A planned post for my True Science Stories substack about how a study got covered in the media didn’t turn out how I expected. Always good to figure out when you’re wrong why you got it wrong.
Full confession in tomorrow’s newsletter.
I think humanity is safe from AI for the moment. I just had to beat Google’s Gemini into submission after it had come up with four erroneous ‘solutions’ to a thing I wanted to do on Substack before admitting it couldn’t be done. It’s like dealing with a toddler who’s just discovered lying.
Et tu, BBC?
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
Just heard Fi Glover on Times Radio being immensely dense about a study saying banning phones in school doesn’t materially affect educational benefits. However much the lead researcher patiently explained the point was that school use made little difference because most use is out of school, Glover was determined that the take away was that phone use overall makes no difference. I double checked the story quickly on the BBC (https://www.
Trump trying to outsource taxation and make other countries pay for the US via tariffs is a kind of analogy for how he wants likes to manage his narcissistic emotions, by forcing other people to make him feel good inside.
Finished reading: Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks 📚
Really interesting stuff about early psychiatric/neurology research, but not enough plot and too much about building cable cars.
A dudebro behind me in this café, having grown weary of praising Trump oh-so-ironically, is now explaining to a fellow dudebro how Kraftwerk invented synthesisers.
My attempt to provoke Gemini into an existential crisis by asking what the point of it was just failed.
Thursday, January 30, 2025
I asked it to collate contact names from public websites like LinkedIn and employee profile pages. But it can’t use that dataset. It can make up researchers, departments and institutions and only admit it when you point this out. I’m only getting scared of AI when it stops recommending I buy a Very Expensive Thing because I just bought an identical one.
When you realise that of your five Substack readers, one is yourself, another is your ex wife keeping tabs, and another is a bot. The other two are old clients.
How the fuck does anyone ever break through Substack if they don’t bring followers with them?
Things coming together
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Reading through some old journal entries about the whys and hows of my writing. I’d come a long way when I wrote them nearly theee years ago, and I’ve come further now. I needed the healthy, supportive relationship I have now and also, I’m realising, the time and distance I’m getting by moving to Canada.
When accidentally leaving your laptop at home reminds you that sometimes scrawling stuff into an actual physical paper notebook hits a vein of way better ideas.
Oscillating between anxiety about paying bills (unwarranted because I can afford them) and reassuring myself that Big New Plans are panning out as I wanted, just slowly. Which I also expected.
Today I found out that Canada could’ve joined the nukes club at the start of the Cold War but chose not to, unlike the UK, which should’ve made the same decision.
As a Brit in Canada, this whole Trump Tariffs insanity is sounding very much like Brexit - the triumph of deluded bigotry over the mutual benefits of trade and compromise.
Alistair Campbell on TRIP: “I don’t consider myself part of The Establishment”
Also Alistair Campbell on TRIP: “As I was saying to Al Gore…”
Trying to file the current lunacy south of the border as some half arsed mafia state rather than the demise of a country I used to think of the least bad option for a world power. But sometimes things get close to home… like POTUS cancelling all government funded clinical research. I mean. WTAF.
Talking to a friend in the UK today and realised I’m actually used to -5c being ‘warm’. This is what two months in Canada does to a Brit….
Turns out going to the pub to watch jazz and get drunk with your partner is a very nice way to spend Sunday afternoon
Finished reading: Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore 📚
The chapters on his death and the subsequent manoeuvring, with some of the players and their relatives hanging on into the Gorbachev era are actually the best bits. Makes me want to rewatch Ianucci’s Death of Stalin.