nickbarnes.bsky.social

Uniting the special interests of @scalzi.com and @chuckwendig.bsky.social : Worst Man by @brandtandstein.com

James Blunt: I keep coming out with terrible ideas and accusing Faithful and persuading other people to vote them out. Also James Blunt: … and that’s why I’m certain Sharon is a Traitor. #celebritytraitors

As if to demonstrate the point of this (generally good) thread: I’m not sure this part (KCs being prosecutors) is true anywhere; it certainly has never been true in England and Wales.

Gone, but not forgotten.

It’s the artilleryman from War of the Worlds!

Someone should learn a thing or two about the actual history of number systems. Start with Georges Ifrah’s big book. Yes, base 12 has been important, along with bases 6, and 60, and 20 (yan tan tethera). But there are good reasons why all those cultures _also_, and often primarily, used base ten.

This again. If base 12 was actually significantly better then perhaps it would have been used for all purposes 2000 years ago and we would have ended up using it in everyday positional notation, with symbols for 11 and 12. But that didn’t happen because base 10 is fine.

Flu is a serious sickness. It kills millions, including the young and fit. It has nearly killed me more than once. If you have flu, you may well be unable to get out of bed, delirious with high fever, for days. Not to be confused with “flu”, which is what a lot of people call the common cold.

Man who won’t give his employees piss breaks claims many piss breaks on the horizon

I’m not in the field anymore, but the caliber of these results is extraordinary. Some are incremental, but some are blockbusters (quasi Riemann!). It will be interesting to see how the community responds, both culturally and at a technical level (eg, where do people go with the quasi RH result?)

Possibly Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Or possibly Doctor Who (hmm, Planet of the Spiders?)

* FRANCE'S MACRON: IF THE BRITISH PM WANTS BRITAIN TO RETURN TO THE EU THAT WOULD BE EXCELLENT NEWS AND A GOOD DECISION @reuters.com

Digital rights activists have long railed at the use of the term "IP," criticizing it for being deceptively imprecise and also rhetorically dishonest. I get where these objections are coming from, but I think they're misguided.

Data centres don’t need to consume any water at all. Closed-loop cooling is a thing. It’s just more expensive. Demand regulations that require it.

Danny Tommo, Amodei, Man City fair play Piddington, Macklemore, Dolly ain’t alive no more Netanyahu’s iron dome, Meg and Harry coming home New cat, Clavicular COVID CONSCIOUS LESBIAN BAR 🎶 we didn’t start the fire 🎶

So is CO-4 in play?!

Gonna start referring to Democrats who take anti-trans stances as “Biological Republicans”

Threatening us with a good time?

If I were Rep Beatty (who is doing an excellent job fighting for the memory of JFK) I would propose the hypothetical of renaming the big obelisk as “the Trump Monument”, or, for that matter, renaming the city as “Trump, DC”. Get the appeals court, or SCOTUS, on the record as to their view of that.

I love this account, but where’s the same thing for movies?

This is interesting. You get assigned to being born at a random place and time in history, to see what a typical person's life might have been like then. Unfortunately I was born in 1403 in the valley of Mexico and died at age 4 from dysentery.

Movie plot: US administration insists AI company lets it use their model to target the people most dangerous to the US. Company folds. AI does that.

These are excellent. Why aren’t boys (and AMAB) playing with cute stationery?

This is why Dolly Parton will be remembered and loved ❤️📚

in a world of JK Rowlings be a Dolly Parton

Many centuries ago, people would boil down cattle hide, pig bones, fish scales and chicken gristle to make a paste that women would smear onto their faces, believing it contained the elixir of eternal youth. Oh sorry - that’s TODAY! Watch out for the collagen peddlers!

#swingbin

Published estimates of AI energy use per prompt (~0.3 watt-hours) appear reassuring small. But they are increasingly disconnected from how we actually use AI. Modern agentic tools use around 600 times more energy per prompt, as I discuss in my latest over at The Climate Brink www.theclimatebrink....

100 years ago? I’m recently wed, and either 1,000 feet below South Yorkshire, hacking coal out of a two-foot seam and breathing in the dust that will kill me; or I’m driving a fuel lorry across the Mendips, delivering diesel and heating oil. Or I’m at home, cooking, cleaning, mending and laundering.

It should always and everywhere be impossible for a state to deport its own citizen, or to strip them of citizenship. Imprison them, if legal and necessary to do so, but if citizenship means anything it is surely that the state has irrevocable responsibility for, and to, the person.

Without saying your age, what is your favorite movie from the year you turned 18

“Banks on banks of humming machinery. I’ve never seen so many knobs.”

Dinner with Misha Glenny tonight; took me back to 1989, hearing his reports on the BBC from the capitals of the Warsaw Pact, as it more-or-less peacefully came apart. 37 years, hard to believe it. Hope I wasn’t too much of a fanboi.

Pete Hegseth: "We need our warriors to embrace the Spartan mindset" U.S. Military: *suffers crushing defeat to the Persians*

What a chaotic mess that “half time show” was. I hope the artists and technicians got well paid. Will FIFA learn that the US-flavoured “innovations” of this World Cup were all terrible mistakes? No.

Unsurprised to see we are retreading the notion that forests could or should be manicured like golf courses.

the future is here and it is picking images for news alerts

Trent Reznor has a collection of oversized cricket equipment. Nine inch bails.