The serpent in Eden being either more informed or more honest than God about what the fruit does.
Sophia_Nyx 🏳️⚧️Name a villain who was actually right.
Профиль
Joe Hodson
Профиль VivelyParalegal with masters in international maritime law, interested in languages, ethics, governance, environmental protection and human rights. Mythology-loving humanist.
Now booked for Stornoway via Inverness, thanks for recommendations!
Joe HodsonI've booked off some leave for the end of August, but still deciding what to do with it. Thinking to focus on exploring more of/around the UK rather than venturing particularly far outside it this time. Any recommendations?
I feel torn between glass-half-full joy that leaders are firmly and clearly opposing plutocracy for once, and glass-half-empty revulsion that they've picked a visible but relatively inconsequential battleground for it while continuing to cave over matters of life and death elsewhere.
George MonbiotNeoliberalism in a nutshell. UEFA on FIFA's proposal: “The moment external investors acquire ownership interests ... football changes forever. Commercial return becomes a permanent obligation. ... Every decision is no longer driven by what best serves the game, but by what best serves shareholders.”
They are apologising for the term "anti-rights", which to me seems odd because I'd have thought it too vague to be a solid basis for a defamation claim/threat. Presumably "rights" encompass moral ones as well as existing legal ones, and thus can't be exhaustively or conclusively defined by a court?
Lee HurleyAmnesty have issued an apology to JK Rowling and the rest. Adjust your expectations, and donations, accordingly www.amnesty.org.uk/latest/an-ap...
Or in the immortal words of Iannucci's Malenkov...
No ProblemAlt: Gif of Malenkov in Death of Stalin saying "I think I misspoke when I said "No problem". What I meant was "No! Problem!"static.klipy.comLondon Review of Books‘John Healy is the managing editor whose job it is after someone goes, “Raises for everybody”, to come back out and go, “I actually meant raises for very few people. I'm sorry, my hands are tied.”’ @stephenkb.bsky.social on Burnham’s first week, on the podcast. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...
Troy: Fall of a City (2008) > Troy (2004) by several orders of magnitude
Paul BernalMy favourite Greek myth films, in order: 1) Jason and the Argonauts 2) Clash of the Titans (1981) 3) The Odyssey 4) Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief …. 9) Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters 19) Clash of the Titans (2010) 99) Wrath of the Titans 199) Immortals If I’ve forgotten any…
Now wondering if calling Troy "ἱερὸν" (sacred) in the second line of the poem was usual inconsequential hyperbole or meant to imply that the sack was intrinsically sacreligious? And was the placement of that next to description of "foolish" eating of the sun-kine intended to reinforce that idea?
Joe HodsonThey don't cover the killing of Astyanax, though that comes from sources outside the Odyssey. They show enough to demonstrate that Odysseus has a ton of innocent blood on his hands, though I didn't quite buy the degree of helpless angst with which he seemed to be participating in the sacking.
Calling it now - Nolan's next hit set again in WWII, replete with the par-for-the-course timey-wimey confusion and that signature sense of distance from women and emotions, but culminating in Mützel und Weber dramatically discovering skulls on their uniforms and realising that they are the baddies.
K E P S I C OThe Odyssey is pretty fucking good. As a human being living through the oil age collapse where we are being told to fear invasion by the sea peoples but know damn well we ARE the sea peoples, it was pretty upsetting and cathartic at the same time. Someday people will learn to read and write again.
I don't think it follows. AI is designed to exploit psychological weaknesses (convenience, flattery, confidence etc) that have nothing to do with intelligence. Just as with cult manipulation tactics, intelligent people can and absolutely do fall for it.
Andy MasleyMy big main objection to how people talk about chatbots is they often imply the majority of people are so tasteless and stupid that they need to be protected from their own use of a talking computer
I'd quibble with, inter alia, the bit about "arbitrary deadlines". The deadlines are informed by science and - now all too evidently - if anything too lax rather than too strict. But overall it's nice to see the Overton window shifting towards sanity for once.
Leo Hickman++BREAKING++ The Daily Telegraph has... *rubs eyes* ...published something sensible about climate change: "I’m coming to the view that the Online Right is going wrong, eschewing compassion or charm, talking itself into corners of angry irrelevance. Take climate change."
What is done cannot be undone
New York PostIf your partner says this 6-word phrase to you, it means you’re about to get broken up with
This is surely correct. The world needs an ICC untainted by even a whiff of such suspicions, otherwise it loses credibility as a mechanism for holding wrongdoers accountable. Dismissal must also be distinguished from criminal/civil liability for which higher evidentiary thresholds are appropriate.
AFP News AgencyInternational Criminal Court member states voted Friday to dismiss prosecutor Karim Khan following allegations that he sexually assaulted a female member of his staff. He has denied all wrongdoing. u.afp.com/Sr7r
The share prices of all AI companies will fall inexorably from this moment with a downward gradient that slopes almost exactly like the blade of a guillotine.
James McLeodIt's safe to assume that all major LLMs are scraping Bluesky data to train future models. As an open protocol, Bluesky is one of the few sources of fresh human-generated content that anybody can gobble up. So all this is probably going in the models. There are submarines in the Great Lakes.
