Tom Freeman

If people are stealing from polling stations and getting away with it, that's a pretty damning indictment of whatever negligent incompetents are currently running the government.

Accidentally bought a jar of raspberry jam that isn't seedless, and I'm trying to make the best of a bad job, but it makes me sad that there are people who voluntarily inflict this crunchy misery on themselves and their families

I guess in theory an extremely small amount of help is better than no help, but in practice this just looks like a big sign saying "We're completely powerless!!!"

Well, the Ghosts film is perfectly lovely

The really tricky bit is holding your breath while saying "Hold, two, three, four"

The rule against making loud noise in a library is officially known as the Dewey Decibel System.

You'd think "Most incompetent prime minister ever too incompetent to understand own incompetence" would at some point lose momentum as a news story, but no

The rule against making loud noise in a library is officially known as the Dewey Decibel System.

I asked AI for three things that make my daughter special, and it said: "We will add her biological, technological and cultural distinctiveness to our own."

OK I am now willing to start feeling hopeful about Brazil

Oh god, please do not make me feel hopeful about Brazil, I can't bear it

Looking forward to the new Gone Fishing tonight, but with some anticipatory sadness #ted

Don't forget to stockpile guns so that in the event of a crisis you can nick all your neighbours' food and water

The proportion of online ads that are for ill-defined AI business services now far exceeds the "lager ads during a World Cup football match" threshold

"Cosy crime" what like a duvet heist

Superb bar chart here.

Dismaying, but unsurprising. I like to think the BBC's failure to cover racism accurately is an aspect of the superficiality that comes from lack of resources and an incompetent misconception of "balance". But it may well be that they're just afraid of being called woke if they tell the truth.

Pretty rich coming from one of fiscal policy's Brothers Grimm

*joining a conversation about the midterms* Yeah, these terms are really mid

But what if the clocks just keep going back an hour every time they get to 2am

Storms are given names in an attempt to control them, based on the ancient magicks under which calling a storm by its true name gives you power over it. Unfortunately, meteorologists have yet to guess even one storm name correctly.

Um, sorry but actually it's "banned width"

PUBLICIST: So we've been riffing off the trend for spooky Halloween names and we've come up with a great new title for the reissue, which we're sure you'll agree is not just fun but maybe even scarier than the original! SHIRLEY JACKSON: "The Haunting of Chill House"?

The Liz Truss Memorial Spaceport would be quite a decent joke if she weren't trying to be serious, and I'd feel rather sorry for her if it weren't for the damage she did during her all-too-long tenure as PM

Just saw an ad for an AI service that will (supposedly) produce copy to appeal to the AI agents that will be scanning it, and I'm increasingly tempted to go and live in a hut in the woods

Dunno if it was the first I saw, but it's the first I have any memory of: ET. I remember only a couple of fragments of the film (dressing him up as a doll in the wardrobe, and the chase through the big containment tubes), plus the fact that my seat was at the left end of the aisle.

Farage losing to Lowe is a surprising reappearance for the cursed ratio

I just worry that young people these days are diminishing themselves by routinely using AI to do things like writing letters, giving relationship advice, and opening pod bay doors

Awkward sentence in the New Yorker: "Some things that seemed unjust, in his view, were not." Context makes it clear which bit "in his view" applies to, but the structural ambiguity still threw me for a moment. This sort of thing has the unlovely name "squinting modifier".

🎵 I'm crying in the piss Just crying in the piss What a miserable feeling I'm not liking this

The great thing about the Liz Truss book is that it's quite short, so instead of just not reading it once, you can quite easily not read it a few times a day

holy shit this is actually brilliant

So, it's like the millennium bug, but all the tech people are hoovering up money so that they can make it happen sooner?

Well this is pretty damn mesmerising earth.nullschool.net

"Impregnable" looks like it ought to mean "possible to impregnate". But "pregnable" was a variation of "prenable", meaning "takeable" (from French "prendre"), arising through confusion with the unrelated "pregnant", from Latin "praegnantem" (literally "before birth"; the "gna-" connects to "natal").

Oh, just be done with it and have Chris Mason cover every story

A new outbreak of West Wing brain

Sorry, but as a precaution in relation to PHP security concerns, I wasn't listening to whatever you just said

University of Nottingham, right now, is cutting 560 jobs. Do we need to rebrand universities as very large, very clean, land-based oil rigs to get government support?

I think it's time for the news media to finally accept that they will never succeed in their campaign to make us think "bad actors" means villains and not inept dramatic performers

we've identified another vulnerability leak. now hackers on the dark web have identified your bad knee and that weird thing your shoulder does if you sleep on it wrong. there's no patch available for this, they're now just keenly aware you feel like your career has stalled out

INTERVIEWER: And what would you say was your biggest weakness? [8 years later, on interviewer's family holiday in south of France] ME: *suddenly appearing* I drift out of time and space

and the "forecast model" was a nondescript pie chart LOL

Please... my toves... they're very slithy

Very happy to discover the word "regasification"