I find this China spy story just very confusing. They keep talking about some deputy national security advisor Matthew Collins. And I keep wondering how on earth the art critic Matthew Collings came to be mixed up in all this.

“There are few things more dehumanizing than being told by a machine that you’re not real because of your face"

For the last month, I've been speaking to people living with facial differences and disfigurements about how face verification tech is failing them. Spoiler: things aren't going well

There will only be 'general intelligence', artificial or not, in a world in which there are general interests to which intelligence is put.

I got very curious about this. You can trace Shearer's unit (21 CCS) and you can see what looks like the echo of his little blaze of fame: in Sept 1916 you get visits from various grandees including ... the editor of the BMJ, who presumably came to see for himself.

“If a company buys their own product, where is the profit? Answer: there is none. It’s a loss. But if you sell to your own family of companies - especially ones that have access to “free” money in government subsidies and such - then suddenly the books look good; at least for a moment.”

so others don't need to go look: this is Desmond M. Clarke, ed., The Equality of the Sexes: Three Feminist Texts of the Seventeenth Century (by Marie le Jars de Gournay, Anna Maria van Schurman & François Poulain de la Barre). OUP, 1997.

Marie Neurath is amazing, and her book on cognitive science for kids is wonderful: Machines which Seem to Think (1954). H/t @irisvanrooij.bsky.social youtu.be/XBWhdcD0r9I for this video about her. Book available for free online: www.fulltable.com/iso/mw.htm

the Clapham 'bus?

I do miss Galloway & Porter!

Not read The Melancholy of Resistance but it does look like a banger.

“clothes, furniture, one’s wife, the fear of war…”

Listen to Wikipedia (Hatnote) turns real-time edits from Wikipedia and Wikidata into sound, a generative symphony of human knowledge in motion.
Exactly the kind of nerdy thing I love.
listen.hatnote.com#wikidata

#Wikidata #DigitalArt #DataSonification #NerdJoy

It's a great line. Unfortunately, I believe it dates to the 1970s & there's no good reason to attribute it to Goldman. (Though, happily, Goldman is said to have enjoyed dancing.)

Who is Dr. Sarah Chen? #claude #amazonnova #hallucination

The disappearance of Amelia Epstein? Really?

Netpol's 'State of Protest' report for 2024 launched with a stark title: ‘This is Repression’. On the second anniversary of the continuing genocide in Gaza, it is hard to know what we will call our assessment of protest rights for 2025.

Perhaps ‘An End to Our Illusions’? netpol.org/2025/10/06/a...

likewise, definitely going to be following up some of this, thank you! On the entangled ways we've thought of government bureaucracies and computers, you might also enjoy @jonagar.bsky.social The Government Machine.

Robot personhood/rights is conceptually bogus and legally puts more power/rights in the hands of those that develop and deploy robots/AI systems

firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...

See also an earlier article on LLM sycophancy by this group, though its attempt to apply sociological insight from Goffman seems to me peculiar. Goffman assumed social reciprocity. Human-LLM interactions (even if parasitic on human expectations of reciprocity) are fundamentally non-reciprocal.

This by @myra.bsky.social @cinoolee.bsky.social @pranavkhadpe.bsky.social Sunny Yu, Dyllan Han & @jurafsky.bsky.social looks at the effects of LLM sycophancy on its users. Its findings are unsurprising but depressing:

Yet more proof that immigrants aren't integrating.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

The police will tell you they have 'no choice' because PA are a proscribed organisation but come to Belfast and you learn very quickly that is a lie.

This is absolutely a choice.

rage against the machi-, oh, nvm

I like this thought. (Though somewhat distracted by wondering when people started talking about a 'gap in the market')