but as we've seen in this war, the majority of shells are being fired by 'dumb' systems. Which we in the west are massively short of.
The claim is that precision systems reduce the need for arty - you can destroy the target with orders of magnitude fewer shells. That concept is currently being tested...
Not really. Because we are providing a trickle of the medium and long range missile weapons. Smart vs dumb studies generally come out in favour of the lower priced tier of smart weapons.
Dumb artillery is cheap per round, but then you have to fire a bunch of rounds, which wears out the gun. Before you know it, a Brimstone is the *cheap* option.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
Edit: found one! This slice of schlock won $300 at the Colorado State Fair. Eat your hearts out, puny human limners.
Jeez. That was years ago. Try this
Less than a year ago for the 'painting'. I think we've already done the fotie and wondered how King Charles's sausage fingers snuck their way in.
Nonetheless, it fooled the judges. Who thought it was poignant and beautiful
Everyone's a critic, but imo even if it had been an authentic photo it would still be absurdly ersatz, trying to sythesise the portents of a century ago.
They are photographic judges, you’re just some old Scot Nat on PB. Tho in this case I am minded to agree with you - it is a little surprising that it won. Fingers aside, as it were, it is self consciously retro and not in an interesting way
But it won, nonetheless
Either way you better get used to it. Do a Twitter search on “Midjourney”. It is pouring out millions of beautiful, strange, dazzling, eerie images. Lots of dreck but lots of Wow, as well
The visual arts as we have known them are finished. From photography to painting, from video to movies. It’s over
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
Edit: found one! This slice of schlock won $300 at the Colorado State Fair. Eat your hearts out, puny human limners.
Jeez. That was years ago. Try this
Less than a year ago for the 'painting'. I think we've already done the fotie and wondered how King Charles's sausage fingers snuck their way in.
Nonetheless, it fooled the judges. Who thought it was poignant and beautiful
Everyone's a critic, but imo even if it had been an authentic photo it would still be absurdly ersatz, trying to sythesise the portents of a century ago.
They are photographic judges, you’re just some old Scot Nat on PB. Tho in this case I am minded to agree with you - it is a little surprising that it won. Fingers aside, as it were, it is self consciously retro and not in an interesting way
But it won, nonetheless
Either way you better get used to it. Do a Twitter search on “Midjourney”. It is pouring out millions of beautiful, strange, dazzling, eerie images. Lots of dreck but lots of Wow, as well
The visual arts as we have known them are finished. From photography to painting, from video to movies. It’s over
It has no real emotion or meaning, the critics will cry when it is revealed.
But they thought it did before they knew, so it makes no difference.
Leicester has a rather lovely station, outside of the great termini. Classic late Victorian elegance, and well located at the edge of the inner ING road, so accessible both by pedestrians and vehicles.
A small thing, but I always rather liked that the bridge on the other side of the road is done to match:
It's a lovely porte cochere. Though they are planning on opening a new main entrance at the side (left in Foxy's photo). Sort of like King's Cross, though not so grand and without the Harry Potter shite.
If we exclude the USA from the comment it might be fair game?
I've been thinking about this a little recently. The US military might highly depends on air power - even in the USN. If, somehow, the US airpower advantage was levelled, or neutralised, then their doctrine is pretty much screwed. You cannot just call in air power to deal with a problem.
I can see armies investing much more in 'classic' mortars and artillery.
Not so much classic artillery and mortars - the big interest is in shoot and scoot self propelled systems.
Stuff like Archer - full auto artillery. You rock up, sit in the cab, press play, and it shoots a fire mission, complete with simultaneous time on target stuff, then you drive off. Done in under a minute.
For mortars, self loading systems in vehicles - again, heavily automated.
For longer range, BAe are looking at various kinds of missile trucks - fire support that can roam around behind the line, and chuck a missile at a target on request from the front line.
Yes, but as we've seen in this war, the majority of shells are being fired by 'dumb' systems. Which we in the west are massively short of.
The claim is that precision systems reduce the need for arty - you can destroy the target with orders of magnitude fewer shells. That concept is currently being tested...
Not really. Because we are providing a trickle of the medium and long range missile weapons. Smart vs dumb studies generally come out in favour of the lower priced tier of smart weapons.
Dumb artillery is cheap per round, but then you have to fire a bunch of rounds, which wears out the gun. Before you know it, a Brimstone is the *cheap* option.
"Because we are providing a trickle of the medium and long range missile weapons."
Because we don't have enough of them. Because we thought artillery was not as important.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
Edit: found one! This slice of schlock won $300 at the Colorado State Fair. Eat your hearts out, puny human limners.
Jeez. That was years ago. Try this
Less than a year ago for the 'painting'. I think we've already done the fotie and wondered how King Charles's sausage fingers snuck their way in.
Nonetheless, it fooled the judges. Who thought it was poignant and beautiful
Everyone's a critic, but imo even if it had been an authentic photo it would still be absurdly ersatz, trying to sythesise the portents of a century ago.
The hands are rubbish (not good King Charles sausages, the one stage left looks like jerusalem artichokes), and don't match. Pretty confident I would have rumbled this.
How about this? Let’s face it, the answer is No. There is no way you could confidently say if this is a real war photograph or an AI fake
Leicester has a rather lovely station, outside of the great termini. Classic late Victorian elegance, and well located at the edge of the inner ING road, so accessible both by pedestrians and vehicles.
A small thing, but I always rather liked that the bridge on the other side of the road is done to match:
Middlesbrough train station is one of the more surprisingly elegant stations in my view. A pleasing Victorian gothic feel.
Leicester has a rather lovely station, outside of the great termini. Classic late Victorian elegance, and well located at the edge of the inner ING road, so accessible both by pedestrians and vehicles.
A small thing, but I always rather liked that the bridge on the other side of the road is done to match:
Middlesbrough train station is one of the more surprisingly elegant stations in my view. A pleasing Victorian gothic feel.
Improved immeasurably by the fact that you can leave Middlesbrough from there and never look back.
If this turns out to be true, we'd be truly f*cked.
The new analysis estimates a timescale for the collapse of between 2025 and 2095, with a central estimate of 2050, if global carbon emissions are not reduced
Damn, I was hoping not to die until toward the end of that period and that I could get through mostly unscathed.
Leicester has a rather lovely station, outside of the great termini. Classic late Victorian elegance, and well located at the edge of the inner ING road, so accessible both by pedestrians and vehicles.
Great Central built a massive one to the north-west of the city centre ca 1890s as part of hteir railway to the Channel Tunnel, ie continental gauge, standards (intending to connect eventually). Closed 1960s, scalped to allow building of industrial buildings on top of the arches. As if you demolished St Pan to platform level and built an industrial estate on top. The carcass is still there today - pretty impressive in a corpselike sort of way.
12% of Tory voters going to Labour has to be very concerning for the red team. What was the equivalent figure in the lead up to the 1997 election?
The Tories got 14 million votes in 1992 but only 9.6 million votes in 1997.
The Labour vote went up from 11.5 million votes in 1992 to 13.5 million votes in 1997.
So about 2 million 1992 Tory voters went directly to Labour ie about 14% of 1992 Tory voters. So Starmer doing less well in winning over Tory voters than Blair was.
See too the May local elections where Starmer Labour got only 35% NEV compared to 47% NEV for Blair's New Labour in 1995.
See also last week's by elections when the LDs in Somerton and Frome got a bigger swing to them than Labour did in either Uxbridge or Selby and Ainsty
Redfield & Wilton have 14% of the Conservative 2019 vote going to Labour so it's not far removed. The Conservatives are only retaining 56% of their 2019 vote so that would mean over 6 million "missing" Conservative voters. 14% is just shy of 2 million and the 19% Don't Knows would be 2.6 million leaving another 1.4 million to Reform, the LDs and not voting at all.
It's far from an exact science as we have to factor in new voters and changes in turnout - I suspect turnout will drop a little (low 60s perhaps) fuelled by ex-Conservative abstentions.
However Redfield also has Starmer only ahead of Sunak 43% to 35% as preferred PM, which is much closer than Major was to Blair as preferred PM pre 1997. So I suspect more of the DKs will vote Tory in the end rather than stay home as they did in 1997 as will some of the ReformUK voters who might have voted Referendum Party or UKIP in 1997 https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1683514941213483027?s=20
That doesn't mean the 35% who prefer Sunak to Starmer will all vote Conservative - some will support other parties and even those who prefer Sunak aren't necessarily going to support his party.
We don't know about the Don't Knows - there are a lot of them and at least half are ex-Conservative voters.
The Conservatives haven't led a poll since December 2021 - by 1997, the Conservatives hadn't led a poll in four years - their last lead was January 1993. Nothing Major did from 1993 onwards made any great difference - yes, he did reduce the lead but it was still substantial on polling day and Blair won a historic landslide.
Preferred PM numbers are generally even more accurate than voting intention, especially in terms of where DKs and waverers go in the end.
In 2015 for example the lead Cameron had over Ed Miliband was more accurate than the neck and neck voting intention figures, as was the lead Major had over Kinnock more accurate than headline voting intention in 1992 too
"Preferred PM numbers are generally even more accurate than voting intention"
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
Edit: found one! This slice of schlock won $300 at the Colorado State Fair. Eat your hearts out, puny human limners.
Jeez. That was years ago. Try this
Less than a year ago for the 'painting'. I think we've already done the fotie and wondered how King Charles's sausage fingers snuck their way in.
Nonetheless, it fooled the judges. Who thought it was poignant and beautiful
Everyone's a critic, but imo even if it had been an authentic photo it would still be absurdly ersatz, trying to sythesise the portents of a century ago.
The hands are rubbish (not good King Charles sausages, the one stage left looks like jerusalem artichokes), and don't match. Pretty confident I would have rumbled this.
How about this? Let’s face it, the answer is No. There is no way you could confidently say if this is a real war photograph or an AI fake
It’s an AI fake. This woman does not exist
I spotted it, but not with high confidence. People adapt, just as they did with motion picture locomotives and CGI dinosaurs. But the gap is narrowing and I doubt this will hold.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
Edit: found one! This slice of schlock won $300 at the Colorado State Fair. Eat your hearts out, puny human limners.
Jeez. That was years ago. Try this
Less than a year ago for the 'painting'. I think we've already done the fotie and wondered how King Charles's sausage fingers snuck their way in.
Nonetheless, it fooled the judges. Who thought it was poignant and beautiful
Everyone's a critic, but imo even if it had been an authentic photo it would still be absurdly ersatz, trying to sythesise the portents of a century ago.
The hands are rubbish (not good King Charles sausages, the one stage left looks like jerusalem artichokes), and don't match. Pretty confident I would have rumbled this.
How about this? Let’s face it, the answer is No. There is no way you could confidently say if this is a real war photograph or an AI fake
It’s an AI fake. This woman does not exist
It being an attractive, modelly, young woman seems to give a whiff of rat to me. A photoshoot for Vogue maybe, war pic no.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
Edit: found one! This slice of schlock won $300 at the Colorado State Fair. Eat your hearts out, puny human limners.
Jeez. That was years ago. Try this
Less than a year ago for the 'painting'. I think we've already done the fotie and wondered how King Charles's sausage fingers snuck their way in.
Nonetheless, it fooled the judges. Who thought it was poignant and beautiful
Everyone's a critic, but imo even if it had been an authentic photo it would still be absurdly ersatz, trying to sythesise the portents of a century ago.
The hands are rubbish (not good King Charles sausages, the one stage left looks like jerusalem artichokes), and don't match. Pretty confident I would have rumbled this.
How about this? Let’s face it, the answer is No. There is no way you could confidently say if this is a real war photograph or an AI fake
It’s an AI fake. This woman does not exist
It being an attractive, modelly, young woman seems to give a whiff of rat to me. A photoshoot for Vogue maybe, war pic no.
Could have been a still from a war movie in that case. The movies teach us every profession is full of models.
If this turns out to be true, we'd be truly f*cked.
'The most recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that Amoc would not collapse this century. But Divlitsen said the models used have coarse resolution and are not adept at analysing the non-linear processes involved, which may make them overly conservative.'
Albeit with warmer winters in the UK than in the past the gulf stream may be less important to us anyway, less rainfall potentially too in summer. Though would need more irrigation for agriculture
Where are new railway stations being built, or revamped now?
The South East Region used the same steel frame - concrete panel system used in Notts for our schools, which have a design life ending around 2020-2040. Are they all being rebuilt?
I wonder how much of the KCC cash contribution to Thanet Station came from the surrounding housing developers.
I know they replaced Rochester station in 2015 with a brand new one about 200 metres closer to London. But not sure if was because of design life.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
I recommend this article by Dr Anthony Daniels.
"I suspect that this hostility derives from a subliminal awareness that the music is a reproach to their own way of living, to its ugliness. Ugliness there has always been, of course, but now there is ugliness without aspiration to anything else, and indeed a desire to destroy anything else. Ugliness, being within the reach of all, is both democratic and authentic, in a way that beauty is not."
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
Edit: found one! This slice of schlock won $300 at the Colorado State Fair. Eat your hearts out, puny human limners.
Jeez. That was years ago. Try this
Less than a year ago for the 'painting'. I think we've already done the fotie and wondered how King Charles's sausage fingers snuck their way in.
Nonetheless, it fooled the judges. Who thought it was poignant and beautiful
Everyone's a critic, but imo even if it had been an authentic photo it would still be absurdly ersatz, trying to sythesise the portents of a century ago.
The hands are rubbish (not good King Charles sausages, the one stage left looks like jerusalem artichokes), and don't match. Pretty confident I would have rumbled this.
How about this? Let’s face it, the answer is No. There is no way you could confidently say if this is a real war photograph or an AI fake
It’s an AI fake. This woman does not exist
I would guess it was fake, because it's too conveniently perfect.
Leicester has a rather lovely station, outside of the great termini. Classic late Victorian elegance, and well located at the edge of the inner ING road, so accessible both by pedestrians and vehicles.
A small thing, but I always rather liked that the bridge on the other side of the road is done to match:
Middlesbrough train station is one of the more surprisingly elegant stations in my view. A pleasing Victorian gothic feel.
Improved immeasurably by the fact that you can leave Middlesbrough from there and never look back.
I actually survived an overnight stay in 'Boro back in 2018
Upon arrival from London, did the curve connecting round towards Hartlepool, and the next day did the railway towards Whitby, which was cool. Unfortunately, had to get the bus back to 'Boro, as a steam train on the North Yorks Moors broke down at Grosmont, thus blocking the "official" railway and leading to cancellation of all 'Boro-bound services from Whitby! Also meant I couldn't do the NYM either!
Odd that the San Francisco police department apparently have some say on what the Twitter logo outside the HQ looks like.
The company doesn't own the building, they rent space there. They don't have the right to alter the exterior and the landlord has kicked off. Why this is a cop matter instead of a legal matter is not known to me
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
If this turns out to be true, we'd be truly f*cked.
'The most recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that Amoc would not collapse this century. But Divlitsen said the models used have coarse resolution and are not adept at analysing the non-linear processes involved, which may make them overly conservative.'
Albeit with warmer winters in the UK than in the past the gulf stream may be less important to us anyway, less rainfall potentially too in summer. Though would need more irrigation for agriculture
You can wave goodbye to any 'warmer winters' in the UK after a collapse of the gulf stream.
"In 2020, a study had assessed the impact of an AMOC collapse on farming and food production in Great Britain. It estimated that AMOC collapse would reverse the impact of global warming in Great Britain and cause an average temperature drop of 3.4 °C."
Odd that the San Francisco police department apparently have some say on what the Twitter logo outside the HQ looks like.
The company doesn't own the building, they rent space there. They don't have the right to alter the exterior and the landlord has kicked off. Why this is a cop matter instead of a legal matter is not known to me
Apparently the police have said they were called because of an illegal road closure
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
I recommend this article by Dr Anthony Daniels.
"I suspect that this hostility derives from a subliminal awareness that the music is a reproach to their own way of living, to its ugliness. Ugliness there has always been, of course, but now there is ugliness without aspiration to anything else, and indeed a desire to destroy anything else. Ugliness, being within the reach of all, is both democratic and authentic, in a way that beauty is not."
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
I recommend this article by Dr Anthony Daniels.
"I suspect that this hostility derives from a subliminal awareness that the music is a reproach to their own way of living, to its ugliness. Ugliness there has always been, of course, but now there is ugliness without aspiration to anything else, and indeed a desire to destroy anything else. Ugliness, being within the reach of all, is both democratic and authentic, in a way that beauty is not."
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
I recommend this article by Dr Anthony Daniels.
"I suspect that this hostility derives from a subliminal awareness that the music is a reproach to their own way of living, to its ugliness. Ugliness there has always been, of course, but now there is ugliness without aspiration to anything else, and indeed a desire to destroy anything else. Ugliness, being within the reach of all, is both democratic and authentic, in a way that beauty is not."
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
I recommend this article by Dr Anthony Daniels.
"I suspect that this hostility derives from a subliminal awareness that the music is a reproach to their own way of living, to its ugliness. Ugliness there has always been, of course, but now there is ugliness without aspiration to anything else, and indeed a desire to destroy anything else. Ugliness, being within the reach of all, is both democratic and authentic, in a way that beauty is not."
If we exclude the USA from the comment it might be fair game?
I've been thinking about this a little recently. The US military might highly depends on air power - even in the USN. If, somehow, the US airpower advantage was levelled, or neutralised, then their doctrine is pretty much screwed. You cannot just call in air power to deal with a problem.
I can see armies investing much more in 'classic' mortars and artillery.
MOD just announced an order to replace ammunition shipped to Ukraine, but not I think to increase stockpiles.
I think it could have been placed some time ago, as the upgraded BAE factory was ready.
Where are new railway stations being built, or revamped now?
The South East Region used the same steel frame - concrete panel system used in Notts for our schools, which have a design life ending around 2020-2040. Are they all being rebuilt?
I wonder how much of the KCC cash contribution to Thanet Station came from the surrounding housing developers.
I know they replaced Rochester station in 2015 with a brand new one about 200 metres closer to London. But not sure if was because of design life.
Here's an example of the look, which is .. functional.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
You miss my point. Beauty can be a NEED
How is AI on the beauty thing? The evidence is on the threadbare to non existent so far.
Given that AI has been regularly winning art and photography prizes, only for the judges to be forced to rescind them, when they realise the artist is “AI”, this is a silly remark
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
Edit: found one! This slice of schlock won $300 at the Colorado State Fair. Eat your hearts out, puny human limners.
Jeez. That was years ago. Try this
Less than a year ago for the 'painting'. I think we've already done the fotie and wondered how King Charles's sausage fingers snuck their way in.
Nonetheless, it fooled the judges. Who thought it was poignant and beautiful
Everyone's a critic, but imo even if it had been an authentic photo it would still be absurdly ersatz, trying to sythesise the portents of a century ago.
The hands are rubbish (not good King Charles sausages, the one stage left looks like jerusalem artichokes), and don't match. Pretty confident I would have rumbled this.
How about this? Let’s face it, the answer is No. There is no way you could confidently say if this is a real war photograph or an AI fake
It’s an AI fake. This woman does not exist
It being an attractive, modelly, young woman seems to give a whiff of rat to me. A photoshoot for Vogue maybe, war pic no.
But you couldn’t say if it was real or not, not with any great confidence
And remember what AI art was like just 18 months ago, then extrapolate forward another 18 months. Scary
Fashion photography seems to be immediately and imminently endangered. AI can produce startling, clever images which would cost £1000s to stage. AI does it for nothing
Photos in online mags will become moving images
“HOLY F**KING HELL. MidJourney 5.2 + RunwayML Gen2 is MIND BLOWING.🤯 This is a deep deep rabbit hole I'll be lost in for a while.🐇🕳️”
Comments
Meanwhile, Coutts CEO Peter Flavel must take the ultimate responsibility for de-banking me based on my political views.
Sir Howard Davies is responsible for overall governance. He has clearly failed in this task, least of all by endorsing their conduct.
In my view — they should all go.
https://twitter.com/nigel_farage/status/1683905857707180037
Slough is the beating heart of the golden triangle of Windsor, Slough and Eton. It needs a bus station which is so attractive to tourists and visitors, especially our friends over the pond, that they are drawn away from the tawdry and passing charms of Eton High Street, St George's Chapel and the Gilbert and Sullivan castle and back to admiring not only a bus station but also the Gurdwara in Woodlands Avenue and the Mars factory.
Slough still lacks a waiting room of the quality of Carlisle Station.
There's certainly a link between environment and anti social behaviour; see the work of Professor Alice Coleman;
https://www.createstreets.com/alice-in-wonderland/
Whether that's just about high vs. low rise, or it's about the humanity of surroundings is harder to unpick. But it wouldn't be crazy.
https://twitter.com/aramco/status/1682294350578094080
This is Newhaven in Edinburgh, opened last month along with 7 other tram stations, this pic taken 12 days ago:
The Labour vote went up from 11.5 million votes in 1992 to 13.5 million votes in 1997.
So about 2 million 1992 Tory voters went directly to Labour ie about 14% of 1992 Tory voters. So Starmer doing less well in winning over Tory voters than Blair was.
See too the May local elections where Starmer Labour got only 35% NEV compared to 47% NEV for Blair's New Labour in 1995.
See also last week's by elections when the LDs in Somerton and Frome got a bigger swing to them than Labour did in either Uxbridge or Selby and Ainsty
I can see armies investing much more in 'classic' mortars and artillery.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2911769/William-Hague-buys-2-5million-10-bedroom-country-pile-mid-Wales.html
Reston (between Dunbar and Berwick), pics taken 11 days ago, roughly a year after opening:
The scary thing about AI art is that it has now 99.99% mastered the human face (it is making images of people which cannot be differentiated from “real” images) and now it is swiftly moving into video. This is why all of Hollywood is on strike
‘This is the most detailed closeup I made, where I cannot find any sign that this is an AI image
#midjourney has reached new heights for me
Can you indicate any detail here that doesn't look real?’
https://twitter.com/uriraveh/status/1680859158571089927?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg
Network Rail build them like this to comply with legislation as cheaply as possible.
Nothing more.
EDIT - Though Musk IS a South African.
It's far from an exact science as we have to factor in new voters and changes in turnout - I suspect turnout will drop a little (low 60s perhaps) fuelled by ex-Conservative abstentions.
Edit: found one! This slice of schlock won $300 at the Colorado State Fair. Eat your hearts out, puny human limners.
It WAS old Penn Station, NYC
Stuff like Archer - full auto artillery. You rock up, sit in the cab, press play, and it shoots a fire mission, complete with simultaneous time on target stuff, then you drive off. Done in under a minute.
For mortars, self loading systems in vehicles - again, heavily automated.
For longer range, BAe are looking at various kinds of missile trucks - fire support that can roam around behind the line, and chuck a missile at a target on request from the front line.
I am just coming on to tut tut loudly at -
1. Alison Rose of NatWest. Dearie dearie me. "A serious error of judgment". No shit, Sherlock. Howard Davies is Chair. His impeccable judgment was shown when he was Chair of the LSE and it decided to take money from Ghaddffi's son who, entirely coincidentally, received some sort of degree shortly thereafter. Mind you he had that idiot, Shami Chakrabarti on the Board so it's no wonder the LSE's moral compass was MIA.
3. The Criminal Cases Review Commission and its appalling response over the Post Office. We have institutional callousness, to add to all the other institutional failings pretty much every public and private service suffers from these days.
3. Police Scotland - on 16 March they launched their Violence against Women & Girls (VAWG) Strategy. 9 days later on 25 May the Chief Constable said the force was institutionally misogynistic. On 22 July a woman was violently assaulted by a man in Aberdeen. The assault was recorded on film and witnessed. The woman suffered punches to her face and arms; she has a black eye. The police have given him a warning and left it at that. Maybe they also said "maaate" at him as that insufferable weasel, Khan, has suggested in his risible poster campaign.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
@SimonCalder
11,000 passengers stranded after 70 flights to/from Gatwick airport are cancelled in 24 hours.
Causes:
Storms
Air-traffic control delays across Europe
‘Last-minute staff shortages at the control tower’ at Gatwick.
Very few seats are available for rebooking"
https://twitter.com/SimonCalder/status/1683853657463312384
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1683514941213483027?s=20
https://www.constructionenquirer.com/2020/08/21/design-work-starts-on-115m-cardiff-central-station-revamp/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/25/gop-candidate-donor-gift-cards-00108054
Including Doug Burgum ("he'll make a fine president") who came up with the idea.
While critiquing 'Bidenomics'.
I hope they were just being corrupt whores. The alternative was that they actually were advocating fascism pebbled dashed in socialist words.
Pretty much everything you see about train and station design now is about designing out opex cost and liability risk.
The money isn't going to the construction crew. Isn't being spent on materials. Isn't getting used for fripperies like design.
No, the money is going to spivs. We can't build a station. We have to have studies and consultations and considerations. Spend the money with a handful of consultants, rather than on the thing itself.
I think we've already done the fotie and wondered how King Charles's sausage fingers snuck their way in.
YG have 2019 Cons on 43% Con, 12% Ref, 9% Lab, 5% LD/Green, 24% Don't Know, 6% Won't Vote
Previous Opinium showed 2019 Cons on 44% Con, 13% Lab, 10% Ref, 4% LD/Green, 26% Don't Know, 2% Won't Vote
So you pays your money and you takes your choice.
There are undoubtedly ashamed Cons hiding out in the don't knows which is why Opinium and MIC factor that into their headline result. As for most of the others well the general pattern when push comes to shove is that those 'don't knows' largely become part of the 30%+ who don't vote. A 30%+ that never show up in opinion polls. (Note that Opinium poll above suggests a 77% turnout! In 2019 it was 67%) It has always been thus and until I see it proved otherwise I shall continue to expect that to be the case.
Meanwhile only 24% on the above Opinium give any degree of approval for the PM. If you need a figure that a political party should be worried about then it is that one!
We don't know about the Don't Knows - there are a lot of them and at least half are ex-Conservative voters.
The Conservatives haven't led a poll since December 2021 - by 1997, the Conservatives hadn't led a poll in four years - their last lead was January 1993. Nothing Major did from 1993 onwards made any great difference - yes, he did reduce the lead but it was still substantial on polling day and Blair won a historic landslide.
Derby station had potential, before it was demolished in ?84? and replaced with the current one. which, to be fair, has been improved in recent years.
https://goo.gl/maps/ZhUJR8WGh3pPEmXYA
The MIdland did make some good stations. Sheffield Midland is also quite attractive:
https://goo.gl/maps/cHc9NhDcioTxiQ8eA
The claim is that precision systems reduce the need for arty - you can destroy the target with orders of magnitude fewer shells. That concept is currently being tested...
A) I've visited every station in London (Brent Cross West is still upcoming!)
and
B ) been on all "normal everyday" National Rail, Tube, Light Rail and Tram lines in Great Britain (new for 2023: Newhaven Tram, and the Luton DART).
In 2015 for example the lead Cameron had over Ed Miliband was more accurate than the neck and neck voting intention figures, as was the lead Major had over Kinnock as preferred PM more accurate than headline voting intention Labour leads in 1992 too
Sadly they can't do much about the hideous 1960/70s shopping centre or the more recent bus station next door, whatever they clad it in. The 60s road layout doesn't help, either.
https://goo.gl/maps/pXiudFFdy3QFDkKm6
More accurate in what sense?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Burgum
Where are new railway stations being built, or revamped now?
The South East Region used the same steel frame - concrete panel system used in Notts for our schools, which have a design life ending around 2020-2040. Are they all being rebuilt?
I wonder how much of the KCC cash contribution to Thanet Station came from the surrounding housing developers.
No way is that station worth £35 million.
You could build a whole secondary school for that.
Somebody, somewhere, has creamed off a fortune.
Cheap and nasty is acceptable if the alternative is nothing, which sadly it rather frequently was, but expensive and nasty is not on.
Dumb artillery is cheap per round, but then you have to fire a bunch of rounds, which wears out the gun. Before you know it, a Brimstone is the *cheap* option.
But it won, nonetheless
Either way you better get used to it. Do a Twitter search on “Midjourney”. It is pouring out millions of beautiful, strange, dazzling, eerie images. Lots of dreck but lots of Wow, as well
The visual arts as we have known them are finished. From photography to painting, from video to movies. It’s over
But they thought it did before they knew, so it makes no difference.
https://news.leicester.gov.uk/news-articles/2023/march/chance-to-explore-plans-for-leicester-railway-station-revamp/
Because we don't have enough of them. Because we thought artillery was not as important.
It’s an AI fake. This woman does not exist
If this turns out to be true, we'd be truly f*cked.
The new analysis estimates a timescale for the collapse of between 2025 and 2095, with a central estimate of 2050, if global carbon emissions are not reduced
Damn, I was hoping not to die until toward the end of that period and that I could get through mostly unscathed.
Albeit with warmer winters in the UK than in the past the gulf stream may be less important to us anyway, less rainfall potentially too in summer. Though would need more irrigation for agriculture
"I suspect that this hostility derives from a subliminal awareness that the music is a reproach to their own way of living, to its ugliness. Ugliness there has always been, of course, but now there is ugliness without aspiration to anything else, and indeed a desire to destroy anything else. Ugliness, being within the reach of all, is both democratic and authentic, in a way that beauty is not."
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/07/absolute-earnestness-and-extreme-triviality/
Upon arrival from London, did the curve connecting round towards Hartlepool, and the next day did the railway towards Whitby, which was cool. Unfortunately, had to get the bus back to 'Boro, as a steam train on the North Yorks Moors broke down at Grosmont, thus blocking the "official" railway and leading to cancellation of all 'Boro-bound services from Whitby! Also meant I couldn't do the NYM either!
https://surbitonwritersgroup.wordpress.com/surbitonwritersgroupblog/https://surbitonwritersgroup.wordpress.com/surbitonwritersgroupblog/
"In 2020, a study had assessed the impact of an AMOC collapse on farming and food production in Great Britain. It estimated that AMOC collapse would reverse the impact of global warming in Great Britain and cause an average temperature drop of 3.4 °C."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturning_circulation#Impacts_of_a_shutdown
I think it could have been placed some time ago, as the upgraded BAE factory was ready.
https://www.baesystems.com/en/article/uk-mod-invests-280m-in-frontline-battlefield-munitions
And remember what AI art was like just 18 months ago, then extrapolate forward another 18 months. Scary
Fashion photography seems to be immediately and imminently endangered. AI can produce startling, clever images which would cost £1000s to stage. AI does it for nothing
Photos in online mags will become moving images
“HOLY F**KING HELL. MidJourney 5.2 + RunwayML Gen2 is MIND BLOWING.🤯 This is a deep deep rabbit hole I'll be lost in for a while.🐇🕳️”
https://twitter.com/lifeofc/status/1682580731065958401?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg