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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Eridanus looks like it was created to deny proportional representation to voters in neighboring constellations

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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Saw someone hyperventilating over LLMs “passing the mirror test”, so …

TL;DR This short program “recognises itself”: show it a file containing its own source code and it will print “This is me!”

Underwhelmed? You should be! But I did have to type a lot of backslashes.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

in reply to Greg Egan

why didn’t you use raw strings to save yourself from all those back-slashes?
in reply to Greg Egan

In the 90s we had Eliza. Why couldn't we just have been happy enough with "Super Eliza" and watching ourselves drawn eating a twelve foot donut with Freddie Mercury?

Why did we have to jam this garbage machine into absolutely everything?


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


We got an email from the Serbian Registry of Internet Domain Names (RNIDS), the organisation that is responsible for the `.rs` top-level domain.

Looks like they are a big fan of Rust. 😊


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Looks like Threads is inhospitable to journalists posting real time information about major international news stories.
in reply to Steve Herman

Gosh! Zuck platform behaves like the other Zuck platforms! Color me shocked!
in reply to Steve Herman

that's a bummer. one by one, people will stagger over to the fediverse (not counting threads as worthy of the fediverse yet)


in reply to Natasha Jay 🇪🇺

"I mostly work with Ruby and Python but I can control any kind of snake with any kind of gemstone"


I have a knee jerk reaction to anyone saying they’ve lost something. Especially metaphorically.
“Mrs Jones lost her husband” “Has she looked down the back of the sofa?”


Can a swan be a birb? I can’t do polls on Friendica so you will have to reply either birb or the appropriate noun of your choice

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


The remarkable witness statement of Johnny Mercer

How a government minister tried and failed to get to the bottom of serious war crimes allegations

By me, at Prospect

prospectmagazine.co.uk/politic…



An article from earlier this year argues that it is entirely constitutionally appropriate for the Lords to block the Rwanda safety Bill and suggests some approaches the courts might take to it if it were passed. #ukpol
ukconstitutionallaw.org/2024/0…

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


It is perfectly proper for House of Lords to insist House of Commons think again with certain types of legislation.

This delaying power is expressly part of the Parliament Acts.

It is not an outright veto.

If Commons in their next session pass same Bill a year from now then it becomes law.

theguardian.com/politics/2024/…

in reply to d a t green

Is it then the case that the Lords CANNOT stop a bill in the end? Even if it's something obviously completely wrong like "All non-caucasian people to be euthanized"?
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

@ajlanes I see. I suppose the intent was that if the Lords kept sending something back over and over, the Commons would take the hint.

(I have to admit, in my Reductio Ad Absurdum, I struggled to come up with a hypothetical policy more obviously immoral than "send refugess to a country known for its genocides and human-rights abuses".)

in reply to Mike Taylor 🦕

@mike

No, there is no absolute veto is the Bill is passed by the Commons again a year later in identical terms.

You would then be looking to the monarch to not give it royal assent.

in reply to d a t green

I see — which is probaby why the government were so keen on rejecting ALL the amendments: so they can send it back in identical form. What a shower.
in reply to d a t green

“people are risking their lives in the hands of people who don’t care if they die as long as they pay”
A fair description by the Home Secretary of the COVID PPE profiteers who benefitted so much from this government during the pandemic

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Yo I've got a PhD in genetics from Cambridge and on the off-chance you need it I give you permission to say that Dawkins is a hack

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in reply to Koos Pol 🇺🇦

@KoosPol @FSMaxB The problem with popular science is that you get to just make your own claims without them being reviewed by other experts, so things like "The gene is the unit of selection" end up as part of popular understanding despite it not being accurate
in reply to Matthew Garrett

@FSMaxB Fair enough. But that's on another level then saying he's a hack. I'd argue that popular science is way more a means of getting people to understand things than necessarily being correct in every detail. It's ok to present omissions, generalizations and caricatures if it helps me understand difficult topics.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Jakop Dalunde commissioned it. I wrote it. And it came out this evening - what needs fixing has why with public transport ticketing, cross border, in the EU jakopdalunde.se/wp-content/upl…

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in reply to Jon Worth

Read it all now and have just one nitpick. The NAP’s don’t really solve the timetable data issue fully because being open data, they come with no guarantees. If a booking portal is planning journeys to sell tickets, there needs to also be a guarantee from the operators that the data is in fact correct, including some commercial relationship as recourse if there are errors.
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm

@stefanlindbohm thanks, but does this matter? Ok, when you hit “book” you might then end up with (fractionally?) different times, but are there cases where this would be significant enough to matter?
in reply to Jon Worth

I will have to get back to you on how frequent issues might be for inaccuracies as we get more data, but the big issue lies in building a portal that is dependent on data without a commercial relationship. If the data would disappear from one day to another and we would potentially have to go through courts to get access back, that is a huge risk to the business model.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Jon Worth

A lot of countries/operators are already fine with their long distance/regional traffic missing from Google/Apple maps. Or in a few cases they are present in Google/Apple without the data otherwise being publicly available (assumingly there are commercial agreements), which would make open data that another party uses a separate question that is lower impact for countries/operators to break.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


I would like to see greetings cards saying

"GET WELL SOON"

and inside

"The well is firmly cemented to the ground. You cannot take it.
What now?"

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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Ireland managed “marriage without regard to gender” before basic bodily autonomy for women. That’s so Ireland. The North’s worse.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


in reply to Alexandra Lanes

... and thereby having a significant impact on my life. That is so weird.


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


The dreaded barnyard puddle has returned, and the goats would like you to know they are really annoyed about it. I'm a little surprised they didn't make use of the plank, but goats have very strong opinions about getting their feet wet.

(Every year this puddle appears and I want to dig a trench, but the ground is still too frozen, and then the puddle soaks in by the time the ground is workable and I forget to do it)

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in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler

@Prof. Sam Lawler Seems like perfectly sensible behaviour for anyone spending time outside in your neck of the woods. Water is cold!
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Prof. Sam Lawler
@weirdmustard They're desert animals. Water makes them sad (though snow doesn't seem to bother them too much)

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


I've worked out when the Firefox developers plan to retire.

(Of course there seems to be an off-by-one error, it's javascript. Kwality is its watchword. I'd expected it to be on an IEEE754 boundary, but it looks like a magic constant).

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.



Me: "I don't think I know $person"
Friend: "I think they know you because you did a politics near them once"

That should be my epitaph. "Did a politics once"


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


If you want to buy Grace Petrie's new album Build Something Better, you should do it now so it has a chance to make the Top 40 chart.

If you bought it but haven't downloaded it, it doesn't count towards the charts, so go and download it.

gracepetrie.bandcamp.com/album…

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Happy get a sensible date order day to those who celebrate.

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in reply to Alexandra Lanes

I’m eagerly awaiting 22 July for the actual decent-approximation-to-pi-day.


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Discourse, 🔥flaming hot take🔥

Sensitive content

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in reply to Another Angry Woman

Discourse, 🔥flaming hot take🔥

Sensitive content

in reply to Another Angry Woman

Discourse, 🔥flaming hot take🔥

Sensitive content


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Do cis people in the UK actually think there has ever been a point at which transgender medicine was widely and routinely available on the NHS?

Guys, it never has. When they exist at all, the services are chronically underfunded with waiting lists that literally stretch for decades.

To a first approximation, if you want to medically transition in the UK, you are on your own, unless you want to fight a war of attrition for years.

TERFs like to pretend that you can easily access NHS gender identity services as if it were just a thing people do.

It appears some people have believed their fairy tales. However badly you think trans people are treated by the medical establishment in the UK, I promise you that the reality is worse, and always has been.

“Children on puberty blockers”. Fucking state of it. There are no children on puberty blockers. Not because they’re trans, anyway.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Totally endorse your summary of the lies, but there is a difference between underfunded and an exercise in bloody-mindedness on the one hand and wholly unavailable on the other. Many of us have no choice but to grit our teeth and grind through the system. Which is as bad as you say.
in reply to Isabel Ruffell

@Isabel Ruffell I transitioned with a lot of people who tried and were unable to access it.

Even at the peak of trans acceptance in the UK, being able to access ANYTHING depended on your postcode at least, and probably a few other things. Some PCTs as we’re basically refused to refer anyone for anything at all.

At which point, you either had the money to go round them, or you found ways to get it 😞

in reply to Sarah Brown

yes, my first attempt at transitioning was without any guarantee that the local health authority would pay for anything but hormones (and having to persuade the local shrinks to refer me to a GIC at all). I am now in my ninth year of a second attempt. Now that I am relatively close to finishing, I am in a position to make other arrangements, but that wasn't the case earlier. And it is awful that I feel fortunate to have made it so far, but then I conside whatr other folk face.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Isabel Ruffell

I basically had to self fund treatment to a certain extent but was incredibly lucky, combined with have a great GP, and being in Wales where they didn’t have a GIC at the time, that surgery was referred directly so I was one of those rare people who went to Heywards Heath. My partner did not so I used what I had saved, expecting I would have to pay, to pay for her. I know plenty who did the exceptionally slow NHS grind. I was just lucky with my circumstances.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Sarah Brown

I would love to ask a TERF to summarise their achievements in removing healthcare from trans people, and then summarise how easy it is for trans people to get it now. They know, of course they do. It's all doublethink.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


“NHS to end practice of back rubs for Godzilla”

If you think the NHS was ever actually giving trans children puberty blockers, then I’m afraid you have fallen for a TERF fairy tale. The NHS has never actually done decent treatment for trans children. news.sky.com/story/children-to…

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in reply to Sarah Brown

For reference, the daughter in question turns 13 soon. And it's not that anyone was trying to give puberty blockers to an eight-year-old, but the battle was to get her the possibility of having them when they would help.
in reply to David Matthewman

@David Matthewman Ok. Credit to her parents for fighting that battle, and maybe the Tavistock might have considered possibly doing it on a trial basis at some point (“maybe” is doing a lot of work there), but they basically don’t do that, and never have. Their standard mode of operation is to just keep talking until people age out of their service and can join an adult GIC waiting list.

The headline is literally just a reaffirmation of the way the NHS has always behaved. It’s giving the impression that it’s ending a practice of medical intervention for trans kids.

But to end something, it has to have started in the first place.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Uhhhh bbc.com/news/business-68534703

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I was watching the Portuguese election coverage last night. Ignore the Chega TV banner in the top left; they were just rebroadcasting RTP3’s coverage. What struck me was where in the UK we report turnout percentages, in Portugal the media report the opposite: the percentage of voters who stayed at home (abstenção in the bottom right). I wonder if there’s something about the political history of Portugal that makes this so.
Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
Alexandra Lanes
@Alisdair Calder McGregor Ooh, that's a good point; I hadn't noticed whether the numbers actually were %ages of the total electorate rather than of those who voted... And annoyingly they're not doing the UK thing of election coverage continuing well into the next day.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


I need privacy, not because my actions are questionable, but because some things are just none of your sodding business.

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in reply to Neil Brown

I'll give up my privacy, when...
Politician's conduct all interactions in public & on the record
Politician's publish their tax records, bank statements, shareholdings, w oversight by open forum
Politician's don't allow lobbying of any kind
All corporations pay their taxes in full, no offshore crap
Free healthcare, education, social care for all worldwide
When the industrial-miltary complex is dismantled
When all wars are abolished & nukes

Sorry, got carried away there, but its my list

in reply to Neil Brown

I like the one which says: I need #privacy not because I've got something to hide, but because you can't be trusted.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


“So sometimes my roommate, with whom I’ve been paying a mortgage for 10 years and looking after a herd of cats, does me against the wall with a strap on. Do you think I should risk telling her I have feelings for her? I’m pretty sure she’s straight.” reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpd…

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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Only 12.5% of the accommodation in this hotel is occupied, which makes one ruminate.

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in reply to Moose Allain

That took me a while 😀 Now I wonder, if I'd heard it rather than read it, would I have struggled the other way round?

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


So, just in case you needed the heads up - noauthority.social is a fascist server; appears to be a refuge for nazis who got tired of having their previous server, noagenda.social, defederated by literally everyone. I just caught some nazi rando in my replies and after blocking him, hopped over to his timeline to see who he's talking to and it's literally all other fascists from noauthority.social. Strong defederate with extreme prejudice recommendation for admins but it's your life.

#Fediblock

in reply to Paul Brownjohn

@Paulos_the_fog Yes, but it doesn't do what most people would think it does. It prevents YOU from seeing all posts, from that instance; as if you muted them all. They can still see and interact with your posts. In fact, it's pretty hard to stop people from SEEING your posts even if you have them blocked; they can just open a new window on a big neutral server like Social. But if you block individually, they can't interact with your posts, which is generally what you want re: nazis.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


The actual transcript excerpts from retired Army Lieutenant Colonel David Slater’s dating-site chats with his mystery gf are quite something. It’s as if HAL 9000 were trying to seduce Dave Bowman instead of lock him outside the ship.

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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


just spent longer than I'd like to admit waiting for my mobile wifi hotspot to appear as an option because I forgot I renamed it "Searching..."

hoisted by my own petard!

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friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Hoppy Notoonol O Doy to thoso who colobroto!

xanna reshared this.

in reply to Alexandra Lanes

O hovo no odoo of thoro's o doopor sognofoconco to todoy on portocolor boong o doy thot only hos O os o vowol, bot ovon of not, ot os o good odoo.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Here’s why the NHS were happy to vaccinate me with MMR the other day. From UK govt advice from
2019:

• individuals born between 1970 and 1979 may have been vaccinated against measles and many will have been exposed to mumps and rubella during childhood. However, this age group should be offered MMR wherever feasible, particularly if they are considered to be at high risk of exposure.

• individuals born before 1970 are likely to have had all three natural infections and are less likely to be susceptible. MMR vaccine should be offered to such individuals on request or if they are considered to be at high risk of exposure.

Tl;dr: younger GenX and older Millennials in the UK were likely given inadequate protection against measles and none against mumps and rubella: vaccinate on sight.

Older GenX and boomers: just give them the vaccine if they ask for it.

in reply to Sarah Brown

I lost some records and got one dose of MMR in 2003. Do you happen to know if this is adequate or do they want to do more topups?
in reply to Charles ☭ abdicated former king of England

I recall that you had whooping cough many months ago, which I was reminded of because I also got it last autumn. Somebody on here told me recently that it was included in the tetanus booster. Research done some years ago shows that people don't need to the tetanus boosters, but I guess whopping cough wasn't part of the study? Anyway, I haven't had that shot in 20 years now and I'm guessing virtually no others adults have either.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Oh wow, this is news to me <immediately goes to track down local vaccination services>

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


RIP to everyone killed by the borrow checker for their hubris but im different. and better. maybe even better than the borrow checker

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

in reply to Matthew Garrett

I'm easily better than the borrow checker, that's why I can write safe bug free C++ code.

[quietly shoving CVE list into a closet]


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Went to an NHS vaccine drop in centre and said, “I had a single measles vaccine 49 years ago. Could I have an MMR please?”

No quibbles. I am now in the queue for an MMR.

I will not go blind because of Andrew sodding Wakefield.

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in reply to Alexandra Lanes

@Alexandra Lanes Dupuutren's appears to have gone into remission overnight. I guess my body is too busy doing measles things to worry about fucking my hands.