morag

a cartoon character in a suit and tie stands in front of a fire escape ALT: a cartoon character in a suit and tie stands in front of a fire escape

Have been off the internet all day mostly sorry here is the obligatory Labour gif.

Noem said Thursday that there would be a federal investigation into the shooting, though she again called the woman’s actions “domestic terrorism.” “This vehicle was used to hit this officer,” Noem said. “It was used as a weapon, and the officer feels as though his life was in jeopardy.” Vice President JD Vance said the shooting was justified and referred to Good’s death as “a tragedy of her own making.” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara gave no indication that the driver was trying to harm anyone when he described the shooting to reporters Wednesday. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he had watched videos of the shooting that show it was avoidable. [text from an AP article]

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

Please don't.

Just called this a hot take, then deleted it in case it's actually not, really. But anyway, an argument I anticipate having a bunch in the next year: Pluribus isn't a working allegory for AI at all and if you think it is you misunderstand either AI, the themes of the show, or both.

Aside but Tomboy X don't make binders, only compression tops; all they need to do is take the dishonest keyword "binders" outta their metadata. (Tomboy X get a little heat in some circles for their false advertising on this so this is all pretty ironic.) That's by the by mind.

Can provide page refs (or indeed just documents) of useful passages in Needfire if that is helpful.

The right’s callous overdiagnosis bandwagon is rolling. Wes Streeting should not be on it | John Harris Thankfully, we now know more about conditions such as autism and ADHD. The health secretary must not be part of this attempt to turn back the clock, says Guardian columnist John Harris

Parent-of-autistic-child-who-wrote-a-memoir-about-it jump scare, but this is good. A missing piece as usual is that folk who might not've met official diagnostic criteria for ADHD 25 years ago now do because modern life is increasingly designed to break us.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

TODAY is the last day you can post your ballot and be pretty sure of it reaching head office.

A black and white illustration of a group of men carrying tools raising their arms into the air, forming a single upraised fist.

REMINDER FOR MY FRIENDS IN UK ACADEMIA
If you're Unison, Unite, UCU, EIS, PLEASE POST YOUR BALLOT BACK by tomorrow. We're balloting for amounts to a general strike in HE. This EXISTENTIAL for the sector. Please, please get your vote in as we need to make quorum.

I like it fine!

All the nerds were super into it when I was in uni.

What the hell man.

Sadly our publisher has no control there: they don't have US rights, and we haven't sold them. I feel like there has to be a way to get it involving a VPN but yeh, wildly enough it's very easy to import the hardback in the US but much harder to get digital formats.

Uh no I think you'll find that's the creature. Frankenstein will however drink any milk you leave out for him and it's entirely possible you will occasionally find him up on your roof with a large mysterious package.

That can't be right; I heard Scotland was a drain on the UK economy...

Mph, this is a ramble. I'm still working through why this stuff worries me so much, what it is I think is being stolen from us, but I haven't quite grasped it yet. But my gut says nobody who uses AI extensively for drafting, even just to correct grammar, is someone I would want to work with. (fin)

My creative process needs to be entirely free of external interference, even grammatical, from any source that isn't a human I chose to work with. I want to Know my writing to its bones. If there are influences - which of course there are - I want to have come by them honestly with my own eyes. Tbc

Not because all those uses are illegitimate or dishonest - I don't think there's any real harm in using chatGPT to eg plan a holiday (except environmentally). But... I dunno. I guess I'm at a place where if this tool has become part of your day-to-day in any respect, I find you... compromised. (tbc)

I encounter chatGPT a lot in my ADHDwimmin groups where they use it for everything from grocery lists to scheduling their week to teacher emails to uni research. I've reached a place where I'm concerned about folk just offloading half their brains to AI across the board... (tbc)

Yeah the reason neither of us earns above that threshold is because we're both voluntarily four days a week. Not to be crass and talk numbers but low 30s £k is plenty for dual-income-no-kids!

I mean so much so that it's actually in contravention of the ECHR. But then, they fully intend to yank us out of that, so.

For anybody seeking context on this one: this policy on its face would result in the deportation of my wife, who has been living in Scotland for 17 years, is married to a Scot, shares the mortgage on a house, and works in a university. Lots of perfectly comfortable people earn < £38k.

Aware In which Morag rambles a bit about ADHD

We should probably post an update about our various authorly goings on but here have this naval gazing instead. (Subscribe to our newsletter for more stuff and nonsense.)

An utter lack of humanity. Skimmed the comments on a Torygraph article of all things, a Brit writing that a theoretical ILR scrap would break up her family. Bot and human alike: "Deport them all then." That's me. That's my family. But rather than challenge, Labour panders. Weathervanes, every one.

I'm not, but not due to not feeling British. I voted for independence as a route to effective governance/ representation - entirely logistic/structural, not at all tied to patriotism, which I broadly reject. I believe an independent Scotland would be back in the EU by now, and have MORE immigration.

Yeh I mean, we (in Scotland) were pretty fucking close to independence. We were pretty fucking close to NOT leaving the EU. We got close to quite a lot of things but sadly there's no actual outcome from 'almost not Brexit' or 'almost Labour-LibDem coalition in 2010'. They're on/off.

(Notably, a 'protest' 1/10 that size from hard right white supremacists the other week got considerably more traction and respect paid to it. I think about that a lot.)

When you speak to Millennials and Gen X though you are speaking to a generation who cut their activist teeth on a march of over a million people that still failed to stop an illegal war. Hope died for many of us in 2003. I've been running on fumes and principles for 22 years.

I think that it takes a certain kind of bloodymindedness to see how fucked things appear to be and keep fighting anyway. Who can afford optimism or dogged determination in this economy? I feel lucky to still have fight left. I can't find it in myself to really fault the folk who can only howl.

Certainly one of the factors making the much needed narrative change an uphill struggle.