Tom SF Haines

The screenshot of the release notes reads: A new version of TeX Live Utility is available! TeX Live Utility 1.55 is now available-you have 1.54. Would you like to download it now? Release Notes: Changes Since 1.54 • Fix bug 137, homepage link in Help Book. • First release in a long time, since I don't use TeX anymore and resent the very idea of paying Apple annually for the privilege of giving away free and open-source software. Also, I'm really lazy. Please accept my apologies for all the annoying issues you've encountered in this mission-critical software. • Updated mirror list, which was three years out of date. • Added missing legacy mirrors, which was even more out of date. • Added an alert on startup when user tries Homebrew's lobotomized MacTex, because those lunatics left timgr but removed its database. Thanks for nothing, guys. Bug 142 and 144. • Use a custom user-agent to work around the Anubis bot trap on texlive.info. Can't wait to see what else breaks because of this, thanks to the profusion of degenerate Artificial Insemination fetishists scraping websites to feed their models. • Lists of countries in Repository/Continent are now sorted. No idea how you people let me get away with that one for the last fifteen years.

There's a "is anyone even reading this" sort of honesty you get in the software update release notes from a project that's been around for a long time.

Unburying the lede from my essay on why we all feel like numb frozen crap these days…

catvalente.substack.com/p/this-is-wh...

Following the controversy over the edited Trump speech, the BBC has been lambasted for its negative and biased portrayal of the leader of a prominent right-wing government…

An Evening with Private Eye 2025, out now on YouTube.

This is the saddest day of my professional life. Today is not only the final recording of the latest series of The Infinite Monkey Cage, it is my last ever Monkey Cage. I never thought that I would have to leave the show. I always imagined going on until | dropped dead under the studio lights due to a brain aneurysm caused by my final attempt to understand notions of quantum gravity or the shock of being told about fly maggot infestations in the sacks of macaque monkeys. I resigned in September, after sixteen years of dedication to the show, A show that I named and helped develop over all those years. Unfortunately, my opinions outside the BBC have been considered problematic for sometime, whether it has been voicing support for the trans community, criticism of Donald Trump, numerous other outlandish opinions, including once gently criticising Stephen Fry. These things were considered to conflict with being a freelance BBC science presenter

In a recent meeting where BBC Studio executives again voiced problems with me, I realised my choices. Obedience and being quieter to remain making Monkey Cage, or 'Resign and have the freedom to speak out against what I believe are injustices'. • I chose the latter. It broke my heart. I love this show and I love the audience, and it is because of the audience in particular, that this decision was so difficult to make. I kept thinking about all the extremist voices promoting hate and division. They are being given so many platforms, while voices that represent kindness, open mindedness, empathy seem to be scarcer and scarcer. I felt I couldn't pamper myself with the luxury of silence. One of my many privileges is that I am able to resign and I can speak out even if it is to the detriment of my career.

I have thought a lot about my heroes, Sinead O Connor, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and so many more. I think of Sinead's words, "the job of an artist is to be themselves at any cost". James Baldwin said prejudice was really just a word for cowardice. Audre Lorde, viewing her life, wrote that her only regrets were her silences. I think of my father as I resign, he brought me up to believe in fairness , justice and kindness. Though my heart is broken, it is also full of fire. I apologise to our incredible listeners for my departure, your love of the show means a great deal. I am so sorry to let you down. I hope that you can understand my reasoning. I have to accept that I am not what the current BBC expects of their freelance presenters.

Despite this I should add that I have always worked far more than my contracted hours to try and ensure the show was always the best it could be, as well as making myself accessible and responsive to the audience wherever and whenever I met them. Every night, we have recorded, I have been filled with determination to make the best show possible. This was not "just a job" I hope that with my departure I can be a better ally to the LGBTQ community, to the neurodivergent community, to activists fighting against those who aim to brutalise society, to those currently in prison on hunger strike, and to all those who fight for a more inclusive world. From many conversations, I know there are many Monkey Cage listeners who support these communities and activists too. The strawberry is dead. Long live the strawberry. B

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

the fifa peace prize trophy with zombie-like hands holding up a crumbling earth

in the movies this is the screensaver on the computers at the world’s most evil company

We have PhD opportunity (start date Sep 2026) at the University of Edinburgh at the intersection of biodiversity mapping and zoonotic disease prediction.

It is part of the UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Biomedical Innovation based in the School of Informatics:
ai4bi-cdt.ed.ac.uk

Interested in doing a PhD in machine learning at the University of Edinburgh starting Sept 2026?

My group works on topics in vision, machine learning, and AI for climate.

For more information and details on how to get in touch, please check out my website:
homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/omacaod

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

Jane Goodall said she’d like to send off to another planet: Musk, Trump, Putin, Xi & Netanyahu. 🚀

We have a Research Systems Developer job, for someone who likes the challenge of building custom systems to support research within a computer science department: www.bath.ac.uk/jobs/Vacancy... Should be a varied role for anyone who likes unusual/weird problems and learning new things!

🧵Introducing the Trump Action Tracker website!

Today I’m launching www.trumpactiontracker.info - a live, searchable list of authoritarian‑style actions from Trump’s second term (over 740 actions so far). 1/14

Startling conclusion here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/humanity

#smbc

Take a listen and seriously consider it. While this is not an uncommon practice, I am glad people are beginning to speak up about it.

Are you interested in the governance of emergent tech?

Come & work w/ me @bmittelstadt.bsky.social & @cruss.bsky.social

We are looking for 3 Post Docs in
Law: tinyurl.com/4rbhcndp
Ethics: tinyurl.com/yc2e2km4
Computer Science/AI/ML: tinyurl.com/yr5bvnn5

Application deadline is June 15, 2025.

US climate scientists need all the help they can get. Including from foul-mouthed comedians! 🤡😱😱

Watch Emmy Award-Winning David Cross team up with Prof Michael Oppenheimer in the US launch of the hit series "Climate Science Translated".

#climate #arresteddevelopment #climatescience

Congratulations Dr Ziubroniewicz. Too bad it wasn’t a machine vision dissertation, so he could deblur the picture. Congratulations to @ozgursimsek.bsky.social the proud doctor mother too! @tomsfhaines.bsky.social was the internal. My first trip back to Bath since Brexit.

The photo pf the huge container ship run aground in the garden of a small coastal house. I've photoshopped an arrow to the house with 'House to Live in', and another arrow to the ship that says 'a room to keep books in'. of course writing the alt text has warned me this may be a joke that only I find funny.

Exciting and practical house designs coming out of Scandinavia

Is In-Context Learning (ICL) in LLMs Memorisation? Emergence? Some Algorithmic Capability? 🤔

📢New work exploring ICL in LLMs: arxiv.org/abs/2505.11004

💡Key Finding:
ICL capabilities are linked to token frequency 🤨

Strap in for the unexpected 🤯

A 🧵👇 #NLProc

Starmer's anti-immigrant speech today wasn't just a moral and political embarrassment. It was also an intellectual embarrassment.

inews.co.uk/opinion/star...

TANK vs TESLA

"We've crushed fascism before and we'll crush it again"

- ⁠WW2 veteran Ken, 98, in the tank

We're still looking for new machine learning lecturers (+senior lecturers and one reader) to join us at the University of Bath. Big and growing research group with varied interests in a beautiful city:-) www.bath.ac.uk/jobs/Vacancy... www.bath.ac.uk/jobs/Vacancy...

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

The problem with most machine-based random number generators is that they’re not TRULY random, so if you need genuine randomness it is sometimes necessary to link your code to an external random process like a physical noise source or the current rate of US tariffs on a given country.

Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive.

No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief.

1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.

We have lots of lectureships in #AI / #ML @uniofbath.bsky.social. Friendly colleagues, beautiful city and more areas of expertise than I can keep track of. www.bath.ac.uk/jobs/Vacancy... (lecturer/senior lecturer) and www.bath.ac.uk/jobs/Vacancy... (reader).

a statue of a hippopotamus with its mouth open and teeth showing . Alt: A hippo being tossed a watermelon, which it crushes in its massive jaws.

I have been doing entirely too much earnest posting about deep things recently, I need to do a proper thread about hippo testicles or something just to keep myself sane.

Oh by the way hippos have migratory testicles.

Maybe appealing to people trying to get out of the US.

lecturer = asst prof
sr lecturer = assoc prof
reader = assoc prof with better transition probability to full prof than a sr lecturer

The Washington Post and LA Times editorial pages have gone full MAGA, MSNBC has purged all of its anti-Trump anchors, and Twitter is owned by a literal Nazi. Here's why liberal media bias is still a problem.

We have lots of lectureships in #AI / #ML @uniofbath.bsky.social. Friendly colleagues, beautiful city and more areas of expertise than I can keep track of. www.bath.ac.uk/jobs/Vacancy... (lecturer/senior lecturer) and www.bath.ac.uk/jobs/Vacancy... (reader).