Can I get some recommendations for restaurants in Henley-on-Thames please?
If you have a vehicle with you, Tom Kerridge's places in Marlow, just up the road are as good as the hype. Bird in Hand is great and he has a butchers shop that doubles as a restaurant (Butcher's tap) was a good lunch option.
If ChatGPT is good at voice chat that is absolutely going to destroy Alexa, Siri etc
I was thinking yesterday how (relatively) crap they are. Incapable of proper conversation. I mainly use them for cooking timers, weather, switching things on, etc
Imagine a voice assistant that will really listen and give you serious or kind or funny or helpful answers, and continue a dialogue indefinitely. That’s quite revolutionary
Imagine a device that could simulate the actions of the human hand, coupled with a voice assistant that could give you kind, funny or helpful conversation while working that device - while simulating a voice of your choice - you'd have heaven on earth, wouldn't you? Or the closest thing to it, pending the whole-body version.
On the boring subject of 'AI'... (I don't know how that differs from normal software and I don't care to find out) I've noticed that if I give my students a translation exercise with a completely fictitious word (that is a word looks like a French or Russian word but I've just made it up) then the ones who cheat with ChatGPT (or whatever) submit a translation in which the 'AI' has tried to infer the meaning of my made up word. The ones who tried to do it for real leave it blank and ask what the word means.
Maybe I'm very naive but I find it odd that some students who've presumably been told not to use ChatGPT decide to go ahead and use it anyway.
Soon there will be chatbots that are entirely indistinguishable from humans, and undetectable as AI. Lord knows what educators (and others) do then
My older daughter has been composing her personal statement for Uni application. She did a REALLY good job and I was proud of her. And yet, as I read it, I got the sinking feeling that in about 6 months ChatGPT5 will be able to outdo her - it can already outdo a few of her friends (she showed me some other statements when I asked)
Hello again and a good sunny afternoon again, all.
My nephew teaches at one of the more liberal-intellectual of the top public schools ( St Paul's, Westminster , Winchester etc, without naming which ) . He says that ChatGPT is a "growing problem" " particularly among the more lazy but also more able students, which I found interesting. It seems a lot of cleverer students enjoy the challenge of succesfully integrating ChatGpT's work with their own, thus simultaneously saving a lot of time, and simlutaneously outwitting the staff. This is apparently the latest thing as a trendy new skill among the pupils, which the teachers are trying to train themselves to recognise, and know when they see them.
So I think using ChatGPT and similar as a resource is just a step further on from using google, wikipedia etc. All that has happened is that the search engine has taken the hits and written the essay too. If a student takes that as a start point, checks the facts, re-writes into their own voice, add appropriate referencing, then I have no issue. I am fairly sure my next research article will have some input done in just this way.
Sadly the weaker and more lazy students will just take the ChatGPT answer and try to use it as their own.
As generations of teachers would say, "you are only cheating yourselves..."
Indeed, Surely the essay is there to demonstrate to yourself and your teacher that you know stuff. If you get AI to write the essay, even if you then edit the content, then you probably don't know the stuff. This will surely be demonstrated when it comes to the exam. The reality is, they are only cheating themselves. Also, writing an essay really isn't that hard. And if you do find it hard you're not going to get any better at it if you never practice. And, if you find it hard to structure an essay, and never practice it, then go into an exam and try to do it under exam conditions... Again, utterly self-defeating, like all forms of cheating. I guess the only question is whether AI makes the acquisition of knowledge and the structuring of our thoughts and composition of an argument superfluous. But if it does, then we might as well just declare human civilisation to be at an end.
Using essays as the yardstick by which to judge knowledge and intelligence is how we ended up with essay-crisis Prime Ministers like Cameron and Johnson.
It was already a pretty poor way of judging whether people had the desired knowledge, but it was a convenient default to avoid thinking of a more creative and useful way to structure a test.
If essay-crisis AIs lead to better ways of testing knowledge and proficiency then that will be a good thing.
I think that the essays Cameron and Johnson wrote in their Oxford examinations (in which they earned a 1st in PPE and a 2:1 in classics respectively) were an accurate yardstick for measuring their intellectual abilities. Both are clearly intelligent men. Cameron's problem is that he overestimates himself, a typical characteristic of those with an elitist upbringing, and this led him to be lazy and take stupid risks like the EU referendum. Johnson's problem is that he is a congenital liar and narcissist. In both cases these are flaws of character, not intelligence, and I would argue were apparent before either of them took the top job. I wouldn't blame Oxford for this, except to the extent that it further burnished their egos and provided them with additional elite contacts to further their political goals.
I cannot see evidence of Cameron having notable intelligence. His autobiography was alarmingly poor in terms of prose, and it also revealed that total lack of self awareness which you touch on
Indeed, I reckon he is living proof that a really good education can punt a fairly mediocre brain an awful long way: ie into Oxford, onto a First, into Number 10
It was only in Number 10 that his mediocrity became apparent
Maybe. On the one occasion I met him - an encounter that lasted an hour or two and apologies for the name-dropping - he certainly came across as intelligent but not remarkably so. He didn't say anything exceptionally interesting or insightful but he didn't say anything stupid and appeared able to think quickly on his feet and respond fluently. And boy was he confident. Scarily confident.
Confidence is a massively underrated quality regarding climbing the greasy pole. It's somewhat overrated with respect to making good decisions.
The election was by STV and is a good example of transferring the surplus votes for Lord Meston who was elected on first preferences before the elimination of lower ranked peers.
Can I express my outrage that John Durival Kemp was not elected? If we are going to make a choice of who gets to make laws based on who their daddy was, it is an outrage that we didn't stick Viscount Rochdale in.
No, strike that. What an absurd spectacle. We shouldn't have a house of peers, and certainly not members who are their because an ancestor was mates with the king.
The two peerages have quite different pedigrees.
The first Baron Meston was a financial civil servant in India and became a peer in 1919. He later became President of the Liberal Party.
In contrast the first Baron De Clifford was a soldier and was sent to quell the Scots in 1296 and became Lord Warden of the Marches. He received the writ of peerage in 1299. He died at the Battle of Bannockburn.
There are eight Democratic seats up in swing or red states in 2024. Six of the Dems in/running for those seats have called for Menendez to resign (Brown, Tester, Casey, Baldwin, Rosen, Slotkin)
Farooq said: "when you drive somewhere, taxpayers subsidise that trip too"
In the US, users pay for most roads, through motor fuel taxes. In some places they also pay through tolls on the roads, and they often pay tolls on new bridges.
(I think the first question one should ask about any transportation project is whether it can be paid for by user fees. Not the only question, of course; you will also want to look at both negative and positive externalities. But if you care at all about effficiency, you should start with that user fee question.)
Host range, transmissibility and antigenicity of a pangolin coronavirus
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01476-x The pathogenic and cross-species transmission potential of SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses (CoVs) remain poorly characterized. Here we recovered a wild-type pangolin (Pg) CoV GD strain including derivatives encoding reporter genes using reverse genetics. In primary human cells, PgCoV replicated efficiently but with reduced fitness and showed less efficient transmission via airborne route compared with SARS-CoV-2 in hamsters. PgCoV was potently inhibited by US Food and Drug Administration approved drugs, and neutralized by COVID-19 patient sera and SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic antibodies in vitro. A pan-Sarbecovirus antibody and SARS-CoV-2 S2P recombinant protein vaccine protected BALB/c mice from PgCoV infection. In K18-hACE2 mice, PgCoV infection caused severe clinical disease, but mice were protected by a SARS-CoV-2 human antibody. Efficient PgCoV replication in primary human cells and hACE2 mice, coupled with a capacity for airborne spread, highlights an emergence potential. However, low competitive fitness, pre-immune humans and the benefit of COVID-19 countermeasures should impede its ability to spread globally in human populations...
Multiculturalism has failed according to Braverman failing to see the irony of her argument given she’s from immigrant parents !
Yes, immigrants must hold political views which are crude extrapolations of the circumstances of their birth. Otherwise they are being naughty. Can't have them thinking for themselves.
"The two buildings differ in both external and internal design. Councillors approved two glass-clad blocks, but instead they were given metal features and grey cladding.
Greenwich says that other breaches include: * Residents have poorer quality accommodation than was promised * Promised roof gardens and children’s play areas have not been built * The footprint of the towers is bigger than was promised * “accessible” apartments for wheelchair users have steps to their balconies, meaning residents cannot use them * car parking has replaced a promised landscaped garden * a residents’ gym has replaced commercial floorspace"
The developer will, I expect, go bust, leaving the flatowners with an even bigger problem. But my question is why the council did not notice these massive lapses of the planning permission much earlier; say, before anyone moved in.
Host range, transmissibility and antigenicity of a pangolin coronavirus
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01476-x The pathogenic and cross-species transmission potential of SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses (CoVs) remain poorly characterized. Here we recovered a wild-type pangolin (Pg) CoV GD strain including derivatives encoding reporter genes using reverse genetics. In primary human cells, PgCoV replicated efficiently but with reduced fitness and showed less efficient transmission via airborne route compared with SARS-CoV-2 in hamsters. PgCoV was potently inhibited by US Food and Drug Administration approved drugs, and neutralized by COVID-19 patient sera and SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic antibodies in vitro. A pan-Sarbecovirus antibody and SARS-CoV-2 S2P recombinant protein vaccine protected BALB/c mice from PgCoV infection. In K18-hACE2 mice, PgCoV infection caused severe clinical disease, but mice were protected by a SARS-CoV-2 human antibody. Efficient PgCoV replication in primary human cells and hACE2 mice, coupled with a capacity for airborne spread, highlights an emergence potential. However, low competitive fitness, pre-immune humans and the benefit of COVID-19 countermeasures should impede its ability to spread globally in human populations...
There are eight Democratic seats up in swing or red states in 2024. Six of the Dems in/running for those seats have called for Menendez to resign (Brown, Tester, Casey, Baldwin, Rosen, Slotkin)
On the boring subject of 'AI'... (I don't know how that differs from normal software and I don't care to find out) I've noticed that if I give my students a translation exercise with a completely fictitious word (that is a word looks like a French or Russian word but I've just made it up) then the ones who cheat with ChatGPT (or whatever) submit a translation in which the 'AI' has tried to infer the meaning of my made up word. The ones who tried to do it for real leave it blank and ask what the word means.
Maybe I'm very naive but I find it odd that some students who've presumably been told not to use ChatGPT decide to go ahead and use it anyway.
Soon there will be chatbots that are entirely indistinguishable from humans, and undetectable as AI. Lord knows what educators (and others) do then
My older daughter has been composing her personal statement for Uni application. She did a REALLY good job and I was proud of her. And yet, as I read it, I got the sinking feeling that in about 6 months ChatGPT5 will be able to outdo her - it can already outdo a few of her friends (she showed me some other statements when I asked)
Hello again and a good sunny afternoon again, all.
My nephew teaches at one of the more liberal-intellectual of the top public schools ( St Paul's, Westminster , Winchester etc, without naming which ) . He says that ChatGPT is a "growing problem" " particularly among the more lazy but also more able students, which I found interesting. It seems a lot of cleverer students enjoy the challenge of succesfully integrating ChatGpT's work with their own, thus simultaneously saving a lot of time, and simlutaneously outwitting the staff. This is apparently the latest thing as a trendy new skill among the pupils, which the teachers are trying to train themselves to recognise, and know when they see them.
So I think using ChatGPT and similar as a resource is just a step further on from using google, wikipedia etc. All that has happened is that the search engine has taken the hits and written the essay too. If a student takes that as a start point, checks the facts, re-writes into their own voice, add appropriate referencing, then I have no issue. I am fairly sure my next research article will have some input done in just this way.
Sadly the weaker and more lazy students will just take the ChatGPT answer and try to use it as their own.
As generations of teachers would say, "you are only cheating yourselves..."
Surely the essay is there to demonstrate to yourself and your teacher that you know stuff. If you get AI to write the essay, even if you then edit the content, then you probably don't know the stuff. This will surely be demonstrated when it comes to the exam. The reality is, they are only cheating themselves. Also, writing an essay really isn't that hard. And if you do find it hard you're not going to get any better at it if you never practice. And, if you find it hard to structure an essay, and never practice it, then go into an exam and try to do it under exam conditions... Again, utterly self-defeating, like all forms of cheating. I guess the only question is whether AI makes the acquisition of knowledge and the structuring of our thoughts and composition of an argument superfluous. But if it does, then we might as well just declare human civilisation to be at an end.
Using essays as the yardstick by which to judge knowledge and intelligence is how we ended up with essay-crisis Prime Ministers like Cameron and Johnson.
It was already a pretty poor way of judging whether people had the desired knowledge, but it was a convenient default to avoid thinking of a more creative and useful way to structure a test.
If essay-crisis AIs lead to better ways of testing knowledge and proficiency then that will be a good thing.
I think that the essays Cameron and Johnson wrote in their Oxford examinations (in which they earned a 1st in PPE and a 2:1 in classics respectively) were an accurate yardstick for measuring their intellectual abilities. Both are clearly intelligent men. Cameron's problem is that he overestimates himself, a typical characteristic of those with an elitist upbringing, and this led him to be lazy and take stupid risks like the EU referendum. Johnson's problem is that he is a congenital liar and narcissist. In both cases these are flaws of character, not intelligence, and I would argue were apparent before either of them took the top job. I wouldn't blame Oxford for this, except to the extent that it further burnished their egos and provided them with additional elite contacts to further their political goals.
Oxbridge is great at burnishing egos. Which is good. Most people need an ego boost and a half. Not so good, however, when you start with someone who's already a narcissist.
Please don’t tarnish Cambridge with Oxford.
Cambridge creates nothing but modest self effacing people.
On the boring subject of 'AI'... (I don't know how that differs from normal software and I don't care to find out) I've noticed that if I give my students a translation exercise with a completely fictitious word (that is a word looks like a French or Russian word but I've just made it up) then the ones who cheat with ChatGPT (or whatever) submit a translation in which the 'AI' has tried to infer the meaning of my made up word. The ones who tried to do it for real leave it blank and ask what the word means.
Maybe I'm very naive but I find it odd that some students who've presumably been told not to use ChatGPT decide to go ahead and use it anyway.
Soon there will be chatbots that are entirely indistinguishable from humans, and undetectable as AI. Lord knows what educators (and others) do then
My older daughter has been composing her personal statement for Uni application. She did a REALLY good job and I was proud of her. And yet, as I read it, I got the sinking feeling that in about 6 months ChatGPT5 will be able to outdo her - it can already outdo a few of her friends (she showed me some other statements when I asked)
Hello again and a good sunny afternoon again, all.
My nephew teaches at one of the more liberal-intellectual of the top public schools ( St Paul's, Westminster , Winchester etc, without naming which ) . He says that ChatGPT is a "growing problem" " particularly among the more lazy but also more able students, which I found interesting. It seems a lot of cleverer students enjoy the challenge of succesfully integrating ChatGpT's work with their own, thus simultaneously saving a lot of time, and simlutaneously outwitting the staff. This is apparently the latest thing as a trendy new skill among the pupils, which the teachers are trying to train themselves to recognise, and know when they see them.
So I think using ChatGPT and similar as a resource is just a step further on from using google, wikipedia etc. All that has happened is that the search engine has taken the hits and written the essay too. If a student takes that as a start point, checks the facts, re-writes into their own voice, add appropriate referencing, then I have no issue. I am fairly sure my next research article will have some input done in just this way.
Sadly the weaker and more lazy students will just take the ChatGPT answer and try to use it as their own.
As generations of teachers would say, "you are only cheating yourselves..."
Indeed, Surely the essay is there to demonstrate to yourself and your teacher that you know stuff. If you get AI to write the essay, even if you then edit the content, then you probably don't know the stuff. This will surely be demonstrated when it comes to the exam. The reality is, they are only cheating themselves. Also, writing an essay really isn't that hard. And if you do find it hard you're not going to get any better at it if you never practice. And, if you find it hard to structure an essay, and never practice it, then go into an exam and try to do it under exam conditions... Again, utterly self-defeating, like all forms of cheating. I guess the only question is whether AI makes the acquisition of knowledge and the structuring of our thoughts and composition of an argument superfluous. But if it does, then we might as well just declare human civilisation to be at an end.
Using essays as the yardstick by which to judge knowledge and intelligence is how we ended up with essay-crisis Prime Ministers like Cameron and Johnson.
It was already a pretty poor way of judging whether people had the desired knowledge, but it was a convenient default to avoid thinking of a more creative and useful way to structure a test.
If essay-crisis AIs lead to better ways of testing knowledge and proficiency then that will be a good thing.
I think that the essays Cameron and Johnson wrote in their Oxford examinations (in which they earned a 1st in PPE and a 2:1 in classics respectively) were an accurate yardstick for measuring their intellectual abilities. Both are clearly intelligent men. Cameron's problem is that he overestimates himself, a typical characteristic of those with an elitist upbringing, and this led him to be lazy and take stupid risks like the EU referendum. Johnson's problem is that he is a congenital liar and narcissist. In both cases these are flaws of character, not intelligence, and I would argue were apparent before either of them took the top job. I wouldn't blame Oxford for this, except to the extent that it further burnished their egos and provided them with additional elite contacts to further their political goals.
I cannot see evidence of Cameron having notable intelligence. His autobiography was alarmingly poor in terms of prose, and it also revealed that total lack of self awareness which you touch on
Indeed, I reckon he is living proof that a really good education can punt a fairly mediocre brain an awful long way: ie into Oxford, onto a First, into Number 10
It was only in Number 10 that his mediocrity became apparent
While not necessarily disagreeing with your observation I am not sure 'alarmingly poor in terms of prose' is any measure of intelligence or lack of. Many clever people cannot write for toffee and many who can are not necessarily bright. It seems to me to be more of an art form. Like most (all?) artistic stuff if you are taught it and work at it you will get better, although there is clearly an underlying talent. I would compare it to painting.
We are probably both quite biased as you are clearly very skilled at it and I am rubbish (I also can't paint).
Do we remember when Matthew Parris sampled a week on benefits after he suggested he could live on them without issue?
After her speech today, perhaps we could ask Cruella to try living in Afghanistan. Hopefully for a lengthy experiment.
Wasn't it David Blunkett who said he had no sympathy with asylum seekers from Afghanistan and that they should go home and rebuild their own countries?
"The two buildings differ in both external and internal design. Councillors approved two glass-clad blocks, but instead they were given metal features and grey cladding.
Greenwich says that other breaches include: * Residents have poorer quality accommodation than was promised * Promised roof gardens and children’s play areas have not been built * The footprint of the towers is bigger than was promised * “accessible” apartments for wheelchair users have steps to their balconies, meaning residents cannot use them * car parking has replaced a promised landscaped garden * a residents’ gym has replaced commercial floorspace"
The developer will, I expect, go bust, leaving the flatowners with an even bigger problem. But my question is why the council did not notice these massive lapses of the planning permission much earlier; say, before anyone moved in.
Where's the building inspectors ?
I expect it will end in a long legal battle with the owners/ tenants in unacceptable limbo
On the boring subject of 'AI'... (I don't know how that differs from normal software and I don't care to find out) I've noticed that if I give my students a translation exercise with a completely fictitious word (that is a word looks like a French or Russian word but I've just made it up) then the ones who cheat with ChatGPT (or whatever) submit a translation in which the 'AI' has tried to infer the meaning of my made up word. The ones who tried to do it for real leave it blank and ask what the word means.
Maybe I'm very naive but I find it odd that some students who've presumably been told not to use ChatGPT decide to go ahead and use it anyway.
Soon there will be chatbots that are entirely indistinguishable from humans, and undetectable as AI. Lord knows what educators (and others) do then
My older daughter has been composing her personal statement for Uni application. She did a REALLY good job and I was proud of her. And yet, as I read it, I got the sinking feeling that in about 6 months ChatGPT5 will be able to outdo her - it can already outdo a few of her friends (she showed me some other statements when I asked)
Hello again and a good sunny afternoon again, all.
My nephew teaches at one of the more liberal-intellectual of the top public schools ( St Paul's, Westminster , Winchester etc, without naming which ) . He says that ChatGPT is a "growing problem" " particularly among the more lazy but also more able students, which I found interesting. It seems a lot of cleverer students enjoy the challenge of succesfully integrating ChatGpT's work with their own, thus simultaneously saving a lot of time, and simlutaneously outwitting the staff. This is apparently the latest thing as a trendy new skill among the pupils, which the teachers are trying to train themselves to recognise, and know when they see them.
So I think using ChatGPT and similar as a resource is just a step further on from using google, wikipedia etc. All that has happened is that the search engine has taken the hits and written the essay too. If a student takes that as a start point, checks the facts, re-writes into their own voice, add appropriate referencing, then I have no issue. I am fairly sure my next research article will have some input done in just this way.
Sadly the weaker and more lazy students will just take the ChatGPT answer and try to use it as their own.
As generations of teachers would say, "you are only cheating yourselves..."
Indeed, Surely the essay is there to demonstrate to yourself and your teacher that you know stuff. If you get AI to write the essay, even if you then edit the content, then you probably don't know the stuff. This will surely be demonstrated when it comes to the exam. The reality is, they are only cheating themselves. Also, writing an essay really isn't that hard. And if you do find it hard you're not going to get any better at it if you never practice. And, if you find it hard to structure an essay, and never practice it, then go into an exam and try to do it under exam conditions... Again, utterly self-defeating, like all forms of cheating. I guess the only question is whether AI makes the acquisition of knowledge and the structuring of our thoughts and composition of an argument superfluous. But if it does, then we might as well just declare human civilisation to be at an end.
Using essays as the yardstick by which to judge knowledge and intelligence is how we ended up with essay-crisis Prime Ministers like Cameron and Johnson.
It was already a pretty poor way of judging whether people had the desired knowledge, but it was a convenient default to avoid thinking of a more creative and useful way to structure a test.
If essay-crisis AIs lead to better ways of testing knowledge and proficiency then that will be a good thing.
I think that the essays Cameron and Johnson wrote in their Oxford examinations (in which they earned a 1st in PPE and a 2:1 in classics respectively) were an accurate yardstick for measuring their intellectual abilities. Both are clearly intelligent men. Cameron's problem is that he overestimates himself, a typical characteristic of those with an elitist upbringing, and this led him to be lazy and take stupid risks like the EU referendum. Johnson's problem is that he is a congenital liar and narcissist. In both cases these are flaws of character, not intelligence, and I would argue were apparent before either of them took the top job. I wouldn't blame Oxford for this, except to the extent that it further burnished their egos and provided them with additional elite contacts to further their political goals.
I cannot see evidence of Cameron having notable intelligence. His autobiography was alarmingly poor in terms of prose, and it also revealed that total lack of self awareness which you touch on
Indeed, I reckon he is living proof that a really good education can punt a fairly mediocre brain an awful long way: ie into Oxford, onto a First, into Number 10
It was only in Number 10 that his mediocrity became apparent
While not necessarily disagreeing with your observation I am not sure 'alarmingly poor in terms of prose' is any measure of intelligence or lack of. Many clever people cannot write for toffee and many who can are not necessarily bright. It seems to me to be more of an art form. Like most (all?) artistic stuff if you are taught it and work at it you will get better, although there is clearly an underlying talent. I would compare it to painting.
We are probably both quite biased as you are clearly very skilled at it and I am rubbish (I also can't paint).
Yes, I admitted in a later comment that I possibly set too much store on good writing. Nonetheless I would still say that skilled use of language is indicative of intelligence, and a lack of that skill often (not always!) denotes dimness. Much more so than drawing or painting or whatever
Multiculturalism has failed according to Braverman failing to see the irony of her argument given she’s from immigrant parents !
Yes, immigrants must hold political views which are crude extrapolations of the circumstances of their birth. Otherwise they are being naughty. Can't have them thinking for themselves.
I don't think @nico679 was suggesting that. I believe his statement was perfectly legitimate bearing in mind what she has just said.
Now I believe immigration into Europe is an issue giving rise to rather concerning extremist politics including her own. Another irony as sitting Home Secretary is she is in a position to drive the agenda to a positive and workable conclusion rather than spit out sound bites that enthuse her more extreme fanbase.
Do we remember when Matthew Parris sampled a week on benefits after he suggested he could live on them without issue?
After her speech today, perhaps we could ask Cruella to try living in Afghanistan. Hopefully for a lengthy experiment.
Wasn't it David Blunkett who said he had no sympathy with asylum seekers from Afghanistan and that they should go home and rebuild their own countries?
On the boring subject of 'AI'... (I don't know how that differs from normal software and I don't care to find out) I've noticed that if I give my students a translation exercise with a completely fictitious word (that is a word looks like a French or Russian word but I've just made it up) then the ones who cheat with ChatGPT (or whatever) submit a translation in which the 'AI' has tried to infer the meaning of my made up word. The ones who tried to do it for real leave it blank and ask what the word means.
Maybe I'm very naive but I find it odd that some students who've presumably been told not to use ChatGPT decide to go ahead and use it anyway.
Soon there will be chatbots that are entirely indistinguishable from humans, and undetectable as AI. Lord knows what educators (and others) do then
My older daughter has been composing her personal statement for Uni application. She did a REALLY good job and I was proud of her. And yet, as I read it, I got the sinking feeling that in about 6 months ChatGPT5 will be able to outdo her - it can already outdo a few of her friends (she showed me some other statements when I asked)
Skills change.
Now the key skill is coming up with the right prompts for ChatGPT, and being able to make sure what it produces doesn't look AI generated.
As of now, AI is at the standard of a pretty average A Level student.
If you know how to use AI tools like ChatGPT, they can be very powerful tools.
Let me give two examples.
(1) I was writing a proposal for a European insurance company, and wanted to write a summary of a particular country's market. I asked ChatGPT to summarise market size, major players, key industry dynamics, etc. I used that as a template for my work. Essentially nothing from ChatGPT survived the rounds of edits, fact checking and the like, but it saved me a couple of hours because I was starting from work that was not terrible.
(2) My son was writing a history essay for school. I told him he couldn't use AI to write his answer, but he could use it to provide feedback. So, he said (roughly): the question was this, and this was my answer, what did I miss? ChatGPT gave him two or three points that he hadn't written about, that he went away and wrote about. He came top of the class. Would he have done so without ChatGPT telling him about things he'd missed? Probably not.
That second one is a really clever use.
Yes - and it is how ChatGPT is actually useful for various tasks. Asking it to write more than simple bits of code, get you code that does the wrong thing. But it can suggest chunks of code to simple task
I use Amazon's (AI-based) CodeWhisperer, and it does indeed provide really useful ideas. The code it suggests doesn't usually work as it stands, and it sometimes gets the wrong idea completely, but its suggestions have certainly helped me improve my coding.
Do we remember when Matthew Parris sampled a week on benefits after he suggested he could live on them without issue?
After her speech today, perhaps we could ask Cruella to try living in Afghanistan. Hopefully for a lengthy experiment.
Wasn't it David Blunkett who said he had no sympathy with asylum seekers from Afghanistan and that they should go home and rebuild their own countries?
He can join her if he likes.
The irony is that Starmer's government will probably be tougher on immigration and asylum than the Tories have been.
On the boring subject of 'AI'... (I don't know how that differs from normal software and I don't care to find out) I've noticed that if I give my students a translation exercise with a completely fictitious word (that is a word looks like a French or Russian word but I've just made it up) then the ones who cheat with ChatGPT (or whatever) submit a translation in which the 'AI' has tried to infer the meaning of my made up word. The ones who tried to do it for real leave it blank and ask what the word means.
Maybe I'm very naive but I find it odd that some students who've presumably been told not to use ChatGPT decide to go ahead and use it anyway.
Soon there will be chatbots that are entirely indistinguishable from humans, and undetectable as AI. Lord knows what educators (and others) do then
My older daughter has been composing her personal statement for Uni application. She did a REALLY good job and I was proud of her. And yet, as I read it, I got the sinking feeling that in about 6 months ChatGPT5 will be able to outdo her - it can already outdo a few of her friends (she showed me some other statements when I asked)
Hello again and a good sunny afternoon again, all.
My nephew teaches at one of the more liberal-intellectual of the top public schools ( St Paul's, Westminster , Winchester etc, without naming which ) . He says that ChatGPT is a "growing problem" " particularly among the more lazy but also more able students, which I found interesting. It seems a lot of cleverer students enjoy the challenge of succesfully integrating ChatGpT's work with their own, thus simultaneously saving a lot of time, and simlutaneously outwitting the staff. This is apparently the latest thing as a trendy new skill among the pupils, which the teachers are trying to train themselves to recognise, and know when they see them.
So I think using ChatGPT and similar as a resource is just a step further on from using google, wikipedia etc. All that has happened is that the search engine has taken the hits and written the essay too. If a student takes that as a start point, checks the facts, re-writes into their own voice, add appropriate referencing, then I have no issue. I am fairly sure my next research article will have some input done in just this way.
Sadly the weaker and more lazy students will just take the ChatGPT answer and try to use it as their own.
As generations of teachers would say, "you are only cheating yourselves..."
Indeed, Surely the essay is there to demonstrate to yourself and your teacher that you know stuff. If you get AI to write the essay, even if you then edit the content, then you probably don't know the stuff. This will surely be demonstrated when it comes to the exam. The reality is, they are only cheating themselves. Also, writing an essay really isn't that hard. And if you do find it hard you're not going to get any better at it if you never practice. And, if you find it hard to structure an essay, and never practice it, then go into an exam and try to do it under exam conditions... Again, utterly self-defeating, like all forms of cheating. I guess the only question is whether AI makes the acquisition of knowledge and the structuring of our thoughts and composition of an argument superfluous. But if it does, then we might as well just declare human civilisation to be at an end.
Using essays as the yardstick by which to judge knowledge and intelligence is how we ended up with essay-crisis Prime Ministers like Cameron and Johnson.
It was already a pretty poor way of judging whether people had the desired knowledge, but it was a convenient default to avoid thinking of a more creative and useful way to structure a test.
If essay-crisis AIs lead to better ways of testing knowledge and proficiency then that will be a good thing.
I think that the essays Cameron and Johnson wrote in their Oxford examinations (in which they earned a 1st in PPE and a 2:1 in classics respectively) were an accurate yardstick for measuring their intellectual abilities. Both are clearly intelligent men. Cameron's problem is that he overestimates himself, a typical characteristic of those with an elitist upbringing, and this led him to be lazy and take stupid risks like the EU referendum. Johnson's problem is that he is a congenital liar and narcissist. In both cases these are flaws of character, not intelligence, and I would argue were apparent before either of them took the top job. I wouldn't blame Oxford for this, except to the extent that it further burnished their egos and provided them with additional elite contacts to further their political goals.
I cannot see evidence of Cameron having notable intelligence. His autobiography was alarmingly poor in terms of prose, and it also revealed that total lack of self awareness which you touch on
Indeed, I reckon he is living proof that a really good education can punt a fairly mediocre brain an awful long way: ie into Oxford, onto a First, into Number 10
It was only in Number 10 that his mediocrity became apparent
While not necessarily disagreeing with your observation I am not sure 'alarmingly poor in terms of prose' is any measure of intelligence or lack of. Many clever people cannot write for toffee and many who can are not necessarily bright. It seems to me to be more of an art form. Like most (all?) artistic stuff if you are taught it and work at it you will get better, although there is clearly an underlying talent. I would compare it to painting.
We are probably both quite biased as you are clearly very skilled at it and I am rubbish (I also can't paint).
Yes, I admitted in a later comment that I possibly set too much store on good writing. Nonetheless I would still say that skilled use of language is indicative of intelligence, and a lack of that skill often (not always!) denotes dimness. Much more so than drawing or painting or whatever
I think (in general) I would agree with that despite my earlier post.
There are eight Democratic seats up in swing or red states in 2024. Six of the Dems in/running for those seats have called for Menendez to resign (Brown, Tester, Casey, Baldwin, Rosen, Slotkin)
Do we remember when Matthew Parris sampled a week on benefits after he suggested he could live on them without issue?
After her speech today, perhaps we could ask Cruella to try living in Afghanistan. Hopefully for a lengthy experiment.
Wasn't it David Blunkett who said he had no sympathy with asylum seekers from Afghanistan and that they should go home and rebuild their own countries?
He can join her if he likes.
The irony is that Starmer's government will probably be tougher on immigration and asylum than the Tories have been.
Braverman's premise today is immigration/ asylum is an all or nothing binary choice. It is not, but it has been managed very poorly by the current Home Secretary. Perhaps Suella should pick a fight with them over their dereliction of duty.
There are eight Democratic seats up in swing or red states in 2024. Six of the Dems in/running for those seats have called for Menendez to resign (Brown, Tester, Casey, Baldwin, Rosen, Slotkin)
Absolutely. Trump praised him at the time of his last acquittal - which is not a good sign about anyone.
Other Republicans seem quite keen.
Senator Menendez has a right to test the government’s evidence in court, just like any other citizen. He should be judged by jurors and New Jersey’s voters, not by Democratic politicians who now view him as inconvenient to their hold on power. https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1706682272840130576
Do we remember when Matthew Parris sampled a week on benefits after he suggested he could live on them without issue?
After her speech today, perhaps we could ask Cruella to try living in Afghanistan. Hopefully for a lengthy experiment.
Wasn't it David Blunkett who said he had no sympathy with asylum seekers from Afghanistan and that they should go home and rebuild their own countries?
He can join her if he likes.
The irony is that Starmer's government will probably be tougher on immigration and asylum than the Tories have been.
Braverman can pretend all she likes . She has zero empathy or humanity , she wants no asylum seekers and tries to pretend otherwise .
I think you're just racist and sexist against Asian ladies!
I really wish you would desist with quite frankly offensive assertions to other posters. You had a go at me over some nonsense about an Asian group called "Karen" who I had never heard of, when I was referencing a certain type of white middle aged American woman.
The key here is Braverman's distasteful Powellian speech and abject failure to focus responsibly on her job as Home Secretary.
Can I get some recommendations for restaurants in Henley-on-Thames please?
If you have a vehicle with you, Tom Kerridge's places in Marlow, just up the road are as good as the hype. Bird in Hand is great and he has a butchers shop that doubles as a restaurant (Butcher's tap) was a good lunch option.
Took my wife there recently for her 50th. Had a main course lamb dish shaped like a toffee apple. Tasty but you more wanted to photograph it than eat it.
"The two buildings differ in both external and internal design. Councillors approved two glass-clad blocks, but instead they were given metal features and grey cladding.
Greenwich says that other breaches include: * Residents have poorer quality accommodation than was promised * Promised roof gardens and children’s play areas have not been built * The footprint of the towers is bigger than was promised * “accessible” apartments for wheelchair users have steps to their balconies, meaning residents cannot use them * car parking has replaced a promised landscaped garden * a residents’ gym has replaced commercial floorspace"
The developer will, I expect, go bust, leaving the flatowners with an even bigger problem. But my question is why the council did not notice these massive lapses of the planning permission much earlier; say, before anyone moved in.
Where's the building inspectors ?
I expect it will end in a long legal battle with the owners/ tenants in unacceptable limbo
In terms of building inspectors, I think their job is simply to ensure compliance with building regulations, not with planning approval, which is a different thing. That is, they are looking at safe construction, not whether it matches the planning permission. Also, whilst there are local authority building inspectors, I think it's more usual to go with a private, accredited building inspector.
Can I get some recommendations for restaurants in Henley-on-Thames please?
If you have a vehicle with you, Tom Kerridge's places in Marlow, just up the road are as good as the hype. Bird in Hand is great and he has a butchers shop that doubles as a restaurant (Butcher's tap) was a good lunch option.
Took my wife there recently for her 50th. Had a main course lamb dish shaped like a toffee apple. Tasty but you more wanted to photograph it than eat it.
The Bird in Hand was very, very expensive, but it was worth every penny. I'd rather pay £90 for a sublime steak and chips than an inedible one at a fiver in an add-water-and-stir pub.
Braverman can pretend all she likes . She has zero empathy or humanity , she wants no asylum seekers and tries to pretend otherwise .
I think you're just racist and sexist against Asian ladies!
I really wish you would desist with quite frankly offensive assertions to other posters. You had a go at me over some nonsense about an Asian group called "Karen" who I had never heard of, when I was referencing a certain type of white middle aged American woman.
The key here is Braverman's distasteful Powellian speech and abject failure to focus responsibly on her job as Home Secretary.
It's too bad about Asa Hutchinson not qualifying for the latest Republican debate. His experience makes him the most qualified person running -- in either party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asa_Hutchinson
How many American voters know that? Fewer than 1 in 100, I would guess. (I blame our media.)
I particularly like this story from early in his long career: "In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed Hutchinson U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas. At age 31, Hutchinson was the nation's youngest U.S. attorney. He made national headlines after successfully prosecuting The Covenant, The Sword, and The Arm of the Lord (CSA), a white supremacist organization founded by polygamist James Ellison. The CSA forced a three-day armed standoff with local, state, and federal law enforcement. As U.S. attorney, Hutchinson personally negotiated a peaceful conclusion to the standoff.(Links omitted.)
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
There are eight Democratic seats up in swing or red states in 2024. Six of the Dems in/running for those seats have called for Menendez to resign (Brown, Tester, Casey, Baldwin, Rosen, Slotkin)
Absolutely. Trump praised him at the time of his last acquittal - which is not a good sign about anyone.
Other Republicans seem quite keen.
Senator Menendez has a right to test the government’s evidence in court, just like any other citizen. He should be judged by jurors and New Jersey’s voters, not by Democratic politicians who now view him as inconvenient to their hold on power. https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1706682272840130576
Probably not a good time for Republicans to advocate for someone to withdraw from public life when they've been charged with, but not yet convicted of, serious offences.
It's also very much in their interests for the story to run and run, and indeed for Menendez to stand in 2024.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
It's for the most part confected rubbish to mask her ineptitude for dealing with a serious and on going problem. OK, it's not just a UK issue, but we seem to be doing particularly badly in managing the problem. Remind me again who is the Home Secretary overseeing this debacle.
Braverman can pretend all she likes . She has zero empathy or humanity , she wants no asylum seekers and tries to pretend otherwise .
I think you're just racist and sexist against Asian ladies!
I really wish you would desist with quite frankly offensive assertions to other posters. You had a go at me over some nonsense about an Asian group called "Karen" who I had never heard of, when I was referencing a certain type of white middle aged American woman.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
It's not an "estimate" at all, it's a scary figure plucked from nowhere.
Braverman can pretend all she likes . She has zero empathy or humanity , she wants no asylum seekers and tries to pretend otherwise .
I think you're just racist and sexist against Asian ladies!
I really wish you would desist with quite frankly offensive assertions to other posters. You had a go at me over some nonsense about an Asian group called "Karen" who I had never heard of, when I was referencing a certain type of white middle aged American woman.
Braverman can pretend all she likes . She has zero empathy or humanity , she wants no asylum seekers and tries to pretend otherwise .
I think you're just racist and sexist against Asian ladies!
I really wish you would desist with quite frankly offensive assertions to other posters. You had a go at me over some nonsense about an Asian group called "Karen" who I had never heard of, when I was referencing a certain type of white middle aged American woman.
Can I get some recommendations for restaurants in Henley-on-Thames please?
If you have a vehicle with you, Tom Kerridge's places in Marlow, just up the road are as good as the hype. Bird in Hand is great and he has a butchers shop that doubles as a restaurant (Butcher's tap) was a good lunch option.
Took my wife there recently for her 50th. Had a main course lamb dish shaped like a toffee apple. Tasty but you more wanted to photograph it than eat it.
The Bird in Hand was very, very expensive, but it was worth every penny. I'd rather pay £90 for a sublime steak and chips than an inedible one at a fiver in an add-water-and-stir pub.
Agree, but it depends upon your motivation for going out to eat. In my case I like cooking, but enjoy a quality meal beyond my ability, but for many the food isn't important and it is just for the company and not cooking and washing up.
I would prefer to go out once and pay twice the price than go out twice and pay half the price. others think I am mad for paying so much for a meal but will go out more regularly.
On the boring subject of 'AI'... (I don't know how that differs from normal software and I don't care to find out) I've noticed that if I give my students a translation exercise with a completely fictitious word (that is a word looks like a French or Russian word but I've just made it up) then the ones who cheat with ChatGPT (or whatever) submit a translation in which the 'AI' has tried to infer the meaning of my made up word. The ones who tried to do it for real leave it blank and ask what the word means.
Maybe I'm very naive but I find it odd that some students who've presumably been told not to use ChatGPT decide to go ahead and use it anyway.
Soon there will be chatbots that are entirely indistinguishable from humans, and undetectable as AI. Lord knows what educators (and others) do then
My older daughter has been composing her personal statement for Uni application. She did a REALLY good job and I was proud of her. And yet, as I read it, I got the sinking feeling that in about 6 months ChatGPT5 will be able to outdo her - it can already outdo a few of her friends (she showed me some other statements when I asked)
Skills change.
Now the key skill is coming up with the right prompts for ChatGPT, and being able to make sure what it produces doesn't look AI generated.
As of now, AI is at the standard of a pretty average A Level student.
If you know how to use AI tools like ChatGPT, they can be very powerful tools.
Let me give two examples.
(1) I was writing a proposal for a European insurance company, and wanted to write a summary of a particular country's market. I asked ChatGPT to summarise market size, major players, key industry dynamics, etc. I used that as a template for my work. Essentially nothing from ChatGPT survived the rounds of edits, fact checking and the like, but it saved me a couple of hours because I was starting from work that was not terrible.
(2) My son was writing a history essay for school. I told him he couldn't use AI to write his answer, but he could use it to provide feedback. So, he said (roughly): the question was this, and this was my answer, what did I miss? ChatGPT gave him two or three points that he hadn't written about, that he went away and wrote about. He came top of the class. Would he have done so without ChatGPT telling him about things he'd missed? Probably not.
That second one is a really clever use.
Yes - and it is how ChatGPT is actually useful for various tasks. Asking it to write more than simple bits of code, get you code that does the wrong thing. But it can suggest chunks of code to simple task
I use Amazon's (AI-based) CodeWhisperer, and it does indeed provide really useful ideas. The code it suggests doesn't usually work as it stands, and it sometimes gets the wrong idea completely, but its suggestions have certainly helped me improve my coding.
We use CoPilot for Golang, Terraform, Python, and JS.
It's particularly good for the first two, which are quite boilerplate-heavy. The annoyances come mostly from stuff like suggesting functions that don't exist, and preferring to use deprecated options (particularly common with fast-moving Terraform providers).
The real sweet spot for us is with less-experienced team members: it can make a pair of two junior devs as productive as a junior/senior pair was previously. They get a real confidence boost from getting something working, and I think they actually learn more from having to figure out what the code is doing for themselves.
The biggest problems come when it produces code that works and passes tests, but will likely lead to maintenance problems in the future. So there's still a lot of mentoring needed - but overall, the experience has been really positive.
On the boring subject of 'AI'... (I don't know how that differs from normal software and I don't care to find out) I've noticed that if I give my students a translation exercise with a completely fictitious word (that is a word looks like a French or Russian word but I've just made it up) then the ones who cheat with ChatGPT (or whatever) submit a translation in which the 'AI' has tried to infer the meaning of my made up word. The ones who tried to do it for real leave it blank and ask what the word means.
Maybe I'm very naive but I find it odd that some students who've presumably been told not to use ChatGPT decide to go ahead and use it anyway.
Soon there will be chatbots that are entirely indistinguishable from humans, and undetectable as AI. Lord knows what educators (and others) do then
My older daughter has been composing her personal statement for Uni application. She did a REALLY good job and I was proud of her. And yet, as I read it, I got the sinking feeling that in about 6 months ChatGPT5 will be able to outdo her - it can already outdo a few of her friends (she showed me some other statements when I asked)
Hello again and a good sunny afternoon again, all.
My nephew teaches at one of the more liberal-intellectual of the top public schools ( St Paul's, Westminster , Winchester etc, without naming which ) . He says that ChatGPT is a "growing problem" " particularly among the more lazy but also more able students, which I found interesting. It seems a lot of cleverer students enjoy the challenge of succesfully integrating ChatGpT's work with their own, thus simultaneously saving a lot of time, and simlutaneously outwitting the staff. This is apparently the latest thing as a trendy new skill among the pupils, which the teachers are trying to train themselves to recognise, and know when they see them.
So I think using ChatGPT and similar as a resource is just a step further on from using google, wikipedia etc. All that has happened is that the search engine has taken the hits and written the essay too. If a student takes that as a start point, checks the facts, re-writes into their own voice, add appropriate referencing, then I have no issue. I am fairly sure my next research article will have some input done in just this way.
Sadly the weaker and more lazy students will just take the ChatGPT answer and try to use it as their own.
As generations of teachers would say, "you are only cheating yourselves..."
Indeed, Surely the essay is there to demonstrate to yourself and your teacher that you know stuff. If you get AI to write the essay, even if you then edit the content, then you probably don't know the stuff. This will surely be demonstrated when it comes to the exam. The reality is, they are only cheating themselves. Also, writing an essay really isn't that hard. And if you do find it hard you're not going to get any better at it if you never practice. And, if you find it hard to structure an essay, and never practice it, then go into an exam and try to do it under exam conditions... Again, utterly self-defeating, like all forms of cheating. I guess the only question is whether AI makes the acquisition of knowledge and the structuring of our thoughts and composition of an argument superfluous. But if it does, then we might as well just declare human civilisation to be at an end.
Using essays as the yardstick by which to judge knowledge and intelligence is how we ended up with essay-crisis Prime Ministers like Cameron and Johnson.
It was already a pretty poor way of judging whether people had the desired knowledge, but it was a convenient default to avoid thinking of a more creative and useful way to structure a test.
If essay-crisis AIs lead to better ways of testing knowledge and proficiency then that will be a good thing.
I think that the essays Cameron and Johnson wrote in their Oxford examinations (in which they earned a 1st in PPE and a 2:1 in classics respectively) were an accurate yardstick for measuring their intellectual abilities. Both are clearly intelligent men. Cameron's problem is that he overestimates himself, a typical characteristic of those with an elitist upbringing, and this led him to be lazy and take stupid risks like the EU referendum. Johnson's problem is that he is a congenital liar and narcissist. In both cases these are flaws of character, not intelligence, and I would argue were apparent before either of them took the top job. I wouldn't blame Oxford for this, except to the extent that it further burnished their egos and provided them with additional elite contacts to further their political goals.
I cannot see evidence of Cameron having notable intelligence. His autobiography was alarmingly poor in terms of prose, and it also revealed that total lack of self awareness which you touch on
Indeed, I reckon he is living proof that a really good education can punt a fairly mediocre brain an awful long way: ie into Oxford, onto a First, into Number 10
It was only in Number 10 that his mediocrity became apparent
While not necessarily disagreeing with your observation I am not sure 'alarmingly poor in terms of prose' is any measure of intelligence or lack of. Many clever people cannot write for toffee and many who can are not necessarily bright. It seems to me to be more of an art form. Like most (all?) artistic stuff if you are taught it and work at it you will get better, although there is clearly an underlying talent. I would compare it to painting.
We are probably both quite biased as you are clearly very skilled at it and I am rubbish (I also can't paint).
Yes, I admitted in a later comment that I possibly set too much store on good writing. Nonetheless I would still say that skilled use of language is indicative of intelligence, and a lack of that skill often (not always!) denotes dimness. Much more so than drawing or painting or whatever
Probably true. Good writers can't be dim. So anytime I've called you dim would have been either in jest or when very angry due to provocation. Logic is your weak point. And one of my strongest as it happens. What we should do is get together and give mutual instruction. You teach me a few fancy words and I help you with the logical reasoning. Over beer and nuts if you like. Be enjoyable and both of us will benefit enormously. Well maybe not enormously but it'll be a worthwhile experience.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
It's not an "estimate" at all, it's a scary figure plucked from nowhere.
"The two buildings differ in both external and internal design. Councillors approved two glass-clad blocks, but instead they were given metal features and grey cladding.
Greenwich says that other breaches include: * Residents have poorer quality accommodation than was promised * Promised roof gardens and children’s play areas have not been built * The footprint of the towers is bigger than was promised * “accessible” apartments for wheelchair users have steps to their balconies, meaning residents cannot use them * car parking has replaced a promised landscaped garden * a residents’ gym has replaced commercial floorspace"
The developer will, I expect, go bust, leaving the flatowners with an even bigger problem. But my question is why the council did not notice these massive lapses of the planning permission much earlier; say, before anyone moved in.
Where's the building inspectors ?
I expect it will end in a long legal battle with the owners/ tenants in unacceptable limbo
In terms of building inspectors, I think their job is simply to ensure compliance with building regulations, not with planning approval, which is a different thing. That is, they are looking at safe construction, not whether it matches the planning permission. Also, whilst there are local authority building inspectors, I think it's more usual to go with a private, accredited building inspector.
I would query the footprint of the towers as I would have thought the footings would need approval
Braverman can pretend all she likes . She has zero empathy or humanity , she wants no asylum seekers and tries to pretend otherwise .
I think you're just racist and sexist against Asian ladies!
I really wish you would desist with quite frankly offensive assertions to other posters. You had a go at me over some nonsense about an Asian group called "Karen" who I had never heard of, when I was referencing a certain type of white middle aged American woman.
780,000,000 refugees 7 bins each 5,460,000,000 bins
BRITAIN IS FULL
full of bins
Bin Laden?
You absolute monster, I was working up to exactly that joke. Here, have a like and never speak to me again.
I swear, I was just through researching the size of wheelie bins, and working out how much of the UK these 5.5 billion bins would fill (answer: Warwickshire), and then I was going to crash my bin laden joke into PB. And you. You ruined everything.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
It's not an "estimate" at all, it's a scary figure plucked from nowhere.
A more rigorous number might be even higher.
350m a week on the side of a bus might be a convenient starting point.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
And everyone in England is eligible under current rules to move to Newcastle.
780,000,000 refugees 7 bins each 5,460,000,000 bins
BRITAIN IS FULL
full of bins
Bin Laden?
You absolute monster, I was working up to exactly that joke. Here, have a like and never speak to me again.
I swear, I was just through researching the size of wheelie bins, and working out how much of the UK these 5.5 billion bins would fill (answer: Warwickshire), and then I was going to crash my bin laden joke into PB. And you. You ruined everything.
We were talking about Saddam last night, so I guess we could say "Uday you're think you're kidding!"
A fairly healthy 11% Green and LD vote to squeeze if those numbers are correct, with a 10% Ref vote who I suspect might not turn out unless they're suddenly drawn to Motorists' Friend and scourge of woke climatologists Sunak.
That is NOT a constituency poll. It is an extrapolation from national polling.
If that just represents national polling, then we have to add on a by-election factor. By-elections usually show bigger swings. In which case, this should be a walk in the park for Labour.
Or have they already done that?
The Conservative vote share is down about 17%, from 2019, not 26% as shown in this projection. The Labour vote share is up about 12%, not 18%. So, it would seem that any boost from a by-election is already being factored in.
No, as I understand it, *because* it's not a constituency poll. What an MRP does is adjust the national swing according to differential change in different demographic groups. So if the swing is higher among (say) leavers/renters/young people and smaller in (say) owner-occupiers, pensioners and Hindus, then it shows that the particular demographic features of Tamworth mean it's likely to swing more than the national figures. If it's true that by-elections produce larger swings, then it probably does mean Labour should be favourites.
Can I get some recommendations for restaurants in Henley-on-Thames please?
If you have a vehicle with you, Tom Kerridge's places in Marlow, just up the road are as good as the hype. Bird in Hand is great and he has a butchers shop that doubles as a restaurant (Butcher's tap) was a good lunch option.
Took my wife there recently for her 50th. Had a main course lamb dish shaped like a toffee apple. Tasty but you more wanted to photograph it than eat it.
The Bird in Hand was very, very expensive, but it was worth every penny. I'd rather pay £90 for a sublime steak and chips than an inedible one at a fiver in an add-water-and-stir pub.
Yes it's out of the ordinary. Good for a special occasion imo.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
It's not an "estimate" at all, it's a scary figure plucked from nowhere.
A fairly healthy 11% Green and LD vote to squeeze if those numbers are correct, with a 10% Ref vote who I suspect might not turn out unless they're suddenly drawn to Motorists' Friend and scourge of woke climatologists Sunak.
That is NOT a constituency poll. It is an extrapolation from national polling.
If that just represents national polling, then we have to add on a by-election factor. By-elections usually show bigger swings. In which case, this should be a walk in the park for Labour.
Or have they already done that?
The Conservative vote share is down about 17%, from 2019, not 26% as shown in this projection. The Labour vote share is up about 12%, not 18%. So, it would seem that any boost from a by-election is already being factored in.
No, as I understand it, *because* it's not a constituency poll. What an MRP does is adjust the national swing according to differential change in different demographic groups. So if the swing is higher among (say) leavers/renters/young people and smaller in (say) owner-occupiers, pensioners and Hindus, then it shows that the particular demographic features of Tamworth mean it's likely to swing more than the national figures. If it's true that by-elections produce larger swings, then it probably does mean Labour should be favourites.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
And everyone in England is eligible under current rules to move to Newcastle.
There are different pull factors involved, and if you turn up in Newcastle, they won't put you up in a 3-star hotel at taxpayers' expense.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
And everyone in England is eligible under current rules to move to Newcastle.
"The two buildings differ in both external and internal design. Councillors approved two glass-clad blocks, but instead they were given metal features and grey cladding.
Greenwich says that other breaches include: * Residents have poorer quality accommodation than was promised * Promised roof gardens and children’s play areas have not been built * The footprint of the towers is bigger than was promised * “accessible” apartments for wheelchair users have steps to their balconies, meaning residents cannot use them * car parking has replaced a promised landscaped garden * a residents’ gym has replaced commercial floorspace"
The developer will, I expect, go bust, leaving the flatowners with an even bigger problem. But my question is why the council did not notice these massive lapses of the planning permission much earlier; say, before anyone moved in.
Where's the building inspectors ?
I expect it will end in a long legal battle with the owners/ tenants in unacceptable limbo
In terms of building inspectors, I think their job is simply to ensure compliance with building regulations, not with planning approval, which is a different thing. That is, they are looking at safe construction, not whether it matches the planning permission. Also, whilst there are local authority building inspectors, I think it's more usual to go with a private, accredited building inspector.
I would query the footprint of the towers as I would have thought the footings would need approval
The point is that the job of building inspectors isn't to assess compliance with planning approval. They only look at compliance with building regulations, which is a separate matter.
780,000,000 refugees 7 bins each 5,460,000,000 bins
BRITAIN IS FULL
full of bins
Fuckers doing the bin Laden joke when I was busy. You can’t leave the site for a moment without someone stealing your joke that you haven’t come up with yet.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
And everyone in England is eligible under current rules to move to Newcastle.
People in Scotland massing at the border waiting to be allowed to live there. Sunderland and Middlesbro also top targets.
I've been smuggling people across the Tweed for a few months now. Sure, one or two boats have sunk along the way, but please don't worry, it's not serious: they all paid me in advance.
780,000,000 refugees 7 bins each 5,460,000,000 bins
BRITAIN IS FULL
full of bins
Fuckers doing the bin Laden joke when I was busy. You can’t leave the site for a moment without someone stealing your joke that you haven’t come up with yet.
Bin Laden was on Great British Bake Off. He's the one who made the big apple crumble.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
And everyone in England is eligible under current rules to move to Newcastle.
People in Scotland massing at the border waiting to be allowed to live there. Sunderland and Middlesbro also top targets.
I've been smuggling people across the Tweed for a few months now. Sure, one or two boats have sunk along the way, but please don't worry, it's not serious: they all paid me in advance.
It's been two months since I paid LNER to smuggle me into Edinburgh to ride the new tram extension, so extortionate! And that was BEFORE they abolished return fares.
On the boring subject of 'AI'... (I don't know how that differs from normal software and I don't care to find out) I've noticed that if I give my students a translation exercise with a completely fictitious word (that is a word looks like a French or Russian word but I've just made it up) then the ones who cheat with ChatGPT (or whatever) submit a translation in which the 'AI' has tried to infer the meaning of my made up word. The ones who tried to do it for real leave it blank and ask what the word means.
Maybe I'm very naive but I find it odd that some students who've presumably been told not to use ChatGPT decide to go ahead and use it anyway.
Soon there will be chatbots that are entirely indistinguishable from humans, and undetectable as AI. Lord knows what educators (and others) do then
My older daughter has been composing her personal statement for Uni application. She did a REALLY good job and I was proud of her. And yet, as I read it, I got the sinking feeling that in about 6 months ChatGPT5 will be able to outdo her - it can already outdo a few of her friends (she showed me some other statements when I asked)
Skills change.
Now the key skill is coming up with the right prompts for ChatGPT, and being able to make sure what it produces doesn't look AI generated.
As of now, AI is at the standard of a pretty average A Level student.
If you know how to use AI tools like ChatGPT, they can be very powerful tools.
Let me give two examples.
(1) I was writing a proposal for a European insurance company, and wanted to write a summary of a particular country's market. I asked ChatGPT to summarise market size, major players, key industry dynamics, etc. I used that as a template for my work. Essentially nothing from ChatGPT survived the rounds of edits, fact checking and the like, but it saved me a couple of hours because I was starting from work that was not terrible.
(2) My son was writing a history essay for school. I told him he couldn't use AI to write his answer, but he could use it to provide feedback. So, he said (roughly): the question was this, and this was my answer, what did I miss? ChatGPT gave him two or three points that he hadn't written about, that he went away and wrote about. He came top of the class. Would he have done so without ChatGPT telling him about things he'd missed? Probably not.
That second one is a really clever use.
Yes - and it is how ChatGPT is actually useful for various tasks. Asking it to write more than simple bits of code, get you code that does the wrong thing. But it can suggest chunks of code to simple task
I use Amazon's (AI-based) CodeWhisperer, and it does indeed provide really useful ideas. The code it suggests doesn't usually work as it stands, and it sometimes gets the wrong idea completely, but its suggestions have certainly helped me improve my coding.
We use CoPilot for Golang, Terraform, Python, and JS.
It's particularly good for the first two, which are quite boilerplate-heavy. The annoyances come mostly from stuff like suggesting functions that don't exist, and preferring to use deprecated options (particularly common with fast-moving Terraform providers).
The real sweet spot for us is with less-experienced team members: it can make a pair of two junior devs as productive as a junior/senior pair was previously. They get a real confidence boost from getting something working, and I think they actually learn more from having to figure out what the code is doing for themselves.
The biggest problems come when it produces code that works and passes tests, but will likely lead to maintenance problems in the future. So there's still a lot of mentoring needed - but overall, the experience has been really positive.
If you want fun, try passing in a small piece of existing working code, and ask it to optimise for (e.g.) speed or memory.
It's definition of optimisation seems to be "optimise to not work".
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
And everyone in England is eligible under current rules to move to Newcastle.
People in Scotland massing at the border waiting to be allowed to live there. Sunderland and Middlesbro also top targets.
I've been smuggling people across the Tweed for a few months now. Sure, one or two boats have sunk along the way, but please don't worry, it's not serious: they all paid me in advance.
It's been two months since I paid LNER to smuggle me into Edinburgh to ride the new tram extension, so extortionate! And that was BEFORE they abolished return fares.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
And everyone in England is eligible under current rules to move to Newcastle.
People in Scotland massing at the border waiting to be allowed to live there. Sunderland and Middlesbro also top targets.
I've been smuggling people across the Tweed for a few months now. Sure, one or two boats have sunk along the way, but please don't worry, it's not serious: they all paid me in advance.
It's been two months since I paid LNER to smuggle me into Edinburgh to ride the new tram extension, so extortionate! And that was BEFORE they abolished return fares.
Return fares? Why would you ever want to leave?
I haven't done the Wolverhampton Station tram extension yet! Do you think that's sufficient excuse for Avanti West Coast to smuggle me into the West Midlands?
Do we remember when Matthew Parris sampled a week on benefits after he suggested he could live on them without issue?
After her speech today, perhaps we could ask Cruella to try living in Afghanistan. Hopefully for a lengthy experiment.
Wasn't it David Blunkett who said he had no sympathy with asylum seekers from Afghanistan and that they should go home and rebuild their own countries?
He can join her if he likes.
The irony is that Starmer's government will probably be tougher on immigration and asylum than the Tories have been.
Braverman's premise today is immigration/ asylum is an all or nothing binary choice. It is not, but it has been managed very poorly by the current Home Secretary. Perhaps Suella should pick a fight with them over their dereliction of duty.
After the pussy cats and the big doggies, your post had me seriously wondering for a moment if I had missed a change of HS!
Multiculturalism has failed according to Braverman failing to see the irony of her argument given she’s from immigrant parents !
I don't see the irony. She appears to be someone who has embraced British culture.
So she’s saying that multiculturalism has failed but on the other hand she’s portraying herself as showing it hasn’t .
No. She is demonstrating assimilation, not mutilculturalism.
Not sure these are mutually exclusive. Can a person not assimilate on the essentials (eg language and law) yet maintain some of their (other) cultural identity? Surely they can. If not it implies we're an intolerant mono kind of a place. Or that we want to be. That sounds a pretty grim prospect to me. I've always taken the 'multicultural society' to be just a fact of modern life. I'm quite suspicious of the message that it's 'failed'. When I hear this I can't help wondering what exactly is meant. What has failed? The 'experiment' of modern life?
"The two buildings differ in both external and internal design. Councillors approved two glass-clad blocks, but instead they were given metal features and grey cladding.
Greenwich says that other breaches include: * Residents have poorer quality accommodation than was promised * Promised roof gardens and children’s play areas have not been built * The footprint of the towers is bigger than was promised * “accessible” apartments for wheelchair users have steps to their balconies, meaning residents cannot use them * car parking has replaced a promised landscaped garden * a residents’ gym has replaced commercial floorspace"
The developer will, I expect, go bust, leaving the flatowners with an even bigger problem. But my question is why the council did not notice these massive lapses of the planning permission much earlier; say, before anyone moved in.
Unfortunately, with the gutting of Local Authority funding, planning enforcement departments have very limited resources. Almost universally, they won't go around checking up for matters to enforce and rely on people flagging them up, other than for large developments, where they will carry out inspections at the end of the development (which appears to be what happened here).
Developers will be aware that they will face inspection at the end of development, but may well rely on enforcement having been all but castrated in powers to actually enforce anything. They'll fight in court, costing the LA more money and the developer will invariably have the better lawyers (at least, better-paid lawyers), and the legislation around the level of impact of enforcement curtails it a lot.
There's not actually much between a fine that most developers would laugh off, and a requirement to return the site to its original condition - a requirement that developers usually assume the LA won't pursue, as it ends up with nothing for all the hassle (almost always a correct assumption).
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
And everyone in England is eligible under current rules to move to Newcastle.
People in Scotland massing at the border waiting to be allowed to live there. Sunderland and Middlesbro also top targets.
I've been smuggling people across the Tweed for a few months now. Sure, one or two boats have sunk along the way, but please don't worry, it's not serious: they all paid me in advance.
It's been two months since I paid LNER to smuggle me into Edinburgh to ride the new tram extension, so extortionate! And that was BEFORE they abolished return fares.
Return fares? Why would you ever want to leave?
What was the Fry/Laurie sketch where they play the WWII prisoner and camp commandant? At the end the prisoner has helped everyone else to escape and replaced them with sandbag dummies. The commandant points out his soldiers are all sandbag dummies as well.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
It's not an "estimate" at all, it's a scary figure plucked from nowhere.
780,000,000 refugees 7 bins each 5,460,000,000 bins
BRITAIN IS FULL
full of bins
Fuckers doing the bin Laden joke when I was busy. You can’t leave the site for a moment without someone stealing your joke that you haven’t come up with yet.
Bin Laden was on Great British Bake Off. He's the one who made the big apple crumble.
Reminds of that quintessential New York novel: Binfire of the Vanities.
Multiculturalism has failed according to Braverman failing to see the irony of her argument given she’s from immigrant parents !
I don't see the irony. She appears to be someone who has embraced British culture.
So she’s saying that multiculturalism has failed but on the other hand she’s portraying herself as showing it hasn’t .
No. She is demonstrating assimilation, not mutilculturalism.
Not sure these are mutually exclusive. Can a person not assimilate on the essentials (eg language and law) yet maintain some of their (other) cultural identity? Surely they can. If not it implies we're an intolerant mono kind of a place. Or that we want to be. That sounds a pretty grim prospect to me. I've always taken the 'multicultural society' to be just a fact of modern life. I'm quite suspicious of the message that it's 'failed'. When I hear this I can't help wondering what exactly is meant. What has failed? The 'experiment' of modern life?
There's something patronising about reducing other people's cultural identity to the things that are compatible with your own. When it comes to things like patriarchal values, I'm sure you'd be for assimilation.
Multiculturalism has failed according to Braverman failing to see the irony of her argument given she’s from immigrant parents !
I don't see the irony. She appears to be someone who has embraced British culture.
So she’s saying that multiculturalism has failed but on the other hand she’s portraying herself as showing it hasn’t .
No. She is demonstrating assimilation, not mutilculturalism.
Not sure these are mutually exclusive. Can a person not assimilate on the essentials (eg language and law) yet maintain some of their (other) cultural identity? Surely they can. If not it implies we're an intolerant mono kind of a place. Or that we want to be. That sounds a pretty grim prospect to me. I've always taken the 'multicultural society' to be just a fact of modern life. I'm quite suspicious of the message that it's 'failed'. When I hear this I can't help wondering what exactly is meant. What has failed? The 'experiment' of modern life?
There's healthy assimilation, and less healthy over-compensation, sometimes among people who may have some other issues in some place of their background, identity/ and or upbringing, and personal psychology.
From the way they conduct themselves, and their general style, I would say Priti and Suella are much more likely to have some connections with the latter group.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
And everyone in England is eligible under current rules to move to Newcastle.
People in Scotland massing at the border waiting to be allowed to live there. Sunderland and Middlesbro also top targets.
I've been smuggling people across the Tweed for a few months now. Sure, one or two boats have sunk along the way, but please don't worry, it's not serious: they all paid me in advance.
It's been two months since I paid LNER to smuggle me into Edinburgh to ride the new tram extension, so extortionate! And that was BEFORE they abolished return fares.
Return fares? Why would you ever want to leave?
What was the Fry/Laurie sketch where they play the WWII prisoner and camp commandant? At the end the prisoner has helped everyone else to escape and replaced them with sandbag dummies. The commandant points out his soldiers are all sandbag dummies as well.
Suella Braverman says there are 780 million potential asylum seekers in the world. UN says there are 35 million. Slight difference in numbers...
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
You're conflating different things. 35 million is the current number of refugees. Suella Braverman's figure is an estimate of the number of people who could claim under the current rules, or our current interpretation of them.
And everyone in England is eligible under current rules to move to Newcastle.
There are different pull factors involved, and if you turn up in Newcastle, they won't put you up in a 3-star hotel at taxpayers' expense.
But otoh the trip is easier. Rather than a 3000 mile trek plus a treacherous small boat across the Med and the Channel, it's a 125 from Kings Cross.
More than half of new cars sold in the UK will have to be electric within five years, the government will confirm. The decision reinforces previous targets despite speculation that they might be weakened after Rishi Sunak watered down some net-zero policies.
Comments
https://x.com/simeon_cps/status/1706621453100048410?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
It's somewhat overrated with respect to making good decisions.
The first Baron Meston was a financial civil servant in India and became a peer in 1919. He later became President of the Liberal Party.
In contrast the first Baron De Clifford was a soldier and was sent to quell the Scots in 1296 and became Lord Warden of the Marches. He received the writ of peerage in 1299. He died at the Battle of Bannockburn.
The only two who haven't: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema
https://twitter.com/stevemorris__/status/1706682579569565713
In the US, users pay for most roads, through motor fuel taxes. In some places they also pay through tolls on the roads, and they often pay tolls on new bridges.
Many states use part of their motor fuel taxes to subsidize public transit, including rail transit: https://reason.org/policy-brief/how-much-gas-tax-money-states-divert-away-from-roads/
(I think the first question one should ask about any transportation project is whether it can be paid for by user fees. Not the only question, of course; you will also want to look at both negative and positive externalities. But if you care at all about effficiency, you should start with that user fee question.)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01476-x
The pathogenic and cross-species transmission potential of SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses (CoVs) remain poorly characterized. Here we recovered a wild-type pangolin (Pg) CoV GD strain including derivatives encoding reporter genes using reverse genetics. In primary human cells, PgCoV replicated efficiently but with reduced fitness and showed less efficient transmission via airborne route compared with SARS-CoV-2 in hamsters. PgCoV was potently inhibited by US Food and Drug Administration approved drugs, and neutralized by COVID-19 patient sera and SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic antibodies in vitro. A pan-Sarbecovirus antibody and SARS-CoV-2 S2P recombinant protein vaccine protected BALB/c mice from PgCoV infection. In K18-hACE2 mice, PgCoV infection caused severe clinical disease, but mice were protected by a SARS-CoV-2 human antibody. Efficient PgCoV replication in primary human cells and hACE2 mice, coupled with a capacity for airborne spread, highlights an emergence potential. However, low competitive fitness, pre-immune humans and the benefit of COVID-19 countermeasures should impede its ability to spread globally in human populations...
Developer gets permission to build two blocks of flats.
Developer builds flats to a different design and starts selling homes in flats.
Council issues order to demolish the blocks and rebuilding them correctly."
https://twitter.com/ianvisits/status/1706647481814069378
"The two buildings differ in both external and internal design. Councillors approved two glass-clad blocks, but instead they were given metal features and grey cladding.
Greenwich says that other breaches include:
* Residents have poorer quality accommodation than was promised
* Promised roof gardens and children’s play areas have not been built
* The footprint of the towers is bigger than was promised
* “accessible” apartments for wheelchair users have steps to their balconies, meaning residents cannot use them
* car parking has replaced a promised landscaped garden
* a residents’ gym has replaced commercial floorspace"
The developer will, I expect, go bust, leaving the flatowners with an even bigger problem. But my question is why the council did not notice these massive lapses of the planning permission much earlier; say, before anyone moved in.
After her speech today, perhaps we could ask Cruella to try living in Afghanistan. Hopefully for a lengthy experiment.
Remember Blunt ended up working for the Queen.
We are probably both quite biased as you are clearly very skilled at it and I am rubbish (I also can't paint).
I expect it will end in a long legal battle with the owners/ tenants in unacceptable limbo
Now I believe immigration into Europe is an issue giving rise to rather concerning extremist politics including her own. Another irony as sitting Home Secretary is she is in a position to drive the agenda to a positive and workable conclusion rather than spit out sound bites
that enthuse her more extreme fanbase.
Trump praised him at the time of his last acquittal - which is not a good sign about anyone.
Senator Menendez has a right to test the government’s evidence in court, just like any other citizen. He should be judged by jurors and New Jersey’s voters, not by Democratic politicians who now view him as inconvenient to their hold on power.
https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1706682272840130576
The key here is Braverman's distasteful Powellian speech and abject failure to focus responsibly on her job as Home Secretary.
How many American voters know that? Fewer than 1 in 100, I would guess. (I blame our media.)
I particularly like this story from early in his long career: "In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed Hutchinson U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas. At age 31, Hutchinson was the nation's youngest U.S. attorney. He made national headlines after successfully prosecuting The Covenant, The Sword, and The Arm of the Lord (CSA), a white supremacist organization founded by polygamist James Ellison. The CSA forced a three-day armed standoff with local, state, and federal law enforcement. As U.S. attorney, Hutchinson personally negotiated a peaceful conclusion to the standoff.(Links omitted.)
Braverman goes on about being gay. Only 1.5% of asylum seekers in the UK have put being gay as part of their claim for asylum, and that might not be their only reason.
It's also very much in their interests for the story to run and run, and indeed for Menendez to stand in 2024.
7 bins each
5,460,000,000 bins
BRITAIN IS FULL
full of bins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayin_State (aka. Karen State)
Karen Flag:
How the Myanmar Coup has affected the Karen ethnic group
I would prefer to go out once and pay twice the price than go out twice and pay half the price. others think I am mad for paying so much for a meal but will go out more regularly.
If nothing else, she gives us a good laugh.
It's particularly good for the first two, which are quite boilerplate-heavy. The annoyances come mostly from stuff like suggesting functions that don't exist, and preferring to use deprecated options (particularly common with fast-moving Terraform providers).
The real sweet spot for us is with less-experienced team members: it can make a pair of two junior devs as productive as a junior/senior pair was previously. They get a real confidence boost from getting something working, and I think they actually learn more from having to figure out what the code is doing for themselves.
The biggest problems come when it produces code that works and passes tests, but will likely lead to maintenance problems in the future. So there's still a lot of mentoring needed - but overall, the experience has been really positive.
I've been smuggling people across the Tweed for a few months now. Sure, one or two boats have sunk along the way, but please don't worry, it's not serious: they all paid me in advance.
It's definition of optimisation seems to be "optimise to not work".
'failed'. When I hear this I can't help wondering what exactly is meant. What has failed? The 'experiment' of modern life?
Developers will be aware that they will face inspection at the end of development, but may well rely on enforcement having been all but castrated in powers to actually enforce anything. They'll fight in court, costing the LA more money and the developer will invariably have the better lawyers (at least, better-paid lawyers), and the legislation around the level of impact of enforcement curtails it a lot.
There's not actually much between a fine that most developers would laugh off, and a requirement to return the site to its original condition - a requirement that developers usually assume the LA won't pursue, as it ends up with nothing for all the hassle (almost always a correct assumption).
From the way they conduct themselves, and their general style, I would say Priti and Suella are much more likely to have some connections with the latter group.
https://youtu.be/5pA-7D07-Uw
More than half of new cars sold in the UK will
have to be electric within five years, the government will confirm. The decision reinforces previous targets despite speculation that they might be weakened after Rishi Sunak watered down some net-zero policies.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7c22b7f2-5c74-11ee-88d6-eacc4268cc5d
Sneaky little tinker, isn't he?