“…persons living in walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods have higher levels of social capital compared with those living in car-oriented suburbs. Respondents living in walkable neighborhoods were more likely to know their neighbors, participate politically, trust others, and be socially engaged.”
WATCH: This is my favourite thing on the internet right now. Well done Norway! youtube.com/watch?v=T4Up...
![4-panel comic. (1) [Person with white hat talking to another person.] PERSON 1 with white hat: As Sherlock Holmes said, When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (2) PERSON 2: What about the possibility that you forgot to eliminate a possibility? Or that you eliminated one incorrectly? Both of those remain, too. (3) PERSON 1: You’re being pedantic. It’s just a general rule for deduction. PERSON 2: But it’s a *bad rule*. (4) PERSON 2: How often have you thought, “I can’t find this thing, and I’ve searched the whole house. The only place I haven’t looked is the car, so it *must* be there.” PERSON 2: ...And then it’s never in the car. PERSON 1: *It’s never in the car!*](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreifiy7vve3vnzcdv2ptjmuvd3twrsyuu2s5tkyvonqzk56mvinoxae)
4-panel comic. (1) [Person with white hat talking to another person.] PERSON 1 with white hat: As Sherlock Holmes said, When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (2) PERSON 2: What about the possibility that you forgot to eliminate a possibility? Or that you eliminated one incorrectly? Both of those remain, too. (3) PERSON 1: You’re being pedantic. It’s just a general rule for deduction. PERSON 2: But it’s a *bad rule*. (4) PERSON 2: How often have you thought, “I can’t find this thing, and I’ve searched the whole house. The only place I haven’t looked is the car, so it *must* be there.” PERSON 2: ...And then it’s never in the car. PERSON 1: *It’s never in the car!*
Eliminating the Impossible
xkcd.com/3210/
"Simon Harris had denounced the Deskerati as a shadowy force of people with terrifying horizontal wooden surfaces at their disposal, preventing him from bringing in facial recognition via CCTV."
www.thegist.ie/the-gist-a-balancing-act/
‘. . . The rapidly growing field of computer vision is contributing to the legacy of surveillance technologies, technologies that have infringed on privacy, limited free expression, exacerbated disparities and created conditions facilitating abuse of power.’
A good example of how age verification techniques can backfire, leaving you open to security risks. My main issue with biometrics for online IDs is that *you can’t change them* if your identity is stolen.
And you can’t change your PPS number either.
#SpeirGorm
www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/20...
still unclear to me how the species made it this far
Privacy is a big deal for cars, especially electric cars. Many are worried about Chinese cars. What is worth remembering is that Western car manufacturers all fail on respecting user privacy www.mozillafoundation.org/en/blog/priv...
#Privacy #EV
Ireland, Day 1056 of The Rain. Everything is saturated to the grey of the sky. Moss covers every surface. The outdoors sounds like constant static. The entire staff of Met Éireann is on mental health leave. I’ve forgotten what dry clothes feel like.
It is still a yellow weather alert.
#SpeirGorm
“A key driver of China’s AI momentum stems from its aggressive embrace of open models, a shift sparked by DeepSeek’s breakout success. Since then, Chinese AI labs have jumped on the open-model bandwagon.The turn to open models in China “has dramatically reduced costs for developers & enterprises,””
When AI was added to a tool for sinus surgery: “Cerebrospinal fluid leaked from one patient’s nose. In another… a surgeon mistakenly punctured the base of a patient’s skull. In two other cases, patients suffered strokes after a major artery was accidentally injured”
www.reuters.com/investigatio...
“The climate scientists we surveyed were unambiguous: current economic models can’t capture what matters most – the cascading failures and compounding shocks that define climate risk in a warmer world – and could undermine the very foundations of economic growth.”
This should be THE story everyday.
🇪🇺 The EU wants to boost open source with better funding and a new strategy, and they're looking for your feedback.
Here's your chance to shape the future of EU tech policy. Share your opinion by February 3.
Learn more.👇
This article is a very useful reframing of the tired “Europe falling behind in tech” whinge.
Europe has actually build the foundations for socially useful tech, for decades.
What it has not done is attempt to create Empires by extracting cash from that work.
ploum.net/2026-01-22-w...
Charles Yang of Time for Three absolutely slaying me. I would lose my mind if I heard this live. Even crappy phone speakers made me scream and cry.
“One mile on a bike is a $.42 economic gain to society, one mile driving is a $.20 loss.”
“Which means that Copenhagen, a city of 1.2 million people, saves $357 million a year on health costs because something like 80% of its population commutes by bike.” #CityMakingMath
Some costs aren’t costs.
AI & Humans: Making the Relationship Work
Leaders of many organizations are urging their teams to adopt agentic AI to improve efficiency, but are finding it hard to achieve any benefit. Managers attempting to add AI agents to existing human teams may find that bots fail to faithfully follow their…
AI and the Corporate Capture of Knowledge
More than a decade after Aaron Swartz's death, the United States is still living inside the contradiction that destroyed him. Swartz believed that knowledge, especially publicly funded knowledge, should be freely accessible. Acting on that, he downloaded…
We are pleased to announce the 13 - 16 April 13, 2026 Software Citation Workshop in San Diego, California — an interactive, cross‑disciplinary event focused on advancing best practices, implementation strategies, and community engagement for software citation in astronomy research (and beyond).
1/6
The cyberpsychologist says that Grok’s ‘nudify’ controversy is not just a 'bad app' issue — it is a global governance challenge...
jrnl.ie/6928174
In the meantime, the replay from December on the Value Paths for OSPOs and ISPOs by @claredillon.bsky.social is online, together with all the previous sessions.
🎥 You can watch them at ospo-alliance.org/onramp/past_...
bsky.app/profile/ospo...
Beneath a banner reading "Mathematical Society: 2025 Meeting" some stick-figure mathematicians are having a conversation. Mathematician 1: "Any other development from the year to cover, before we wrap?" Mathematician 2: "Oh, the teens picked a new funny number." Mathematician 3: "Aww, I'm glad to hear they're still doing that." Mathematician 4: "I'll add it to the list". She is drawn writing the number "67" onto a whiteboard that already contains the following numbers: "23 (skidoo!). 42. 1,337. 69. 58,008. 420."
Absolutely top-notch comic-ry from #XKCD today.
Extract from Rob Reiner's Wikipedia Filmography 1986 - Stand By zme 1987 - The Princess Bride 1989 - When Harry Met Sally 1990 - Misery 1992 - A Few Good Men
Rob Reiner: I'm going to make a coming of age drama, a fantasy adventure story, a romantic comedy, a psychological horror and then a courtroom drama.
Us: Across your entire career?
Reiner: In a 6 year period.
Us: That sounds-
Reiner: -Each one will be arguably the best movie in that genre.
The tenants of "The Complex" the brilliant arts space just off Capel St Stop are being evicted in January and the city can't afford to lose yet *another* cultural space.
Please sign & share the petition to save The Complex
At a meeting Monday, councillors fumed over the govt's delay of Dart extension meant to serve thousands of homes. “If we keep taking money away from these projects and delaying them, we’re just going to condemn people to slowly losing the will to live in gridlock.”
“Maybe we’re onto something.”
“How can we tell? We’ve only done this 187,623 times with the same success every single time. Could be a fluke.”
I’d never have guessed.
Read this interview with @peterthorne.bsky.social to understand how dire the situation is with respect to US science funding. The US has played an outsized role in Earth observations and global coordination, and even if other nations decide to step in, it would take at least a decade to recover.
UK consumers warned over AI chatbots giving inaccurate financial advice
People support structures that support them. Who in your workplace is the biggest slopAI enthusiast?
news.stanford.edu/stories/2025...
