Marc Sweeney

A photo of Anas Al-Sharif and his Al Jazeera colleague Mohammad Qrere in their press bullet proof vests looking at their phones. Both are reported killed. Photo credit to Motassem A Dalloul.

BREAKING: One of the most important and prominent reporters on the ground in Gaza has been Anas Al Sharif.

He - and several other Al Jazeera journalists - have just been assassinated by Israelis forces whilst in their press tent in central Gaza.

Speechless.

92 badges ranked: 1. #Forest

50 yrs ago #NFFC designed an iconic image that's outlived its contemporary cultural touchpoints, yet remains so disarmingly 1970s.

Perhaps it’s that seductive kick of the “R”, or the understated dynamism of the River Trent.

Impeccable and faultless.

#NCFC #DCFC

'What $1tn problem will AI solve?'

Well, quite. Funny that nobody has an answer for that. Strange that barely anyone is asking the question.

Wishing everyone a happy and prosperous year of the snake!

#ChineseNewYear #LunarNewYear #恭喜发财

Remember, all public rights of way ultimately originated as desire paths - places where people walked because they wanted to, trespass or not. They’ve only since been legitimised through Acts of Parliament and furnished with gates, stiles etc

bsky.app/profile/chaz...

TOP TIP!

Men! Take regular “hard looks at yourself and your behaviour towards others” *before* you’re the subject of an investigation into a repeated pattern of coercive and inappropriate behaviour predicated on an abusive power dynamic.

But in its panicked retreat from the system it spent years building, Meta may now be putting billions of users at risk. Just because Meta deleted that line about hateful speech causing offline violence doesn't mean it isn't true. And now the company has all but declared open season on immigrants, transgender people and whatever other targets that Trump and his allies find useful in their fascist project. "I can't tell you how much harm comes from non-illegal but harmful content," a longtime former trust and safety employee at the company told me. The classifiers that the company is now switching off meaningfully reduced the spread of hate movements on Meta's platforms, they said. "This is not the climate change debate, or pro-life vs. pro-choice. This is degrading, horrible content that leads to violence and that has the intent to harm other people."

I talked to 10 current and former Meta employees about the company's surrender to the right on speech issues. All were upset. One person called the changes "a precursor to genocide" www.platformer.news/meta-fact-ch...

Let me tell you about the weird business that delivers art into our lives, and the impact it has on the long-term careers of artists. This is a thread prompted by yet another article on authors' incomes, and the inevitable reactions from the 'people-would-pay-if-it-was-worth-it-to-them' brigade. 1/

Who is up for a short thread on the intriguing parallels between OpenAI and Enron, as told by one of Enron's investment bankers -- that is to say, me? Here goes...

Elon Musk’s fascist turn isn’t puzzling at all.

It’s all about labour 🧵

Musk’s latest intervention is objectively hilarious but the problem of a hideous human using his enormous wealth & power to promote lies & liars in the U.K., despite having no links to or other interest in the country, remains acute.

Appliances shouldn’t even have the internet, let alone built-in chatbots. Tech companies will keep forcing shitty tech on us to boost their bottom lines until we collective force them to stop.

i will never get over how mark zuckerberg spent the GDP of several small nations trying to convince people to have zoom work meetings in Minecraft

92 badges ranked: 69. #Oxford United.

Chicago Bulls? ❌️🏀
Cotswolds Bulls ✅️⚽️ 👌

#football #soccer #championship #efl #epl #nonleaguue #oufc #lufc #Leeds #stfc #cufc #qpr #ccfc #pfc #pompey #hull #hcfc #premierleague #Chicago #nba #basketball #reading #rfc #royals

92 badges ranked: 70. #Plymouth.

Blue Peter badges were never cool.

#pafc #Argyle #soccer #football #efl #epl #Rooney #ecfc #Devon #Cornwall #exeter #pfc #pompey #premierleague #nonleague #england #mufc #efc

Huge thanks to everyone who’s chipped in to make LBD interventions happen this year. We’re 100% funded by small donations & refuse big donors to protect us from becoming reliant on any individual source. Wanna help? Link in bio👆

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky
#BookChallenge
💙📚
Day 14

Then there's these utter tools coming for our beloved books too.

Under the guise of 'making it easier for authors to publish' they're just making it easier for AI-produced garbage to enter the marketplace, and harder for people to spot it a mile off.

I'm already seeing this play out on YouTube and Spotify.

On YouTube I'm continually targeted with philosophy & theory videos with AI image thumbnails and suspect voiceovers. The accounts are all separate but all look the same.

As for Spotify, the amount of AI music & audiobooks has skyrocketed.

LLM AI has been simultaneously touted as a threat to jobs and a solution to all of our problems. One big threat, in my view, is how it could fundamentally alter how people engage with the world and access knowledge and services. Entire fields of knowledge and creativity will be diminished by its use

People should be a lot more troubled by this than they currently are. It shouldn't be confined to educators and those that have taken an interest in what is happening.

This slapdash, sleight of hand, charlatanism will impact everything, and not in the way that MSM currently talk about.

And the thing is, if it's making up not just articles that never existed (with links that go nowhere) and people that never existed, but 'facts' that it is presenting with confidence, then we're in a grim situation. This stuff is being touted as the future and yet it's taking civilisation backwards

I can vouch for the fact that I have tried Chat GPT a few times in the last week (for signposts to articles and thinkers that link to ideas I've been exploring) and it has produced made up stuff on at least two occasions. I only knew because I checked out each of the things it listed.

Great news! Look forward to reading it!

ChatGPT o1 output Let’s check each state name to see if it contains the letter “p”: 1. Alabama - no 2. Alaska - no 3. Arizona - no 4. Arkansas - no 5. California - p 6. Colorado - no 7. Connecticut - no 8. Delaware - no 9. Florida - no 10. Georgia - no 11. Hawaii - no 12. Idaho - no 13. Illinois - no 14. Indiana - no 15. Iowa - no 16. Kansas - no 17. Kentucky - no 18. Louisiana - no 19. Maine - no 20. Maryland - no 21. Massachusetts - p 22. Michigan - no 23. Minnesota - no 24. Mississippi - p 25. Missouri - no 26. Montana - no 27. Nebraska - no 28. Nevada - no 29. New Hampshire - p 30. New Jersey - no 31. New Mexico - no 32. New York - no 33. North Carolina - no 34. North Dakota - no 35. Ohio - no 36. Oklahoma - no 37. Oregon - no 38. Pennsylvania - p 39. Rhode Island - no 40. South Carolina - no 41. South Dakota - no 42. Tennessee - no 43. Texas - no 44. Utah - no 45. Vermont - no 46. Virginia - no 47. Washington - no 48. West Virginia - no 49. Wisconsin - no 50. Wyoming - no States that contain the letter “p” are: California, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. Total: 5 states have the letter “p” in their name .

Let’s check each state name to see if it contains the letter “p”: 1. Alabama - no 2. Alaska - no 3. Arizona - no 4. Arkansas - no 5. California - p 6. Colorado - no 7. Connecticut - no 8. Delaware - no 9. Florida - no 10. Georgia - no 11. Hawaii - no 12. Idaho - no 13. Illinois - no 14. Indiana - no 15. Iowa - no 16. Kansas - no 17. Kentucky - no 18. Louisiana - no 19. Maine - no 20. Maryland - no 21. Massachusetts - p 22. Michigan - no 23. Minnesota - no 24. Mississippi - p 25. Missouri - no 26. Montana - no 27. Nebraska - no 28. Nevada - no 29. New Hampshire - p 30. New Jersey - no 31. New Mexico - no 32. New York - no 33. North Carolina - no 34. North Dakota - no 35. Ohio - no 36. Oklahoma - no 37. Oregon - no 38. Pennsylvania - p 39. Rhode Island - no 40. South Carolina - no 41. South Dakota - no 42. Tennessee - no 43. Texas - no 44. Utah - no 45. Vermont - no 46. Virginia - no 47. Washington - no 48. West Virginia - no 49. Wisconsin - no 50. Wyoming - no States that contain the letter “p” are: California, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. Total: 5 states have the letter “p” in their name.

I am once again using powerful, futuristic artificial intelligence and I remain astonished at the results

I love this podcast.

92 badges ranked: 82. @shrewsburytown.com A tin of Golden Syrup shows flies buzzing around a lions corpse. Perhaps this is the same creature, moments before death, releasing his final feeble breath. The weakest of many lions in English football.

#soccer #football #stfc #salop #efl #epl #shrewsbury

If you're puzzled or disturbed by the response to the United Healthcare shooting, let me share these 6 observations on this new phase in cultural conflict (THREAD...)

These come from an analysis I published just 22 days ago.

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky
#BookChallenge
💙📚
Day 13