On thread. Paris lie because they can. They treat the voters with contempt. Eventually the voters have had enough. Amazing we have reached that with the 2024 Labour Govt already.
Do you have a view on the reliability of other European capitals? Belgrade always struck me as a bit of a bullshitter.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day remember Punk Rock flirted with Nazi iconography and the Sex Pistols in Holiday in the Sun wanted to go to the ‘New Belsen’, they also sang the ‘Belsen was a Gas’. With gas being a play on words.
CIA has concluded the Covid pandemic was “more likely” to have leaked from a Wuhan lab than emerged naturally. Chinese officials have long labelled this a “conspiracy theory” and, right from the start, were supported in that interpretation by much of the western MSM, especially the left-leaning MSM like the Guardian, NYT and BBC, some of whom smeared anybody who even gave the lab theory the time of day.
Hasn't it been obviously more likely - and generally viewed as more likely - for about four years now?
I mean, at the start there was a desperate attempt to avoid finger pointing, which was both understandable but also fundamentally unhelpful, and which damaged the reputation of science generally. But we've now swung to a point where yeah, we know that, and I don't think people in the MSM has been pushing the zoonotic line for a long time.
So it feels a little bit like punching a slow kid in the mouth again and again for something they did five years ago.
On thread. Paris lie because they can. They treat the voters with contempt. Eventually the voters have had enough. Amazing we have reached that with the 2024 Labour Govt already.
Actually, I would turn it around.
Parties lie, because telling the truth doesn't get you elected. And the more you are willing to lie, the more likely you are to be elected.
On thread. Paris lie because they can. They treat the voters with contempt. Eventually the voters have had enough. Amazing we have reached that with the 2024 Labour Govt already.
Actually, I would turn it around.
Parties lie, because telling the truth doesn't get you elected. And the more you are willing to lie, the more likely you are to be elected.
On thread. Paris lie because they can. They treat the voters with contempt. Eventually the voters have had enough. Amazing we have reached that with the 2024 Labour Govt already.
Not really, given they were elected with the lowest vote share for a new government in decades.
CIA has concluded the Covid pandemic was “more likely” to have leaked from a Wuhan lab than emerged naturally. Chinese officials have long labelled this a “conspiracy theory” and, right from the start, were supported in that interpretation by much of the western MSM, especially the left-leaning MSM like the Guardian, NYT and BBC, some of whom smeared anybody who even gave the lab theory the time of day.
Quite recently, maybe in the past year, he’s turned kind of nuts. Obviously he’s always been a bit odd, which is why he’s been a long-term target of Private Eye satire, but he managed to maintain the impression of someone who would criticise left and right.
I think with the loss of the tv show, and too much time online, he’s just become a satire of himself.
What is it about sporting body leaderships that turn them into such idiots? The latest changes to the sporting code will be widely considered as an attempt to gag the drivers and a demonstration of Ben Sulayem's sensitivity to criticism.
There are two key clauses in the sporting code which will concern the drivers:
the definition of a breach as "the general use of language (written or verbal), gesture and/or sign that is offensive, insulting, coarse, rude or abusive and might reasonably be expected or be perceived to be coarse or rude or to cause offense, humiliation or to be inappropriate", plus "assaulting (elbowing, kicking, punching, hitting, etc)", and "incitement to do any of the above"
and the forbidding of "any words, deeds or writings that have caused moral injury or loss to the FIA, its bodies, its members or its executive officers, and more generally on the interest of motor sport and on the values defended by the FIA" https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/articles/c78x03252mpo
Yes the populist right are close to monopoly market leaders in lies and misinformation. The study is correct. We need to find a way to counter it. This will mean ignoring their disingenuous whining about "free speech".
One of my difficulties with the conclusions in the article is that many terms like 'radical right' 'conservative' 'liberal' and so on have no fixed meaning. Unless you manage to clarify your terms with scalpel like accuracy you will end up with unrealistic conclusions.
To take an obvious example, Reform may come under 'Radical Right' (don't know about here). but in many respects it is fairly old fashioned social democrat + nationalism + low net migration + unrealistic economics + appeal to the working class. There is nothing especially Radical or Right about any of this.
The terminology question is important imo, because lack of provision allows obfuscation. Without applying any term to RefUK on this occasion (I would want to argue for my choice), we have eg:
"During the recent General Election campaign for example, the media used a dizzying array of terms to describe Reform UK, variously calling the party “right-wing populist”, “classically right wing”, merely “populist”, or increasingly, the never defined term “hard right.” Reform UK leader Nigel Farage himself is described as everything from a “bog-standard Essex Man Thatcherite” to a “a renegade nationalist conservative.
In March this year, apparently after being contacted by lawyers acting for then-leader Richard Tice, the BBC issued a correction and apologised to Reform UK for calling the party far right. Tice then stated that they were “also in touch with other news organisations” for using the term, which he claimed was “defamatory and libellous”. ... In reality, ‘far right’ is an umbrella term, and while useful, it is not a monolith which is why academics and practitioners split it further into its constituent parts. ... Cas Mudde, the leading social scientist in the field, divides it into the radical right and the extreme far right. He explains that the radical right, “accepts the essence of democracy, but opposes fundamental elements of liberal democracy, most notably minority rights, rule of law, and separation of powers”.
Hope not hate are fascists I wouldn't put any credence in absolutely anything they had to say
BS.
They like antifa support political violence against those who's view they disagree with and suppression of any expression of views they disagree with.....seems pretty fascist to me
Hmmm.
Nigel Farage claimed about Hope not Hate back in 2016, that they use violent and undemocratic means:
If The Nigel can't find any evidence to save his blushes, and runs away when he isn't allowed to sweep it under the carpet, I suggest the claim is baseless.
"Britain’s largest choir stop performing The Police’s ‘Every Breath You Take’ due to controversial lyrics and “impact of the narrative”. Comprising over 31,000 members across the UK, the Rock Choir has long performed the classic 1983 track but has now confirmed it will be removing it from the repertoire."
On thread. Paris lie because they can. They treat the voters with contempt. Eventually the voters have had enough. Amazing we have reached that with the 2024 Labour Govt already.
Actually, I would turn it around.
Parties lie, because telling the truth doesn't get you elected. And the more you are willing to lie, the more likely you are to be elected.
Indeed. Parties and leaders drop in support if they start getting real with us.
The hope is that some leaders are talented enough and popular enough that they can drip feed us some truth and push ahead, but most are not talented or strong enough.
Eventually things will reach a tipping point where we cannot keep going with the lies, but we're not there yet, and antiestablishment parties aren't likely to stop it either.
CIA has concluded the Covid pandemic was “more likely” to have leaked from a Wuhan lab than emerged naturally. Chinese officials have long labelled this a “conspiracy theory” and, right from the start, were supported in that interpretation by much of the western MSM, especially the left-leaning MSM like the Guardian, NYT and BBC, some of whom smeared anybody who even gave the lab theory the time of day.
Hasn't it been obviously more likely - and generally viewed as more likely - for about four years now?
I mean, at the start there was a desperate attempt to avoid finger pointing, which was both understandable but also fundamentally unhelpful, and which damaged the reputation of science generally. But we've now swung to a point where yeah, we know that, and I don't think people in the MSM has been pushing the zoonotic line for a long time.
So it feels a little bit like punching a slow kid in the mouth again and again for something they did five years ago.
But if it's true, it is industrial malfeasance on a hitherto unimagined scale. The operators of the lab, the US and China should pay everyone affected by Covid punitive damages. Those affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill claimed millions in damages, but the affects of Covid were millions of times worse.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day remember Punk Rock flirted with Nazi iconography and the Sex Pistols in Holiday in the Sun wanted to go to the ‘New Belsen’, they also sang the ‘Belsen was a Gas’. With gas being a play on words.
Joy Division/New Order had a similar nomenclature problem
Catching up with clips of Heseltine on BBC politics. 91 years old and still going.
But incredible to think his brand of tory thinking is now as dead as a doornail it seems. Listening to him on europe and popularism and so on.
Yet there was a time when his leaving the cabinet might have brought the government down.
Incredible.
No, it is just mainly found in the LDs now who now have over 70 MPs, a level not even the SDP reached and Heseltine was himself once a National Liberal.
Badenoch is also fractionally closer to Heseltine's thinking than Farage is
I’d like to download DeepSeek but I’m worried about Chinese surveillance.
My attempts to get Claude to write spy thrillers haven’t been terribly successful, to be honest.
My ex-girlfriend’s stepbrother was the subject of a large plagiarism scandal in the States because he took whole passages from spy thrillers and pieced them together into a whole new novel that he managed to sell before he was caught. This happened long after me and his stepsister broke up. But essentially he was doing what AI does.
Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the 🇨🇳 State.
Catching up with clips of Heseltine on BBC politics. 91 years old and still going.
But incredible to think his brand of tory thinking is now as dead as a doornail it seems. Listening to him on europe and popularism and so on.
Yet there was a time when his leaving the cabinet might have brought the government down.
Incredible.
No, it is just mainly found in the LDs now who now have over 70 MPs, a level not even the SDP reached and Heseltine was himself once a National Liberal.
Badenoch is also fractionally closer to Heseltine's thinking than Farage is
Good point about Heseltine once a National Liberal.
Very odd story as Agincourt was a crap name for a modern warship in the first place. I almost suspect wokehunter-laid bait.
The last but one was an infamous 6 x twin gun turreted dreadnought taken over at the shipyard in 1914 and the Turkish crew ejected (probably motivated the Turks, for whom it was being built, to go the other side ... well, I'd be pissed too). The last was a Battle class fleet destroyer converted to a radar picket. But it's never been a submarine name. Admittedly some of the other submarine names in the Astute class aren't traditional boat names. But by the same token there are plenty of more important names to use.
Correct - the names were more a smorgasboard of famous ships.
They should have gone "woke" and named them after Flower Class corvettes.
Which was the French ship of the line, which fought so well before being captured, that there was a tradition in RN service of respecting the place on board where the French Captain died?
Forgive me for checking, but it's not by any chance a misremembering of the Captain and his son on the Orient at the Nile against Nelson, and the poem being written about the Boy on the Burning Deck? Conflated with the famous plaque on the deck of Victory?
Shades also of 16-year-old ‘Boy’ Cornwell VC, who died at the Battle of Jutland after remaining in position, and buried in Sunil's neck of the woods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Cornwell
I had no idea that the chap was buried in a common grave (as opposed to sea or the CWGC, e.g. at Queensferry* near Rosyth where some must have died of wounds or been found in compartments dead). Or that the newspaper fund raised belatedly wouldn't support his mother.
One can't eat a VC. But the family kept it till atd least 1968 when they loaned it to the IWM.
Antiques Roadshow last night valued a VC won by a Sikh captain at £250k. I guess Cornwall’s VC would be quite a lot higher in the unlikely event of it coming on the market..
I’d like to download DeepSeek but I’m worried about Chinese surveillance.
My attempts to get Claude to write spy thrillers haven’t been terribly successful, to be honest.
Claude has been good at series outlines, even casting the main roles, for Dr Who series and Spy dramas based on drama at a certain point. The early seventies, the late eighties, etc etc.
I found it good at scenes too. dad’s Army, Morse, Rockliffe’s Babies, The Bill and so on. But nothing more. No structuring a full episode with plot.
Yes the populist right are close to monopoly market leaders in lies and misinformation. The study is correct. We need to find a way to counter it. This will mean ignoring their disingenuous whining about "free speech".
One of my difficulties with the conclusions in the article is that many terms like 'radical right' 'conservative' 'liberal' and so on have no fixed meaning. Unless you manage to clarify your terms with scalpel like accuracy you will end up with unrealistic conclusions.
To take an obvious example, Reform may come under 'Radical Right' (don't know about here). but in many respects it is fairly old fashioned social democrat + nationalism + low net migration + unrealistic economics + appeal to the working class. There is nothing especially Radical or Right about any of this.
The terminology question is important imo, because lack of provision allows obfuscation. Without applying any term to RefUK on this occasion (I would want to argue for my choice), we have eg:
"During the recent General Election campaign for example, the media used a dizzying array of terms to describe Reform UK, variously calling the party “right-wing populist”, “classically right wing”, merely “populist”, or increasingly, the never defined term “hard right.” Reform UK leader Nigel Farage himself is described as everything from a “bog-standard Essex Man Thatcherite” to a “a renegade nationalist conservative.
In March this year, apparently after being contacted by lawyers acting for then-leader Richard Tice, the BBC issued a correction and apologised to Reform UK for calling the party far right. Tice then stated that they were “also in touch with other news organisations” for using the term, which he claimed was “defamatory and libellous”. ... In reality, ‘far right’ is an umbrella term, and while useful, it is not a monolith which is why academics and practitioners split it further into its constituent parts. ... Cas Mudde, the leading social scientist in the field, divides it into the radical right and the extreme far right. He explains that the radical right, “accepts the essence of democracy, but opposes fundamental elements of liberal democracy, most notably minority rights, rule of law, and separation of powers”.
Hope not hate are fascists I wouldn't put any credence in absolutely anything they had to say
BS.
They like antifa support political violence against those who's view they disagree with and suppression of any expression of views they disagree with.....seems pretty fascist to me
Hmmm.
Nigel Farage claimed about Hope not Hate back in 2016, that they use violent and undemocratic means:
If The Nigel can't find any evidence to save his blushes, and runs away when he isn't allowed to sweep it under the carpet, I suggest the claim is baseless.
Total bollocks even if you have proof on your side libel courts in this country is fickle, people publish apologies rather than goto court all the time even when they know they are right. Using the fact someone decided to not goto court over it is no sort of proof it happens constantly.
Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the 🇨🇳 State.
I wonder if people are so desensitised to being digitally monitored that the moment is ripe for people to not even care if said monitoring is done for or to the benefit of the Chinese state, even if it was proven to be happening.
On thread. Paris lie because they can. They treat the voters with contempt. Eventually the voters have had enough. Amazing we have reached that with the 2024 Labour Govt already.
Actually, I would turn it around.
Parties lie, because telling the truth doesn't get you elected. And the more you are willing to lie, the more likely you are to be elected.
They used to have to lie well though, with some semblance of credibility attached, eg Churchill suggesting Labour with whom he had worked for six years would be the new Gestapo fell entirely flat. Unfortunately nowadays any lie that keys into public rage and fear seems to work.
Catching up with clips of Heseltine on BBC politics. 91 years old and still going.
But incredible to think his brand of tory thinking is now as dead as a doornail it seems. Listening to him on europe and popularism and so on.
Yet there was a time when his leaving the cabinet might have brought the government down.
Incredible.
No, it is just mainly found in the LDs now who now have over 70 MPs, a level not even the SDP reached and Heseltine was himself once a National Liberal.
Badenoch is also fractionally closer to Heseltine's thinking than Farage is
Good point about Heseltine once a National Liberal.
Thanks, Heseltine was always more of a Liberal than a Tory anyway and would happily have been a Liberal MP in the 19th century or a Whig MP in the 18th century. He was only a Conservative MP in the 20th century as it was the main opposing party to the Labour Party and he was firmly anti socialism and was also pro EEC and pro EU. Now Heseltine openly votes LD since Brexit and the Conservatives abandoned support for staying in the EU
I suspect few of us look our best in police mug shots but I'm starting to wonder if AI couldn't learn to pick out wrong 'uns just from their obviously guilty faces.
So many paedos look like caricatures of paedos. People of obviously low intelligence, hideously ugly, and devoid of morals.
If you listen to In Dark Corners (on BBC Sounds) - Alex Renton's documentary about paedophiles in schools and PIE, you'll realise how many paedophiles have a very outwardly respectable appearance and are very clever indeed at getting themselves into positions where they can do harm. One of PIE's members, Peter Righton, was for many years an advisor to the Home Office on the residential child care system.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day remember Punk Rock flirted with Nazi iconography and the Sex Pistols in Holiday in the Sun wanted to go to the ‘New Belsen’, they also sang the ‘Belsen was a Gas’. With gas being a play on words.
Joy Division/New Order had a similar nomenclature problem
Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the 🇨🇳 State.
Errrr
Anyone can download the Deepseek model, and run it themselves using Ollama on their local computer. And you can even do it with no internet connection.
I actually got Deepseek (1.5bn) running successfully on my phone with acceptable performance levels. (Obviously, I have insanely powerful phone. But still.)
On thread. Paris lie because they can. They treat the voters with contempt. Eventually the voters have had enough. Amazing we have reached that with the 2024 Labour Govt already.
Actually, I would turn it around.
Parties lie, because telling the truth doesn't get you elected. And the more you are willing to lie, the more likely you are to be elected.
They used to have to lie well though, with some semblance of credibility attached, eg Churchill suggesting Labour with whom he had worked for six years would be the new Gestapo fell entirely flat. Unfortunately nowadays any lie that keys into public rage and fear seems to work.
Are we more credulous, more impulsive, more emotional? Who knows. I don't think the past was some golden age of truth and integrity, but it feels like there's so much information out there we feel quite free to believe anything because it's easy to think it is impossible to know the truth.
On thread. Paris lie because they can. They treat the voters with contempt. Eventually the voters have had enough. Amazing we have reached that with the 2024 Labour Govt already.
Actually, I would turn it around.
Parties lie, because telling the truth doesn't get you elected. And the more you are willing to lie, the more likely you are to be elected.
Indeed. Parties and leaders drop in support if they start getting real with us.
The hope is that some leaders are talented enough and popular enough that they can drip feed us some truth and push ahead, but most are not talented or strong enough.
Eventually things will reach a tipping point where we cannot keep going with the lies, but we're not there yet, and antiestablishment parties aren't likely to stop it either.
Who was the last politician who had the talent to tell brutal truths and get away with it?
Cameron talked of austerity, but his approach (basically stopping capital spending) looks worse with each year that passes. Thatcher made the right noises, but was bailed out by various windfalls.
Churchill, perhaps? But he had the political advantage of a war to win and token opposition. Maybe we're asking more of our politicians to control us than is reasonable.
I’d like to download DeepSeek but I’m worried about Chinese surveillance.
My attempts to get Claude to write spy thrillers haven’t been terribly successful, to be honest.
Claude has been good at series outlines, even casting the main roles, for Dr Who series and Spy dramas based on drama at a certain point. The early seventies, the late eighties, etc etc.
I found it good at scenes too. dad’s Army, Morse, Rockliffe’s Babies, The Bill and so on. But nothing more. No structuring a full episode with plot.
I can’t agree. Tend to find its suggestions cliched, and its dialogue stale and (for period stuff) ahistorical. Of course it’s still miraculous, but ultimately I do not find it terribly useful for the development of creative writing of any kind.
What is it about sporting body leaderships that turn them into such idiots? The latest changes to the sporting code will be widely considered as an attempt to gag the drivers and a demonstration of Ben Sulayem's sensitivity to criticism.
There are two key clauses in the sporting code which will concern the drivers:
the definition of a breach as "the general use of language (written or verbal), gesture and/or sign that is offensive, insulting, coarse, rude or abusive and might reasonably be expected or be perceived to be coarse or rude or to cause offense, humiliation or to be inappropriate", plus "assaulting (elbowing, kicking, punching, hitting, etc)", and "incitement to do any of the above"
and the forbidding of "any words, deeds or writings that have caused moral injury or loss to the FIA, its bodies, its members or its executive officers, and more generally on the interest of motor sport and on the values defended by the FIA" https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/articles/c78x03252mpo
Greed and incompetence. It's the perfect corporate gig for the well-connected lazy, corrupt, and dim.
CIA has concluded the Covid pandemic was “more likely” to have leaked from a Wuhan lab than emerged naturally. Chinese officials have long labelled this a “conspiracy theory” and, right from the start, were supported in that interpretation by much of the western MSM, especially the left-leaning MSM like the Guardian, NYT and BBC, some of whom smeared anybody who even gave the lab theory the time of day.
Hasn't it been obviously more likely - and generally viewed as more likely - for about four years now?
I mean, at the start there was a desperate attempt to avoid finger pointing, which was both understandable but also fundamentally unhelpful, and which damaged the reputation of science generally. But we've now swung to a point where yeah, we know that, and I don't think people in the MSM has been pushing the zoonotic line for a long time.
So it feels a little bit like punching a slow kid in the mouth again and again for something they did five years ago.
But if it's true, it is industrial malfeasance on a hitherto unimagined scale. The operators of the lab, the US and China should pay everyone affected by Covid punitive damages. Those affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill claimed millions in damages, but the affects of Covid were millions of times worse.
Being the most likely scenario doesn't make it a certainty.
What is it about sporting body leaderships that turn them into such idiots? The latest changes to the sporting code will be widely considered as an attempt to gag the drivers and a demonstration of Ben Sulayem's sensitivity to criticism.
There are two key clauses in the sporting code which will concern the drivers:
the definition of a breach as "the general use of language (written or verbal), gesture and/or sign that is offensive, insulting, coarse, rude or abusive and might reasonably be expected or be perceived to be coarse or rude or to cause offense, humiliation or to be inappropriate", plus "assaulting (elbowing, kicking, punching, hitting, etc)", and "incitement to do any of the above"
and the forbidding of "any words, deeds or writings that have caused moral injury or loss to the FIA, its bodies, its members or its executive officers, and more generally on the interest of motor sport and on the values defended by the FIA" https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/articles/c78x03252mpo
It's the perfect corporate gig for the well-connected lazy, corrupt, and dim.
Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the 🇨🇳 State.
Errrr
Anyone can download the Deepseek model, and run it themselves using Ollama on their local computer. And you can even do it with no internet connection.
I actually got Deepseek (1.5bn) running successfully on my phone with acceptable performance levels. (Obviously, I have insanely powerful phone. But still.)
You lost me with Ollama. I’m well known offline for my lack of technical chops.
I get you can run it locally, but I still don’t trust it, especially since at the end of the day none of my devices are permanently offline.
What is it about sporting body leaderships that turn them into such idiots? The latest changes to the sporting code will be widely considered as an attempt to gag the drivers and a demonstration of Ben Sulayem's sensitivity to criticism.
There are two key clauses in the sporting code which will concern the drivers:
the definition of a breach as "the general use of language (written or verbal), gesture and/or sign that is offensive, insulting, coarse, rude or abusive and might reasonably be expected or be perceived to be coarse or rude or to cause offense, humiliation or to be inappropriate", plus "assaulting (elbowing, kicking, punching, hitting, etc)", and "incitement to do any of the above"
and the forbidding of "any words, deeds or writings that have caused moral injury or loss to the FIA, its bodies, its members or its executive officers, and more generally on the interest of motor sport and on the values defended by the FIA" https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/articles/c78x03252mpo
It's the perfect corporate gig for the well-connected lazy, corrupt, and dim.
Damn, I only have 3 of the 4.
Are we allowed to guess which of the four you are missing?
What is it about sporting body leaderships that turn them into such idiots? The latest changes to the sporting code will be widely considered as an attempt to gag the drivers and a demonstration of Ben Sulayem's sensitivity to criticism.
There are two key clauses in the sporting code which will concern the drivers:
the definition of a breach as "the general use of language (written or verbal), gesture and/or sign that is offensive, insulting, coarse, rude or abusive and might reasonably be expected or be perceived to be coarse or rude or to cause offense, humiliation or to be inappropriate", plus "assaulting (elbowing, kicking, punching, hitting, etc)", and "incitement to do any of the above"
and the forbidding of "any words, deeds or writings that have caused moral injury or loss to the FIA, its bodies, its members or its executive officers, and more generally on the interest of motor sport and on the values defended by the FIA" https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/articles/c78x03252mpo
It's the perfect corporate gig for the well-connected lazy, corrupt, and dim.
Damn, I only have 3 of the 4.
Are we allowed to guess which of the four you are missing?
Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year
Welcome to North Wales
Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.
The current solution to social care funding is for local councils to not do anything nice at all.
(Our local library has just been announced as for the chop. For all it is small, part-time and close to bigger alternatives, it's a very visible enshittification of the neighbourhood.
Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year
Welcome to North Wales
Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.
The current solution to social care funding is for local councils to not do anything nice at all.
(Our local library has just been announced as for the chop. For all it is small, part-time and close to bigger alternatives, it's a very visible enshittification of the neighbourhood.
And the council will still be unviable.)
"enshittification"
We should, as political types, be increasingly aware of this term.
Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year
Welcome to North Wales
Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.
The current solution to social care funding is for local councils to not do anything nice at all.
(Our local library has just been announced as for the chop. For all it is small, part-time and close to bigger alternatives, it's a very visible enshittification of the neighbourhood.
And the council will still be unviable.)
How many people actually use a library anymore....when 50%+ of residents would use it their was an argument it was worth charging everyone for the service. I doubt nowadays more than 1% of local residents have set foot in their local library in the last year. Libraries are the buggy whip manufacturers of the 21st century
Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the 🇨🇳 State.
Errrr
Anyone can download the Deepseek model, and run it themselves using Ollama on their local computer. And you can even do it with no internet connection.
I actually got Deepseek (1.5bn) running successfully on my phone with acceptable performance levels. (Obviously, I have insanely powerful phone. But still.)
Errrr
You haven’t met my tech skills. To borrow a phrase, “I’m an analogue man in a digital age”. I was freaked out enough by my first e-Sim so “Ollama” (whatever that is apart from an Irish Camelid will have to wait.
Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year
Welcome to North Wales
Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.
The current solution to social care funding is for local councils to not do anything nice at all.
(Our local library has just been announced as for the chop. For all it is small, part-time and close to bigger alternatives, it's a very visible enshittification of the neighbourhood.
And the council will still be unviable.)
How many people actually use a library anymore....when 50%+ of residents would use it their was an argument it was worth charging everyone for the service. I doubt nowadays more than 1% of local residents have set foot in their local library in the last year. Libraries are the buggy whip manufacturers of the 21st century
If they get shut down of course people get used to not having them.
It doesn't save that much money either, so as a public good it is worth preserving unless the council truly is at its lowest ebb - unfortunately, many are.
Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year
Welcome to North Wales
Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.
The current solution to social care funding is for local councils to not do anything nice at all.
(Our local library has just been announced as for the chop. For all it is small, part-time and close to bigger alternatives, it's a very visible enshittification of the neighbourhood.
And the council will still be unviable.)
I personally think that social care and education should be removed from councils anyway. The NHS should have an overarching responsibility for care, and the schools should be funded from central government as well. It would give us a better idea of what our tax rate is really. Councils should deal with the rest.
Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year
Welcome to North Wales
Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.
The current solution to social care funding is for local councils to not do anything nice at all.
(Our local library has just been announced as for the chop. For all it is small, part-time and close to bigger alternatives, it's a very visible enshittification of the neighbourhood.
And the council will still be unviable.)
I personally think that social care and education should be removed from councils anyway. The NHS should have an overarching responsibility for care, and the schools should be funded from central government as well. It would give us a better idea of what our tax rate is really. Councils should deal with the rest.
At this point councils are social care administrative bodies with some stuff attached. Proportionally it's a weird mix.
Bernard Arnault is exploring a potential acquisition of struggling French Artificial Intelligence company Mistral citing a need for France to "maintain it's edge in artisanal goods post ASI." https://x.com/techbrospod/status/1883952340023280083
I’d like to download DeepSeek but I’m worried about Chinese surveillance.
My attempts to get Claude to write spy thrillers haven’t been terribly successful, to be honest.
Claude has been good at series outlines, even casting the main roles, for Dr Who series and Spy dramas based on drama at a certain point. The early seventies, the late eighties, etc etc.
I found it good at scenes too. dad’s Army, Morse, Rockliffe’s Babies, The Bill and so on. But nothing more. No structuring a full episode with plot.
I can’t agree. Tend to find its suggestions cliched, and its dialogue stale and (for period stuff) ahistorical. Of course it’s still miraculous, but ultimately I do not find it terribly useful for the development of creative writing of any kind.
Maybe we look for different things.
I’m looking for authenticity. Something that has the feel of it, a feel of the time. Fan fiction effectively. I give it a scenario and ask for a scene. Or I ask for an outline for a series.
My main issue is when I ask it to cast a story it picks contemporary actors.
Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year
Welcome to North Wales
Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.
The current solution to social care funding is for local councils to not do anything nice at all.
(Our local library has just been announced as for the chop. For all it is small, part-time and close to bigger alternatives, it's a very visible enshittification of the neighbourhood.
And the council will still be unviable.)
How many people actually use a library anymore....when 50%+ of residents would use it their was an argument it was worth charging everyone for the service. I doubt nowadays more than 1% of local residents have set foot in their local library in the last year. Libraries are the buggy whip manufacturers of the 21st century
If they get shut down of course people get used to not having them.
It doesn't save that much money either, so as a public good it is worth preserving unless the council truly is at its lowest ebb - unfortunately, many are.
There is a library here.....I used to be an avid user of libraries then the internet came and the majority of people have it. I have not once set foot in my local library in 3 years because basically why would I....libraries are like high street shops and are obsolete for the same reason....why go there and choose out of a tiny portion of whats available when I can goto the net and find everything
On thread. Paris lie because they can. They treat the voters with contempt. Eventually the voters have had enough. Amazing we have reached that with the 2024 Labour Govt already.
Actually, I would turn it around.
Parties lie, because telling the truth doesn't get you elected. And the more you are willing to lie, the more likely you are to be elected.
They used to have to lie well though, with some semblance of credibility attached, eg Churchill suggesting Labour with whom he had worked for six years would be the new Gestapo fell entirely flat. Unfortunately nowadays any lie that keys into public rage and fear seems to work.
AFAIAC and being of a certain age it's clear they all lie copiously and treat voters with contempt by doing so. It's got to the stage where it really doesn't matter who is elected... however it's possible Reform have to be kept out in the same way as the National Front in France If I was without the concerns of a very aged mother to think about I would have gone to live abroad.
Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the 🇨🇳 State.
Errrr
Anyone can download the Deepseek model, and run it themselves using Ollama on their local computer. And you can even do it with no internet connection.
I actually got Deepseek (1.5bn) running successfully on my phone with acceptable performance levels. (Obviously, I have insanely powerful phone. But still.)
You lost me with Ollama. I’m well known offline for my lack of technical chops.
I get you can run it locally, but I still don’t trust it, especially since at the end of the day none of my devices are permanently offline.
OK.
Ollama is a platform for running LLMs (i.e. neural nets) on.
Deepseek or LLama or any of these models are just a series of connected nodes with weights attached to them. They have no ability to do anything other than to spit out tokens. (Technically, they take a bunch of tokens and predict the next token. Then the next token. Then the next token.)
Now obviously if you use someone's hosted service, whether Claude or ChatGPT or DeepSeek, then they will likely store everything you tell them,
But the model itself has no ability to do that, because it's just a bunch of nodes with weights, that calculated that if the two tokens it has been passed are "I" and "am", then there's an 87% chance the next word should be "a".
Bernard Arnault is exploring a potential acquisition of struggling French Artificial Intelligence company Mistral citing a need for France to "maintain it's edge in artisanal goods post ASI." https://x.com/techbrospod/status/1883952340023280083
Will anyone on the board be buying their local WH Smiths? I might put a bid in for the one in Canterbury where I spent a lot of the mid to late Eighties in the record department after school.
What do you go to Smiths for. Used to be magazines but the range there is shockingly narrow. Not stamps (what?), the odd newspaper okay. Some trashly airport or top 20 novels plus Jamie Oliver's latest. So I'm not entirely sure what it's for. Hence, I'm out.
Considering I assumed the print/magazine market would have died yonks ago with the internet, I am regularly stunned to see just how many different and varied magazines one can buy in WH Smith.
Probably they stock a lot of things that don't release new issues as frequently as they used to, but, still, I find it weirdly impressive just how many magazines you can still buy and just how niche some of them are.
"Time for honest questions about race and terror I warned about young refugees from conflict zones 20 years ago — we’re ignoring the evidence before our eyes Trevor Phillips Monday January 27 2025, 12.01am, The Times" (£)
Will anyone on the board be buying their local WH Smiths? I might put a bid in for the one in Canterbury where I spent a lot of the mid to late Eighties in the record department after school.
What do you go to Smiths for. Used to be magazines but the range there is shockingly narrow. Not stamps (what?), the odd newspaper okay. Some trashly airport or top 20 novels plus Jamie Oliver's latest. So I'm not entirely sure what it's for. Hence, I'm out.
Considering I assumed the print/magazine market would have died yonks ago with the internet, I am regularly stunned to see just how many different and varied magazines one can buy in WH Smith.
Probably they stock a lot of things that don't release new issues as frequently as they used to, but, still, I find it weirdly impressive just how many magazines you can still buy and just how niche some of them are.
It's impressive WH Smith is still a thing to buy them in! (For now anyway).
Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year
Welcome to North Wales
Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.
The current solution to social care funding is for local councils to not do anything nice at all.
(Our local library has just been announced as for the chop. For all it is small, part-time and close to bigger alternatives, it's a very visible enshittification of the neighbourhood.
And the council will still be unviable.)
How many people actually use a library anymore....when 50%+ of residents would use it their was an argument it was worth charging everyone for the service. I doubt nowadays more than 1% of local residents have set foot in their local library in the last year. Libraries are the buggy whip manufacturers of the 21st century
If they get shut down of course people get used to not having them.
It doesn't save that much money either, so as a public good it is worth preserving unless the council truly is at its lowest ebb - unfortunately, many are.
According to the Reading Agency, there were (2019-2020 numbers) 214 million RW visits to libraries, and another 110 million online.
Active library using population = 7.3 million.
Visits from ~60% of 5-15 year olds.
It doesn't seem ripe for closure just yet as a service.
It's a pity transgender people can't sign an executive order retiring him to the golf course.
This EO is wrong. There is no good reason for banning a class of people from the military. What matters is whether the individuals are mentally and physically fit for the job.
Also I am a very regular user of my library - as is Husband. Every month we get an email telling us how much money we've saved by using the library. Most of what we take out is not stocked locally so we order the books online and there is a man from Cumberland libraries who delivers the books to the libraries round the county. I like to think that he has the Cumbrian equivalent of this.
But given today's weather, the books would end up as papier-mâché.
Incidentally I had to drive to Penrith today and the car's idiotic sat-nav suggested I go via the Kirkstone Pass, which given the heavy rains, fog and winds, would have been insane. Even in good weather it's a daft way to get there. Who programmes these things?
Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year
Welcome to North Wales
Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.
Two things: 1. Councils need to up their recycling levels. Main bin will almost certainly be alternating with bins for plastics and cardboard and garden waste etc etc. Its not "one collection a month" 2. Councils are broke by means of Conservative Party policy. I know that some people like to vote Conservative to reward this behaviour, but happily far fewer people are now happy to reward malice.
Will anyone on the board be buying their local WH Smiths? I might put a bid in for the one in Canterbury where I spent a lot of the mid to late Eighties in the record department after school.
What do you go to Smiths for. Used to be magazines but the range there is shockingly narrow. Not stamps (what?), the odd newspaper okay. Some trashly airport or top 20 novels plus Jamie Oliver's latest. So I'm not entirely sure what it's for. Hence, I'm out.
Considering I assumed the print/magazine market would have died yonks ago with the internet, I am regularly stunned to see just how many different and varied magazines one can buy in WH Smith.
Probably they stock a lot of things that don't release new issues as frequently as they used to, but, still, I find it weirdly impressive just how many magazines you can still buy and just how niche some of them are.
There was an article in The Sunday Times before Christmas listing the 10 best independent magazine emporiums in the UK. There is one in Bath which is incredible
Yes the populist right are close to monopoly market leaders in lies and misinformation. The study is correct. We need to find a way to counter it. This will mean ignoring their disingenuous whining about "free speech".
One of my difficulties with the conclusions in the article is that many terms like 'radical right' 'conservative' 'liberal' and so on have no fixed meaning. Unless you manage to clarify your terms with scalpel like accuracy you will end up with unrealistic conclusions.
To take an obvious example, Reform may come under 'Radical Right' (don't know about here). but in many respects it is fairly old fashioned social democrat + nationalism + low net migration + unrealistic economics + appeal to the working class. There is nothing especially Radical or Right about any of this.
The terminology question is important imo, because lack of provision allows obfuscation. Without applying any term to RefUK on this occasion (I would want to argue for my choice), we have eg:
"During the recent General Election campaign for example, the media used a dizzying array of terms to describe Reform UK, variously calling the party “right-wing populist”, “classically right wing”, merely “populist”, or increasingly, the never defined term “hard right.” Reform UK leader Nigel Farage himself is described as everything from a “bog-standard Essex Man Thatcherite” to a “a renegade nationalist conservative.
In March this year, apparently after being contacted by lawyers acting for then-leader Richard Tice, the BBC issued a correction and apologised to Reform UK for calling the party far right. Tice then stated that they were “also in touch with other news organisations” for using the term, which he claimed was “defamatory and libellous”. ... In reality, ‘far right’ is an umbrella term, and while useful, it is not a monolith which is why academics and practitioners split it further into its constituent parts. ... Cas Mudde, the leading social scientist in the field, divides it into the radical right and the extreme far right. He explains that the radical right, “accepts the essence of democracy, but opposes fundamental elements of liberal democracy, most notably minority rights, rule of law, and separation of powers”.
Hope not hate are fascists I wouldn't put any credence in absolutely anything they had to say
BS.
They like antifa support political violence against those who's view they disagree with and suppression of any expression of views they disagree with.....seems pretty fascist to me
Hmmm.
Nigel Farage claimed about Hope not Hate back in 2016, that they use violent and undemocratic means:
If The Nigel can't find any evidence to save his blushes, and runs away when he isn't allowed to sweep it under the carpet, I suggest the claim is baseless.
Total bollocks even if you have proof on your side libel courts in this country is fickle, people publish apologies rather than goto court all the time even when they know they are right. Using the fact someone decided to not goto court over it is no sort of proof it happens constantly.
I think you're somewhat dissembling through a focus on process detail, tbh.
Farage could not find evidence to defend his claims in Court, nor to defend his arse / reputation in the media. It's pretty clear to me that he was just indulging himself in hyperbollocks in his original statement.
If you have evidence that supports the position you state that Hope not Hate support violence, please do provide a citation - I'd love to see it.
WH Smith’s don’t exist in the U.S., and hence the magazine ecosystem is poor, considering the U.S. market is five or six times that of the UK.
Same goes for bookshops. Even in New York there aren’t really that many.
Ironically WHS is trying to sell off its UK high street business and focus exclusively on the travel business. WHS Travel makes up around 75% of its profits and heavily relies on its non-UK branches.
When in France I'd much rather shop in an airport Relay store than WHST, but clearly that's just me.
My Mum invited me over for roast beef, so I knew there'd be loads of beef left over. I decided to make new sandwiches
I made beetroot, horseradish and chive cream cheese
A pint of natural yoghurt, an inch and a half wide beetroot finely grated, about a third of that of fresh horseradish even more finely grated, a pack of chives finely chopped, all mixed together
Add a teaspoon of salt and mix well, then transfer to a muslin bag in a funnel over a bowl
It was delicious with both beef and smoked salmon in sandwiches. Then my parents had it with cold poached salmon, new potatoes and salad for dinner. They had it for lunch the next day as well
Bernard Arnault is exploring a potential acquisition of struggling French Artificial Intelligence company Mistral citing a need for France to "maintain it's edge in artisanal goods post ASI." https://x.com/techbrospod/status/1883952340023280083
Mistral just raised €600m at a €5.8bn valuation.
France is working on an authentically French rival to Deepseek, but every time they try to launch it, it goes on strike.
Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the 🇨🇳 State.
Errrr
Anyone can download the Deepseek model, and run it themselves using Ollama on their local computer. And you can even do it with no internet connection.
I actually got Deepseek (1.5bn) running successfully on my phone with acceptable performance levels. (Obviously, I have insanely powerful phone. But still.)
Presumably the Chinese don't particularly need our data to cause trouble, because undercutting Silicon Valley financially is enough to be going on with. (Aren't Taiwan big in the chip business?)
I’d like to download DeepSeek but I’m worried about Chinese surveillance.
My attempts to get Claude to write spy thrillers haven’t been terribly successful, to be honest.
It's open source, you can download and spin it up yourself if you've got a modern GPU.
You can run it on your phone, assuming you have Android. I get remarkably snappy performance from the 1.5bn parameter model.
Nice, what's the word on Apple silicon? I just got my M4 Pro laptop delivered last week, finally replaced my old M1 Pro now that I don't have a laptop from work.
Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year
Welcome to North Wales
Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.
Wales receives £120 for every £100 in England due to the Barnett formula
And its even more than that up here north of the wall. And yet our councils are absolutely broke because that cash isn't available to them.
We have two problems - it costs too much money to do anything, and we don't put up enough cash to cover the bill. Hence councils and public services having a dangerous lack of cash.
The solution is not to vote out the respective governments. That doesn't change the maths - we need to do things cheaper and pool budgets. Cutting the number of teachers cos we can't afford it costs us more money. And yet regardless of party they get stuck in this "cut the service and the need goes away" nonsense.
My Mum invited me over for roast beef, so I knew there'd be loads of beef left over. I decided to make new sandwiches
I made beetroot, horseradish and chive cream cheese
A pint of natural yoghurt, an inch and a half wide beetroot finely grated, about a third of that of fresh horseradish even more finely grated, a pack of chives finely chopped, all mixed together
Add a teaspoon of salt and mix well, then transfer to a muslin bag in a funnel over a bowl
It was delicious with both beef and smoked salmon in sandwiches. Then my parents had it with cold poached salmon, new potatoes and salad for dinner. They had it for lunch the next day as well
Pink cream cheese mmm...
If you're ever tasked with making a veggie lasagne - brussels sprouts and goats cheese as the 'bechamel' layer works very well.
Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year
Welcome to North Wales
Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.
They are inefficient and as they have no competition they have no reason to actually fix the issues, they can just milk the public by keeping charging higher and higher amounts. Just grifters.
I like the idea Bernard Arnault wants to buy Mistral to keep French artisanal production going.
This is where France can excel. Anyone can mass-produce an impressive LLM. But only French LLMs have their own appellation contrôlée, guaranteeing that the AI is trained by hand, with great care and respect for the seasons, then aged for years in natural caves under the slopes of Sophia Antipolis yielding a robust, aromatic but subtle output with a hint of minerality.
I know Cyclefree will counter that Italy’s regional AIs are just as high quality and more diverse, but they don’t have the money of Europes richest billionaire behind them.
I’d like to download DeepSeek but I’m worried about Chinese surveillance.
My attempts to get Claude to write spy thrillers haven’t been terribly successful, to be honest.
It's open source, you can download and spin it up yourself if you've got a modern GPU.
You can run it on your phone, assuming you have Android. I get remarkably snappy performance from the 1.5bn parameter model.
Nice, what's the word on Apple silicon? I just got my M4 Pro laptop delivered last week, finally replaced my old M1 Pro now that I don't have a laptop from work.
Nvidia lost enough money today to basically buy Mexico
Apple, who are not seen as AI market leaders, up $4...
I’d like to download DeepSeek but I’m worried about Chinese surveillance.
My attempts to get Claude to write spy thrillers haven’t been terribly successful, to be honest.
It's open source, you can download and spin it up yourself if you've got a modern GPU.
You can run it on your phone, assuming you have Android. I get remarkably snappy performance from the 1.5bn parameter model.
Nice, what's the word on Apple silicon? I just got my M4 Pro laptop delivered last week, finally replaced my old M1 Pro now that I don't have a laptop from work.
Nvidia lost enough money today to basically buy Mexico
Apple, who are not seen as AI market leaders, up $4...
Apple is outsourcing a chunk of what makes up modern Siri to OpenAI. A price/quality war is good for them.
Bernard Arnault is exploring a potential acquisition of struggling French Artificial Intelligence company Mistral citing a need for France to "maintain it's edge in artisanal goods post ASI." https://x.com/techbrospod/status/1883952340023280083
Mistral just raised €600m at a €5.8bn valuation.
France is working on an authentically French rival to Deepseek, but every time they try to launch it, it goes on strike.
Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the 🇨🇳 State.
Errrr
Anyone can download the Deepseek model, and run it themselves using Ollama on their local computer. And you can even do it with no internet connection.
I actually got Deepseek (1.5bn) running successfully on my phone with acceptable performance levels. (Obviously, I have insanely powerful phone. But still.)
I've tried it out against various tasks over the past week or so. It really doesn't seem any better than a 'dumb' model using one of the 'contemplative' prompts** for what I've tried it on. The technique in their paper does seem quite effective though judging by some of the fine-tunes I've seen.
But the media reporting of it has been - unsurprisingly - beyond awful. No questioning at all of how they've gone from almost no users to millions over a weekend and just, you know, casually scaled it without any problem. Maybe they're just amazing. And not just sitting on a pile of side-acquired top-flight GPUs. Maybe.
Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year
Welcome to North Wales
Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.
They are inefficient and as they have no competition they have no reason to actually fix the issues, they can just milk the public by keeping charging higher and higher amounts. Just grifters.
If only it were that simplistic. The idea people don't even want to fix issues is just lazy, cynical nonsense.
I’d like to download DeepSeek but I’m worried about Chinese surveillance.
My attempts to get Claude to write spy thrillers haven’t been terribly successful, to be honest.
It's open source, you can download and spin it up yourself if you've got a modern GPU.
You can run it on your phone, assuming you have Android. I get remarkably snappy performance from the 1.5bn parameter model.
Nice, what's the word on Apple silicon? I just got my M4 Pro laptop delivered last week, finally replaced my old M1 Pro now that I don't have a laptop from work.
Nvidia lost enough money today to basically buy Mexico
Apple, who are not seen as AI market leaders, up $4...
Apple is outsourcing a chunk of what makes up modern Siri to OpenAI. A price/quality war is good for them.
It’s the same old pattern whenever there’s a technological revolution. The businesses that benefit are the users, not the creators of the new technology.
My Mum invited me over for roast beef, so I knew there'd be loads of beef left over. I decided to make new sandwiches
I made beetroot, horseradish and chive cream cheese
A pint of natural yoghurt, an inch and a half wide beetroot finely grated, about a third of that of fresh horseradish even more finely grated, a pack of chives finely chopped, all mixed together
Add a teaspoon of salt and mix well, then transfer to a muslin bag in a funnel over a bowl
It was delicious with both beef and smoked salmon in sandwiches. Then my parents had it with cold poached salmon, new potatoes and salad for dinner. They had it for lunch the next day as well
Pink cream cheese mmm...
Sounds lovely. Beetroot and horseradish go really well together. I’ve mixed them together with Greek yoghurt before to have as a side dip with mackerels and potatoes.
Russia has generally supported parties of the populist right so it wouldn't surprise me. However we have an international survey of 26 countries and a picture of the UK Parliament*. Feels like the strategy is to group together the populist right in the UK with the generic 'populist right' internationally and hope that damages the brand.
*It would be nice to see some evidence specific to the UK.
I’d like to download DeepSeek but I’m worried about Chinese surveillance.
My attempts to get Claude to write spy thrillers haven’t been terribly successful, to be honest.
It's open source, you can download and spin it up yourself if you've got a modern GPU.
You can run it on your phone, assuming you have Android. I get remarkably snappy performance from the 1.5bn parameter model.
Nice, what's the word on Apple silicon? I just got my M4 Pro laptop delivered last week, finally replaced my old M1 Pro now that I don't have a laptop from work.
An M4 Pro with lots of memory is an ideal platform to run current LLMs at a usable clip. LLMs really, really like lots of memory bandwidth, and short of buying extremely expensive custom hardware M4 Pro macs have the best memory bandwidth you can buy in a consumer accessible package if your LLM of choice doesn’t fit in the 8-12Gb of a typical GPU. (24 GB GPUs are available, but at vast expense & those aren’t big enough to run the 70B weight LLMs.)
Includes this chart which kind of explains why UK local services have gone to fuck.
Oof. You can really see the destruction of local government carried through in the name of austerity by the Osbourne/Cameron government in that chart. What’s also clear is that it didn’t work - central government expenditure ending up increasing anyway.
I’d like to download DeepSeek but I’m worried about Chinese surveillance.
My attempts to get Claude to write spy thrillers haven’t been terribly successful, to be honest.
It's open source, you can download and spin it up yourself if you've got a modern GPU.
You can run it on your phone, assuming you have Android. I get remarkably snappy performance from the 1.5bn parameter model.
Nice, what's the word on Apple silicon? I just got my M4 Pro laptop delivered last week, finally replaced my old M1 Pro now that I don't have a laptop from work.
I work on an M1 mac mini with 16gb of ram - and it's fine to run ~7bn param size models. Mostly terrible though they are.
Includes this chart which kind of explains why UK local services have gone to fuck.
Oof. You can really see the destruction of local government carried through in the name of austerity by the Osbourne/Cameron government in that chart. What’s also clear is that it didn’t work - central government expenditure ending up increasing anyway.
Are we sure this isn’t just showing NHS employment? 4 million civil servants in central government seems way too many.
Includes this chart which kind of explains why UK local services have gone to fuck.
Oof. You can really see the destruction of local government carried through in the name of austerity by the Osbourne/Cameron government in that chart. What’s also clear is that it didn’t work - central government expenditure ending up increasing anyway.
DCLG (in its various forms) made its spending cuts and then some. But most people still think local government is nothing but grifting and wastefulness. It remains an easy target for Westminster and Whitehall.
Notably despite all parties talking about believing in localism the plans usually seem to be more centralisation, competing for pots from Whitehall, or as with the current schemes, creating a tier apart from current local government instead - so they can talk less to councils.
Comments
Hasn't it been obviously more likely - and generally viewed as more likely - for about four years now?
I mean, at the start there was a desperate attempt to avoid finger pointing, which was both understandable but also fundamentally unhelpful, and which damaged the reputation of science generally. But we've now swung to a point where yeah, we know that, and I don't think people in the MSM has been pushing the zoonotic line for a long time.
So it feels a little bit like punching a slow kid in the mouth again and again for something they did five years ago.
Parties lie, because telling the truth doesn't get you elected. And the more you are willing to lie, the more likely you are to be elected.
https://x.com/TalkTV/status/1883822499151872462
Narrator: Isabel posted an article yesterday on Telegraph saying she has been living in Dubai since...erm. August 2024
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/25/how-i-became-a-labour-school-fee-exile-in-dubai/
I think with the loss of the tv show, and too much time online, he’s just become a satire of himself.
Apparently the Speaker has decided to spread his wings by appearing in tonight's Emmerdale, complete with wellies !!!
The latest changes to the sporting code will be widely considered as an attempt to gag the drivers and a demonstration of Ben Sulayem's sensitivity to criticism.
There are two key clauses in the sporting code which will concern the drivers:
the definition of a breach as "the general use of language (written or verbal), gesture and/or sign that is offensive, insulting, coarse, rude or abusive and might reasonably be expected or be perceived to be coarse or rude or to cause offense, humiliation or to be inappropriate", plus "assaulting (elbowing, kicking, punching, hitting, etc)", and "incitement to do any of the above"
and the forbidding of "any words, deeds or writings that have caused moral injury or loss to the FIA, its bodies, its members or its executive officers, and more generally on the interest of motor sport and on the values defended by the FIA"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/articles/c78x03252mpo
Nigel Farage claimed about Hope not Hate back in 2016, that they use violent and undemocratic means:
Farage, who has previously accused Hope Not Hate of disrupting his public events, said the group pursued “violent and undemocratic means”.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/20/nigel-farage-accuses-jo-cox-widower-brendan-cox-of-supporting-extremism
(Includes video of him saying it.)
Hope not Hate asked him to apologise and withdraw his statement. He ignored it.
They raised the money and said they would take legal action. He apologised and withdrew his statement.
"Farage had filed a statement with the high court in London saying he was “happy to acknowledge that Hope Not Hate does not tolerate or pursue violent or undemocratic behaviour” and that he would not repeat the claim."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/14/nigel-farage-withdraws-claim-hope-not-hate-high-court
If The Nigel can't find any evidence to save his blushes, and runs away when he isn't allowed to sweep it under the carpet, I suggest the claim is baseless.
My attempts to get Claude to write spy thrillers haven’t been terribly successful, to be honest.
Indeed. Parties and leaders drop in support if they start getting real with us.
The hope is that some leaders are talented enough and popular enough that they can drip feed us some truth and push ahead, but most are not talented or strong enough.
Eventually things will reach a tipping point where we cannot keep going with the lies, but we're not there yet, and antiestablishment parties aren't likely to stop it either.
Welcome to North Wales
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5108642-trump-executive-order-transgender-military/
Badenoch is also fractionally closer to Heseltine's thinking than Farage is
Story here for those interested -
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/02/13/the-plagiarists-tale
Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the 🇨🇳 State.
I found it good at scenes too. dad’s Army, Morse, Rockliffe’s Babies, The Bill and so on. But nothing more. No structuring a full episode with plot.
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/tory-grandee-michael-heseltine-vows-to-vote-for-liberal-democrats-in-european-elections
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50555146
(He died in October 2007.)
Anyone can download the Deepseek model, and run it themselves using Ollama on their local computer. And you can even do it with no internet connection.
I actually got Deepseek (1.5bn) running successfully on my phone with acceptable performance levels. (Obviously, I have insanely powerful phone. But still.)
Cameron talked of austerity, but his approach (basically stopping capital spending) looks worse with each year that passes. Thatcher made the right noises, but was bailed out by various windfalls.
Churchill, perhaps? But he had the political advantage of a war to win and token opposition. Maybe we're asking more of our politicians to control us than is reasonable.
Tend to find its suggestions cliched, and its dialogue stale and (for period stuff) ahistorical. Of course it’s still miraculous, but ultimately I do not find it terribly useful for the development of creative writing of any kind.
It doesn’t seem to want to talk about Tiananmem square though.
I’m well known offline for my lack of technical chops.
I get you can run it locally, but I still don’t trust it, especially since at the end of the day none of my devices are permanently offline.
Because...
She is an economic migrant.
The Telegraph article makes clear she left to save on private school fees.
(Our local library has just been announced as for the chop. For all it is small, part-time and close to bigger alternatives, it's a very visible enshittification of the neighbourhood.
And the council will still be unviable.)
We should, as political types, be increasingly aware of this term.
Mental, innit.
You haven’t met my tech skills. To borrow a phrase, “I’m an analogue man in a digital age”. I was freaked out enough by my first e-Sim so “Ollama” (whatever that is apart from an Irish Camelid will have to wait.
It doesn't save that much money either, so as a public good it is worth preserving unless the council truly is at its lowest ebb - unfortunately, many are.
For example, at 49 mins 25 secs on this video from ITN's 1983 election night show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3eb5b5DOZs
Bernard Arnault is exploring a potential acquisition of struggling French Artificial Intelligence company Mistral citing a need for France to "maintain it's edge in artisanal goods post ASI."
https://x.com/techbrospod/status/1883952340023280083
I’m looking for authenticity. Something that has the feel of it, a feel of the time. Fan fiction effectively. I give it a scenario and ask for a scene. Or I ask for an outline for a series.
My main issue is when I ask it to cast a story it picks contemporary actors.
It's got to the stage where it really doesn't
matter who is elected... however it's
possible Reform have to be kept out in the
same way as the National Front in
France
If I was without the concerns of a very aged mother to think about I would have gone to live abroad.
Ollama is a platform for running LLMs (i.e. neural nets) on.
Deepseek or LLama or any of these models are just a series of connected nodes with weights attached to them. They have no ability to do anything other than to spit out tokens. (Technically, they take a bunch of tokens and predict the next token. Then the next token. Then the next token.)
Now obviously if you use someone's hosted service, whether Claude or ChatGPT or DeepSeek, then they will likely store everything you tell them,
But the model itself has no ability to do that, because it's just a bunch of nodes with weights, that calculated that if the two tokens it has been passed are "I" and "am", then there's an 87% chance the next word should be "a".
Probably they stock a lot of things that don't release new issues as frequently as they used to, but, still, I find it weirdly impressive just how many magazines you can still buy and just how niche some of them are.
I warned about young refugees from conflict zones 20 years ago — we’re ignoring the evidence before our eyes
Trevor Phillips
Monday January 27 2025, 12.01am, The Times" (£)
https://www.thetimes.com/article/a20d1f8f-6d3f-4b62-b8dc-527ad4595e53
Active library using population = 7.3 million.
Visits from ~60% of 5-15 year olds.
It doesn't seem ripe for closure just yet as a service.
Same goes for bookshops. Even in New York there aren’t really that many.
Also I am a very regular user of my library - as is Husband. Every month we get an email telling us how much money we've saved by using the library. Most of what we take out is not stocked locally so we order the books online and there is a man from Cumberland libraries who delivers the books to the libraries round the county. I like to think that he has the Cumbrian equivalent of this.
But given today's weather, the books would end up as papier-mâché.
Incidentally I had to drive to Penrith today and the car's idiotic sat-nav suggested I go via the Kirkstone Pass, which given the heavy rains, fog and winds, would have been insane. Even in good weather it's a daft way to get there. Who programmes these things?
1. Councils need to up their recycling levels. Main bin will almost certainly be alternating with bins for plastics and cardboard and garden waste etc etc. Its not "one collection a month"
2. Councils are broke by means of Conservative Party policy. I know that some people like to vote Conservative to reward this behaviour, but happily far fewer people are now happy to reward malice.
Farage could not find evidence to defend his claims in Court, nor to defend his arse / reputation in the media. It's pretty clear to me that he was just indulging himself in hyperbollocks in his original statement.
If you have evidence that supports the position you state that Hope not Hate support violence, please do provide a citation - I'd love to see it.
When in France I'd much rather shop in an airport Relay store than WHST, but clearly that's just me.
My Mum invited me over for roast beef, so I knew there'd be loads of beef left over. I decided to make new sandwiches
I made beetroot, horseradish and chive cream cheese
A pint of natural yoghurt, an inch and a half wide beetroot finely grated, about a third of that of fresh horseradish even more finely grated, a pack of chives finely chopped, all mixed together
Add a teaspoon of salt and mix well, then transfer to a muslin bag in a funnel over a bowl
It was delicious with both beef and smoked salmon in sandwiches. Then my parents had it with cold poached salmon, new potatoes and salad for dinner. They had it for lunch the next day as well
Pink cream cheese mmm...
Hot librarians.
Actually, ours is a designated warm space, so hot readers as well as librarians.
We have two problems - it costs too much money to do anything, and we don't put up enough cash to cover the bill. Hence councils and public services having a dangerous lack of cash.
The solution is not to vote out the respective governments. That doesn't change the maths - we need to do things cheaper and pool budgets. Cutting the number of teachers cos we can't afford it costs us more money. And yet regardless of party they get stuck in this "cut the service and the need goes away" nonsense.
This is where France can excel. Anyone can mass-produce an impressive LLM. But only French LLMs have their own appellation contrôlée, guaranteeing that the AI is trained by hand, with great care and respect for the seasons, then aged for years in natural caves under the slopes of Sophia Antipolis yielding a robust, aromatic but subtle output with a hint of minerality.
I know Cyclefree will counter that Italy’s regional AIs are just as high quality and more diverse, but they don’t have the money of Europes richest billionaire behind them.
Apple, who are not seen as AI market leaders, up $4...
But the media reporting of it has been - unsurprisingly - beyond awful. No questioning at all of how they've gone from almost no users to millions over a weekend and just, you know, casually scaled it without any problem. Maybe they're just amazing. And not just sitting on a pile of side-acquired top-flight GPUs. Maybe.
** See https://gist.github.com/Maharshi-Pandya/4aeccbe1dbaa7f89c182bd65d2764203 for instance. For me it took Google's gemini flash from beyond useless to very decent.
*It would be nice to see some evidence specific to the UK.
https://tomforth.co.uk/whynorthenglandispoor/
Includes this chart which kind of explains why UK local services have gone to fuck.
Notably despite all parties talking about believing in localism the plans usually seem to be more centralisation, competing for pots from Whitehall, or as with the current schemes, creating a tier apart from current local government instead - so they can talk less to councils.