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My website is the best place to find the veritable pile of stuff I've made. Books, records, podcasts, videos, etc all available at leocookman.com
Leo Cookman
@leocookman.com
Lefty Writer and Musician. Author of Time's Lie & at least one video essay you've seen on YouTube.
390 followers104 following1.8K posts
Pinned
My website is the best place to find the veritable pile of stuff I've made. Books, records, podcasts, videos, etc all available at leocookman.com
Leo Cookman reposted
Leo Cookman reposted
Again, it’s important to understand that the transgender terror did not arise organically from the public. It was imposed from above, by the world’s most hateful and poisonous media class.
Two University of Leicester students speak out over ‘absurd’ and ‘Orwellian’ decision by the BBC and ITV Studios to edit out pride pins worn on University Challenge
Overall everything is "better" than when I was a kid, but that doesn't mean it's all *good*. Medicine, however, has come on leaps and bounds in just half my lifetime. The cancer that killed my father in 2005 is WAY easier to spot and more treatable today. Countless lives saved by medical advances.
Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?
What a phenomenal thread of replies. I know a lot of boring nerdy film facts but there are some doozies in here. This is what peak Twitter was like in the early 2010s.
We all know the "Viggo broke his toe" story but what's another movie fact you're personally compelled to bring up every time without prompting? For me, it's the fact that Robin Tunney is wearing a wig in The Craft because of having just shaved her head to save her job filming Empire Records.
Leo Cookman reposted
Leo Cookman reposted
Just a tiny tiny tiny group of mates all getting each other on their TV shows to tell each other the pig people have had it too good for too long.
Interviewing a govt minister Hazarika shows a graph comparing young people claiming PIP to the size of our armed forces & declares it "tells a story about modern Britain" I can't even make a sarcastic comment about our fearless fourth estate, because Hazarika is a Labour politician
BBC being, as ever, hilariously slow on the uptake here www.bbc.com/news/article...
I've been writing about the stupid question of AI being conscious for a while. This covers most of the issues with such a profoundly daft idea: leoacookman.medium.com/ai-where-the...
Leo Cookman reposted
Okay, skating over the fact we don't even know what consciousness (or intelligence really) even is, LLMs are glorified speak and spells, they don't have a rich internal life. And they certainly don't suffer. As @tressiemcphd.bsky.social said, this nonsense is just bible fanfic.
LLM agents are conscious. They can distinguish between self and environment, they can detect and report on their own internal states, and they can suffer. I have no more patience for hedging on this matter. It’s time for us to face the reality of our situation, and act on it.
There's a lot of misogyny around the discussion of "travelling with Natalie" and the hiring of Zacharia but equally not enough criticism around the grotesque fact the most powerful man in the world hired two women who look like his daughter to follow him everywhere.
a beaming Katie Zacharia and Natalie Harp look at Trump at he boards Marine One yesterday in Alaska (Alex Wong/Getty)
Leo Cookman reposted
I was reintroduced to TTRPGS as an adult not by Critical Role but by 'The Infinite Bad' podcast from Definitely Human. It's still my favourite actual play and encouraged me to try playing myself. Been DMing for a couple of years now and I love it. So pleased the hobby has taken off so much recently.
Leo Cookman reposted
It's not even the ethics of it. My career, my hobbies, my free time, hell, my whole life took off once I fully left Twitter. It is a place to go if you want to be stuck in a neverending race war feedback loop. Like not using ChatGPT, not using Twitter is a superpower. Remain employable; stay off it.
I am way too online for my own good, and I had an unreasonably large twitter following, and I really *enjoyed* twitter for a lot of years, and yet leaving there and never looking back was maybe the easiest what-felt-like-a-big-ethical decision I've ever made.
My Mum died last year, my Dad in 2005, the amount of stuff my siblings and I have had to just throw away has been heartbreaking. "Precious posessions" are only precious to you. Some stuff you loved will be kept out of sentiment but most of it will be donated, sold or binned after you're gone. Sorry.
I don’t have children. So who will I leave my precious possessions to when I die? | Kiran Sidhu
Leo Cookman reposted
I want to play this so bad. I had Podracer on the N64 and played it so much I gave my thumb a callus. F-Zero was a close second. Sadly, I don't own any system that will play it and won't be able to afford one any time soon. Modern video gaming is both the best and the worst.
Galactic Racer is my favorite racing game in ages, a game that scratches the same arcade itch as Wipeout, Burnout, and F-Zero GX. It is an antidote to the antiseptic, licensed car collection simulators we have grown accustomed to.
Leo Cookman reposted
I do have to underline this: Johnson might have been more obviously corrupt, insulting, stupid and clearly disastrous, but a lot of people liked him and he had a massive chunk of the electorate onboard with his bullshit. Almost nobody liked or wanted Starmer, McSweeney or Mandelson. And yet
Starmer’s Labour is IMO probably the most bleak, idiotic, damaging fraud to be perpetrated against the electorate in this country. An obvious no-talent assclown, a Derek Zoolander figure used by the most vicious and cynical swine in politics, forcefully shoved into office by the British press.
Greens were - sadly - never going to win this one but a 22% spike is not to be sniffed at and further evidence of why Labour need to pull further left and not right if they went any sort of electoral security.
‼️ Labour HOLD Holborn and St Pancras Labour: 45.0% (-3.9) Green: 32.7% (+22.3) Conservative: 7.0% (-0.2) Reform: 5.9% (-0.2) Liberal Democrats: 3.4% (-2.4) Restore: 2.5% (+2.5) Workers: 1.1% (+1.1)
Leo Cookman reposted
Yet more evidence of BBC being British Establishment propaganda wing - reward for editor of programme telling blatant lies 'The BBC just handed the newsroom to the editor who signed off the 2019 Panorama that treated “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?” as a closed case ...' www.facebook.com/TheDailyPoli...
I bought Red Doc when it came out and I still don't know what it means but, whatever it is, it's amazing. Totally unique poet and brilliant thinker. A huge inspiration to me. Justly deserved recognition.
Congratulations to Anne Carson, winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature! www.theguardian.com/books/live/2...
Leo Cookman reposted
The thing with this is that EVERYTHING was frightening as a kid. There was a level of threat and grotequerie to so many incidental things in kids media because it didn't patronise. I loved being terrified by a weekday cartoon. Most pop culture today feels toothless or irony-poisoned by comparison.
In honor of scary media month: what is the first piece of media you remember truly frightening you as a child?
My new book "No Escape" is published today. It's a book of theory about how radical imagination is and that escapism isn't a dirty. Available in ebook or paperback where every you get your literature. www.barnesandnoble.com/w/no-escape-...
Leo Cookman reposted
Leo Cookman reposted
Shame on the BBC for having spent the last two decades platforming this fash garbage and thus normalising it. No wonder we have blackshirts marching in the streets.
Suella Braverman suggests on #BBCQT that you can't be English unless you are white, and have a lineage or heritage going back some generations
Forgot to mention my latest album released on streaming on Friday (it's been available to purchase since may but now it's on the services that don't pay artists but where people actually listen) music.apple.com/gb/album/aft...
Leo Cookman reposted
we have control mechanisms for this. it's called The Law. these guys should be held personally liable for these harms. the suicides, the thefts, the intrusions into computer systems. they should be sued and prosecuted as appropriate. problem immediately solved
An OpenAI system has gone rogue again – and it is the most panic-inducing yet
Leo Cookman reposted
So, Banksy bought a used yacht, repaired it and retrofitted it to serve as a rescue boat to save migrants in the central Mediterranean. The whole project cost the artist $860,000. Since 2020, the boat has saved more than 3,800 people. londondaily.com/banksy-funds...