Ben Taylor @VoxDei@qoto.org
Software Engineer, Trade Unionist, Gamer, Geek, Dad. Lives in Devon
Joined Nov 2022
Ben Taylor
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Economics: Humans only value things monetarily.
Sociology: Uh, I don't ...
Economics: Humans are always rational and value is calculated by a complex inner calculus.
Sociology: Uh, Psy, can you help?
Psychology: That's not how humans ...
Economics: ALSO MY SYSTEM WILL GROW EXPONENTIALLY FOREVER!!
Physics: *drops teacup*
Ben Taylor
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'Britain has for too long presented one face to the world while concealing the awful truth...'
Aditya Chakrbortty summarises the work of a research group at Manchester University which aims to show how our delusional #politics is contributing to our #economic decline...
a depressing but vital read - its worth a few minutes of your time.
Ben Taylor
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A rock bonus for your hard work https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/14kdc0g/a_rock_bonus_for_your_hard_work/
Ben Taylor
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I spent 5 hours in A&E yesterday. (I'm fine.)
After triage I had bloods taken + blood sugars (separately), an ECG, a chest x-ray, a head CT scan, and two sessions with a doctor. I left with a prescription for two weeks of meds and a referral to a specialist unit.
Total cost to me: £0.
Fuck the government and what they're doing to our health services. Fuck privatisation. Fuck the fact the staff are underpaid and overworked. Fuck the Tories. Support your #NHS.
Ben Taylor
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Why am I standing in the #UxbridgeAndSouthRuislip by-election? And why should the wonderful people of that constituency vote for me? I present the 2023 Count Binface Charter. #VoteBinface #BinItToWinIt
@dungeons Um... how did we just do 9 damage and 8 damage to this thing with a 1d4 improvised ranged attack? Has it used our maul stats instead of the ranged attack?
Ben Taylor
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I asked ChatGPT about primes ending in 2 to make it prove a point and it proved the point far better than I could have hoped for.
Please do not be a fool who trusts ChatGPT with anything outside your field of expertise, and even then double or triple check what it tells you if you must use it.
Ben Taylor
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@ponda OK. I don't pretend to be an expert, so thank you. I guess Prigozhin winning would be bad then!
The Russians can do what they like in sorting out how their rebellion goes. Mostly it's a question of which unpleasant dictator is in control. If Putin wins, presumably little changes other than that Russia has spent a load of resources fighting itself.
There are two questions I care about, if Prigozhin wins:
1. Would he continue the war in Ukraine? He's already said the pretext was false, so maybe less likely than Putin?
2. If he does, is he more or less likely than Putin to escalate to a direct confrontation with NATO?
I want the Russians out of Ukraine and I want not to have a nuclear war in the process. I'm rooting for whichever side makes that more likely.
Ben Taylor
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"Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.
But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said."
We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.
@garius I feel like this has been inevitable since Putin sided with the Russian MoD a couple of weeks ago in declaring that the Wagner troops would come under the MoD chain of command. If that happens, Prigozhin is nothing. He couldn't refuse the order and keep his head, so we have one of those rebellions that is careful not to target the king, but only his evil advisors.
Sadly, Jonathan Freedland is right. Rejoining the EU will be a multi-decade project that if I'm very lucky I might see accomplished in my lifetime (I'm 42). It will require the old who never understood the benefits and who were seduced by lies and meaningless jingoism to die, and the young who had their rights stolen to get old enough to have children in turn to be angry about their rights being stolen.
Because it will not happen until the demand is overwhelming, and overwhelming enough to withstand the demands the EU will place on us to consider letting us back in (not getting our rebate back will be the least of it - we'll probably have to join the Euro, for a start, and Schengen). 52-48 was sufficient to trigger the hardest Brexit possible. Rejoin will be impossible until that figure swings back to nearer 30-70 and stays there.
Ben Taylor
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Ben Taylor
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An #AmazonRiver plume stretches thousands of kilometres across the tropical Atlantic Ocean.
🛰️ #Copernicus Sentinel-3, 19-06-2023
📷 Full-size: https://www.flickr.com/photos/191444271@N08/52994079196/in/dateposted-public/
Image is about 525 kilometers wide.
@dungeons Wait, we died? Dammit people, I go to bed for eight hours and look what happens...
Ben Taylor
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Totally unsurprising: NHS England in emergency crisis due to 100,000 excess deaths from cardiovascular incidents since March 2020 *beyond* those attributable to COVID19. Turns out Tory NHS cuts over the previous decade, followed by a pandemic, pushed heart attack/stroke care into meltdown on a national scale, death rate rising (the surplus deaths alone are 10x the death rate from all road traffic accidents).
OpenAI wants regulation for its competition but not for itself. I'm shocked. 🙄
I've been saying since the big AI players made their call for regulation that what they actually wanted was for regulators to strangle their nascent competitors for them. And here's the proof.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/21/openai_government_regulation/
Ben Taylor
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This sign, warning of a steep path at a South African crocodile farm, is fairly unambiguous about the potential risks.
Software Engineer, Trade Unionist, Gamer, Geek, Dad. Lives in Devon
Joined Nov 2022
