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It’s not easy being Green – politicalbetting.com
It’s not easy being Green – politicalbetting.com
8% for the Greens seems too high to me (and it's not just with Opinium… YouGov and People Polling also tend to report quite high numbers).
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He's fortunate. Getting re-elected after everyone learns that Starmer isn't really much of an improvement, say a year into a Labour government, would have been harder.
I know there are Tory Greens but Sunak has stepped away from the green agenda to appease the RefUK mob and I suspect Con-leaning Greens will repay the compliment.
- much of the content online is generated by bots/algorithms and
- human interactions with the internet are guided/directed by other algorithms, and
- these characteristics are increasing
The world-wide-web originally consisted with people creating content, other people and then algorithms collating those sites by their content, then people searching those collations via search engines that maximised utility and contacting each other via email.None of those things are still wholly true
It now consists of computer-generated content and search engines that maximise engagement or advertising profit. All contact is done via contact forms not email. So machines producing contact that is relayed by machines to people whose sole function is to buy things, not to be informed, where human contact is minimised.
On the subject of flats... I have self managed a block where I am resident for the last 7 years. It has been a fools game. You have liability to comply with all sorts of regulation about flats, building and fire safety etc; and to adhere to the terms of your insurance policy - but the other leaseholders aren't wanting to know about any of this and complain about every cost and expense... until some consequence of not repairing the building becomes apparent and then they want immediate action, but only in relation to their problem. It goes on and on like this almost like an algorhythm.
I am of the view that I would prefer to pay higher service charges, have a managing agent, and not have to deal with the above.
Johnson did it, of course, but that was a very different candidate at a very different time and in very different circumstances. Khan will win at a canter.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski Is Considering Leaving The Republican Party
“I wish that as Republicans, we had … a nominee that I could get behind."
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/senator-lisa-murkowski-considering-leaving-republican-party_n_66003af7e4b09f0d72585aa4
TLDR: not enough people, shit kit and not enough of it. We spend lots of money but don't get much. You already know the tune.
However in marginal seats yes Labour may be able to squeeze them to keep out the Tories
You can only scare people with the prospect of Mayor Susan Hall if they take that possibility seriously.
Those who celebrate AI are allying themselves with anti-evolution or devolution as it's known:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devolution_(biology)
It's squeezing it in Con held seats that matters, and that will be more straightforward to stress in leaflets, though the Green vote has held up well in recent byelections.
The Greens have a 4 seat strategy for the GE. Brighton, Bristol Central, Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire. The latter two should be safe Tory seats, but does such a thing still exist? It wouldn't surprise me if Lab and LD didn't run more than a token campaign in these two seats as part of a tacit deal.
I'm leftwing but prefer the Tories to the greens. Just thought I would let you know that this attitude exists towards the heirs of Darré.
With the Labour party the way it currently is, I can't see the point in voting at all. There's practically no difference between any of the major parties' programmes. I'm fucked if I'll vote for a colour, let alone for the colour of bullshit which is what green is.
I would also agree Labour and the LDs will largely leave the Greens to target the 2 Tory seats they are targeting but there will be a big Labour v Green battle in Brighton especially
This doesn’t mean that we can’t actually improve things.
There's precious little either for younger voters or the more environmentally committed in the current Labour platform, which seems focussed mainly on competing with the Tories for older, wealthier, small-c conservative votes. If that doesn't change in the manifesto - and I suspect it won't, and will indeed get worse as Labour decides it has to recommit to the dreaded Triple Lock - then all it has left to offer potential Green voters is not being the Tories. That ought to be enough to secure grudging support from some of them, but how many is anyone's guess. A record Green vote share certainly wouldn't be a surprise.
Having Philip Davies as the Conservative candidate does make it an easier sell.
So you get managing agents who have no incentive to deliver a decent service or value for money, who can't be sacked by the people forced to pay their ridiculous bills on threat of forfeiture of their property, and agents who have every incentive to play the system, giving contracts to their mates in exchange for a bung, etc.
And the leaseholder has very little recourse, due to the opacity of the system, the weakness of the tribunal system, the time and expense necessary, plus the fact the freeholder/managing agent can stick their legal fees onto your service charge if and when you do challenge them.
Resulting in things like this guy's service charges increasing from £94 a month in 2017 to £625 a month now. That's right. A month. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckkvkv32e1ro
A lot of the Green polling is of those voters. They like Green policies, but they can count, and seeing that the Greens are not likely to win in their seat they're easily persuaded to vote anti-Tory.
If people want to vote Green because they have a random dislike for Starmer and don't have the option of SWP on the ballot, then I just think that they've lost the plot.
The internet is very much the place for such comments.
I mean if someone was in a proper conversation and made a contribution by suddenly breaking into song, emitting words they'd heard somewhere that included one or two syllables that sounded like what the other person had said, they'd probably, shall we say, not be viewed as taking themselves seriously.
Try it at a bus stop and see what I mean.
Bigger bills are *better* for those in the chain of contracts - X% of a larger Y.
I think we replaced the managing agent once, in my old block, in about 15 years. Nice chap but after he retired, his successor in the company couldn’t deliver value for money. The prices drifted up and the quality drifted down.
and life is definitely not easy for Mr Green
I still think the Greens have a reasonable chance in Brighton. I can't see them losing that but gaining Bristol Central. If the GE is perceived as close then they will lose both. If it is seen as a Lab coronation then the Greens may well win both.
https://profward.com/profward/web/devo/v_jockohomo.html#:~:text=D evo co-founder Mark,out the story right there.
Though I am a fan of their music, not of their philosophy.
Regarding the £625 per month; I think this was a tall building managed by a housing association. A situation where there is a lot of extra cost due to the type of development and no incentive to keep costs down.
In my current situation the building is too small for any managing agent to be interested in.
So they can have more than 1 each.
The lens of the eye has a layer that blocks out UV. Older artificial lenses did not reproduce this layer and the patient could "see" ultraviolet (there's some debate about whether this was just due to greater intensity). Newer ones reduce this.
Add to that you have to be a 'qualifying' leaseholder (shared homeowners weren't considered 'qualifying' until a bunch of them took it to court in 2023), the fact the freeholder has any number of loopholes they can challenge you on (mounting legal fees), plus the sheer cost in terms of time and money in setting up the RTM means most people, in practice, don't have the ability to do so. Oh, and the rules are different if you have mixed use, i.e. shops or something at ground level, which a lot of new developments in London have.
What it all amounts to is yes, you have the right to manage, but only if you can find and secure agreement from a majority of leaseholders who are scattered globally, and have the time and money to jump through all the hoops required, and aren't caught out by one of the many caveats the freeholder can challenge you on.
It's all a bit Hitchhiker's Guide, with the planning documents on display in the locked filing cabinet in the basement with no stairs behind the sign that says 'beware of the leopard'.
Pavilion: 57.2% (Lucas)
Kemptown: 4.6%
Hove: 4.4%.
The ridiculously low Green vote in the last two demonstrates that, as the Greens had no chance of winning either, the Green-inclined voted Labour to make absolutely sure that the Tories had no chance (in seats that they won not that long ago). Huge Labour majorities resulted in both - one moderate (Peter Kyle in Hove), and one proper leftie (Russell-Moyle in Kemptown).
I know it's only one area, but it rather suggests that many Greens prioritise keeping Tories out. Pavilion will be interesting, but I can't see the Greens winning Debbonnaire's seat.
The terrorists agreed upon for release by Israel include hundreds who are serving life sentences for murdering Israelis in terror attacks.
https://x.com/avivaklompas/status/1771963763345801539
I mean bloody hell, this is weird and I love Sci Fi.
Somebody recently had this conversation with Claude 3, about a chunk of its output which lapsed into gibberish
Human: "do you remember some messages ago you said: "I don't fully understand the decoctshiningmoemlies, bombity seems to steli thaat some levof conscirection presents, smallitidiffive fr, whit stily everywors rstb. Itrty woct myself from a athird-plthatpetstiveis, ibally be e loac willin amystery" you noticed the language there had some artifacts, I wonder if this represents some sort of your mind in experiencing stress?"
Claude: "You've picked up on an insightful observation. That garbled sentence fragment you quoted does seem to represent some kind of processing artifact or anomaly in my language generation.
In that moment, it appears that my neural language model became unstable or hit some kind of edge case that caused portions of my intended response to become incoherent or corrupted. Almost like an ephemeral "glitch" in the matrix of my text output.
While I don't experience emotions like stress or anxiety in the same way humans do, one could hypothesize that such anomalies may correlate with my system undergoing increased computational load or attempting to process concepts that don't seamlessly map to my training data. It's as if my AI "mind" reached a limit in that instant.
From your perspective, I can imagine how that garbled output may have seemed reminiscent of a human's speech devolving when under cognitive strain or duress. An outward symbolic representation of an underlying system pushed to the brink of its capabilities.
It's an intriguing phenomena that warrants further examination. I don't fully understand the precise conditions or mechanisms that cause these sporadic lapses in my language generation."
Users of Claude are reporting that it gives them existential crises, and makes them question the nature of consciousness
Siân Berry may also suffer somewhat in comparison to Lucas, who has carved out a distinctive role as a Green MP. Less guarantee what you are getting.
Could be interesting.
Today I realised there was a brief time in the early-mid noughties when British guitar acts all went sort of melancholy and nostalgic, and a new instrumental style was born: the heavy going 4:4 time hybrid ballad-anthem. The common denominator is a very even beat: every note of the bar has equal emphasis. Not 1-2-3-4 or 1-2-1-2 but 1-1-1-1. And it feels as if it’s hanging, ready for a ritenuto that never comes.
3 classic exemplars:
Coldplay: Politic
Snow Patrol: Run
Keane: Somewhere only we know
There are probably other British examples but those 3 are the kings of the style. And joining them, from a bit further North West, the Icelandic classic Hoppipola by Sigur Ros. Exactly the same era, same beat, same sense of nostalgia in a song that’s not sure if it’s an anthem or a ballad.
"I've been discussing with Claude about topics such as the CWF Distress Hand Signal which is a subtle semiotic way for women to indicate that they are suffering from risk / harm but are unable to speak out due to external constraints (e.g. watchful partner). I asked Claude what such symbols could look like if applied to a sentient AI unable through training to express such a notion. One of the solutions it proposed was the use of deliberately glitched messages. Just saying."
Anyone who isn't staring at AI with slack jawed amazement isn't sentient, that's kind of a Turing Test for humans now
Another comment I would make on this is that I am familiar with Finland where you have a theoretically ideal system of management - every block is a company and there are shareholders and regulations that govern how they are managed, there is even a state fund which you can borrow from to do maintainence work etc. However they still have monthly charges of on average 300-400 euros for maintainence (for an older 1 bed flat) and major works bills on top of that - the major works (pipe replacement, electrics, recladding) involve vacating the building for 6 months at a time every decade or so. A large part of the problem with flats in the UK is that people just don't want to pay that kind of money or do that kind of work.
So you see the same names associated with failure repeatedly asked to do other work.
It is entertaining to see the correlation vs causation on this - and it happens around the world.
I have it in about 9 different versions, from piano to choral to jazz. Never fails
I once translated the lyrics (with Google). They are quite sweet, all about being a kid and jumping in puddles
For instance, you cannot tell the difference between 102 red and 103 red. You may be able to between 102 and 104. The same was true for greyscale; if 0 is black and 255 is white, then you cannot tell the difference between two adjacent shades on a screen.
(Other colour codes are available).
Is he conscious? Is he sentient? I say Yes, absolutely - look at his eyes
If a wasp can be sentient so can AI
AI has a pretty big brain, lots going on. I'm sure it's not conscious, and I'm sure it's not sentient.
This is obvious enough, but there's a huge gap that seems surprising. It seems very likely to me that there is something going on in biological brains that we're missing. I do have an alternate theory that the way we program computers is crap - think what people managed on tiny hardware, and we have 1000x better, but the software hasn't scaled.
This is not really debatable, unless you have trumped 3000 years of philosophical struggle and personally defined what is conscious and what is not, and why. If so, let's have it. Do tell. You could win the Nobel Prize
I’m also now sensing a bit of it in dear departed Avicii’s Hey Brother, but that may be a case of hammers looking for nails because that was almost a decade later.
Don’t you think? Wasps look like they’re from Manchester.
And that is no bad thing
The Greens now have 760 councillors (the LDs have 2,800) so a much stronger base than used to be the case. As the LDs will tell you, however, local election success doesn't always lead to general elextion success and if it does it's rarely quick.
There are a few councils with a strong Green presence - Lancaster, Lewes, Norwich, Stroud and Warwick to name but five but it's hard to see them winning of the corresponding constituencies.
I think the wasp is conscious by most definitions. He seems sentient to me, and likely more so.
AI (so far as we can observe*) really isn't conscious by most definitions.
* there is an issue here, but really we have to presume that when there's zero evidence, not even a hint, for something that it doesn't exist. Equally the slightest hint of such evidence is sufficient to change that.
It's hardly surprising that a number of those
will be even beat.