THIS! 👇

Mike is a reminder that even though Trump and his bootlickers are trying their best to destroy the world, that the real sane Americans are fucking brilliant people with great hearts. X

That is outrageous. For a second row to even attempt that sidestep and swan dive, disgusting Wales can't ignore his athleticism for much longer. I hope he's not ineligible at Sale

Can’t stop thinking about how Wall Street is celebrating Elon Musk becoming the world’s first trillionaire, while he single handedly eliminated humanitarian aid that will lead to the needless deaths of 4.5 million of the poorest children in the world in the next 4 years.

Can we all agree Thunderbird 2 was the best Thunderbird?

🤣🤣

She posted this video in 2023 btw so it’s not recent. This is a well-documented thing that deserves more care than it’s currently being given.

This is super interesting. The last one I can read fluently is 1600. I can then still read it and figure out (almost) every word, with some puzzling, but then lose it almost completely at 1200. deadlanguagesociety.com/p/ho…

🚨 Muslims Taking Over the UK? An important message from Shah Lalon Amin, group director of award-winning Delhi 6 street food group, who in 2023 won the Curry King title at the inaugural Nation's Curry Awards. “I never thought I’d have to write this. But I keep seeing people say Muslims are trying to take over the UK, bring in Sharia law, or push the country toward civil war. And I know some of that fear feels real. So I’m speaking plainly, not to argue, not to attack, just to bring this back to reality. This is not a Muslim-majority country. It is a parliamentary democracy and a country with Christian heritage. Laws are made by elected representatives. Muslims make up around 6–7% of the population in a country of roughly 70 million people. There is no legal, political, or demographic pathway for replacing British law with any religious law. That isn’t secretly unfolding. It isn’t slowly building. It isn’t a hidden long-term plan. The average Muslim in Britain does not spend their time plotting political change. There are no secret strategy meetings. No takeover conversations. No coordinated agenda. And no, we don’t have some secret WhatsApp group discussing who’s arriving by boat next week. The only WhatsApp groups we have are about exam results, family gossip, and who’s bringing dessert for Ramadan. When Muslims get together, the conversations are painfully ordinary. Football results. Who’s top of the league. Ronaldo vs Messi debates. The cost of living. Mortgage rates. Trump being unpredictable. Children’s school reports. Business worries. Holiday plans. During Ramadan, it’s fasting and food. That’s the reality. That’s because we are British, our daily lives look very similar to the average person in this country. What people call “Sharia courts” in the UK are religious councils that mostly deal with marriage and divorce paperwork or mediation. They cannot override British courts. They cannot enforce criminal punishments. They cannot replace Parliament. If anything conflicts with UK law, UK law wins every single time. It’s no different in principle from Jewish Beth Din courts that handle religious matters within British law. Religious arbitration exists under the legal system. It does not replace it. Yes, many asylum arrivals are young men. Dangerous journeys are often made by the strongest family member first so they can seek safety and claim asylum and if approved, reunite with their families legally. This pattern has been seen throughout migration history. Wanting secure borders is reasonable. Wanting efficient processing is reasonable. Criminal behaviour should be punished. But that’s immigration policy, not proof of a coordinated religious invasion. Sometimes I hear people say, “We want our country back,” or “We just want to protect our country.” I understand that feeling. Wanting safety, stability, and a sense of identity isn’t wrong. But Britain hasn’t been taken. It hasn’t been stolen. It’s still here. Its laws, institutions, culture, and democracy are intact. Protecting a country doesn’t mean hating your neighbours, it means upholding fairness, rule of law, and shared values. There is no secret Muslim lobby running Westminster. British Muslims are not politically unified, do not vote as one bloc, and do not answer to a central authority. Most British Muslims are doing what everyone else is doing: working, paying taxes, raising children, worrying about bills, hoping their kids succeed, wanting safe streets and a stable country. We don’t want to change Britain into something else. We are part of Britain. You can want law and order. You can want borders controlled. You can want your country protected. That’s fair. But if anti-Muslim panic exists on your screen and nowhere in your real life, that’s not society—that’s an algorithm selling you fear.” 🇬🇧

Everyone laughing at Newfoundland… BUT NOT NOW!! SEE YA ALL AT 9:40AM FOR THE GOLD MEDAL GAME 😎😎

I think I've finally become a republican.

Doctors and parents should be aware that the medical textbook description of a "bright red measles rash" is based on white skin. On brown or black skin, the measles rash can be much harder to see. It may appear as darker, dusky or purple patches rather than bright red spots.

This remains one of the greatest moments in Olympic history. One of the most unforgettable scenes in Olympic history unfolded at the Tokyo 2020 Games during the men’s high jump final. Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi and Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim were deadlocked after both cleared 2.37 meters and missed their attempts at the next height. Under Olympic rules, they could either enter a jump-off or agree to share the gold medal. After confirming with an official that a shared gold was permitted, Barshim proposed the idea, and Tamberi instantly accepted. The pair erupted in celebration, embracing and laughing on the track in a moment that quickly spread around the world. It stood out as a rare, heartfelt display of sportsmanship at the sport’s highest level. The shared victory carried even deeper meaning because both athletes had battled serious injuries earlier in their careers—setbacks that once put their Olympic dreams in doubt. By choosing unity over rivalry, they transformed a technical rule into a lasting symbol of respect, resilience, and perseverance. For many fans, it became one of the defining images of the Tokyo Olympics.

Who buys it though? - IT and procurement departments, not users. If the users had a voice... @tomfgoodwin

When you think about it, Almost every single Microsoft product is substandard, yet here they are with 228,000 employees making $281.7 billion in revenue every year. The idea that people demand or use or appreciate great software just isn't true.

It annoys me that so many people are under the impression that this guy, Steven Bradbury, is some subpar goober who lucked his way into gold. That could not be further from the truth. This is one of the most satisfying victories in the history of the Olympics if you know the full backstory. This medal final was during his fourth Olympics, in Salt Lake City in 2002. Earlier in his career, he was among the best athletes in the world in this specific event, the 1000 meter short-track men's speed skate. But despite his talent, he just had some of the shittiest luck in the sport. We're talking a decade of shit luck. In the '94 Winter Olympics, he was considered the odds-on favorite to take gold, but he fell in his heat after getting illegally pushed by an opponent (who was later disqualified). He didn't get a re-do. That was it. He got shoved by some asshole, and his Olympics was over. Then in the '98 Winter Olympics, he was a favorite to at least medal in the same event but got caught up in a collision that wasn't his fault and failed to advance. In 1994, he got his thigh sliced open by a competitor's skate during a race, which required 111 stitches and 18 months of recovery time. In 2000, he broke his neck during training because a skater in front of him fell and tripped him up. That required a bunch of screws and plates being inserted into his skull and back and chest. And doctors told him that he should stop skating. But he didn't wanna give up. It meant too much to him. So, there he was in Salt Lake City in 2002, past his prime, a walking erector set, going up against opponents who were faster and younger and in their prime. He manages to win his heat and advance to the quarterfinal but then has the shit luck (yet again) of having to go up against the best two athletes in the quarterfinal and only the top two advance. He finishes third and thinks: "Damn, I gave it my best shot." But then, the second place finisher is disqualified, so Bradbury gets to advance to the semifinal. Now, at this point, he's thinking: Well, shit, I'm not as fast as these younger guys, and I got a bad habit of getting taken out by crashes that aren't my fault. So, he consults with the Australian national coach, Ann Zhang, and they decide that he should hang back from the pack and hope the pack crashes. That is a perfectly valid strategy. If you crash, you lose, but speed skaters risk crashing to gain an advantage in order to win. It may not feel exciting, but it is a valid strategy and just as risky: avoid crashes entirely and hope that pays off. It paid off in the semifinal: the pack, including the defending Olympic champion, jostled too much and crashed. Bradbury wins and advances. So, he's improbably in the final and takes the same approach, and it works: the entire pack jostles too much and crashes, and Bradbury's risk of hanging back pays off. This victory was not some un-athletic schlub lucking his way into gold. It was a journeyman athlete who never gave up and played smart after a career of shitty luck and finally got his due after it being snatched away from him so many times. Hands down, one of my favorite Olympics stories.

WARNING Massive AI hype being built in a sudden burst (and most of it fake) 1) A scary article: I was surprised to read a long article on Twitter (X) claiming it's just 6-12 months before a Covid-like event changes this world. It claims this will be the AI-event, where most white-collar jobs worldwide would be gone, because AI is that good now. That article got 100 M plus views. Clearly, people are spooked (naturally). So the psy-op has worked. (and I saw other similar dark articles too) 2) Suddenly many influencers are pushing the same narrative, and it so turns out that media reported many are being paid heavy sums by AI firms to push their story (that AI singularity is arriving). But if AI is "revolutionary", does it need an influencer push? No. This should be a clear signal it's hyped. 3) A correction in IT stocks' and SaaS stock's prices is suddenly creating a doom scenario about these companies dying any moment now, with second- and third-order effects on entire economy. Stock investors who haven't studied AI technicals are automatically assuming it's all over, dead, gone, finished. WRONG. NO. 4) What is the truth, and what's most likely to happen? In my opinion, based on years of observing AI trends, reading and learning AI technology, and doing AI at various levels, my take is as follows. I urge you to read this, and preserve your sanity. Please don't panic, nothing catastrophic is happening anytime soon. A) IPO pressure: AI firms are going crazy pushing their God-narrative, as many giant IPOs are lined up soon. They need public to buy their paid subscriptions or else the story goes kaput. So they are creating a false hype. It's shameful, anti-social and deeply hurtful. (Almost all AI firms released doom-scenarios just before their next funding rounds; investors who haven't learnt technology fall for it; pure FOMO. This playbook is so repetitive it's comical) B) OpenAI is spooked: Sam Altman has lost the lead he temporarily managed to build against Google and others, and now his loss-making enterprise isn't the darling of any investor any more. He's terrified. C) Elon Musk's Grok does not have the traction in consumer space anyway near what's needed to make it a profit-making entity. So with many other capex-heavy AI firms. But the GPU / TPU hungry AI ops need more capex each day, not less. It's a dead-end for most except cash rich Googles. D) Enterprise AI is patchy, lagging, slow, choppy: Anyone who has ever built a company, or run a large department, or consulted a business enterprise knows how random, undefined, tacit, and unstructured most of the real world work actually is. No way is AI ever going to replace humans doing those very complex things on a daily basis. No way. Not tomorrow, not in 10 years. NO. (I am not even beginning to get into 'regulated' industries' needs) E) Consumer AI is cool, but has limits: The more AI regular humans (of all ages) use, the more the artificiality of it becomes apparent to anyone. The novelty cannot sustain the commercial numbers needed to make AI (foundation models) profitable. OpenAI and Perplexity would never have given free tiers for most Indians otherwise. They desperately need folks to stick to this opium. F) LLMs aren't solved, Hallucinations aren't zero: The structure of any LLM is such that it will ALWAYS hallucinate, no matter how much fine-tuning humans do. In most sensitive business operations, you cannot allow LLMs to control the core data at all. Can you run an airline with a Generative AI system (LLM-based) that's 98% accurate? Can you run a precision-mfg. operation at 97% accuracy? Can you run a financial services firm with 95% accuracy? NO. NEVER. So the deterministic, old-fashioned computer software ERP will go nowhere. Nowhere at all. LLMs will be good as a top layer on those ERPs to glean insights, nothing more. [ None can 'train away' hallucinations in a probabilistic LLM model, using larger datasets. You are actually claiming I'll build a dice that lands a 4, or a 6, each time ] G) Agents aren't magical, humans aren't going anywhere: Multi-step agentic AI is being touted as the final solution where one founder sitting alone can run 100 agents and build an empire. Try doing that once, experience the frequent breakdowns, see the regular edges and new complexities, and you will realize that other than the most mundane of tasks, nothing else will be seamless. Yes, Voice AI agents are good, and many in the developing world are now deploying those, but that's hardly a cutting-edge technology that'll replace all humans. H) IT and SaaS firms are going nowhere: Ironically, the more AI happens in enterprises, the more will be the need for humans to supervised and orchestrate those bits and pieces of AI, to ensure nothing flies off the rails. The complex software code that Claude and Codex can write only changes the nature of work for the human coders who now have to check the AI code thoroughly for the many edge cases in real world. The nature of IT and SaaS work will change, some companies that can't innovate and adapt will vanish, but many new ones will emerge in their place. (Yes, there'll will be some much-deserved disruption in short-term, and the non-innovating IT firms will have deserved every bit of it) I) If IT and SaaS are dead, why are AI firms hyping: Ask this simple question - if AI is indeed killing IT and SaaS, then why are AI firms spending massive sums hyping their wares? They need spend nothing and still earn the spoils. But they know the truth. J) The China angle: Models from China - many of them open-sourced - are getting better and more competitive. Many of them are cheaper, or free (for now). OpenAI complained recently that they are stealing from American models (via "distillation"). Imagine, just imagine - OpenAI that stole entire internet work of creative work is complaining the Chinese are stealing from it. A dacoit crying that thieves broke into his house. Rich. You think these are signs of singularity? Ha! The judicial backlash on stolen content and profiteering off of it hasn't even begun in most jurisdictions. (now imagine what happens to American LLM-makers when Chinese models gain traction everywhere) K) Downside of mindless AI already visible: Take just one example: In education everywhere, students, parents and teachers are all realizing that mindless AI use is harming the process of learning, not aiding it. The sensible, guarded and limited way AI should be brought into pedagogy hasn't even been given a proper thought. Students are just doing "cognitive offloading", and turning into non-thinking beings. This is bound to collapse sooner than later. Humans as species don't learn this way - it's a long, tortuous and slow process, always. L) AI is normal technology: Serious researchers from the AI field have for years argued that AI is being hyped unnecessarily out of proportion, turned into Snake Oil like propositions, and most of AI's predictive powers are anyway not better than that of astrology. AI's ability to talk to use like humans has totally stumped normal people, and anthropomorphism has kicked in. Since no ERP talked to use like a human would, the computer revolution came about without the singularity fears. M) AI in law and judiciary: The impact will be on the grunt work. It will be cut down substantially. But no judge will outsource their cognition to AI, now will any lawyer. The fact that an LLM can read a complex document fast and summarise it means nothing if it hallucinates. And LLMs will forever hallucinate; that's their structure. (so you'll need humans to sign off on LLM outputs) N) Enterprise AI's lessons: Every company that has mindlessly gone in on AI has learnt that employees just stopped using it if it didn't adapt to the existing workflows. AI cannot magically alter anything: it can speed things up (with hallucinations), it can generate beautiful stuff (needed or not) and it can help save some time, but the company-to-company needs are so different, it cannot be force-fit on all in one shot. (that is what foundation LLM firms are trying to do). Remember: Enterprise work is not just code. It’s messy data, old legacy systems, compliance needs, multiple integrations, business context, human complexities, and more. Services firms are going nowhere. O) AI has no solutions for the human situation: Fertility rates everywhere are dropping. Humans are being converted into permanently marketable selves. Consumption comfort has made us soft, and our morality is totally adrift. AI doesn't solve any of this, it just force-multiplies most of it. We built it. It reflects what we are. 5) So what should you do? a) Read up on AI. Its technical side. How LLMs are created. What they just cannot do. What they can. Why they aren't superhuman at all. Why AI is a good but normal set of technologies. b) Think why regulated industries (at least 25) cannot hand over their future to AI, LLMs, and GenAI. c) Check the history of Indian IT and how it kept rebooting itself to suit a new era (from Y2K, to outsourcing, to SaaS backend support, to much more). d) Check how human societies eventually revolt when artificiality starts overpowering natural human interactions. e) Be prepared for more hype and nonsense. Sadly, the AI firms won't stop at it at all. They need more humans to subscribe to their paid tiers, and fear seems to be the chosen weapon. Tragic. [I am subscribed to more than 10 such paid AI tools currently, and know exactly what's good and what's not, and why no singularity is arriving] f) Adapt your work, and bits of it, to AI tools that can adjust to the workflow well. Let your discretion be supreme. g) If AI is the shiny new tap, IT is the plumbing behind it. Remember: Elon Musk's predictions have mostly gone wrong Geoffrey Hinton's predictions have gone wrong Mustafa Suleyman's predictions have gone bust Yet they keep predicting. Sad part: We are living in an age of bullshit. And LLMs are excellent bullshitting machines. The reason the AI Bros are continuing doing so is no one is holding them accountable for their nonstop lies. But what about AGI: If AGI is ever built, it won't be by any one company. The technology diffuses rapidly each day. So multiple AGIs in multiple hands. Goes without saying governments will capture (claim) that technology almost immediately. If that day ever arrives, UBI is happening too. Finally: Your brain, running on just 20 watts, continues to outthink LLMs fueled by the energy of an entire planet. Never underestimate yourself. And stop falling prey to AI hype.

iPad left in a black cab tonight Journey was from Waterloo Station to Embankment Gardens. The passenger couldn’t get home to the countryside due to SWR disruption. A retweet would massively help get this iPad back to its owner. 🙏

Always know someone must be a real **** if Piers Morgan and I agree about them...

Aside from his blatant lies/ignorance about UK population numbers, Ratcliffe is an immigrant tax exile in Monaco, and most of his Manchester United team are immigrants to UK. So he’s a stinking race-baiting hypocrite.

hey Americans, the @guardian is a brilliant newspaper. It's not gated, it's independent and the coverage is detailed on global issues. It's the website to read if you want reliable fact-checked news.