Kevin Marks
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kevinmarks.com
Kevin Marks
@kevinmarks.com
5.2K followers 13K following 5.3K posts
Reading your thoughts, as long as you tell me where you're writing them first this week. https://xoxo.zone/@kevinmarks
Sheffield, UK - Don't try direct messaging as I am blocked by daft UK legislation unless I'm on a VPN.
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kevinmarks.com
Feeling autumnal, but I have a snow warning for Wednesday
A pink-red leaf on the road with water droplets on it
November 17, 2025 at 4:08 PM
kevinmarks.com
100 years ago there was a tram in both directions down the middle of Linthorpe Road, and space for bikes, cars and pedestrians.
Photo of Linthorpe Road Middlesbrough circa 1925 with electric tram, 2 cars, 90 about 10 pedestrians and 6 bikes
November 15, 2025 at 4:37 PM
kevinmarks.com
Early #CargoBikes at Middlesbrough's Dorman Museum
A tricycle with 2 front wheels and a big ice box labelled Erimus Dairy Ices
November 15, 2025 at 3:01 PM
kevinmarks.com
You have my axe
Andrew posing with a pixellated Minecraft axe prop
November 11, 2025 at 6:25 PM
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How does this get to 200? At about the million ton level it gets to 1000
Graph of lines gently sloping down as mass launched goes up by powers of ten.
November 10, 2025 at 4:47 PM
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Spot the portable poodle 🐩 🚲 🚉
An ebike on a railway platform, with two mismatched panniers on the back. The nearside one is camouflage, and has the head of a small black poodle, Abigail, looking out
November 7, 2025 at 12:54 PM
kevinmarks.com
Indeed - Jaron Lanier said something similar in 2000: www.edge.org/conversation...
The whole enterprise of Artificial Intelligence is based on an intellectual mistake, and continues to expensively turn out poorly designed software as it is re-marketed under a new name for every new generation of programmers. Lately it has been called "intelligent agents". Last time around it was called "expert systems". Let's start at the beginning, when the idea first appeared. In Turing's famous thought experiment, a human judge is asked to determine which of two correspondents is human, and which is machine. If the judge cannot tell, Turing asserts that the computer should be treated as having essentially achieved the moral and intellectual status of personhood. Turing's mistake was that he assumed that the only explanation for a successful computer entrant would be that the computer had become elevated in some way; by becoming smarter, more human. There is another, equally valid explanation of a winning computer, however, which is that the human had become less intelligent, less human-like. An official Turing Test is held every year, and while the substantial cash prize has not been claimed by a program as yet, it will certainly be won sometime in the coming years. My view is that this event is distracting everyone from the real Turing Tests that are already being won. Real, though miniature, Turing Tests are happening all the time, every day, whenever a person puts up with stupid computer software. For instance, in the United States, we organize our financial lives in order to look good to the pathetically simplistic computer programs that determine our credit ratings. We borrow money when we don't need to, for example, to feed the type of data to the programs that we know they are programmed to respond to favorably. In doing this, we make ourselves stupid in order to make the computer software seem smart. In fact we continue to trust the credit rating software even though there has been an epidemic of personal bankruptcies during a time of very low unemployment and great prosperity. We have caused the Turing test to be passed. There is no epistemological difference between artificial intelligence and the acceptance of badly designed computer software. My argument can be taken as an attack against the belief in eventual computer sentience, but a more sophisticated reading would be that it argues for a pragmatic advantage to holding an anti-AI belief (because those who believe in AI are more likely to put up with bad software). More importantly, I'm hoping the reader can see that Artificial Intelligence is better understood as a belief system instead of a technology. The AI belief system is a direct explanation for a lot of bad software in the world, such as the annoying features in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint that guess at what the user really wanted to type. Almost every person I have asked has hated these features, and I have never met an engineer at Microsoft who could successfully turn the features completely off on my computer (running Mac Office '98), even though that is supposed to be possible.
November 7, 2025 at 7:57 AM
kevinmarks.com
Public square is leftover from a bad formulation by Habermas. We have Publics - note the plural - that partially overlap, and that's a good thing
kevinmarks.com/mastodontheo...
Publics As with Twitter, and indeed the web in general, we all see a different subset of the conversation. We each have our own public that we see and address. These publics are semi-overlapping - they are connected, but adjacent. This is not Habermas’s public sphere, but de Certeau's distinction of place and space. The place is the structure provided, the space the life given it by the paths we take through it and our interactions. Since I first wrote Twitter Theory, Twitter itself has become much more like a single public sphere, through its chasing of ‘engagement’ above all else. The federated nature of Mastodon, GnuSocial, the blogosphere and indeed the multiply-linked web is now seen as confusing by those used to Twitter's silo. The structure of Mastodon and GnuSocial instances provides multiple visible publics by default, and Mastodon's columnar layout (on wider screens) emphasises this. You have your own public of those you follow, and the notifications sent back in response, as with Twitter. But you also have two more timeline choices - the Local and the Federated. These make the substructure manifest. Local is everyone else posting on your instance. The people who share a server with you are now a default peer group. The Federated public is even more confusing to those with a silo viewpoint. It shows all the posts that this instance has seen - GnuSocial calls it “the whole known network” - all those followed by you and others on your instance. This is not the whole fediverse, it’s still a window on part of it.
November 4, 2025 at 1:44 PM
kevinmarks.com
This piece by @v21.bsky.social made me revisit this photo from my walk and compare each tree closely. blog.vbuckenham.com/paying-atten...
Avenue of trees along a path in the woods where the branches are growing diagonally above the path at about 30 degrees. They are not really parallel, but they all seem to have copied each others' solution to growing into the gap.
November 2, 2025 at 5:41 AM
kevinmarks.com
#skyrdle 141 is clearly ERGOT, which I got in 4, but @skyrdle.com won't let me submit it
Skyrdle grid showing it starts with ER and ends with OT - there is no word that fits that other than ergot.
November 1, 2025 at 7:25 AM
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No it's just duelling "don't park outside the ambulance bay" paint
Wider view of the zebra crossing over painted by double red lines
October 25, 2025 at 3:22 PM
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Is this a new flag vandalism outbreak? Trying for the Washington DC flag but stars are hard? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of...
Zebra crossing where the first white stripe has two horizontal red stripes painted over it
October 25, 2025 at 2:41 PM
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Marks and Spencer sourdough bread clearly got a bit too bubbly. It's not just bread – it's aerated bread.
Slice of bread with about a third missing due to a giant bubble in the middle
October 24, 2025 at 9:54 AM
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Doncaster ✅ 🐩 sadly the pub on 3B is closed
Abigail the poodle in her travel coat on Doncaster station
October 17, 2025 at 7:02 PM
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Cross Country trains from Nunthorpe to Dore tonight.
Nunthorpe ✅
Middlesbrough ✅
Darlington ✅
York ✅ 🐩
Abigail the poodle in her winter coat on York platform 3
October 17, 2025 at 6:32 PM
kevinmarks.com
looks like @katebevan.com called this 2 years ago on X
Kate isn't really here any more @katebevan Jun 16, 2023 This reads as if someone has said to ChatGPT "write 1,000 words in the style of Boris Johnson about a weight loss drug". Quote Mail+ @DailyMailUK · Jun 16, 2023 BORIS JOHNSON: Wonder drug I hoped would stop my raids for cheddar and chorizo didn't work for me https://trib.al/1APYTx1 Kevin Marks 🏠kevinmarks.com xoxo.zone/@KevinMarks @kevinmarks I've been saying ChatGPT is Johnson as a service for a while. Superficially read in historic texts, able to extrude something that looks like prose in a particular form, but has no underlying emotion, meaning or connection to the truth, but you recognise repeating chunks of it. 7:06 PM · Jun 16, 2023 · 257 Views
October 16, 2025 at 9:07 AM
kevinmarks.com
I am in a funky pub in Middlesbrough, I wasn't expecting the tech bro inquisition
The pub sitting room. It features a boar head 🐗 old sofas, instruments, pistols and a fireplace The pub front room. It features a chandelier, a fireplace, stuffed animals, cupboards full of China and books and 3 tech bullshitters by the window
October 15, 2025 at 9:35 PM
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And no doubt you enjoy the company of other bigots like Liddle and Taki at the Spectator garden party.
Two eagles are talking in their club, one with a paper the other with a cup of tea 2: Do you think the Owl is a predator? 1: Of course not. He's never bothered me 2: Exactly. 2 sips tea 2: No idea what Mr. Mouse was going on about.
October 15, 2025 at 7:14 AM
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A while ago I made this page to compare the AI generated poetry clock with the one that collates quotes from prose written by humans. I have yet to see a time when I preferred the AI one. kevinmarks.com/clockwatch.h... (you need to scroll down the AI iframe a bit)
Clock watching Comparing the prose clock with the AI generated poetry clock AI 'poem': One twenty-seven, shadows creep, /Where stories linger, lost in sleep. Prose selection: At twenty-seven minutes past one she felt as if she was levitating out of her body. -Trackers, Deon Meyer credit for prose clock: GitHub Based on work and idea by Jaap Meijers
October 15, 2025 at 12:34 AM
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Talulah's secret agenda to take over X is revealed by her t-shirt collection and her posts telling him to buy it in the first place
Talulah Riley making a t-shirt with a big swastika on it
October 9, 2025 at 6:43 PM
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Did you warn him that the way from the rental car lot to Piccadilly goes through this roundabout, and he should try the Piccadilly Line instead?
Aerial view of Hatton Cross Roundabout from Google Maps, showing it's actually 5 roads meeting at a large roundabout , but connected by 5 short 2 way roads joining 5 smaller roundabouts
October 8, 2025 at 10:05 PM
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In general museums and art galleries are free (you may pay for special exhibitions). There are lots of good ones, big and small. The V&A casts room and the Soane museum are eclectic chaos.
St Paul's and Westminster Abbey charge for a tour but are free during services. Look up Choral Evensong
The Soane museum is full of fragments of buildings from everywhere Full size Michelangelo's David in the V&A casts room Full size Trajan's Column in two parts in the V&A casts room
October 2, 2025 at 11:07 AM
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Syncing to a specific track is probably pretty doable, syncing to an arbitrary one is a lot harder. You do get speed of sound delays too with a big enough crowd. Link to the front of the crowd youtu.be/_n0MbWR1YcM?...
October 2, 2025 at 8:41 AM
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Yes! You want lumps in your guacamole (Kenji López-Alt says to stir it with an egg whisk).
Orwell complained about this faux smoothness in Politics and the English Language 80 years ago www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-f...
Frayn also did in The Tin Men epeus.blogspot.com/2010/09/if-g...
As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier – even quicker, once you have the habit – to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for the words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry – when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech – it is natural to fall into a pretentious, latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash – as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot – it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. He opened the filing cabinet and picked out the first card in the set. Traditionally, it read. Now there was a random choice between cards reading coronations, engagements, funerals, weddings, comings of age, births, deaths, or the churching of women. The day before he had picked funerals, and been directed on to a card reading with simple perfection are occasions for mourning. Today he closed his eyes, drew weddings, and was signposted on to are occasions for rejoicing. The wedding of X and Y followed in logical sequence, and brought him a choice between is no exception and is a case in point. Either way there followed indeed. Indeed, whichever occasion one had started off with, whether coronations, deaths, or births, Goldwasser saw with intense mathematical pleasure, one now reached this same elegant bottleneck. He paused on indeed, then drew in quick succession it is a particularly happy occasion, rarely, and can there have been a more popular young couple. From the next selection, Goldwasser drew X has won himself/ herself a special place in the nation's affections, which forced him to go on to and the British people have clearly taken Y to their hearts already. Goldwasser was surprised, and a little disturbed, to realise that the word "fitting" had still not come up. But he drew it with the next card— it is especially fitting that. This gave him the bride/bridegroom should be, and an open choice between of such a noble and illustrious line, a commoner in these democratic times, from a nation with which this country has long enjoyed a particularly close and cordial relationship, and from a nation with which this country's relations have not in the past been always happy. Feeling that he had done particularly well with "fitting" last time, Goldwasser now deliberately selected it again. It is also fitting that, read the card, to be quickly followed by we should remember, and X and Y are not merely symbols – they are a lively young man and a very lovely young …
October 1, 2025 at 10:46 AM
kevinmarks.com
From the Seaview in Saltburn-by-the-Sea last week. They also do takeaway fish and chips wrapped up in newspaper downstairs
3 very plump Lindisfarne oysters Scallops in a 'nduja broth Seared sea bass stuffed with a fresh vegetable ragu New potatoea cooked with seaweed
September 29, 2025 at 3:18 PM