"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
Spooky
"Doesn't know its arse from its elbow" => on the verge of sentience?
Probably easier to justify the inference => chatbots are almost as stupid as humans.
I'm not claiming this is my opinion. I am forwarding the opinion of an academic who specialises in this stuff. C'est tout!
The academic was obviously persuasive enough to get my friend doubting HIS previously firm skepticism
We now know who he is. More importantly, so do the football authorities.
“ James White, 33, from Warwickshire, was charged by police with ‘displaying threatening or abusive writing likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress’.”
Born after the disaster, then.
It is a genuinely idiotic thing to have done but tbh having to spend the rest of his life being his idiotic self is probably punishment enough.
I love football, but despair of football fan culture sometimes.
Yes, certain sections of the football fan community do appear to have little concept of how to conduct themselves in public.
There was also an MC fan spotted in the ground yesterday waving around an inflatable aeroplane, which is a slightly-more-subtle reference to the Munich disaster.
Personally, I’m not sure that wearing an offensive t-shirt should be a criminal offence by itself, but it should be a provocation factor in the defence of anyone who had assaulted him. Naming and shaming him, is going to be punishment in itself. Perhaps he gets community service in Liverpool, there’s a memorial and a graveyard which could be cleaned.
Good point about his age, he wasn’t born when the Hillsborough disaster happened. It’s like the student socialists still railing against Thatcher.
There was the moron City fan who through something (looked like a lighter or summat) at Lindelof after United scored their pen.
Every club has them, some more than others I guess.
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
I am not a birder. But I have a slight suspicion that there's a big issue with 'popular' birds getting all the funding and attention. Your eagles? we'll spend a fortune having cameras on their nests to ensure no eggs are stolen. Your rare LBJ (Little Brown Job): nothing. Robins and Blue Tits? Indispensable. Your Dunnock or Coal Tit: who cares?
Like wondering why sparrow numbers have decreased as the number of the magnificent sparrowhawks have increased.
Or the way any number of species are dying to extinction in China, but the Panda gets millions thrown at it (presumably bundled up in bamboo)
Edit: IANAE, but I'm concerned that charities and people concentrate on the 'sexy' animals; often large and apex ones, and not the entire ecosystem.
See also badgers vs hedgehogs.
They’re disparagingly called ‘charismatic megafauna’ in the zoology/conservation world.
Nobody is making a cuddly toy of the endangered stinking bracket fungus.
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
I am not a birder. But I have a slight suspicion that there's a big issue with 'popular' birds getting all the funding and attention. Your eagles? we'll spend a fortune having cameras on their nests to ensure no eggs are stolen. Your rare LBJ (Little Brown Job): nothing. Robins and Blue Tits? Indispensable. Your Dunnock or Coal Tit: who cares?
Like wondering why sparrow numbers have decreased as the number of the magnificent sparrowhawks have increased.
Or the way any number of species are dying to extinction in China, but the Panda gets millions thrown at it (presumably bundled up in bamboo)
Edit: IANAE, but I'm concerned that charities and people concentrate on the 'sexy' animals; often large and apex ones, and not the entire ecosystem.
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
Yes they are all linked. Same cause. Humankind.
Even the aliens? Well I guess if they are just in the mind then yes.
Or if, as some suggest, humans triggering atomic bombs is what brought them here.
Or the advent of AGI
We are on the cusp of a singularity. IF I was an AI drone sent out by the dudes on Andromeda Cluster: Exoplanet 9 I'd pause and take a peek at us
I really don't think we are. AIs are not sentient, nor show any signs of being so. It's just a dangerous bunch of big spanners.
The most likely big singularity for humanity is an end to aging.
And what if that is all humanity is? A dangerous bunch of spanners?
I see plentiful evidence of this
I've also now spoken to lots and lots of people with great experience in this field, AI. Quite a few remain skeptical like you, but there are plenty of others who believe AI will be sentient soon, in the next 5-20 years, or it is sentient already, OR - and this is important - it will shortly so resemble a sentient mind we won't have any way of knowing if it is sentient or not - it is a black box and we cannot look inside - so we will be forced to treat it as sentient, rendering the entire debate moot and irrelevant
If cabbages started talking to us in perfect English and asked for presents at Christmas and offered to drive the car when we are drinking, we would soon start treating them as equals, and cease chopping them up to be boiled
"And what if that is all humanity is? A dangerous bunch of spanners?"
I think that is almost unarguably so. Apart from the 'all'.
You must remember however there are lots of voters who vote LD or Nimby Independent locally to mend the potholes and protect the greenbelt from new homes but will still vote Tory nationally if the alternative is a high tax Labour government.
So Tory canvassers don't find them particularly hostile, like some Labour or LD national as well as local voters but they still won't vote Tory locally hence the confusion.
What should encourage Sunak is that while the Tories only got 26% NEV locally last month, little different to the 25% Major's Tories got in the 1995 locals, Labour only got 35% NEV, well below the 47% Blair's Labour got in those local elections. That suggests the mood is more anti Tory than pro Labour
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
I am not a birder. But I have a slight suspicion that there's a big issue with 'popular' birds getting all the funding and attention. Your eagles? we'll spend a fortune having cameras on their nests to ensure no eggs are stolen. Your rare LBJ (Little Brown Job): nothing. Robins and Blue Tits? Indispensable. Your Dunnock or Coal Tit: who cares?
Like wondering why sparrow numbers have decreased as the number of the magnificent sparrowhawks have increased.
Or the way any number of species are dying to extinction in China, but the Panda gets millions thrown at it (presumably bundled up in bamboo)
Edit: IANAE, but I'm concerned that charities and people concentrate on the 'sexy' animals; often large and apex ones, and not the entire ecosystem.
The top 100 Conservative vacant seats where the existing Tory MP is stepping down, safe or marginal, are all due to have selected their candidate by the party conference in the autumn
Of course people will say "I only ever vote for your party" because it is an easy way to get unwanted pests off their doorstep.
A few years back I tried telling them the truth and they hung around and spent time trying to make me switch my vote.
Lying to them is much easier
We don't, our policy is unless they normally vote Tory move on, certainly unless the party has a big poll lead and they are undecided. Canvassing works in close seats and wards when you have identified your supporters so you can knock them up on polling day, it is not an exercise in deep political debate
The top 100 Conservative vacant seats where the existing Tory MP is stepping down, safe or marginal, are all due to have selected their candidate by the party conference in the autumn
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
Spooky
"Doesn't know its arse from its elbow" => on the verge of sentience?
Probably easier to justify the inference => chatbots are almost as stupid as humans.
I'm not claiming this is my opinion. I am forwarding the opinion of an academic who specialises in this stuff. C'est tout!
The academic was obviously persuasive enough to get my friend doubting HIS previously firm skepticism
Who is your 'academic' being funded by?
Instead, you might want to listen to a wise PBer who has opined often on this over twelve years. One who has repeatedly said: "the danger from AI comes not from the AI, but from people believing its output."
The top 100 Conservative vacant seats where the existing Tory MP is stepping down, safe or marginal, are all due to have selected their candidate by the party conference in the autumn
Thanks.
I believe the top Tory target seats are also due to have selected by the autumn too (not that there is much hope of the successful candidates winning any of them at present except perhaps in Scotland a handful from the SNP)
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
No.
Hang on.
I thought the Trans Gay NATO Illegal Immigrant Alien AIs were responsible for *everything* ?
NATO isn’t what it used to be...
Well, I have no problem with the legality of Gay Marriage, but making it compulsory seems a bit much. Still if that is what NATO wants, it is hard to argue...
The way Farage is behaving you'd think the Woke had already taken over NATO (or would they use OTAN?)
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
The top 100 Conservative vacant seats where the existing Tory MP is stepping down, safe or marginal, are all due to have selected their candidate by the party conference in the autumn
Thanks.
I believe the top Tory target seats are also due to have selected by the autumn too (not that there is much hope of the successful candidates winning any of them at present except perhaps in Scotland a handful from the SNP)
Plus Tory MPs wanting to stand again should mostly have been re selected by their Associations by this year's party conference
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
Spooky
Are you in LA?
No, Camden. But off to an amazing place tomorrow....
Anne Applebaum notes that this is the precise behaviour of the previous regime when the Pope visited communist Poland.
There is an enormous opposition march in Warsaw, so of course TVP Info is running with exclusive coverage of the 1st All-Polish Parade of the Circles of Rural Housewives.
These are all just ways of saying "I don't want these machines to be sentient, or conscious, or say anything meaningful, so I've decided that these are uniquely human characteristics"
Of course if you make that argument, the machines can never be sentient. But it's about as worthwhile as saying only badgers can be badgers. Well done. Bravo
These are all just ways of saying "I don't want these machines to be sentient, or conscious, or say anything meaningful, so I've decided that these are uniquely human characteristics"
Of course if you make that argument, the machines can never be sentient. But it's about as worthwhile as saying only badgers can be badgers. Well done. Bravo
Or alternatively, your posts are saying "I really, really want these machines to be sentient or conscious, or say anything meaningful, so I'll ignore every little piece of evidence that goes against my wishes. Even if it makes me look like an idiot."
Of course if you make that argument, the machines are always sentient.
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
Spooky
Are you in LA?
No, Camden. But off to an amazing place tomorrow....
Cincinnati
Eeeek
Bit of a difference, Camden is Starmer Labour central, Cincinnati is in a county that voted 41% for Trump
This happened a lot in the 1997 election campaign. I spoke to a couple of Conservative activists some weeks after the poll and they both told me the doorstep reception had generally been very polite and civil, even friendly, with the odd exception.
When the ballot boxes were opened, the scale of what had happened became apparent and for some on the Conservative side it was a genuine surprise.
Gyles Brandreth's Westminster diaries are good on this- the doorstep response in 1997 wasn't good, but it wasn't that bad. Trouble is that conservative voters are generally polite people and don't want to hurt the feelings of candidates in the main. (Last time the blue team came knocking on my door, I just hid.)
There's even a vignette of David Davis phoning GB after the polls had closed telling him "you'll be fine" (he really really wasn't).
Who the fuck wants a job where you can be chucked out every 4 years or so, not because of anything you have done or not done but because the arseholes in charge of your party have screwed up?
I mean, how do you plan your life, your career, your family finances around that? Politics is set up to be almost exclusively for nutters and then we complain that our politicians are nuts!
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
Spooky
Are you in LA?
No, Camden. But off to an amazing place tomorrow....
Cincinnati
Eeeek
Bit of a difference, Camden is Starmer Labour central, Cincinnati is in a county that voted 41% for Trump
You must remember however there are lots of voters who vote LD or Nimby Independent locally to mend the potholes and protect the greenbelt from new homes but will still vote Tory nationally if the alternative is a high tax Labour government.
So Tory canvassers don't find them particularly hostile, like some Labour or LD national as well as local voters but they still won't vote Tory locally hence the confusion.
What should encourage Sunak is that while the Tories only got 26% NEV locally last month, little different to the 25% Major's Tories got in the 1995 locals, Labour only got 35% NEV, well below the 47% Blair's Labour got in those local elections. That suggests the mood is more anti Tory than pro Labour
I am sure that Sunak will be mightily encouraged that, thanks to the likes of you supporting the clown and loopy Liz, the country is now so determinedly anti Tory.
As a guide to good morals, the bible is seriously deficient. Lot offers up his daughters for rape, God orders Abraham to burn Isaac alive just to show how afraid he was of God, the woman who was raped and then hacked to pieces in Judges 19...
This happened a lot in the 1997 election campaign. I spoke to a couple of Conservative activists some weeks after the poll and they both told me the doorstep reception had generally been very polite and civil, even friendly, with the odd exception.
When the ballot boxes were opened, the scale of what had happened became apparent and for some on the Conservative side it was a genuine surprise.
Gyles Brandreth's Westminster diaries are good on this- the doorstep response in 1997 wasn't good, but it wasn't that bad. Trouble is that conservative voters are generally polite people and don't want to hurt the feelings of candidates in the main. (Last time the blue team came knocking on my door, I just hid.)
There's even a vignette of David Davis phoning GB after the polls had closed telling him "you'll be fine" (he really really wasn't).
Who the fuck wants a job where you can be chucked out every 4 years or so, not because of anything you have done or not done but because the arseholes in charge of your party have screwed up?
I mean, how do you plan your life, your career, your family finances around that? Politics is set up to be almost exclusively for nutters and then we complain that our politicians are nuts!
Yep.
I think people go into it thinking they’ll have some agency. They rarely do.
Of course people will say "I only ever vote for your party" because it is an easy way to get unwanted pests off their doorstep.
A few years back I tried telling them the truth and they hung around and spent time trying to make me switch my vote.
Lying to them is much easier
We don't, our policy is unless they normally vote Tory move on, certainly unless the party has a big poll lead and they are undecided. Canvassing works in close seats and wards when you have identified your supporters so you can knock them up on polling day, it is not an exercise in deep political debate
Surely in your case, self-declared Tory voters must then pass a series of supplementary questions, to make sure that they really are proper Tory voters, and not people whose views reveal that they should be voting Liberal or Labour?
We can’t have just anyone voting Tory, after all; that would never do.
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
Spooky
Are you in LA?
No, Camden. But off to an amazing place tomorrow....
Cincinnati
Eeeek
Bit of a difference, Camden is Starmer Labour central, Cincinnati is in a county that voted 41% for Trump
Starmer got 64.5% of the vote in Holborn and St Pancras, Biden got 57.15% of the vote in Hamilton County. Not that much of a difference.
The Govt is trying to amend the law by Statutory Instrument to do something that Parliament has already said 'no' to in a Bill earlier this year. Whatever your thoughts about the laws on the right to protest, this case raises serious questions about our parliamentary democracy https://twitter.com/RuthFox01/status/1665268708623745027
This happened a lot in the 1997 election campaign. I spoke to a couple of Conservative activists some weeks after the poll and they both told me the doorstep reception had generally been very polite and civil, even friendly, with the odd exception.
When the ballot boxes were opened, the scale of what had happened became apparent and for some on the Conservative side it was a genuine surprise.
Gyles Brandreth's Westminster diaries are good on this- the doorstep response in 1997 wasn't good, but it wasn't that bad. Trouble is that conservative voters are generally polite people and don't want to hurt the feelings of candidates in the main. (Last time the blue team came knocking on my door, I just hid.)
There's even a vignette of David Davis phoning GB after the polls had closed telling him "you'll be fine" (he really really wasn't).
Who the fuck wants a job where you can be chucked out every 4 years or so, not because of anything you have done or not done but because the arseholes in charge of your party have screwed up?
I mean, how do you plan your life, your career, your family finances around that? Politics is set up to be almost exclusively for nutters and then we complain that our politicians are nuts!
Yep.
I think people go into it thinking they’ll have some agency. They rarely do.
Certainty, most people stand for the council full of ideas as to how the council could do new and better and exciting things by spending a bit more money here and there on worthwhile stuff.
Then find that their main role is deciding how and where to spend less money on stuff and being forced to try and justify the consequences to their voters (of, of course, be in opposition and be able to call for spending more on worthwhile stuff knowing it won’t happen).
But that’s largely a consequence of the absurd centralisation of British politics and the lack of genuine localism in our governmental model.
Elected representatives - and this goes for backbench MPs also - have very little hard power, but can muster surprising amounts of soft power, if they know how to go about it.
Lysglimt Johansen is the leader of Norwegian far-right political party Alliance - Alternative for Norway. He is a virulent antisemite, a Holocaust denier, and an open supporter of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.
Bad news. Leach is not fantastic but he does a job. England really need a spinner. For me Moeen has to be the answer but he is not much of a threat and his 20:20 career has, if anything, made him an even more defensive option rather than an attacking one.
Bad news. Leach is not fantastic but he does a job. England really need a spinner. For me Moeen has to be the answer but he is not much of a threat and his 20:20 career has, if anything, made him an even more defensive option rather than an attacking one.
Of course people will say "I only ever vote for your party" because it is an easy way to get unwanted pests off their doorstep.
A few years back I tried telling them the truth and they hung around and spent time trying to make me switch my vote.
Lying to them is much easier
We don't, our policy is unless they normally vote Tory move on, certainly unless the party has a big poll lead and they are undecided. Canvassing works in close seats and wards when you have identified your supporters so you can knock them up on polling day, it is not an exercise in deep political debate
Canvassing is basically a quick opinion poll - identify your supporters is the main aim. They are the ones who you will knock up on polling day - everyone else is a waste of time.
When I've organised it, you do your bad areas first and quickly just to confirm they are still bad. If they are, move on, if not, it's time to get excited then work your way through the middling areas to your strongholds and do them last and quick. Concentrate on middling streets where perhaps you've worked a local issue and see if that has yielded any benefits.
Use what intelligence you have from previous campaigns - I find those who have voted in locals in the past generally vote again so by the marked register you can concentrate on the known voters and the new voters.
In London, we had no votes this year - next year we will (presumably) have both the Mayoral/GLA and the GE after which our next vote is the locals in 2026. Areas with third up elections in two-tier local government structures fight elections every year (nearly).
This happened a lot in the 1997 election campaign. I spoke to a couple of Conservative activists some weeks after the poll and they both told me the doorstep reception had generally been very polite and civil, even friendly, with the odd exception.
When the ballot boxes were opened, the scale of what had happened became apparent and for some on the Conservative side it was a genuine surprise.
Gyles Brandreth's Westminster diaries are good on this- the doorstep response in 1997 wasn't good, but it wasn't that bad. Trouble is that conservative voters are generally polite people and don't want to hurt the feelings of candidates in the main. (Last time the blue team came knocking on my door, I just hid.)
There's even a vignette of David Davis phoning GB after the polls had closed telling him "you'll be fine" (he really really wasn't).
Who the fuck wants a job where you can be chucked out every 4 years or so, not because of anything you have done or not done but because the arseholes in charge of your party have screwed up?
I mean, how do you plan your life, your career, your family finances around that? Politics is set up to be almost exclusively for nutters and then we complain that our politicians are nuts!
Of course politics used to be something you did after your career and family. It was public duty. Those days are long gone.
I cannot feel any sympathy for politicians because they risk getting kicked out every 4 years. If they did a better job in the time they were in office and didn't see it as a sinecure then perhaps they would have more chance of holding their seats.
Of course people will say "I only ever vote for your party" because it is an easy way to get unwanted pests off their doorstep.
A few years back I tried telling them the truth and they hung around and spent time trying to make me switch my vote.
Lying to them is much easier
We don't, our policy is unless they normally vote Tory move on, certainly unless the party has a big poll lead and they are undecided. Canvassing works in close seats and wards when you have identified your supporters so you can knock them up on polling day, it is not an exercise in deep political debate
Canvassing is basically a quick opinion poll - identify your supporters is the main aim. They are the ones who you will knock up on polling day - everyone else is a waste of time.
When I've organised it, you do your bad areas first and quickly just to confirm they are still bad. If they are, move on, if not, it's time to get excited then work your way through the middling areas to your strongholds and do them last and quick. Concentrate on middling streets where perhaps you've worked a local issue and see if that has yielded any benefits.
Use what intelligence you have from previous campaigns - I find those who have voted in locals in the past generally vote again so by the marked register you can concentrate on the known voters and the new voters.
In London, we had no votes this year - next year we will (presumably) have both the Mayoral/GLA and the GE after which our next vote is the locals in 2026. Areas with third up elections in two-tier local government structures fight elections every year (nearly).
That’s the traditional (and, no offence, somewhat old fashioned) approach, to be sure.
I'm liking that because stories like that about the human spirit touch me very deeply. I don't think the dig at either @NickPalmer or @Dura_Ace was really called for.
Lysglimt Johansen is the leader of Norwegian far-right political party Alliance - Alternative for Norway. He is a virulent antisemite, a Holocaust denier, and an open supporter of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.
Corbyn is probably not really anti-Semitic. He is, however, undoubtedly so stupid that he should not be allowed out on his own, let alone left in charge of a political party.
Of course people will say "I only ever vote for your party" because it is an easy way to get unwanted pests off their doorstep.
A few years back I tried telling them the truth and they hung around and spent time trying to make me switch my vote.
Lying to them is much easier
We don't, our policy is unless they normally vote Tory move on, certainly unless the party has a big poll lead and they are undecided. Canvassing works in close seats and wards when you have identified your supporters so you can knock them up on polling day, it is not an exercise in deep political debate
Canvassing is basically a quick opinion poll - identify your supporters is the main aim. They are the ones who you will knock up on polling day - everyone else is a waste of time.
When I've organised it, you do your bad areas first and quickly just to confirm they are still bad. If they are, move on, if not, it's time to get excited then work your way through the middling areas to your strongholds and do them last and quick. Concentrate on middling streets where perhaps you've worked a local issue and see if that has yielded any benefits.
Use what intelligence you have from previous campaigns - I find those who have voted in locals in the past generally vote again so by the marked register you can concentrate on the known voters and the new voters.
In London, we had no votes this year - next year we will (presumably) have both the Mayoral/GLA and the GE after which our next vote is the locals in 2026. Areas with third up elections in two-tier local government structures fight elections every year (nearly).
That’s the traditional (and, no offence, somewhat old fashioned) approach, to be sure.
I'm sure it's much better now - I was politically active 30-40 years ago and this was how I operated in the 80s and 90s - not without a little success at the time. I was very much a disciple of the then-ALDC theory and practice of local campaigning.
As I've often said, that party died in the fires of the Coalition - the Liberal Democrats now are a different beast though perhaps discovering (or re-discovering) the merit of building local strength as a route to Parliamentary success.
You must remember however there are lots of voters who vote LD or Nimby Independent locally to mend the potholes and protect the greenbelt from new homes but will still vote Tory nationally if the alternative is a high tax Labour government.
So Tory canvassers don't find them particularly hostile, like some Labour or LD national as well as local voters but they still won't vote Tory locally hence the confusion.
What should encourage Sunak is that while the Tories only got 26% NEV locally last month, little different to the 25% Major's Tories got in the 1995 locals, Labour only got 35% NEV, well below the 47% Blair's Labour got in those local elections. That suggests the mood is more anti Tory than pro Labour
Though the Omnisis for the locals was interesting. This was their final prediction:
A week before they had this national poll:
So despite being a relatively new pollster they made a pretty accurate forecast for the locals.
In both polls the Con share was about the same. In the national one Lab was the beneficiary of the drop in the LD vote. Not much evidence of what you suggest.
It looks very much to me that the LD LE vote intends to vote Lab in the GE. Of course depending on local circumstances they may stick with LD in a tacit ABC coalition.
I'm liking that because stories like that about the human spirit touch me very deeply. I don't think the dig at either @NickPalmer or @Dura_Ace was really called for.
Given their views on the conflict, I think it's very fair. They have been excusers and appeasers of the aggressors in this evil war. Shame on them.
I wonder how the little girl *poked* the Russians into attacking her, or how her country yokel dialect caused them to bomb the building she was in?
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
Spooky
Are you in LA?
No, Camden. But off to an amazing place tomorrow....
Cincinnati
Eeeek
Bit of a difference, Camden is Starmer Labour central, Cincinnati is in a county that voted 41% for Trump
Hamilton County is a wonderful microcosm of America. At the Presidential level, it voted by 16 points for Biden over Trump. But the further you got downballot, the better the Republicans did. They lost by a much smaller margin in the House Election, missed out by just a couple of votes for Sheriff, but went for a Republican as Prosecutor.
This happened a lot in the 1997 election campaign. I spoke to a couple of Conservative activists some weeks after the poll and they both told me the doorstep reception had generally been very polite and civil, even friendly, with the odd exception.
When the ballot boxes were opened, the scale of what had happened became apparent and for some on the Conservative side it was a genuine surprise.
Gyles Brandreth's Westminster diaries are good on this- the doorstep response in 1997 wasn't good, but it wasn't that bad. Trouble is that conservative voters are generally polite people and don't want to hurt the feelings of candidates in the main. (Last time the blue team came knocking on my door, I just hid.)
There's even a vignette of David Davis phoning GB after the polls had closed telling him "you'll be fine" (he really really wasn't).
Who the fuck wants a job where you can be chucked out every 4 years or so, not because of anything you have done or not done but because the arseholes in charge of your party have screwed up?
I mean, how do you plan your life, your career, your family finances around that? Politics is set up to be almost exclusively for nutters and then we complain that our politicians are nuts!
Of course politics used to be something you did after your career and family. It was public duty. Those days are long gone.
I cannot feel any sympathy for politicians because they risk getting kicked out every 4 years. If they did a better job in the time they were in office and didn't see it as a sinecure then perhaps they would have more chance of holding their seats.
Or perhaps not. You could be a conscientious and diligent backbench MP, working hard to help refugees, the homeless, those with benefit problems and the many who find the modern state remote, bureaucratic and incomprehensible as well as working hard on some committee producing worthy reports that no one reads and you get chucked out because your party thought Liz Truss or Boris Johnson was a good idea. Who wants such a job? I will certainly not be applying.
I'm liking that because stories like that about the human spirit touch me very deeply. I don't think the dig at either @NickPalmer or @Dura_Ace was really called for.
Given their views on the conflict, I think it's very fair. They have been excusers and appeasers of the aggressors in this evil war. Shame on them.
I wonder how the little girl *poked* the Russians into attacking her, or how her country yokel dialect caused them to bomb the building she was in?
War is shit and Russia undoubtedly bears the blame for this one. But different views of how we got here are welcome as are different ideas of how we stop this. Sasha's inspirational story does not prove one side right or wrong in itself.
You must remember however there are lots of voters who vote LD or Nimby Independent locally to mend the potholes and protect the greenbelt from new homes but will still vote Tory nationally if the alternative is a high tax Labour government.
So Tory canvassers don't find them particularly hostile, like some Labour or LD national as well as local voters but they still won't vote Tory locally hence the confusion.
What should encourage Sunak is that while the Tories only got 26% NEV locally last month, little different to the 25% Major's Tories got in the 1995 locals, Labour only got 35% NEV, well below the 47% Blair's Labour got in those local elections. That suggests the mood is more anti Tory than pro Labour
Though the Omnisis for the locals was interesting. This was their final prediction:
A week before they had this national poll:
So despite being a relatively new pollster they made a pretty accurate forecast for the locals.
In both polls the Con share was about the same. In the national one Lab was the beneficiary of the drop in the LD vote. Not much evidence of what you suggest.
It looks very much to me that the LD LE vote intends to vote Lab in the GE. Of course depending on local circumstances they may stick with LD in a tacit ABC coalition.
More likely, ‘Labour’ is the stock response to the putative GE vote question for the many people fed up with the current state of affairs but otherwise not paying much attention to politics. Whether they stay with Labour or are influenced by campaigning, national and local, as polling day approaches, remains to be seen.
The Telegraph story about tax cuts reveals the - fairly obvious - Tory re-election story of dodging recession, significantly lower inflation, pre-election tax cuts, and the usual “we’ve done the heavy lifting, don’t let Labour ruin it” campaign slogan. The question is whether people will fall for it, or are now beyond the point of no return?
Olga Skabeeva, Russia's propagandist-in-chief, calls for the extermination of all human beings in the Kharkiv region as a way to finally solve the Ukrainian question. It's a major departure from the more traditional genocidal rhetoric that accompanied Russia's invasion… https://twitter.com/OPolianichev/status/1665343369227169793
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
I am not a birder. But I have a slight suspicion that there's a big issue with 'popular' birds getting all the funding and attention. Your eagles? we'll spend a fortune having cameras on their nests to ensure no eggs are stolen. Your rare LBJ (Little Brown Job): nothing. Robins and Blue Tits? Indispensable. Your Dunnock or Coal Tit: who cares?
Like wondering why sparrow numbers have decreased as the number of the magnificent sparrowhawks have increased.
Or the way any number of species are dying to extinction in China, but the Panda gets millions thrown at it (presumably bundled up in bamboo)
Edit: IANAE, but I'm concerned that charities and people concentrate on the 'sexy' animals; often large and apex ones, and not the entire ecosystem.
Thats what the Red List system is there for. It lists all those species in trouble not just the sexy or obvious ones and organisations like the BTO and RSPB then concentrate their efforts on those species and look at what can be done to save them.
Of course people will say "I only ever vote for your party" because it is an easy way to get unwanted pests off their doorstep.
A few years back I tried telling them the truth and they hung around and spent time trying to make me switch my vote.
Lying to them is much easier
See @HYUFD post. To add to that if you tell everyone you are going to vote for them you are likely to be knocked up (in the election sense) by all and sundry. I and a Tory activist had the embarrassment of both of us turning up to give someone a lift. I think she was more embarrassed than both of us. Awkward.
Best policy is to tell the truth or politely refuse to answer.
Bad news. Leach is not fantastic but he does a job. England really need a spinner. For me Moeen has to be the answer but he is not much of a threat and his 20:20 career has, if anything, made him an even more defensive option rather than an attacking one.
I'm liking that because stories like that about the human spirit touch me very deeply. I don't think the dig at either @NickPalmer or @Dura_Ace was really called for.
Given their views on the conflict, I think it's very fair. They have been excusers and appeasers of the aggressors in this evil war. Shame on them.
I wonder how the little girl *poked* the Russians into attacking her, or how her country yokel dialect caused them to bomb the building she was in?
War is shit and Russia undoubtedly bears the blame for this one. But different views of how we got here are welcome as are different ideas of how we stop this. Sasha's inspirational story does not prove one side right or wrong in itself.
"But different views of how we got here are welcome as are different ideas of how we stop this."
Bullshit; do you say the same about our usual Saturday morning trolls? Because when it comes to NickP in particular, some of his stated views on this conflict have been right out of the Russian propaganda handbook.
"Sasha's inspirational story does not prove one side right or wrong in itself."
It might just, perhaps, in a teensy-weensy way, show that the side that shelled that centre was in the wrong? Perhaps?
Bad news. Leach is not fantastic but he does a job. England really need a spinner. For me Moeen has to be the answer but he is not much of a threat and his 20:20 career has, if anything, made him an even more defensive option rather than an attacking one.
Play Wood and use Root as the spinner.
Play Sam Curran and use Root as the spinner.
Sam Curran is an exceptional cricketer who knows how to win. A worthy addition to any team in any format.
Lysglimt Johansen is the leader of Norwegian far-right political party Alliance - Alternative for Norway. He is a virulent antisemite, a Holocaust denier, and an open supporter of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.
Bad news. Leach is not fantastic but he does a job. England really need a spinner. For me Moeen has to be the answer but he is not much of a threat and his 20:20 career has, if anything, made him an even more defensive option rather than an attacking one.
Play Wood and use Root as the spinner.
Only a complete lunatic would do that.
Why, it would be like dropping the world's best keeper to squeeze the skipper's out of form bessy mate into the si...shit, you're right, that's what they'll do.
You must remember however there are lots of voters who vote LD or Nimby Independent locally to mend the potholes and protect the greenbelt from new homes but will still vote Tory nationally if the alternative is a high tax Labour government.
So Tory canvassers don't find them particularly hostile, like some Labour or LD national as well as local voters but they still won't vote Tory locally hence the confusion.
What should encourage Sunak is that while the Tories only got 26% NEV locally last month, little different to the 25% Major's Tories got in the 1995 locals, Labour only got 35% NEV, well below the 47% Blair's Labour got in those local elections. That suggests the mood is more anti Tory than pro Labour
Though the Omnisis for the locals was interesting. This was their final prediction:
A week before they had this national poll:
So despite being a relatively new pollster they made a pretty accurate forecast for the locals.
In both polls the Con share was about the same. In the national one Lab was the beneficiary of the drop in the LD vote. Not much evidence of what you suggest.
It looks very much to me that the LD LE vote intends to vote Lab in the GE. Of course depending on local circumstances they may stick with LD in a tacit ABC coalition.
Certainly round here they don't, the LD local Nimby vote largely votes Tory at the GE. Indeed the relatively low Labour NEV lead and still high LD vote shows while Middle England dislikes the Tories they still aren't sold on Labour, certainly compared to being sold on Blair who actually did get 47% NEV in the 1995 local elections.
Starmer also polls much worse as preferred PM relative to Sunak than Blair did as preferred PM relative to Major pre 1997
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
I am not a birder. But I have a slight suspicion that there's a big issue with 'popular' birds getting all the funding and attention. Your eagles? we'll spend a fortune having cameras on their nests to ensure no eggs are stolen. Your rare LBJ (Little Brown Job): nothing. Robins and Blue Tits? Indispensable. Your Dunnock or Coal Tit: who cares?
Like wondering why sparrow numbers have decreased as the number of the magnificent sparrowhawks have increased.
Or the way any number of species are dying to extinction in China, but the Panda gets millions thrown at it (presumably bundled up in bamboo)
Edit: IANAE, but I'm concerned that charities and people concentrate on the 'sexy' animals; often large and apex ones, and not the entire ecosystem.
Thats what the Red List system is there for. It lists all those species in trouble not just the sexy or obvious ones and organisations like the BTO and RSPB then concentrate their efforts on those species and look at what can be done to save them.
I should add that I am seeing some encouraging signs this last couple of years for some bird species. I take part in BTO surveys each year and within the survey areas on the Nottinghamshire/Lincolnshire borders we are seeing notable increases in populations of Woodcock and Nightjars. We are also dicovering previously unknown sites for Cuckoos and some of the warblers. But generally the pattern is one of decline.
My one big hope is that I am right about the issue with petrol additives and that once the use of ICEs reduces we will start to see a reversal opf the declines of insects and birds. So long as they can hold on until then.
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
Spooky
Are you in LA?
No, Camden. But off to an amazing place tomorrow....
Cincinnati
Eeeek
Bit of a difference, Camden is Starmer Labour central, Cincinnati is in a county that voted 41% for Trump
Starmer got 64.5% of the vote in Holborn and St Pancras, Biden got 57.15% of the vote in Hamilton County. Not that much of a difference.
If you think Trump would have got 36% of the vote in Holborn and St Pancras I have a flying pig to sell you!
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
I am not a birder. But I have a slight suspicion that there's a big issue with 'popular' birds getting all the funding and attention. Your eagles? we'll spend a fortune having cameras on their nests to ensure no eggs are stolen. Your rare LBJ (Little Brown Job): nothing. Robins and Blue Tits? Indispensable. Your Dunnock or Coal Tit: who cares?
Like wondering why sparrow numbers have decreased as the number of the magnificent sparrowhawks have increased.
Or the way any number of species are dying to extinction in China, but the Panda gets millions thrown at it (presumably bundled up in bamboo)
Edit: IANAE, but I'm concerned that charities and people concentrate on the 'sexy' animals; often large and apex ones, and not the entire ecosystem.
Thats what the Red List system is there for. It lists all those species in trouble not just the sexy or obvious ones and organisations like the BTO and RSPB then concentrate their efforts on those species and look at what can be done to save them.
I think that while wildlife charities do use "charismatic megafauna" for fundraising, they do recognise that these require a habitat that supports a much wider ecosystem, with many less obvious species benefitting.
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
Spooky
Are you in LA?
No, Camden. But off to an amazing place tomorrow....
Cincinnati
Eeeek
Bit of a difference, Camden is Starmer Labour central, Cincinnati is in a county that voted 41% for Trump
Starmer got 64.5% of the vote in Holborn and St Pancras, Biden got 57.15% of the vote in Hamilton County. Not that much of a difference.
If you think Trump would have got 36% of the vote in Holborn and St Pancras I have a flying pig to sell you!
Trump, no, but the UK Trump-lite Boris Johnson probably would have.
You must remember however there are lots of voters who vote LD or Nimby Independent locally to mend the potholes and protect the greenbelt from new homes but will still vote Tory nationally if the alternative is a high tax Labour government.
So Tory canvassers don't find them particularly hostile, like some Labour or LD national as well as local voters but they still won't vote Tory locally hence the confusion.
What should encourage Sunak is that while the Tories only got 26% NEV locally last month, little different to the 25% Major's Tories got in the 1995 locals, Labour only got 35% NEV, well below the 47% Blair's Labour got in those local elections. That suggests the mood is more anti Tory than pro Labour
Though the Omnisis for the locals was interesting. This was their final prediction:
A week before they had this national poll:
So despite being a relatively new pollster they made a pretty accurate forecast for the locals.
In both polls the Con share was about the same. In the national one Lab was the beneficiary of the drop in the LD vote. Not much evidence of what you suggest.
It looks very much to me that the LD LE vote intends to vote Lab in the GE. Of course depending on local circumstances they may stick with LD in a tacit ABC coalition.
Certainly round here they don't, the LD local Nimby vote largely votes Tory at the GE. Indeed the relatively low Labour NEV lead and still high LD vote shows while Middle England dislikes the Tories they still aren't sold on Labour, certainly compared to being sold on Blair.
Starmer also polls much worse as preferred PM relative to Sunak than Blair did as preferred PM relative to Major pre 1997
There may well be such anecdata from your area, but nationally it looks as LD LE voters will often go Lab at GE, and far more so than Con.
Lysglimt Johansen is the leader of Norwegian far-right political party Alliance - Alternative for Norway. He is a virulent antisemite, a Holocaust denier, and an open supporter of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.
While I’m prepared to believe that Corbyn didn’t know who he was, the fact that the Nordic fascist had a lot of nice things to say about magic grandpa speaks volumes
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
Spooky
Are you in LA?
No, Camden. But off to an amazing place tomorrow....
Cincinnati
Eeeek
Bit of a difference, Camden is Starmer Labour central, Cincinnati is in a county that voted 41% for Trump
Starmer got 64.5% of the vote in Holborn and St Pancras, Biden got 57.15% of the vote in Hamilton County. Not that much of a difference.
If you think Trump would have got 36% of the vote in Holborn and St Pancras I have a flying pig to sell you!
Trump, no, but the UK Trump-lite Boris Johnson probably would have.
So what, Boris would probably have won Cincinnati (which voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004). In US terms Boris is a relative moderate RINO, only Farage comes close to Trump here and he would have been crushed in Holborn and St Pancras (and in actual fact even the Boris Tories only got 15% in Holborn and St Pancras in 2019)
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
I am not a birder. But I have a slight suspicion that there's a big issue with 'popular' birds getting all the funding and attention. Your eagles? we'll spend a fortune having cameras on their nests to ensure no eggs are stolen. Your rare LBJ (Little Brown Job): nothing. Robins and Blue Tits? Indispensable. Your Dunnock or Coal Tit: who cares?
Like wondering why sparrow numbers have decreased as the number of the magnificent sparrowhawks have increased.
Or the way any number of species are dying to extinction in China, but the Panda gets millions thrown at it (presumably bundled up in bamboo)
Edit: IANAE, but I'm concerned that charities and people concentrate on the 'sexy' animals; often large and apex ones, and not the entire ecosystem.
Thats what the Red List system is there for. It lists all those species in trouble not just the sexy or obvious ones and organisations like the BTO and RSPB then concentrate their efforts on those species and look at what can be done to save them.
I should add that I am seeing some encouraging signs this last couple of years for some bird species. I take part in BTO surveys each year and within the survey areas on the Nottinghamshire/Lincolnshire borders we are seeing notable increases in populations of Woodcock and Nightjars. We are also dicovering previously unknown sites for Cuckoos and some of the warblers. But generally the pattern is one of decline.
My one big hope is that I am right about the issue with petrol additives and that once the use of ICEs reduces we will start to see a reversal opf the declines of insects and birds. So long as they can hold on until then.
I hope you're right but is there any evidence of a link to ICE emissions?
Bad news. Leach is not fantastic but he does a job. England really need a spinner. For me Moeen has to be the answer but he is not much of a threat and his 20:20 career has, if anything, made him an even more defensive option rather than an attacking one.
Play Wood and use Root as the spinner.
Yes, I suspect they will go the four-seamer route. There's a lot to commend it. You can play Broad and Anderson with less fear for their fitness and stamina, and you can certainly pick Wood for his extreme pace. Robinson is the obvious 'fourth' and has the additional merit of being a decent bat too for a number eight. There are other candidates though and it likely there would be rotation as the series develops. England are lucky to have strength in depth in this department and should use it.
There is no strength in depth in the spin department. I'm not sure what the issue is with Moen but if he were up to it and available they wouldn't have kept playing Leach, who is reliable but no great threat at Test level. The other spinners - Bess, Jack, and heaven forbid Dawson - don't bear thining about.
You must remember however there are lots of voters who vote LD or Nimby Independent locally to mend the potholes and protect the greenbelt from new homes but will still vote Tory nationally if the alternative is a high tax Labour government.
So Tory canvassers don't find them particularly hostile, like some Labour or LD national as well as local voters but they still won't vote Tory locally hence the confusion.
What should encourage Sunak is that while the Tories only got 26% NEV locally last month, little different to the 25% Major's Tories got in the 1995 locals, Labour only got 35% NEV, well below the 47% Blair's Labour got in those local elections. That suggests the mood is more anti Tory than pro Labour
Though the Omnisis for the locals was interesting. This was their final prediction:
A week before they had this national poll:
So despite being a relatively new pollster they made a pretty accurate forecast for the locals.
In both polls the Con share was about the same. In the national one Lab was the beneficiary of the drop in the LD vote. Not much evidence of what you suggest.
It looks very much to me that the LD LE vote intends to vote Lab in the GE. Of course depending on local circumstances they may stick with LD in a tacit ABC coalition.
Certainly round here they don't, the LD local Nimby vote largely votes Tory at the GE. Indeed the relatively low Labour NEV lead and still high LD vote shows while Middle England dislikes the Tories they still aren't sold on Labour, certainly compared to being sold on Blair.
Starmer also polls much worse as preferred PM relative to Sunak than Blair did as preferred PM relative to Major pre 1997
There may well be such anecdata from your area, but nationally it looks as LD LE voters will often go Lab at GE, and far more so than Con.
Wasn't the case in 1995, then Labour got 47% in the locals, the Tories 25% and the LDs 23%.
The Tories did about 6% better 2 years later in the 1997 GE than they had done in the 1995 locals and some of that came from the LDs
Lysglimt Johansen is the leader of Norwegian far-right political party Alliance - Alternative for Norway. He is a virulent antisemite, a Holocaust denier, and an open supporter of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
I am not a birder. But I have a slight suspicion that there's a big issue with 'popular' birds getting all the funding and attention. Your eagles? we'll spend a fortune having cameras on their nests to ensure no eggs are stolen. Your rare LBJ (Little Brown Job): nothing. Robins and Blue Tits? Indispensable. Your Dunnock or Coal Tit: who cares?
Like wondering why sparrow numbers have decreased as the number of the magnificent sparrowhawks have increased.
Or the way any number of species are dying to extinction in China, but the Panda gets millions thrown at it (presumably bundled up in bamboo)
Edit: IANAE, but I'm concerned that charities and people concentrate on the 'sexy' animals; often large and apex ones, and not the entire ecosystem.
Thats what the Red List system is there for. It lists all those species in trouble not just the sexy or obvious ones and organisations like the BTO and RSPB then concentrate their efforts on those species and look at what can be done to save them.
I should add that I am seeing some encouraging signs this last couple of years for some bird species. I take part in BTO surveys each year and within the survey areas on the Nottinghamshire/Lincolnshire borders we are seeing notable increases in populations of Woodcock and Nightjars. We are also dicovering previously unknown sites for Cuckoos and some of the warblers. But generally the pattern is one of decline.
My one big hope is that I am right about the issue with petrol additives and that once the use of ICEs reduces we will start to see a reversal opf the declines of insects and birds. So long as they can hold on until then.
I hope you're right but is there any evidence of a link to ICE emissions?
Also what about the effect of the cat population on bird populations ?
Do you live in a marginal? I live in what has turned from a Conservative safe seat to a Conservative / Lib Dem marginal, with the local council now firmly in Lib Dem hands. And at the last GE we got canvassed by the main three parties.
Lysglimt Johansen is the leader of Norwegian far-right political party Alliance - Alternative for Norway. He is a virulent antisemite, a Holocaust denier, and an open supporter of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.
While I’m prepared to believe that Corbyn didn’t know who he was, the fact that the Nordic fascist had a lot of nice things to say about magic grandpa speaks volumes
Jeremy Corbyn appears to be in Oslo today as the keynote speaker of a pro-Julian Assange event. Given Assange's views and his popularity with the far-right, it would not be too surprising if Lysglimt Johansen was also in attendance at this event.
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
Spooky
Are you in LA?
No, Camden. But off to an amazing place tomorrow....
Cincinnati
Eeeek
Check out Over the Rhine, IF it's still there.
Was chatting this AM with graduate of U of Cincinnati, who worked as student in a VERY old hardware store in the Over the Rhine 'hood. From when the Queen City (aka Porkopolis back in the day) was the biggest city in US east of the Alleghenies and a magnet for German immigrants pre-Civil War.
Be sure to quaff at least one ice-cold Hudepohl while in Cincy.
AND do NOT say ANTHING bad about Pete Rose. Especially while quaffing Hudepohl.
ADDENDUM - For what it's worth (to a high-flyer like you! the traditional Sin City for Cincinnatians out on a spree (or visiting salesmen-conventioneers-travel writers) is across the Ohio River, in Newport and/or Covington, Kentucky.
Another attraction in the Commonweath of KY you might appreciate, not far from Cincinnati - Big Bone Lick
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
I am not a birder. But I have a slight suspicion that there's a big issue with 'popular' birds getting all the funding and attention. Your eagles? we'll spend a fortune having cameras on their nests to ensure no eggs are stolen. Your rare LBJ (Little Brown Job): nothing. Robins and Blue Tits? Indispensable. Your Dunnock or Coal Tit: who cares?
Like wondering why sparrow numbers have decreased as the number of the magnificent sparrowhawks have increased.
Or the way any number of species are dying to extinction in China, but the Panda gets millions thrown at it (presumably bundled up in bamboo)
Edit: IANAE, but I'm concerned that charities and people concentrate on the 'sexy' animals; often large and apex ones, and not the entire ecosystem.
Thats what the Red List system is there for. It lists all those species in trouble not just the sexy or obvious ones and organisations like the BTO and RSPB then concentrate their efforts on those species and look at what can be done to save them.
I should add that I am seeing some encouraging signs this last couple of years for some bird species. I take part in BTO surveys each year and within the survey areas on the Nottinghamshire/Lincolnshire borders we are seeing notable increases in populations of Woodcock and Nightjars. We are also dicovering previously unknown sites for Cuckoos and some of the warblers. But generally the pattern is one of decline.
My one big hope is that I am right about the issue with petrol additives and that once the use of ICEs reduces we will start to see a reversal opf the declines of insects and birds. So long as they can hold on until then.
I hope you're right but is there any evidence of a link to ICE emissions?
Not been enough study. I suspect you missed my original comment about this on the previous thread. Back in 2000 the world's leading expert on house sparrows identified the use of lead replacement additives in petrol as a possible cause of their massive decline. The timing was very compelling but he was looking primarily at a direct causal link of the additives killing off house sparrows. What hasn't really been looked at in enough detail is that the massive declines in insect populations coincide with the introduction of unleaded petrol and that in turn might be what is causing the bird population declines.
It is something that the German's have looked at but most studies in the UK and elsewhere concentrate on climate change and pesticides as the potential causes. In spite of the fact that climate change had already been occuring well before the collapse (and insects unlike other creatures are more mobile and able to deal with climate change better - we see migration of populations over the years) and that the use of pestidices has actually been droping since before the collapse in insect populations.
It is a hypothesis and one that needs a lot more study. But I hope it is right because if it is then there is a solution that we are already working towards anyway.
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
Spooky
Are you in LA?
No, Camden. But off to an amazing place tomorrow....
Cincinnati
Eeeek
Check out Over the Rhine, IF it's still there.
Was chatting this AM with graduate of U of Cincinnati, who worked as student in a VERY old hardware store in the Over the Rhine 'hood. From when the Queen City (aka Porkopolis back in the day) was the biggest city in US east of the Alleghenies and a magnet for German immigrants pre-Civil War.
Be sure to quaff at least one ice-cold Hudepohl while in Cincy.
AND do NOT say ANTHING bad about Pete Rose. Especially while quaffing Hudepohl.
TBF, I'm not looking forwards to Cincy, but BA are so desperate to get coverage they are laying on the Concorde Lounge, Biz Class, endless free booze, so it could be worse
More importantly, I have tacked on a personal roadtrip afterwards: Virginia, DC, Maryland, Kentucky, or something like that. I am reading Battle Cry of Freedom as research and it is SUPERB
I had no idea the South, pre Civil War, had real designs on Cuba and Mexico as new slave states to be added to the Confederacy. Came very close
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
I am not a birder. But I have a slight suspicion that there's a big issue with 'popular' birds getting all the funding and attention. Your eagles? we'll spend a fortune having cameras on their nests to ensure no eggs are stolen. Your rare LBJ (Little Brown Job): nothing. Robins and Blue Tits? Indispensable. Your Dunnock or Coal Tit: who cares?
Like wondering why sparrow numbers have decreased as the number of the magnificent sparrowhawks have increased.
Or the way any number of species are dying to extinction in China, but the Panda gets millions thrown at it (presumably bundled up in bamboo)
Edit: IANAE, but I'm concerned that charities and people concentrate on the 'sexy' animals; often large and apex ones, and not the entire ecosystem.
Thats what the Red List system is there for. It lists all those species in trouble not just the sexy or obvious ones and organisations like the BTO and RSPB then concentrate their efforts on those species and look at what can be done to save them.
I should add that I am seeing some encouraging signs this last couple of years for some bird species. I take part in BTO surveys each year and within the survey areas on the Nottinghamshire/Lincolnshire borders we are seeing notable increases in populations of Woodcock and Nightjars. We are also dicovering previously unknown sites for Cuckoos and some of the warblers. But generally the pattern is one of decline.
My one big hope is that I am right about the issue with petrol additives and that once the use of ICEs reduces we will start to see a reversal opf the declines of insects and birds. So long as they can hold on until then.
I hope you're right but is there any evidence of a link to ICE emissions?
Also what about the effect of the cat population on bird populations ?
Yep. There are plenty of contributing factors. But bird populations do seem to be declining particularly as insect populations drop. And I am not aware of cats eating Winter Moth caterpillars
Lysglimt Johansen is the leader of Norwegian far-right political party Alliance - Alternative for Norway. He is a virulent antisemite, a Holocaust denier, and an open supporter of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.
While I’m prepared to believe that Corbyn didn’t know who he was, the fact that the Nordic fascist had a lot of nice things to say about magic grandpa speaks volumes
Jeremy Corbyn appears to be in Oslo today as the keynote speaker of a pro-Julian Assange event. Given Assange's views and his popularity with the far-right, it would not be too surprising if Lysglimt Johansen was also in attendance at this event.
"A shocking number of birds are in trouble We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.
...
The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.
This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.
Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”"
It is absolutely distressing. And happening in our lifetime
So many crises all at once. AI to climate change to extinction to Covid to Ukraine-and-Putin to ALIENS
Are they all somehow linked?
A clever dude I met last week said "I get the feeling these are indeed the End Times, but they are also, let's face it, Really Interesting Times"
On the AI front - I think you've used Midjourney quite a bit. If you've not tried some of the new open-source models, they're well worth a shot. The new RunDiffusionFX ones are quite impressive especially (also 'Epic Reality' for photo-realistic stuff). https://rundiffusion.com/rundiffusion-fx
Also some of the papers exploring ideas for GPT/LLM's and the "Tree of Thoughts" are giving really quite impressive gains. Also quite a good paper exploring why adding "Let's work this out step-by-step to get the correct answer." to the end of a prompt improves the accuracy so much (and work on making it even better)
Had drinks with a friend yesterday in beautiful Ted LAsso-land, and he told me an AI expert mate of his is speculating that AI's are not always "hallucinating" when they get things wrong, what we are seeing might be genuine qualia: this is the AI actively and consciously wondering, out loud
My friend has gone from total AI skeptic to Fuck they could be sentient: in about two weeks
Spooky
Are you in LA?
No, Camden. But off to an amazing place tomorrow....
Cincinnati
Eeeek
Check out Over the Rhine, IF it's still there.
Was chatting this AM with graduate of U of Cincinnati, who worked as student in a VERY old hardware store in the Over the Rhine 'hood. From when the Queen City (aka Porkopolis back in the day) was the biggest city in US east of the Alleghenies and a magnet for German immigrants pre-Civil War.
Be sure to quaff at least one ice-cold Hudepohl while in Cincy.
AND do NOT say ANTHING bad about Pete Rose. Especially while quaffing Hudepohl.
TBF, I'm not looking forwards to Cincy, but BA are so desperate to get coverage they are laying on the Concorde Lounge, Biz Class, endless free booze, so it could be worse
More importantly, I have tacked on a personal roadtrip afterwards: Virginia, DC, Maryland, Kentucky, or something like that. I am reading Battle Cry of Freedom as research and it is SUPERB
I had no idea the South, pre Civil War, had real designs on Cuba and Mexico as new slave states to be added to the Confederacy. Came very close
Do you live in a marginal? I live in what has turned from a Conservative safe seat to a Conservative / Lib Dem marginal, with the local council now firmly in Lib Dem hands. And at the last GE we got canvassed by the main three parties.
None this year, as we did not have a LE...
We have a local by-election here in Newham.
Today saw the Labour candidate and 40 helpers going out and about delivering. Have to say I was rather envious - if I got half a dozen out to help I thought I was doing well. I imagine the Epping Conservatives, rather like East Ham Labour, have plenty of helpers they can call on if required.
Not sure if @HYUFD will be tempted to come and help the Conservative cause in either of the two forthcoming Newham by-elections - the Conservatives have held help from Barking, Dagenham & Rainham and Ilford but their five or six helpers looks a bit weak next to the Labour squadron.
The Greens are working the Boleyn Ward - will be interesting to see how they get on.
Bad news. Leach is not fantastic but he does a job. England really need a spinner. For me Moeen has to be the answer but he is not much of a threat and his 20:20 career has, if anything, made him an even more defensive option rather than an attacking one.
Play Wood and use Root as the spinner.
Play Sam Curran and use Root as the spinner.
Sam Curran is an exceptional cricketer who knows how to win. A worthy addition to any team in any format.
These are all just ways of saying "I don't want these machines to be sentient, or conscious, or say anything meaningful, so I've decided that these are uniquely human characteristics"
Of course if you make that argument, the machines can never be sentient. But it's about as worthwhile as saying only badgers can be badgers. Well done. Bravo
I actually agree with Leon on this one. It's like how people claim AI created music is worthless because it has no real meaning behind it, no true creation, but the fact is you can play human vs AI created stuff next to each other and without being told which is which the listenere will enjoy and feel emotion to both without distinction.
Ultimately it may well be AI is never 'truly' sentient and just reaches a very convincing imitation of it. But at that point there is no real difference.
Comments
The academic was obviously persuasive enough to get my friend doubting HIS previously firm skepticism
Every club has them, some more than others I guess.
Nobody is making a cuddly toy of the endangered stinking bracket fungus.
I can’t see anything on con home.
Ta
I think that is almost unarguably so. Apart from the 'all'.
So Tory canvassers don't find them particularly hostile, like some Labour or LD national as well as local voters but they still won't vote Tory locally hence the confusion.
What should encourage Sunak is that while the Tories only got 26% NEV locally last month, little different to the 25% Major's Tories got in the 1995 locals, Labour only got 35% NEV, well below the 47% Blair's Labour got in those local elections. That suggests the mood is more anti Tory than pro Labour
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/65805317
I think Dom Bess would be a better option given his wider experience, but that means he's certain not to be picked.
https://conservativehome.com/2023/05/30/the-next-24-seats-opening-candidate-selections/
A few years back I tried telling them the truth and they hung around and spent time trying to make me switch my vote.
Lying to them is much easier
Instead, you might want to listen to a wise PBer who has opined often on this over twelve years. One who has repeatedly said: "the danger from AI comes not from the AI, but from people believing its output."
Then look at this story:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/eating-disorder-helpline-chatbot-disabled/
But you won't listen, as that brilliant PBer's view isn't DRAMATIC enough for you ...
Utah district bans Bible in elementary and middle schools ‘due to vulgarity or violence’
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/03/nation/utah-district-bans-bible-elementary-middle-schools-due-vulgarity-or-violence/
Cincinnati
Eeeek
"Ukraine war: Anti-Putin fighters say two Russian soldiers 'captured'"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65804249
“Language is a way of facilitating interactions with other beings. That is entirely different than the sort of next-token prediction, which is what we have [with AI tools] now.”
https://twitter.com/nathanbenaich/status/1665369089508777990
There is an enormous opposition march in Warsaw, so of course TVP Info is running with exclusive coverage of the 1st All-Polish Parade of the Circles of Rural Housewives.
The logic is obvious: to contrast a bunch of cosmopolitan urban deviants with heartland Poland.
https://twitter.com/BDStanley/status/1665325240447115266
Of course if you make that argument, the machines can never be sentient. But it's about as worthwhile as saying only badgers can be badgers. Well done. Bravo
Of course if you make that argument, the machines are always sentient.
I mean, how do you plan your life, your career, your family finances around that? Politics is set up to be almost exclusively for nutters and then we complain that our politicians are nuts!
Good for Utah
I think people go into it thinking they’ll have some agency. They rarely do.
We can’t have just anyone voting Tory, after all; that would never do.
The Govt is trying to amend the law by Statutory Instrument to do something that Parliament has already said 'no' to in a Bill earlier this year. Whatever your thoughts about the laws on the right to protest, this case raises serious questions about our parliamentary democracy
https://twitter.com/RuthFox01/status/1665268708623745027
Then find that their main role is deciding how and where to spend less money on stuff and being forced to try and justify the consequences to their voters (of, of course, be in opposition and be able to call for spending more on worthwhile stuff knowing it won’t happen).
But that’s largely a consequence of the absurd centralisation of British politics and the lack of genuine localism in our governmental model.
Elected representatives - and this goes for backbench MPs also - have very little hard power, but can muster surprising amounts of soft power, if they know how to go about it.
I mean what are the odds of Jeremy Corbyn meeting up with a virulent antisemite and holocaust denier? He's the unluckiest anti-racist in the world.
For some reason Jeremy Corbyn is posing and smiling in a photo with Norwegian Neo-Nazi Hans Jørgen Lysglimt Johansen
https://twitter.com/OzKaterji/status/1665422259165577217/photo/1
Lysglimt Johansen is the leader of Norwegian far-right political party Alliance - Alternative for Norway. He is a virulent antisemite, a Holocaust denier, and an open supporter of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.
https://twitter.com/OzKaterji/status/1665423751507263488
Today she won a gymnastics competition.
https://twitter.com/SlavaUk30722777/status/1665317864721743872
The sort of 'Nazis' @NickPalmer and @Dura_Ace warned us about ...
When I've organised it, you do your bad areas first and quickly just to confirm they are still bad. If they are, move on, if not, it's time to get excited then work your way through the middling areas to your strongholds and do them last and quick. Concentrate on middling streets where perhaps you've worked a local issue and see if that has yielded any benefits.
Use what intelligence you have from previous campaigns - I find those who have voted in locals in the past generally vote again so by the marked register you can concentrate on the known voters and the new voters.
In London, we had no votes this year - next year we will (presumably) have both the Mayoral/GLA and the GE after which our next vote is the locals in 2026. Areas with third up elections in two-tier local government structures fight elections every year (nearly).
I cannot feel any sympathy for politicians because they risk getting kicked out every 4 years. If they did a better job in the time they were in office and didn't see it as a sinecure then perhaps they would have more chance of holding their seats.
Stop misusing the off topic button.
As I've often said, that party died in the fires of the Coalition - the Liberal Democrats now are a different beast though perhaps discovering (or re-discovering) the merit of building local strength as a route to Parliamentary success.
A week before they had this national poll:
So despite being a relatively new pollster they made a pretty accurate forecast for the locals.
In both polls the Con share was about the same. In the national one Lab was the beneficiary of the drop in the LD vote. Not much evidence of what you suggest.
It looks very much to me that the LD LE vote intends to vote Lab in the GE. Of course depending on local circumstances they may stick with LD in a tacit ABC coalition.
I wonder how the little girl *poked* the Russians into attacking her, or how her country yokel dialect caused them to bomb the building she was in?
The Telegraph story about tax cuts reveals the - fairly obvious - Tory re-election story of dodging recession, significantly lower inflation, pre-election tax cuts, and the usual “we’ve done the heavy lifting, don’t let Labour ruin it” campaign slogan. The question is whether people will fall for it, or are now beyond the point of no return?
Olga Skabeeva, Russia's propagandist-in-chief, calls for the extermination of all human beings in the Kharkiv region as a way to finally solve the Ukrainian question. It's a major departure from the more traditional genocidal rhetoric that accompanied Russia's invasion…
https://twitter.com/OPolianichev/status/1665343369227169793
Best policy is to tell the truth or politely refuse to answer.
Bullshit; do you say the same about our usual Saturday morning trolls? Because when it comes to NickP in particular, some of his stated views on this conflict have been right out of the Russian propaganda handbook.
"Sasha's inspirational story does not prove one side right or wrong in itself."
It might just, perhaps, in a teensy-weensy way, show that the side that shelled that centre was in the wrong? Perhaps?
Whether it should be his job to do due diligence on stuff like that is another question.
Why, it would be like dropping the world's best keeper to squeeze the skipper's out of form bessy mate into the si...shit, you're right, that's what they'll do.
Starmer also polls much worse as preferred PM relative to Sunak than Blair did as preferred PM relative to Major pre 1997
My one big hope is that I am right about the issue with petrol additives and that once the use of ICEs reduces we will start to see a reversal opf the declines of insects and birds. So long as they can hold on until then.
Lung cancer pill cuts risk of death by half, says ‘thrilling’ study
Taking the drug osimertinib once a day after surgery reduces chance of patients dying by 51%, trials show
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jun/04/lung-cancer-pill-cuts-risk-of-death-by-half-says-thrilling-study
There is no strength in depth in the spin department. I'm not sure what the issue is with Moen but if he were up to it and available they wouldn't have kept playing Leach, who is reliable but no great threat at Test level. The other spinners - Bess, Jack, and heaven forbid Dawson - don't bear thining about.
The Tories did about 6% better 2 years later in the 1997 GE than they had done in the 1995 locals and some of that came from the LDs
None this year, as we did not have a LE...
https://twitter.com/ozkaterji/status/1665427134565761024?s=46
Was chatting this AM with graduate of U of Cincinnati, who worked as student in a VERY old hardware store in the Over the Rhine 'hood. From when the Queen City (aka Porkopolis back in the day) was the biggest city in US east of the Alleghenies and a magnet for German immigrants pre-Civil War.
Be sure to quaff at least one ice-cold Hudepohl while in Cincy.
AND do NOT say ANTHING bad about Pete Rose. Especially while quaffing Hudepohl.
ADDENDUM - For what it's worth (to a high-flyer like you! the traditional Sin City for Cincinnatians out on a spree (or visiting salesmen-conventioneers-travel writers) is across the Ohio River, in Newport and/or Covington, Kentucky.
Another attraction in the Commonweath of KY you might appreciate, not far from Cincinnati - Big Bone Lick
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bone_Lick_State_Park
It is something that the German's have looked at but most studies in the UK and elsewhere concentrate on climate change and pesticides as the potential causes. In spite of the fact that climate change had already been occuring well before the collapse (and insects unlike other creatures are more mobile and able to deal with climate change better - we see migration of populations over the years) and that the use of pestidices has actually been droping since before the collapse in insect populations.
It is a hypothesis and one that needs a lot more study. But I hope it is right because if it is then there is a solution that we are already working towards anyway.
More importantly, I have tacked on a personal roadtrip afterwards: Virginia, DC, Maryland, Kentucky, or something like that. I am reading Battle Cry of Freedom as research and it is SUPERB
I had no idea the South, pre Civil War, had real designs on Cuba and Mexico as new slave states to be added to the Confederacy. Came very close
The end of the Silicon Valley dream
How the home of big tech lost its way"
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-end-of-the-silicon-valley-dream/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walker_(filibuster)
also see my addendum previous post
https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1665370459439874048?cxt=HHwWgIC-5f_mypwuAAAA
"Europe Elects
@EuropeElects
·
4h
Spain, SocioMétrica poll:
PP-EPP: 32% (+3)
PSOE-S&D: 24%
VOX-ECR: 16%
Sumar-LEFT|G/EFA: 10%
Podemos-LEFT: 5% (-2)
ERC-G/EFA: 3% (+1)
Junts-NI: 2%
PNV-RE: 2% (+1)
...
+/- vs. 3-5 May 2023
Fieldwork: 30 May-3 June 2023
Sample size: 1,140
➤ https://europeelects.eu/spain"
Today saw the Labour candidate and 40 helpers going out and about delivering. Have to say I was rather envious - if I got half a dozen out to help I thought I was doing well. I imagine the Epping Conservatives, rather like East Ham Labour, have plenty of helpers they can call on if required.
Not sure if @HYUFD will be tempted to come and help the Conservative cause in either of the two forthcoming Newham by-elections - the Conservatives have held help from Barking, Dagenham & Rainham and Ilford but their five or six helpers looks a bit weak next to the Labour squadron.
The Greens are working the Boleyn Ward - will be interesting to see how they get on.
It's very weird knocking on the door of a random stranger and demanding to know their politics.
Ultimately it may well be AI is never 'truly' sentient and just reaches a very convincing imitation of it. But at that point there is no real difference.