I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Trouble is it's done by Conservative Constituency Parties. The ones that thought Truss was a good idea.
And IDS. Never forget that one.
IDS never lost a GE as leader!
And neither did Truss. It doesn't make either of them a good idea.
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Do you fancy standing for GE 2029? Hopefully a CON recovery year? Maybe a good time to enter politics after a successful commercial career? Late 40s ideal time to do it not like these career politicians?
Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight.
That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.
I hope they regain contact.
Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.
He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.
Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
The ends do not justify the means.
Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
Inanimate objects do not have rights. Mars is a hunk of rock circling the sun which has already had more stuff 'done' to it by the universe than we could ever dream of. Your arguments are pointless.
If you haven't already, get a copy of LM Studio or GPT4All and start downloading custom (uncensored) LLMs from huggingface.co/thebloke
(Assuming your computer can handle it - you'll need a decent graphics card or an M1/M2/M3 mac).
I very much doubt my computer can handle it, and I am annoyingly illiterate at complex coding. Is it hard to do?
If you don't have the above hardware (e.g. you have a bog standard pc laptop), you won't be able to run the models.
It used to be hard to do because you had to install software at the command line, but now it's relatively easy with LM studio or GPT4All which are one click installs. Then you download a single file containing your LLM (TheBloke is reliable), load it into LM Studio, and chat like it's chatgpt.
But you'll need a PC with an up to date non-integrated graphics card (e.g. an Nvidia 3090 or later) or an M1/M2/M3 mac to do it.
Edit: even if you can't run this stuff yourself, I strongly suggest you check out the open source community just to see how fast things are moving. It's getting like being able to 3d print a nuclear bomb at home with a 9gb download... the idea that OpenAI or whoever can keep a lid on it is for the birds.
Based on this post (thanks!) I decided to give it a go.
I downloaded both LM Studio and GPT4All and a model in each.
LM Studio seems to work better for me on linux and I'm now running 'TheBloke'. Total time: 15 minutes, plus the background model downloads.
This isn't going away, is it?
[I have a 16GB GPU and a 16 core processor and get about 3 or 4 words/sec out of it]
I so wish I could do this! What are you discovering?
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
Tbf you’re a late middle aged flint knapper and you seem fairly terrified.
Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight.
That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.
I hope they regain contact.
Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.
He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.
Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
The ends do not justify the means.
Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
Inanimate objects do not have rights. Mars is a hunk of rock circling the sun which has already had more stuff 'done' to it by the universe than we could ever dream of. Your arguments are pointless.
If ever I'd done a PhD it would have been on the rights of non-living things. Both here on earth and other parts of the solar system.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
Its frankly not easy to see what careers are a reasonably safe bet looking forward 20 years. As Elon Musk pointed out Iain M Banks' Culture novels might give us the best idea (as well as being a great read). We are going to need to find a different purpose.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
To some degree; but note that AI still makes some howling errors - and for anything even remotely vital, it's not good enough. And I have doubts that the current systems will ever be good enough.
(I asked an online AI image generator to give me an image of a 'redheaded female triathelete,' and what it came up with was hilarious. I'd post it on here if it was allowed. Every image had obvious problems, such as people cycling with no seats on their bike. But that first image.... my God. I'll have nightmares.)
Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight.
That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.
I hope they regain contact.
Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.
He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.
Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
The ends do not justify the means.
Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
Inanimate objects do not have rights. Mars is a hunk of rock circling the sun which has already had more stuff 'done' to it by the universe than we could ever dream of. Your arguments are pointless.
Objects have rights (in a sense) as implied by the awesome natural forces which created them.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
That AI would destroy the wish to learn and use foreign languages is predicated on a couple of tendentious ideas. One is that foreign languages are obstacles to be got around rather that cultural and artistic gateways and ladders to be grappled with and ascended for their own sake, and so that one can live more richly in culturally other worlds.
The other is that people would stop wanting to learn for themselves the languages that have a sort of universal scope, of which English is one.
Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight.
That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.
I hope they regain contact.
Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.
He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.
Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
The ends do not justify the means.
Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
Inanimate objects do not have rights. Mars is a hunk of rock circling the sun which has already had more stuff 'done' to it by the universe than we could ever dream of. Your arguments are pointless.
If ever I'd done a PhD it would have been on the rights of non-living things. Both here on earth and other parts of the solar system.
I'm guessing you have read 'Should Trees Have Standing?' by Christopher Stone?
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
To some degree; but note that AI still makes some howling errors - and for anything even remotely vital, it's not good enough. And I have doubts that the current systems will ever be good enough.
(I asked an online AI image generator to give me an image of a 'redheaded female triathelete,' and what it came up with was hilarious. I'd post it on here if it was allowed. Every image had obvious problems, such as people cycling with no seats on their bike. But that first image.... my God. I'll have nightmares.)
Just change your profile picture to the triathlete...
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
To some degree; but note that AI still makes some howling errors - and for anything even remotely vital, it's not good enough. And I have doubts that the current systems will ever be good enough.
(I asked an online AI image generator to give me an image of a 'redheaded female triathelete,' and what it came up with was hilarious. I'd post it on here if it was allowed. Every image had obvious problems, such as people cycling with no seats on their bike. But that first image.... my God. I'll have nightmares.)
There is absolutely no reason why AI cannot be BETTER than humans at translating, and that indeed will happen, soon enough: because the AI will have access to all the words and all the examples ever used, and no human will possess that
As for images you obviously have no idea what you're doing. A reasonably smart ten year old can now get AI to produce images entirely indistinguishable from reality
Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight.
That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.
I hope they regain contact.
Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.
He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.
Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
The ends do not justify the means.
Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
Inanimate objects do not have rights. Mars is a hunk of rock circling the sun which has already had more stuff 'done' to it by the universe than we could ever dream of. Your arguments are pointless.
If ever I'd done a PhD it would have been on the rights of non-living things. Both here on earth and other parts of the solar system.
I'm guessing you have read 'Should Trees Have Standing?' by Christopher Stone?
Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight.
That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.
I hope they regain contact.
Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.
He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.
Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
The ends do not justify the means.
Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
Inanimate objects do not have rights. Mars is a hunk of rock circling the sun which has already had more stuff 'done' to it by the universe than we could ever dream of. Your arguments are pointless.
If ever I'd done a PhD it would have been on the rights of non-living things. Both here on earth and other parts of the solar system.
My son has recently been looking at this in his philosophy course. It seems a very active field, probably because genuine AI now seems so possible. The base work seems to evolve out of animal ethics. It seems to me that we might rather want to think about how AI is going to think about us rather than the other way around.
“We keep coming up against the fatal tension between the obvious political collapse of this government and the obvious unwillingness of Conservative MPs to put it out of its misery,” one rebel said. “That tension can’t hold for very long. It can only be resolved by removing the PM.”
The Conservatives face two by-elections in February, both of which they are expected to lose, followed by what Tory MPs fear will be a hugely damaging set of local election results. Time, the rebel argues, is running out. “The local elections are the hard stop — realistically we can’t really change after the end of May,” they said. “The party does need to come to this conclusion organically, but may also need a steer.”
I'm not sure what this anonymous rebel is saying. If they go past May then they can't bin Sunak before the GE? I'm pretty sure they can and probably should.
It’s a dice roll, but it’s hard to see anything getting better for them under Sunak. Of course, they could come out of it looking even more ludicrous and making it even worse.
They really made some terrible unforced errors by elevating Truss and Sunak. That said, who is the alternative who is going to be able to ride in and save the day?
Morning all! One benefit of the Tories endlessly swapping PM is that is has disarmed the notion that you vote for a PM. Presidential politics is unhelpful in our system. Perhaps the reason why recent Tory smears against Starmer and Davey haven’t worked is that people are voting for change, not the person.
If they bin off Sunak then the replacement won’t be Braverman. Too many people are prejudiced against people who aren’t as white and male as themselves.
The problem is the leader the right wants isn’t a Tory MP. They could install the ghosts of Powell or Moseley into an empty vessel (Jonathan Gillis perhaps) and the Nigel would still be the one they want.
Have to laugh. As the Tories head towards the abyss, the person they believe can win them victory won just under 4m votes at the height of his powers. Though if the Tory members would like to be down to 4m votes I think we shouldn’t stand in their way.
Strong point this. I deeply doubt that the current Tory membership would ever choose a non-white leader over a white one.
Not convinced with that. It is hard to see someone for instance like Barclay, Dowden or Gove winning a member vote against Badenoch or Braverman.
The whole discussion about whether the Tories would do better with or without a new leader is for the birds.
The party is toxic and riven between the ascendant GB News faction that feels the party isn’t toxic enough and the neutered One Nation faction that seems resigned to declaring the water to be wet as the ship goes down.
In the absence of a dynamic, charismatic figure that could unite the party, drag it back to its senses and persuade the public to give it a second look, the leadership is practically irrelevant.
Seriously, which of these prospects would make any difference at all (in the absence of a serious failure on the part of Labour)?
Anderson: too provocative Badenoch: too wild Barclay: too bland Braverman: too fired Cameron: too previous Cleverly: too gaffe-prone Dowden: too forgettable Farage: too outside Frost: too unelected Gove: too weird Hunt: too unpopular Johnson: too Johnson Mordaunt: too woke Shapps: too schizophrenic Truss: to the pub
You missed off the star of the show:
#Priti4Leader
Haha! Gosh, what an embarrassment of riches a richness of embarrassments they have to choose from! Here’s the updated list, with additions asterisked:
Anderson: too provocative Badenoch: too wild Barclay: too bland Braverman: too fired Cameron: too previous Cleverly: too gaffe-prone Farage: too outside Frost: too unelected Gove: too weird Hunt: too unpopular ***Jenrick: too cruel Johnson: too Johnson Mordaunt: too woke ***Patel: too sinister ***Rees-Mogg: too Victorian Shapps: too schizophrenic Truss: to the pub ***Tugendhat: Tugendhat
If I was a Tory (and thank Richard Dawkins I’m not), I’d want Tugendhat as the next leader out of that lot or even Mordaunt or Cleverly. I suspect they’ll actually go for Badenoch.
And that's one of the problem the Tories have - there's nobody in that list who is obviously better than Sunak. Sunak is a bit rubbish, but he is an improvement on his two predecessors.
Hunt and Gove would probably be much better PMs in practice, but would never be elected either by the party (Hunt) or country (Gove). The others to me are all either meh or repellent, even if they appeal to various sections of right-wing opinion.
The other problem they face if they change leaders is that come the GE, all Labour has to do is to ask "how long do you think you will be Prime Minister?" And laugh.
Where have you been for the last year? Everybody on that list is better than Sunak. Add to that Geoffrey Cox, Ann Widdecombe, Michael Fabricant, John Gummer's lady that does, someone that once shook hands with Virginia Bottomley, and Larry the Downing Street cat. The man is a success vacuum.
Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight.
That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.
I hope they regain contact.
Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.
He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.
Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
The ends do not justify the means.
Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
Inanimate objects do not have rights. Mars is a hunk of rock circling the sun which has already had more stuff 'done' to it by the universe than we could ever dream of. Your arguments are pointless.
We have no evidence that Mars has no rights, no evidence that it is an inanimate object, and no evidence that a right is conferred on ourselves to take any action which may do it harm; unless and until it may do harm to us (by being on a collision course for example, which it isn't).
It is the Taliban and ISIS who act as if inanimate objects have no rights. When they damage beauty in a bad cause we criticise them for it. We are right, even if only on the precautionary principle, to do so.
I got 3 out of 10, pretty feeble - and I pride myself on being good at spotting AI images, as I write about them so often for the Gazette. See how you do
Here is the kicker tho, and maybe an explanation for my errors. It now seems that AI image creation is so good people tend to see AI inages as more likely to be real than real images. Try and wrap your head round that. I'm still attempting to understand the implications. AI is more real than reality??
As the article puts it:
"Distinguishing between a real versus an A.I.-generated face has proved especially confounding.
Research published across multiple studies found that faces of white people created by A.I. systems were perceived as more realistic than genuine photographs of white people, a phenomenon called hyper-realism."
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
To some degree; but note that AI still makes some howling errors - and for anything even remotely vital, it's not good enough. And I have doubts that the current systems will ever be good enough.
(I asked an online AI image generator to give me an image of a 'redheaded female triathelete,' and what it came up with was hilarious. I'd post it on here if it was allowed. Every image had obvious problems, such as people cycling with no seats on their bike. But that first image.... my God. I'll have nightmares.)
Just change your profile picture to the triathlete...
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Trouble is it's done by Conservative Constituency Parties. The ones that thought Truss was a good idea.
And IDS. Never forget that one.
IDS never lost a GE as leader!
And neither did Truss. It doesn't make either of them a good idea.
The members didn't think Truss or IDS were 'a good idea' ; they were offered a binary choice and felt that they were better on balance than Kenneth Clark and Sunak. Kenneth Clark was uncompromisingly opposed to the settled view of the party on one of the defining issues of the day, and Sunak was just plain crap - something which has been painfully proven true in the event. If Tory MPs want the members to stop choosing duds, stop passing them duds to choose between.
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Trouble is it's done by Conservative Constituency Parties. The ones that thought Truss was a good idea.
That needs to change. Or at least it needs a very different process.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
To some degree; but note that AI still makes some howling errors - and for anything even remotely vital, it's not good enough. And I have doubts that the current systems will ever be good enough.
(I asked an online AI image generator to give me an image of a 'redheaded female triathelete,' and what it came up with was hilarious. I'd post it on here if it was allowed. Every image had obvious problems, such as people cycling with no seats on their bike. But that first image.... my God. I'll have nightmares.)
There is absolutely no reason why AI cannot be BETTER than humans at translating, and that indeed will happen, soon enough: because the AI will have access to all the words and all the examples ever used, and no human will possess that
As for images you obviously have no idea what you're doing. A reasonably smart ten year old can now get AI to produce images entirely indistinguishable from reality
Bullshit; at least not with a heck of a lot of curating.
"you obviously have no idea what you're doing."
And you, as ever, have no idea what you're talking about.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
To some degree; but note that AI still makes some howling errors - and for anything even remotely vital, it's not good enough. And I have doubts that the current systems will ever be good enough.
(I asked an online AI image generator to give me an image of a 'redheaded female triathelete,' and what it came up with was hilarious. I'd post it on here if it was allowed. Every image had obvious problems, such as people cycling with no seats on their bike. But that first image.... my God. I'll have nightmares.)
Just change your profile picture to the triathlete...
Why the hell do you have Liz Truss as yours???
I think you can figure that one out for yourself...
Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight.
That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.
I hope they regain contact.
Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.
He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.
Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
The ends do not justify the means.
Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
Inanimate objects do not have rights. Mars is a hunk of rock circling the sun which has already had more stuff 'done' to it by the universe than we could ever dream of. Your arguments are pointless.
Objects have rights (in a sense) as implied by the awesome natural forces which created them.
Even if they don't (which I don't believe) any object may be the proper object of our duties, which extend to all sorts of entities whose rights my be debatable. Even if the Mona Lisa has no rights, I may well have a duty not to throw paint over it. Same with Mars.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
That AI would destroy the wish to learn and use foreign languages is predicated on a couple of tendentious ideas. One is that foreign languages are obstacles to be got around rather that cultural and artistic gateways and ladders to be grappled with and ascended for their own sake, and so that one can live more richly in culturally other worlds.
The other is that people would stop wanting to learn for themselves the languages that have a sort of universal scope, of which English is one.
Oh, for sure, people will still learn foreign languages, but it will be a niche and luxurious pursuit, like learning the cello. something nice to have, and enriching
But 99% of people don't have the time, inclination or money to learn the cello, it is pointless for them, and when machine translation arrives with lip synch and the rest (as in the Milei video) then what is the point in your spending years learning a language when computers can do it all so easily and brilliantly and much mucb faster?
It's like insisting on walking fifty miles, when you have a car in your drive
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Trouble is it's done by Conservative Constituency Parties. The ones that thought Truss was a good idea.
And IDS. Never forget that one.
Actually, I think IDS is fine as a constituency and not a bad bloke.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
That AI would destroy the wish to learn and use foreign languages is predicated on a couple of tendentious ideas. One is that foreign languages are obstacles to be got around rather that cultural and artistic gateways and ladders to be grappled with and ascended for their own sake, and so that one can live more richly in culturally other worlds.
The other is that people would stop wanting to learn for themselves the languages that have a sort of universal scope, of which English is one.
In fairness to @Leon (words I thought I would never write) that point, whilst a good and interesting one, is a rather different one from making a living out of it.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
To some degree; but note that AI still makes some howling errors - and for anything even remotely vital, it's not good enough. And I have doubts that the current systems will ever be good enough.
(I asked an online AI image generator to give me an image of a 'redheaded female triathelete,' and what it came up with was hilarious. I'd post it on here if it was allowed. Every image had obvious problems, such as people cycling with no seats on their bike. But that first image.... my God. I'll have nightmares.)
There is absolutely no reason why AI cannot be BETTER than humans at translating, and that indeed will happen, soon enough: because the AI will have access to all the words and all the examples ever used, and no human will possess that
As for images you obviously have no idea what you're doing. A reasonably smart ten year old can now get AI to produce images entirely indistinguishable from reality
Bullshit; at least not with a heck of a lot of curating.
"you obviously have no idea what you're doing."
And you, as ever, have no idea what you're talking about.
Go look at that New York Times article linked below. The images are now so good and so real, people see them as more real than the real
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Do you fancy standing for GE 2029? Hopefully a CON recovery year? Maybe a good time to enter politics after a successful commercial career? Late 40s ideal time to do it not like these career politicians?
I don't have a thick enough skin mate. Get triggered easily. Also don't want to expose my family.
I might (might) do County Council or something. Main thing that puts me off that is the sheer lack of power.
Basically, making difficult decisions on what to cut/not fund that isn't Adult Social Care as Westminster ties both hands behind your back.
Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight.
That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.
I hope they regain contact.
Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.
He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.
Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
The ends do not justify the means.
Yes, they do.
Humankind has done, and continues to do, all sorts of stupid and unethical shit cloaked in the justification of "science".
Not in my name.
No medicines for you then, as they are products of nasty old science.
Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight.
That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.
I hope they regain contact.
Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.
He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.
Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
The ends do not justify the means.
Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
To some degree; but note that AI still makes some howling errors - and for anything even remotely vital, it's not good enough. And I have doubts that the current systems will ever be good enough.
(I asked an online AI image generator to give me an image of a 'redheaded female triathelete,' and what it came up with was hilarious. I'd post it on here if it was allowed. Every image had obvious problems, such as people cycling with no seats on their bike. But that first image.... my God. I'll have nightmares.)
Just change your profile picture to the triathlete...
Have done. It's quite a nice picture, until you notice a small detail - that she is utterly missing a forearm (though her hand is on the handlebar). Also notice that she is not sitting on a seat, and has three knees. In fact, seats are missing on all the piccies I had made, in two different packages.
I daresay you can get excellent results *with human curation*. And that's the issue.
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Trouble is it's done by Conservative Constituency Parties. The ones that thought Truss was a good idea.
That needs to change. Or at least it needs a very different process.
The members should be choosing from a shortlist of 5. That would have given them Tugend, Badenoch, Mordaunt, Truss, and Sunak. I suspect they would have chosen Badenoch. Badenoch, though I have big questions about her delivery, is a better interview and Commons communicator than Sunak, seems genuine in her questioning of the woke consensus, and would have been a better choice on paper than either Truss or Sunak, who are both seriously flawed. It was MPs, with their backroom deals and job-sniffing that selected those two.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
That AI would destroy the wish to learn and use foreign languages is predicated on a couple of tendentious ideas. One is that foreign languages are obstacles to be got around rather that cultural and artistic gateways and ladders to be grappled with and ascended for their own sake, and so that one can live more richly in culturally other worlds.
The other is that people would stop wanting to learn for themselves the languages that have a sort of universal scope, of which English is one.
In fairness to @Leon (words I thought I would never write) that point, whilst a good and interesting one, is a rather different one from making a living out of it.
Yes, most people learn languages because they are USEFUL (especially English) and will advance their careers and make them money. When universal machine translation is effortless and brilliant and we have actual lip-synch like in the Milei video (and we are basically there now) all those pragmatic reasons go out the window. You can spend five years acquiring English but the guy next door can spend those five years leaning something else, something more useful, and you'll have a virtually pointless skill that can be replicated by a machine in seconds, it will be like learning to handweave cotton in the 1820s
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Trouble is it's done by Conservative Constituency Parties. The ones that thought Truss was a good idea.
And IDS. Never forget that one.
Actually, I think IDS is fine as a constituency and not a bad bloke.
I got 3 out of 10, pretty feeble - and I pride myself on being good at spotting AI images, as I write about them so often for the Gazette. See how you do
Here is the kicker tho, and maybe an explanation for my errors. It now seems that AI image creation is so good people tend to see AI inages as more likely to be real than real images. Try and wrap your head round that. I'm still attempting to understand the implications. AI is more real than reality??
As the article puts it:
"Distinguishing between a real versus an A.I.-generated face has proved especially confounding.
Research published across multiple studies found that faces of white people created by A.I. systems were perceived as more realistic than genuine photographs of white people, a phenomenon called hyper-realism."
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
Tbf you’re a late middle aged flint knapper and you seem fairly terrified.
I'm either terrified or exhilarated. I only have two modes. Sobering up (to a degree) has possibly made this WORSE
Met up with JohnO at a working man’s champagne bar and put us in charge of the Tory party and we’ll save the party.
PS I debuted my new trainers today.
I got endless grief about buying myself a pair of white Lacoste trainers. My children eventually bought me new trainers for Christmas on the basis it was just too embarrassing being seen out with me. Even more than normal, apparently. So I am glad to see that I am not the only one who thought they were a good idea.
Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?
You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.
Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?
Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.
Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.
The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.
But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).
I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.
The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.
Importing it from India or China is not.
Is Carbon capture technology real yet?
National Grid say yes- and capturing from factories where lots of carbon dioxide is produced in one place is the most plausible application.
I'd be a bit surprised if that doesn't leave the electric arc (recycling) process as better, as long as the resulting steel has the right qualities.
So- anyone know when we either absolutely need, or probably want, virgin steel? And how many Port Talbots of steel is that?
And, if the answer is "more than zero, but less than one", what do we do? Because I'm not sure we're going to like an answer constructed by free market players.
I'm very bearish on CCS. It works on (relatively) small scales, in ideal places, particularly where the source and sink are relatively close.
A statement like: "You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon." is a bit like 'steal underpants'.
1.5 million tpa ain't small scale.
Yes, it is.
"Today, CCS projects are storing almost 45 million tons of CO2 every year, which is about the amount of CO2 emissions created by 10 million passenger cars. "
1.5 million tpa from a single plant. That is a large scale plant.
The technology is proven. At large commercial scale. TRL9. It just needs to be rolled out. That's the stage we have reached.
It can work where the source and sink are close together. I'm not denying it has its place as *part* of the solution. But it's not *the* solution, or even a major part of it.
We've reached a degree of common ground regarding CCS being part of the solution. Let's leave it there and keep an eye on developments.
The government has allocated £20 billion of our money to CCS, after all.
That could just be a sunk cost fallacy at work.
Do you know how many billions were thrown at fuel cells for cars?
It isn't sunk cost. The government has not made Final Investment Decision on any of the projects yet.
The sunk cost was the money wasted on the two previous abortive attempts to implement CCS in the UK.
Sunk cost is using the investment to date to justify pressing on
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Do you fancy standing for GE 2029? Hopefully a CON recovery year? Maybe a good time to enter politics after a successful commercial career? Late 40s ideal time to do it not like these career politicians?
I don't have a thick enough skin mate. Get triggered easily. Also don't want to expose my family.
I might (might) do County Council or something. Main thing that puts me off that is the sheer lack of power.
Basically, making difficult decisions on what to cut/not fund that isn't Adult Social Care as Westminster ties both hands behind your back.
One thing is for sure. No sign of CON or LAB sorting out Adult Social Care! That requires difficult decisions to raise the money to do it properly that neither party will address.
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Trouble is it's done by Conservative Constituency Parties. The ones that thought Truss was a good idea.
And IDS. Never forget that one.
Actually, I think IDS is fine as a constituency and not a bad bloke.
He's just not really cabinet material.
Possibly a drinks cabinet. Otherwise, no.
A shortlist of 5 sent to the members in 2001 would have been the full slate: Michael Ancram, David Davis, Kenneth Clarke, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Portillo. I am not really in touch with how the members would have voted there, but I'd like to think Portillo would have taken it.
I got 3 out of 10, pretty feeble - and I pride myself on being good at spotting AI images, as I write about them so often for the Gazette. See how you do
Here is the kicker tho, and maybe an explanation for my errors. It now seems that AI image creation is so good people tend to see AI inages as more likely to be real than real images. Try and wrap your head round that. I'm still attempting to understand the implications. AI is more real than reality??
As the article puts it:
"Distinguishing between a real versus an A.I.-generated face has proved especially confounding.
Research published across multiple studies found that faces of white people created by A.I. systems were perceived as more realistic than genuine photographs of white people, a phenomenon called hyper-realism."
This is so boring.
AI's a strange subject: it got boring before it really got interesting.
Met up with JohnO at a working man’s champagne bar and put us in charge of the Tory party and we’ll save the party.
PS I debuted my new trainers today.
I got endless grief about buying myself a pair of white Lacoste trainers. My children eventually bought me new trainers for Christmas on the basis it was just too embarrassing being seen out with me. Even more than normal, apparently. So I am glad to see that I am not the only one who thought they were a good idea.
I have a Lacoste Outlet store 10 minutes away on the bicycle.
You could celebrate by buying 3 of last year's range for the same price.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
To some degree; but note that AI still makes some howling errors - and for anything even remotely vital, it's not good enough. And I have doubts that the current systems will ever be good enough.
(I asked an online AI image generator to give me an image of a 'redheaded female triathelete,' and what it came up with was hilarious. I'd post it on here if it was allowed. Every image had obvious problems, such as people cycling with no seats on their bike. But that first image.... my God. I'll have nightmares.)
There is absolutely no reason why AI cannot be BETTER than humans at translating, and that indeed will happen, soon enough: because the AI will have access to all the words and all the examples ever used, and no human will possess that
As for images you obviously have no idea what you're doing. A reasonably smart ten year old can now get AI to produce images entirely indistinguishable from reality
Bullshit; at least not with a heck of a lot of curating.
"you obviously have no idea what you're doing."
And you, as ever, have no idea what you're talking about.
I can see your avatar. If you are using image creators that are producing images of triathletes with one arm then you must be using some shit-arse AI image creator from the 1890s
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
That AI would destroy the wish to learn and use foreign languages is predicated on a couple of tendentious ideas. One is that foreign languages are obstacles to be got around rather that cultural and artistic gateways and ladders to be grappled with and ascended for their own sake, and so that one can live more richly in culturally other worlds.
The other is that people would stop wanting to learn for themselves the languages that have a sort of universal scope, of which English is one.
We're planning on taking a family holiday to Japan in the autumn, to see a friend of mine who has lived there for ages. With this in mind, I'm happily learning the rudiments of Japanese using the Duolingo app. It really is great fun and, while I will obviously be far from fluent, I hope to learn enough to get some feel for the language and people and be able to have rudimentary conversations in Japanese. I'll probably never go there again, so it makes sense to immerse myself in the culture as much as possible beforehand to make the most of the trip.
Met up with JohnO at a working man’s champagne bar and put us in charge of the Tory party and we’ll save the party.
PS I debuted my new trainers today.
I got endless grief about buying myself a pair of white Lacoste trainers. My children eventually bought me new trainers for Christmas on the basis it was just too embarrassing being seen out with me. Even more than normal, apparently. So I am glad to see that I am not the only one who thought they were a good idea.
These Nike trainers are so comfortable, like angels giving my feet a massage.
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Trouble is it's done by Conservative Constituency Parties. The ones that thought Truss was a good idea.
And IDS. Never forget that one.
IDS never lost a GE as leader!
And neither did Truss. It doesn't make either of them a good idea.
The members didn't think Truss or IDS were 'a good idea' ; they were offered a binary choice and felt that they were better on balance than Kenneth Clark and Sunak. Kenneth Clark was uncompromisingly opposed to the settled view of the party on one of the defining issues of the day, and Sunak was just plain crap - something which has been painfully proven true in the event. If Tory MPs want the members to stop choosing duds, stop passing them duds to choose between.
I heard Ken Clarke on the radio yesterday discussing the problems with indeterminate sentences, something he got abolished when Home Secretary but it was beyond his powers of persuasion to do this retrospectively. Some 1400 men are still trapped on these sentences unable to obtain their liberty many years after any rational sentence for their offence would have expired.
As usual, he was humane, warm, intelligent and sensible. It made me all nostalgic for when the Tory party was like that.
Met up with JohnO at a working man’s champagne bar and put us in charge of the Tory party and we’ll save the party.
PS I debuted my new trainers today.
I got endless grief about buying myself a pair of white Lacoste trainers. My children eventually bought me new trainers for Christmas on the basis it was just too embarrassing being seen out with me. Even more than normal, apparently. So I am glad to see that I am not the only one who thought they were a good idea.
These Nike trainers are so comfortable, like angels giving my feet a massage.
Quite agree, I’ve got these. Possibly flashier than the plain whites?
Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight.
That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.
I hope they regain contact.
Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.
He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.
Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
The ends do not justify the means.
Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
Do inanimate objects have rights?
We have been in this area already this afternoon; but it remains fascinating.
Do I have a duty, other things being equal, not to destroy 'The Girl with the Pearl Earring' regardless of who owns it?
If: Yes (to which most would assent) then this means by simple reasoning, for the painting, the following:
'This painting is the subject of duties towards it which confers upon it a particular property, namely it ought not to be destroyed by X'.
Therefore the painting has the right not to be destroyed by X.
Therefore some inanimate objects have some rights.
Met up with JohnO at a working man’s champagne bar and put us in charge of the Tory party and we’ll save the party.
PS I debuted my new trainers today.
I got endless grief about buying myself a pair of white Lacoste trainers. My children eventually bought me new trainers for Christmas on the basis it was just too embarrassing being seen out with me. Even more than normal, apparently. So I am glad to see that I am not the only one who thought they were a good idea.
These Nike trainers are so comfortable, like angels giving my feet a massage.
Quite agree, I’ve got these. Possibly flashier than the plain whites?
Taken from an advert by the way, that’s not me
Flashy really isn’t my style, I prefer classy understatement.
Met up with JohnO at a working man’s champagne bar and put us in charge of the Tory party and we’ll save the party.
PS I debuted my new trainers today.
I got endless grief about buying myself a pair of white Lacoste trainers. My children eventually bought me new trainers for Christmas on the basis it was just too embarrassing being seen out with me. Even more than normal, apparently. So I am glad to see that I am not the only one who thought they were a good idea.
I have a Lacoste Outlet store 10 minutes away on the bicycle.
You could celebrate by buying 3 of last year's range for the same price.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
To some degree; but note that AI still makes some howling errors - and for anything even remotely vital, it's not good enough. And I have doubts that the current systems will ever be good enough.
(I asked an online AI image generator to give me an image of a 'redheaded female triathelete,' and what it came up with was hilarious. I'd post it on here if it was allowed. Every image had obvious problems, such as people cycling with no seats on their bike. But that first image.... my God. I'll have nightmares.)
There is absolutely no reason why AI cannot be BETTER than humans at translating, and that indeed will happen, soon enough: because the AI will have access to all the words and all the examples ever used, and no human will possess that
As for images you obviously have no idea what you're doing. A reasonably smart ten year old can now get AI to produce images entirely indistinguishable from reality
Bullshit; at least not with a heck of a lot of curating.
"you obviously have no idea what you're doing."
And you, as ever, have no idea what you're talking about.
I can see your avatar. If you are using image creators that are producing images of triathletes with one arm then you must be using some shit-arse AI image creator from the 1890s
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
To some degree; but note that AI still makes some howling errors - and for anything even remotely vital, it's not good enough. And I have doubts that the current systems will ever be good enough.
(I asked an online AI image generator to give me an image of a 'redheaded female triathelete,' and what it came up with was hilarious. I'd post it on here if it was allowed. Every image had obvious problems, such as people cycling with no seats on their bike. But that first image.... my God. I'll have nightmares.)
There is absolutely no reason why AI cannot be BETTER than humans at translating, and that indeed will happen, soon enough: because the AI will have access to all the words and all the examples ever used, and no human will possess that
As for images you obviously have no idea what you're doing. A reasonably smart ten year old can now get AI to produce images entirely indistinguishable from reality
Bullshit; at least not with a heck of a lot of curating.
"you obviously have no idea what you're doing."
And you, as ever, have no idea what you're talking about.
I can see your avatar. If you are using image creators that are producing images of triathletes with one arm then you must be using some shit-arse AI image creator from the 1890s
Try Midjourney V6
I'll have a go now. Red haired triathlete?
That one was from Gencraft.
With no curating. First image out.
I've just made one. But I can't post it on here without being banned. She has all four limbs
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Do you fancy standing for GE 2029? Hopefully a CON recovery year? Maybe a good time to enter politics after a successful commercial career? Late 40s ideal time to do it not like these career politicians?
I don't have a thick enough skin mate. Get triggered easily. Also don't want to expose my family.
I might (might) do County Council or something. Main thing that puts me off that is the sheer lack of power.
Basically, making difficult decisions on what to cut/not fund that isn't Adult Social Care as Westminster ties both hands behind your back.
One thing is for sure. No sign of CON or LAB sorting out Adult Social Care! That requires difficult decisions to raise the money to do it properly that neither party will address.
It is odd that this issue suddenly moved the dial dramatically in the 2017 election but is currently a non barking dog though it is the same problem it was then.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
To some degree; but note that AI still makes some howling errors - and for anything even remotely vital, it's not good enough. And I have doubts that the current systems will ever be good enough.
(I asked an online AI image generator to give me an image of a 'redheaded female triathelete,' and what it came up with was hilarious. I'd post it on here if it was allowed. Every image had obvious problems, such as people cycling with no seats on their bike. But that first image.... my God. I'll have nightmares.)
There is absolutely no reason why AI cannot be BETTER than humans at translating, and that indeed will happen, soon enough: because the AI will have access to all the words and all the examples ever used, and no human will possess that
As for images you obviously have no idea what you're doing. A reasonably smart ten year old can now get AI to produce images entirely indistinguishable from reality
Bullshit; at least not with a heck of a lot of curating.
"you obviously have no idea what you're doing."
And you, as ever, have no idea what you're talking about.
I can see your avatar. If you are using image creators that are producing images of triathletes with one arm then you must be using some shit-arse AI image creator from the 1890s
Try Midjourney V6
I'll have a go now. Red haired triathlete?
That one was from Gencraft.
With no curating. First image out.
I've just made one. But I can't post it on here without being banned. She has all four limbs
But, as with Eric Morcombe's music, not necessarily in the right order.
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Do you fancy standing for GE 2029? Hopefully a CON recovery year? Maybe a good time to enter politics after a successful commercial career? Late 40s ideal time to do it not like these career politicians?
I don't have a thick enough skin mate. Get triggered easily. Also don't want to expose my family.
I might (might) do County Council or something. Main thing that puts me off that is the sheer lack of power.
Basically, making difficult decisions on what to cut/not fund that isn't Adult Social Care as Westminster ties both hands behind your back.
One thing is for sure. No sign of CON or LAB sorting out Adult Social Care! That requires difficult decisions to raise the money to do it properly that neither party will address.
It is odd that this issue suddenly moved the dial dramatically in the 2017 election but is currently a non barking dog though it is the same problem it was then.
At some level, we all know it's a problem, but it's a chronic one we can mentally drown out.
Any attempt to actually fix social care by identifying a stream of money to pay for it reliably and properly turns it into an acute issue. Much easier to kick the can for another year.
Met up with JohnO at a working man’s champagne bar and put us in charge of the Tory party and we’ll save the party.
PS I debuted my new trainers today.
I got endless grief about buying myself a pair of white Lacoste trainers. My children eventually bought me new trainers for Christmas on the basis it was just too embarrassing being seen out with me. Even more than normal, apparently. So I am glad to see that I am not the only one who thought they were a good idea.
I have a Lacoste Outlet store 10 minutes away on the bicycle.
You could celebrate by buying 3 of last year's range for the same price.
Or dye them purple.
"Now I am an old man I shall wear ..." etc
I absolutely adore that poem.
It's quite old itself, now.
Written in 1961; contemporaneous with Stig of the Dump.
I am not sure that the muscle definition on the forearms is quite right. Too smooth and no bunch at the elbow as you would expect an athlete to have. But yes, it works.
Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight.
That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.
I hope they regain contact.
Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.
He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.
Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
The ends do not justify the means.
Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
Do inanimate objects have rights?
We have been in this area already this afternoon; but it remains fascinating.
Do I have a duty, other things being equal, not to destroy 'The Girl with the Pearl Earring' regardless of who owns it?
If: Yes (to which most would assent) then this means by simple reasoning, for the painting, the following:
'This painting is the subject of duties towards it which confers upon it a particular property, namely it ought not to be destroyed by X'.
Therefore the painting has the right not to be destroyed by X.
Therefore some inanimate objects have some rights.
This was the original spur to iconoclasm, of course. Destroying objects that your enemy revered.
Met up with JohnO at a working man’s champagne bar and put us in charge of the Tory party and we’ll save the party.
PS I debuted my new trainers today.
I got endless grief about buying myself a pair of white Lacoste trainers. My children eventually bought me new trainers for Christmas on the basis it was just too embarrassing being seen out with me. Even more than normal, apparently. So I am glad to see that I am not the only one who thought they were a good idea.
These Nike trainers are so comfortable, like angels giving my feet a massage.
Quite agree, I’ve got these. Possibly flashier than the plain whites?
Taken from an advert by the way, that’s not me
Flashy really isn’t my style, I prefer classy understatement.
Met up with JohnO at a working man’s champagne bar and put us in charge of the Tory party and we’ll save the party.
PS I debuted my new trainers today.
I got endless grief about buying myself a pair of white Lacoste trainers. My children eventually bought me new trainers for Christmas on the basis it was just too embarrassing being seen out with me. Even more than normal, apparently. So I am glad to see that I am not the only one who thought they were a good idea.
I have a Lacoste Outlet store 10 minutes away on the bicycle.
You could celebrate by buying 3 of last year's range for the same price.
Or dye them purple.
"Now I am an old man I shall wear ..." etc
I absolutely adore that poem.
It's quite old itself, now.
Written in 1961; contemporaneous with Stig of the Dump.
On the contrary, young, spritely and of the moment. Just like me who was born that year!
I am not sure that the muscle definition on the forearms is quite right. Too smooth and no bunch at the elbow as you would expect an athlete to have. But yes, it works.
Well no it's not perfect, but it is proof that in a very short time (that took me a minute) you can get really quite impressive results
With some fine tuning In reckon I could make that indistinguishable from reality in about half an hour. And this is a complicated request
If you simply ask for a face - in the right way - you will get images that are perfectly real immediately
See the NYT article below. Try the test. It is humbling when you keep getting it wrong and you can't tell AI from reality
Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?
You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.
Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?
Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.
Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.
The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.
But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).
I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.
The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.
Importing it from India or China is not.
Is Carbon capture technology real yet?
National Grid say yes- and capturing from factories where lots of carbon dioxide is produced in one place is the most plausible application.
I'd be a bit surprised if that doesn't leave the electric arc (recycling) process as better, as long as the resulting steel has the right qualities.
So- anyone know when we either absolutely need, or probably want, virgin steel? And how many Port Talbots of steel is that?
And, if the answer is "more than zero, but less than one", what do we do? Because I'm not sure we're going to like an answer constructed by free market players.
I'm very bearish on CCS. It works on (relatively) small scales, in ideal places, particularly where the source and sink are relatively close.
A statement like: "You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon." is a bit like 'steal underpants'.
1.5 million tpa ain't small scale.
Yes, it is.
"Today, CCS projects are storing almost 45 million tons of CO2 every year, which is about the amount of CO2 emissions created by 10 million passenger cars. "
1.5 million tpa from a single plant. That is a large scale plant.
The technology is proven. At large commercial scale. TRL9. It just needs to be rolled out. That's the stage we have reached.
It can work where the source and sink are close together. I'm not denying it has its place as *part* of the solution. But it's not *the* solution, or even a major part of it.
We've reached a degree of common ground regarding CCS being part of the solution. Let's leave it there and keep an eye on developments.
The government has allocated £20 billion of our money to CCS, after all.
That could just be a sunk cost fallacy at work.
Do you know how many billions were thrown at fuel cells for cars?
It isn't sunk cost. The government has not made Final Investment Decision on any of the projects yet.
The sunk cost was the money wasted on the two previous abortive attempts to implement CCS in the UK.
Sunk cost is using the investment to date to justify pressing on
Yes, but that isn't what is being done. The previous projects were chopped after significant up front expenditure because they were not cost effective. The government then started from scratch with the whole Track 1 process. Sunk(public sector) costs on this are relatively low, and are not being used as an argument to press on.
Spend a billion to build a cluster that, for arguments sake, doesn't work properly, and then decide to spend another five hundred million to try and fix it (but fail) on the basis of not wanting to have wasted the billion. There's the sunk cost fallacy.
I am not sure that the muscle definition on the forearms is quite right. Too smooth and no bunch at the elbow as you would expect an athlete to have. But yes, it works.
Well no it's not perfect, but it is proof that in a very short time (that took me a minute) you can get really quite impressive results
With some fine tuning In reckon I could make that indistinguishable from reality in about half an hour. And this is a complicated request
If you simply ask for a face - in the right way - you will get images that are perfectly real immediately
See the NYT article below. Try the test. It is humbling when you keep getting it wrong and you can't tell AI from reality
I don't subscribe to the NYT so I can't see it but I have seen similar things before. Machines can create realistic images, even of faces which our biology makes us particularly skilled at noticing in detail. Not sure this has anything to do with intelligence per se though. It is ultimately no more complex than creating a machine tool.
“We keep coming up against the fatal tension between the obvious political collapse of this government and the obvious unwillingness of Conservative MPs to put it out of its misery,” one rebel said. “That tension can’t hold for very long. It can only be resolved by removing the PM.”
The Conservatives face two by-elections in February, both of which they are expected to lose, followed by what Tory MPs fear will be a hugely damaging set of local election results. Time, the rebel argues, is running out. “The local elections are the hard stop — realistically we can’t really change after the end of May,” they said. “The party does need to come to this conclusion organically, but may also need a steer.”
I'm not sure what this anonymous rebel is saying. If they go past May then they can't bin Sunak before the GE? I'm pretty sure they can and probably should.
It’s a dice roll, but it’s hard to see anything getting better for them under Sunak. Of course, they could come out of it looking even more ludicrous and making it even worse.
They really made some terrible unforced errors by elevating Truss and Sunak. That said, who is the alternative who is going to be able to ride in and save the day?
Morning all! One benefit of the Tories endlessly swapping PM is that is has disarmed the notion that you vote for a PM. Presidential politics is unhelpful in our system. Perhaps the reason why recent Tory smears against Starmer and Davey haven’t worked is that people are voting for change, not the person.
If they bin off Sunak then the replacement won’t be Braverman. Too many people are prejudiced against people who aren’t as white and male as themselves.
The problem is the leader the right wants isn’t a Tory MP. They could install the ghosts of Powell or Moseley into an empty vessel (Jonathan Gillis perhaps) and the Nigel would still be the one they want.
Have to laugh. As the Tories head towards the abyss, the person they believe can win them victory won just under 4m votes at the height of his powers. Though if the Tory members would like to be down to 4m votes I think we shouldn’t stand in their way.
Strong point this. I deeply doubt that the current Tory membership would ever choose a non-white leader over a white one.
Not convinced with that. It is hard to see someone for instance like Barclay, Dowden or Gove winning a member vote against Badenoch or Braverman.
The whole discussion about whether the Tories would do better with or without a new leader is for the birds.
The party is toxic and riven between the ascendant GB News faction that feels the party isn’t toxic enough and the neutered One Nation faction that seems resigned to declaring the water to be wet as the ship goes down.
In the absence of a dynamic, charismatic figure that could unite the party, drag it back to its senses and persuade the public to give it a second look, the leadership is practically irrelevant.
Seriously, which of these prospects would make any difference at all (in the absence of a serious failure on the part of Labour)?
Anderson: too provocative Badenoch: too wild Barclay: too bland Braverman: too fired Cameron: too previous Cleverly: too gaffe-prone Dowden: too forgettable Farage: too outside Frost: too unelected Gove: too weird Hunt: too unpopular Johnson: too Johnson Mordaunt: too woke Shapps: too schizophrenic Truss: to the pub
You missed off the star of the show:
#Priti4Leader
Haha! Gosh, what an embarrassment of riches a richness of embarrassments they have to choose from! Here’s the updated list, with additions asterisked:
Anderson: too provocative Badenoch: too wild Barclay: too bland Braverman: too fired Cameron: too previous Cleverly: too gaffe-prone Farage: too outside Frost: too unelected Gove: too weird Hunt: too unpopular ***Jenrick: too cruel Johnson: too Johnson Mordaunt: too woke ***Patel: too sinister ***Rees-Mogg: too Victorian Shapps: too schizophrenic Truss: to the pub ***Tugendhat: Tugendhat
If I was a Tory (and thank Richard Dawkins I’m not), I’d want Tugendhat as the next leader out of that lot or even Mordaunt or Cleverly. I suspect they’ll actually go for Badenoch.
And that's one of the problem the Tories have - there's nobody in that list who is obviously better than Sunak. Sunak is a bit rubbish, but he is an improvement on his two predecessors.
Hunt and Gove would probably be much better PMs in practice, but would never be elected either by the party (Hunt) or country (Gove). The others to me are all either meh or repellent, even if they appeal to various sections of right-wing opinion.
The other problem they face if they change leaders is that come the GE, all Labour has to do is to ask "how long do you think you will be Prime Minister?" And laugh.
Where have you been for the last year? Everybody on that list is better than Sunak. Add to that Geoffrey Cox, Ann Widdecombe, Michael Fabricant, John Gummer's lady that does, someone that once shook hands with Virginia Bottomley, and Larry the Downing Street cat. The man is a success vacuum.
I bow to no one in my disdain for Sunak (not even you).
But to suggest Michael Fabricating C**t would be better is bullshit. He is barely better than Donald Trump after the fourth line of coke.
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Trouble is it's done by Conservative Constituency Parties. The ones that thought Truss was a good idea.
Truss was pushed on Norfolk by David Cameron as an 'A-lister,' somebody he rated and thought would modernise the PCP.
The local party didn't want her at all. Indeed, they tried to get her removed after she was very publicly caught shagging Mark Field.
“We keep coming up against the fatal tension between the obvious political collapse of this government and the obvious unwillingness of Conservative MPs to put it out of its misery,” one rebel said. “That tension can’t hold for very long. It can only be resolved by removing the PM.”
The Conservatives face two by-elections in February, both of which they are expected to lose, followed by what Tory MPs fear will be a hugely damaging set of local election results. Time, the rebel argues, is running out. “The local elections are the hard stop — realistically we can’t really change after the end of May,” they said. “The party does need to come to this conclusion organically, but may also need a steer.”
I'm not sure what this anonymous rebel is saying. If they go past May then they can't bin Sunak before the GE? I'm pretty sure they can and probably should.
It’s a dice roll, but it’s hard to see anything getting better for them under Sunak. Of course, they could come out of it looking even more ludicrous and making it even worse.
They really made some terrible unforced errors by elevating Truss and Sunak. That said, who is the alternative who is going to be able to ride in and save the day?
Morning all! One benefit of the Tories endlessly swapping PM is that is has disarmed the notion that you vote for a PM. Presidential politics is unhelpful in our system. Perhaps the reason why recent Tory smears against Starmer and Davey haven’t worked is that people are voting for change, not the person.
If they bin off Sunak then the replacement won’t be Braverman. Too many people are prejudiced against people who aren’t as white and male as themselves.
The problem is the leader the right wants isn’t a Tory MP. They could install the ghosts of Powell or Moseley into an empty vessel (Jonathan Gillis perhaps) and the Nigel would still be the one they want.
Have to laugh. As the Tories head towards the abyss, the person they believe can win them victory won just under 4m votes at the height of his powers. Though if the Tory members would like to be down to 4m votes I think we shouldn’t stand in their way.
Strong point this. I deeply doubt that the current Tory membership would ever choose a non-white leader over a white one.
Not convinced with that. It is hard to see someone for instance like Barclay, Dowden or Gove winning a member vote against Badenoch or Braverman.
The whole discussion about whether the Tories would do better with or without a new leader is for the birds.
The party is toxic and riven between the ascendant GB News faction that feels the party isn’t toxic enough and the neutered One Nation faction that seems resigned to declaring the water to be wet as the ship goes down.
In the absence of a dynamic, charismatic figure that could unite the party, drag it back to its senses and persuade the public to give it a second look, the leadership is practically irrelevant.
Seriously, which of these prospects would make any difference at all (in the absence of a serious failure on the part of Labour)?
Anderson: too provocative Badenoch: too wild Barclay: too bland Braverman: too fired Cameron: too previous Cleverly: too gaffe-prone Dowden: too forgettable Farage: too outside Frost: too unelected Gove: too weird Hunt: too unpopular Johnson: too Johnson Mordaunt: too woke Shapps: too schizophrenic Truss: to the pub
You missed off the star of the show:
#Priti4Leader
Haha! Gosh, what an embarrassment of riches a richness of embarrassments they have to choose from! Here’s the updated list, with additions asterisked:
Anderson: too provocative Badenoch: too wild Barclay: too bland Braverman: too fired Cameron: too previous Cleverly: too gaffe-prone Farage: too outside Frost: too unelected Gove: too weird Hunt: too unpopular ***Jenrick: too cruel Johnson: too Johnson Mordaunt: too woke ***Patel: too sinister ***Rees-Mogg: too Victorian Shapps: too schizophrenic Truss: to the pub ***Tugendhat: Tugendhat
If I was a Tory (and thank Richard Dawkins I’m not), I’d want Tugendhat as the next leader out of that lot or even Mordaunt or Cleverly. I suspect they’ll actually go for Badenoch.
And that's one of the problem the Tories have - there's nobody in that list who is obviously better than Sunak. Sunak is a bit rubbish, but he is an improvement on his two predecessors.
Hunt and Gove would probably be much better PMs in practice, but would never be elected either by the party (Hunt) or country (Gove). The others to me are all either meh or repellent, even if they appeal to various sections of right-wing opinion.
The other problem they face if they change leaders is that come the GE, all Labour has to do is to ask "how long do you think you will be Prime Minister?" And laugh.
Where have you been for the last year? Everybody on that list is better than Sunak. Add to that Geoffrey Cox, Ann Widdecombe, Michael Fabricant, John Gummer's lady that does, someone that once shook hands with Virginia Bottomley, and Larry the Downing Street cat. The man is a success vacuum.
I bow to no one in my disdain for Sunak (not even you).
But to suggest Michael Fabricating C**t would be better is bullshit. He is barely better than Donald Trump after the fourth line of coke.
Ah, yes, I knew there was someone missing from my list - Donald Trump after his 4th line of coke.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
Its frankly not easy to see what careers are a reasonably safe bet looking forward 20 years. As Elon Musk pointed out Iain M Banks' Culture novels might give us the best idea (as well as being a great read). We are going to need to find a different purpose.
As someone who works for the government I find myself currently doing stuff that could quite easily be automated but won't be anytime soon.
I am not sure that the muscle definition on the forearms is quite right. Too smooth and no bunch at the elbow as you would expect an athlete to have. But yes, it works.
Well no it's not perfect, but it is proof that in a very short time (that took me a minute) you can get really quite impressive results
With some fine tuning In reckon I could make that indistinguishable from reality in about half an hour. And this is a complicated request
If you simply ask for a face - in the right way - you will get images that are perfectly real immediately
See the NYT article below. Try the test. It is humbling when you keep getting it wrong and you can't tell AI from reality
I don't subscribe to the NYT so I can't see it but I have seen similar things before. Machines can create realistic images, even of faces which our biology makes us particularly skilled at noticing in detail. Not sure this has anything to do with intelligence per se though. It is ultimately no more complex than creating a machine tool.
Perhaps. I confess I was a little unnerved I got so many wrong - it's a shame you can't access it.
I was also disquited by the revelation people now think AI images are more "believable" than real images. AI reality is seen as more convincing and authentic than actual reality
"The idea that A.I.-generated faces could be deemed more authentic than actual people startled experts like Dr. Dawel, who fear that digital fakes could help the spread of false and misleading messages online."
Spend a few minutes pondering that, and the philosophical implications are wild, and profound
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
Its frankly not easy to see what careers are a reasonably safe bet looking forward 20 years. As Elon Musk pointed out Iain M Banks' Culture novels might give us the best idea (as well as being a great read). We are going to need to find a different purpose.
As someone who works for the government I find myself currently doing stuff that could quite easily be automated but won't be anytime soon.
I am not sure that the muscle definition on the forearms is quite right. Too smooth and no bunch at the elbow as you would expect an athlete to have. But yes, it works.
Well no it's not perfect, but it is proof that in a very short time (that took me a minute) you can get really quite impressive results
With some fine tuning In reckon I could make that indistinguishable from reality in about half an hour. And this is a complicated request
If you simply ask for a face - in the right way - you will get images that are perfectly real immediately
See the NYT article below. Try the test. It is humbling when you keep getting it wrong and you can't tell AI from reality
I don't subscribe to the NYT so I can't see it but I have seen similar things before. Machines can create realistic images, even of faces which our biology makes us particularly skilled at noticing in detail. Not sure this has anything to do with intelligence per se though. It is ultimately no more complex than creating a machine tool.
PS you should, by the way, subscribe to the NYT if you can time it right
They often give British readers insanely good deals that you can't get in America. eg 50p a week for the whole site
It is definitely worth "50p a week"; the sports coverage in the Athletic alone - often superb - is worth a lot more than that
I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.
Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.
This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.
But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.
Select very good candidates.
Yes but very good candidates are far more likely to apply when the party is either in government midterm or heading for government. Then high flyers are more willing to take a pay cut by standing for Parliament for a chance of ministerial office than when heading for opposition or in opposition and behind in the polls. Hence Labour are getting better candidates now than in the Corbyn and Ed Miliband years and the Tories got better candidates under Cameron than under Hague and IDS.
Otherwise the best you can pick are mainly good local councillors who are party loyalists with an effective record for their community or ideologues who will nonetheless do the hard work of campaigning, especially in marginal seats
Met up with JohnO at a working man’s champagne bar and put us in charge of the Tory party and we’ll save the party.
PS I debuted my new trainers today.
I got endless grief about buying myself a pair of white Lacoste trainers. My children eventually bought me new trainers for Christmas on the basis it was just too embarrassing being seen out with me. Even more than normal, apparently. So I am glad to see that I am not the only one who thought they were a good idea.
I have a Lacoste Outlet store 10 minutes away on the bicycle.
You could celebrate by buying 3 of last year's range for the same price.
Or dye them purple.
"Now I am an old man I shall wear ..." etc
I absolutely adore that poem.
It's quite old itself, now.
Written in 1961; contemporaneous with Stig of the Dump.
At some stage, and it’s not entirely clear when, the British governing class abandoned the British national *project*.
I think David Edgerton is probably the best writer on this, his thesis is that 1945 represented the creation of a new British state that was - contra to received opinion - surprisingly advanced and puissant - but that the neo-liberal age since 1979 has seen its slow and now rapid dismantlement.
Why should Britain retain the ability to manufacture steel? Why should Britain maintain armed forces and be concerned about Russian aggression? Why shouldn’t it import a million immigrants a year? Why shouldn’t Scotland go its own way? Why shouldn’t Britain run a massive trade deficit? Why should we keep the BBC?
The modern dispensation barely knows how to answer these questions.
I am not sure that the muscle definition on the forearms is quite right. Too smooth and no bunch at the elbow as you would expect an athlete to have. But yes, it works.
Well no it's not perfect, but it is proof that in a very short time (that took me a minute) you can get really quite impressive results
With some fine tuning In reckon I could make that indistinguishable from reality in about half an hour. And this is a complicated request
If you simply ask for a face - in the right way - you will get images that are perfectly real immediately
See the NYT article below. Try the test. It is humbling when you keep getting it wrong and you can't tell AI from reality
I don't subscribe to the NYT so I can't see it but I have seen similar things before. Machines can create realistic images, even of faces which our biology makes us particularly skilled at noticing in detail. Not sure this has anything to do with intelligence per se though. It is ultimately no more complex than creating a machine tool.
PS you should, by the way, subscribe to the NYT if you can time it right
They often give British readers insanely good deals that you can't get in America. eg 50p a week for the whole site
It is definitely worth "50p a week"; the sports coverage in the Athletic alone - often superb - is worth a lot more than that
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
Its frankly not easy to see what careers are a reasonably safe bet looking forward 20 years. As Elon Musk pointed out Iain M Banks' Culture novels might give us the best idea (as well as being a great read). We are going to need to find a different purpose.
As someone who works for the government I find myself currently doing stuff that could quite easily be automated but won't be anytime soon.
If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified
AI comin for ya
Its frankly not easy to see what careers are a reasonably safe bet looking forward 20 years. As Elon Musk pointed out Iain M Banks' Culture novels might give us the best idea (as well as being a great read). We are going to need to find a different purpose.
As someone who works for the government I find myself currently doing stuff that could quite easily be automated but won't be anytime soon.
As someone who also sort of works for the government these days, I can confidently say that there is absolutely no trace of intelligence in their computer systems.
Comments
Their next winner won't be in Parliament yet.
(I asked an online AI image generator to give me an image of a 'redheaded female triathelete,' and what it came up with was hilarious. I'd post it on here if it was allowed. Every image had obvious problems, such as people cycling with no seats on their bike. But that first image.... my God. I'll have nightmares.)
The other is that people would stop wanting to learn for themselves the languages that have a sort of universal scope, of which English is one.
As for images you obviously have no idea what you're doing. A reasonably smart ten year old can now get AI to produce images entirely indistinguishable from reality
It is the Taliban and ISIS who act as if inanimate objects have no rights. When they damage beauty in a bad cause we criticise them for it. We are right, even if only on the precautionary principle, to do so.
The NYT has produced ten images of people. Can you guess which are AI and which are real?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/19/technology/artificial-intelligence-image-generators-faces-quiz.html
I got 3 out of 10, pretty feeble - and I pride myself on being good at spotting AI images, as I write about them so often for the Gazette. See how you do
Here is the kicker tho, and maybe an explanation for my errors. It now seems that AI image creation is so good people tend to see AI inages as more likely to be real than real images. Try and wrap your head round that. I'm still attempting to understand the implications. AI is more real than reality??
As the article puts it:
"Distinguishing between a real versus an A.I.-generated face has proved especially confounding.
Research published across multiple studies found that faces of white people created by A.I. systems were perceived as more realistic than genuine photographs of white people, a phenomenon called hyper-realism."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68041937
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1748732612544221262
"you obviously have no idea what you're doing."
And you, as ever, have no idea what you're talking about.
But 99% of people don't have the time, inclination or money to learn the cello, it is pointless for them, and when machine translation arrives with lip synch and the rest (as in the Milei video) then what is the point in your spending years learning a language when computers can do it all so easily and brilliantly and much mucb faster?
It's like insisting on walking fifty miles, when you have a car in your drive
He's just not really cabinet material.
I might (might) do County Council or something. Main thing that puts me off that is the sheer lack of power.
Basically, making difficult decisions on what to cut/not fund that isn't Adult Social Care as Westminster ties both hands behind your back.
I daresay you can get excellent results *with human curation*. And that's the issue.
PS I debuted my new trainers today.
Doesn't that make you an identifiable politician, or a contestant in Celebrity wotsit?
The overlap of that Venn Diagram is Matt Hancock, Nadine Dorries, Edwina Currie, Stanley Johnson, or Nigel Farage.
Fess Up, @TSE .
Starting prep for the Election.
You could celebrate by buying 3 of last year's range for the same price.
Or dye them purple.
"Now I am an old man I shall wear ..." etc
Try Midjourney V6
I'll have a go now. Red haired triathlete?
As usual, he was humane, warm, intelligent and sensible. It made me all nostalgic for when the Tory party was like that.
Taken from an advert by the way, that’s not me
Do I have a duty, other things being equal, not to destroy 'The Girl with the Pearl Earring' regardless of who owns it?
If: Yes (to which most would assent) then this means by simple reasoning, for the painting, the following:
'This painting is the subject of duties towards it which confers upon it a particular property, namely it ought not to be destroyed by X'.
Therefore the painting has the right not to be destroyed by X.
Therefore some inanimate objects have some rights.
With no curating. First image out.
This is a test. Here is my red haired remale triathlete, let's see if this works...
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/990816877691437086/1198303040432775350/leon614487_long_distance_photo_of_a_young_female_red_haired_tri_81a42299-a2da-43ac-a197-1f98fc334094.png?ex=65be69ac&is=65abf4ac&hm=e0be12fe11d6c733d304ceb8de08a22c639a141a54ea173137690ea537c122bb&
Any attempt to actually fix social care by identifying a stream of money to pay for it reliably and properly turns it into an acute issue. Much easier to kick the can for another year.
Written in 1961; contemporaneous with Stig of the Dump.
Indeterminate prison sentences sounds like a good one.
Things the Government hasn't done which they said they would would be like Morecambe and Wise vs Des O Connor.
https://youtu.be/F2P18e41m0o?t=200
😳
With some fine tuning In reckon I could make that indistinguishable from reality in about half an hour. And this is a complicated request
If you simply ask for a face - in the right way - you will get images that are perfectly real immediately
See the NYT article below. Try the test. It is humbling when you keep getting it wrong and you can't tell AI from reality
Spend a billion to build a cluster that, for arguments sake, doesn't work properly, and then decide to spend another five hundred million to try and fix it (but fail) on the basis of not wanting to have wasted the billion. There's the sunk cost fallacy.
But to suggest Michael Fabricating C**t would be better is bullshit. He is barely better than Donald Trump after the fourth line of coke.
The local party didn't want her at all. Indeed, they tried to get her removed after she was very publicly caught shagging Mark Field.
I was also disquited by the revelation people now think AI images are more "believable" than real images. AI reality is seen as more convincing and authentic than actual reality
"The idea that A.I.-generated faces could be deemed more authentic than actual people startled experts like Dr. Dawel, who fear that digital fakes could help the spread of false and misleading messages online."
Spend a few minutes pondering that, and the philosophical implications are wild, and profound
Right weather for Scotland, though.
They often give British readers insanely good deals that you can't get in America. eg 50p a week for the whole site
It is definitely worth "50p a week"; the sports coverage in the Athletic alone - often superb - is worth a lot more than that
Otherwise the best you can pick are mainly good local councillors who are party loyalists with an effective record for their community or ideologues who will nonetheless do the hard work of campaigning, especially in marginal seats
I think David Edgerton is probably the best writer on this, his thesis is that 1945 represented the creation of a new British state that was - contra to received opinion - surprisingly advanced and puissant - but that the neo-liberal age since 1979 has seen its slow and now rapid dismantlement.
Why should Britain retain the ability to manufacture steel? Why should Britain maintain armed forces and be concerned about Russian aggression? Why shouldn’t it import a million immigrants a year? Why shouldn’t Scotland go its own way? Why shouldn’t Britain run a massive trade deficit? Why should we keep the BBC?
The modern dispensation barely knows how to answer these questions.