Pals

1. Australian politicians do not mince words

(tags:australia politics video )

2. An Australian piece on why 25 degrees really is hot in the UK

(tags:temperature architecture climate uk australia video )

1. EU puts Monaco on money laundering blacklist

(tags:fraud money Europe )

2. Steven Universe Sequel Series Heads to Prime Video

(tags:TV animation scifi GoodNews )

3. Houseplants Do Not Purify the Air

(tags:air pollution plants )

4. Solar Orbiter offers first glimpse of the Sun's poles in breakthrough mission

(tags:sun astronomy space solarsystem )

5. Cthulhu's ABCs: A Heavy Metal Muppet Parody Song about the Alphabet

(tags:muppets language funny video cthulhu viaKirsty )

6. Book burning is a modern free speech test for Labour

(tags:uk freespeech religion )

Reading this article on advice to teachers in the UK about using AI, they suggest using it for things like "marking quizzes" and "generating routine letters".

And what really annoys me about this is that it's a perfect example of where simple automation could be used without the need for AI.

The precise example in the article is "Generate a letter to parents about a head lice outbreak." - which is a fairly common thing to happen in schools. So why on earth isn't there one standard letter per school, if not one standard letter for the whole country, that can be reused by absolutely everyone whenever this standard event happens? Why does this require AI to generate a new one every time, rather than just being a standard email that gets sent?

Same with marking quizzes. If children get multiple-choice quizzes regularly across all schools, and marking them uses precious teacher time, why is there not a standard piece of software, paid for once (or written once internally) which enables all children to do quizzes in a standard way, and get them marked automatically?

If we're investing a bunch of money into automating the various processes that teachers spend far too much time on, start with simple automation, which is cheap, easy, and reliable.

Also, wouldn't it be sensible to do some research into how accurately AI marks homework *before* you tell teachers to use it to do that? Here's some research from February which shows that its agreement with examiners was only 0.61 (where 1.00 would be perfect agreement). So I'm sceptical about the quality of the marking it's going to be doing...

1. Have you experience the glory that is "It's Raining Tacos"? Because my children have subjected me to it over 5,000 times now...

(tags:music video children food funny )

2. Mapping Edinburgh planning applications

(tags:Edinburgh planning maps visualisation )

3. The UK's North-South divide in transport funding - mapped

(tags:uk transport government money )

4. AI - where are we now?

(tags:ai programming globalwarming economics )

My brother Mike got me this for my birthday, and it just takes a weight off my mind being able to say "bring the steam temperature up to 95 degrees and hold it there"

(Control over oil temperature when frying eggs is also awesome.)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

I spent the day feeling bad for lacking focus, and wondering why I couldn't get anything done.
And then I slept for an hour on no notice.
And now I'm very wobbly and all of my muscles gently ache.
So I think I'm going to chalk it up as "The Plague" and hope I feel better tomorrow.

1. First case on AI and copyright referred to the CJEU

(tags:europe law copyright ai )

2. Therapy Chatbot Tells Recovering Addict to Have a Little Meth as a Treat

(tags:ai drugs )

3. What it's like being made responsible for the behaviour of Conservative MPs

(tags:Conservatives chaos politics UK )

4. Reform leads in voting intentions - but where does their vote come from?

(tags:voting polls uk politics )

5. The Universal Tech Tree

(tags:Technology history visualisation )

1. Microsoft will make Windows use your selected browser for searches. But only in the EU. Because they're dicks.

(tags:Microsoft OhForFucksSake regulation Europe )

2. Voters In Labour-Reform Battleground Seats More Likely To Rely On Disability Benefits

(tags:welfare inequality disability politics uk )

1. Musk Weighs Return To Politics After 60th Death On 'Elden Ring Nightreign' Tutorial

(tags:ElonMusk satire games politics )

2. Download festival clarifies stance after being slammed by Manchester band in trans bathroom row

(tags:LGBT transgender festival Manchester toilets )

3. Vodafone and Three UK Officially Complete £16bn Merger

(tags:phones business UK )

4. Brits think that we should spend more on defence, but we shouldn't raise taxes or cut other spending to pay for it.

(tags:tax military uk money government )

British Voters are happy that UK net migration is down. But they still think it's too high. Sadly, there is no information about how much immigration voters would like, but I suspect that they think that zero is good. And probably that negative is better.

And a fair chunk of this is because Labour and the Conservatives are both backing the idea that immigration is a bad thing. Lib Dems are in favour of being more humane about it than either of them, but only the SNP seem to have a policy that recognises that if immigration doesn't go up the economy is fucked.

Britain is aging. With serious economic consequences, with insufficient people entering the workforce to make up for the people leaving it, and increasing healthcare costs.

If we want the economy to function then either we will have to have more children or to bring more people in to work here. Those are the two options. And nobody has successfully managed to get a developed society to do the former*. So either we deal with an insupportable economy or we increase immigration. But neither of the big political parties wants to deal with the Daily Mail screaming at them, so we're going to spend the next few years doing the economically** stupid thing.

* Except Israel. Who we are unlikely to emulate.
** Obviously I haven't touched on the moral case here.