Ben Taylor @VoxDei@qoto.org
Software Engineer, Trade Unionist, Gamer, Geek, Dad. Lives in Devon
Joined Nov 2022
Ben Taylor
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Tabloid that paid a 16-year-old girl to quit school and pose for topless photos remains straight-faced while trying to expose BBC presenter who paid a 17-year-old for photos https://newsthump.com/2023/07/10/tabloid-that-paid-a-16-year-old-girl-to-quit-school-and-pose-for-topless-photos-remains-straight-faced-while-trying-to-expose-bbc-presenter-who-paid-a-17-year-old-for-photos/
Ben Taylor
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The Spilhaus Projection. In 1942, Athelstan Spilhaus produced a world map with a unique perspective, presenting the world's oceans as one body of water.
Ben Taylor
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Q. is there evidence that changing the fundamental business model of the #NHS – e.g. introducing insurance-based funding or breaking the NHS up into smaller units which can be privatised – could be effective as ways of tackling the current issues?
The evidence, both domestic & international, is that the answer is a clear ‘no’: The rational strategy is to recommit to the fundamental model of the NHS, fund it properly & introduce operational improvements over time!
https://99-percent.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/NHS-report-for-print.pdf
Ben Taylor
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Via @decolonialatlas "Each 8th of July, at 11:15 UTC, 99% of the world's population is experiencing daylight. This day should have a name, and it should be a holiday." Original source: https://www.timeanddate.com/news/astronomy/99-percent-sunlight
Ben Taylor
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Favourite summary of the current situation, from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/07/twitter-is-burning-bluesky-is-smug-where-is-the-best-place-to-do-your-pathetic-doomscrolling?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Ben Taylor
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For customers of #SouthWestWater, this will come as no surprise, but in the two years to March 2022, SWW spent more on interest payments & #dividends than it did on maintaining (improving) its infrastructure....
You can decide for yourself whether this in any way contributed to their catastrophic failure of #water supply early this year.
That this included a 'special dividend' approved by #OfWat merely confirms that the regulator(s) have been asleep at the wheel.
Ben Taylor
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Perfectly Pringular Russian royal yacht Livadia, launched today in 1880 and laid up in 1881. Not a success then.
Apparently designed with a skirt to stop anyone getting overheated at the sight of its ankles, the overly oval vessel was reputedly very stable but the shallow draft caused terrible slamming in waves that opened up the seams. Dry docks as wide as they were long being in short supply, repair was difficult and the ship quickly retired.
Ben Taylor
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Ben Taylor
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Just in: July 3rd was the hottest day ever measured in human history.
We are in a climate emergency.
IPCC: We need "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society" — and you are part of the solution.
Ben Taylor
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🇳🇱
Ben Taylor
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It's oddly impressive how many genuinely mediocre generals the Union had in the early years of the Civil War.
It's like they were doing some kind of gimmick run on Twitch.
"Win a Civil War without using leaders"
Ben Taylor
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Stormy looking on Glastonbury Tor this morning.
#glastonbury #glastonburytor #somerset #stormy #storm #cloud #cloudy #darksky
I really don't understand this. This article mentions in passing that Asda was fined £30,000 twice for failing to respond to information requests and for being unable to explain how being taken over affected its fuel pricing policy. In the same paragraph it mentions that Asda is acquiring a fuel business for £2.27bn.
Asda has enough money to be able to make acquisitions of businesses that are not its core business costing in the billions. A fine in the tens of thousands is literally not even noticeable to them. What is the point? I accept the CMA may not have power to impose a greater fine (I don't know), but what's the point in a regulator that either cannot or will not impose fines that actually hurt their targets?
It happens all over the place, companies being handed fines that aren't even negligible, they're just not actually noticeable. Nobody will follow the rules if it costs substantially less to break them than it does to follow them.
Ben Taylor
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To anyone thinking about joining BlueSky, especially artists: everything you post is used to train generative AI models.
BlueSky uses AI to label content for moderation, and to do that they use a company called https://thehive.ai. If you look through their privacy policy, you will see that they use all content sent to them to train models for all their services, which include generative AI for both text and images.
It’s a built in “feature” and cannot be turned off.
Ben Taylor
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Well that's more like it. Sunrise this morning on Glastonbury Tor.
#glastonbury #glastonburytor #somerset #landscapephotography #sunrisephotography #sunrise
Ben Taylor
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As we head towards a(nother) #JuniorDoctors #strike... once again its worth emphasising that this is a strike that has been directly caused by the #Tories defunding of the #NHS, their callous attitude to the well-being of others & their strategy of driving (rich-enough) #patients into the arms of private #healthcare.
If #RishiSunak or #SteveBarclay actually wanted to reach a deal with the BMA/Junior Doctors they could, but they are choosing not to.
"Sir John Armitt told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “By 2050, the Environment Agency and the water companies believe that about £50bn needs to be invested to get sewage overflows down to an acceptable level."
Right. My local water company, South West Water, is paying £112M in dividends this year. There are ten water and sewerage companies in England, if we assume they're all about that level then that is £1.1bn per year. Counting 2023 and 2050 there are 28 years to go on that clock, so there's ~£31bn right there.
I'm sorry, water companies should not be paying dividends at the same time as a) breaking the law over sewage discharges and b) arguing that bills need to go up massively to pay for fixing that. They've got the money, they need to (be forced to) spend it on regulatory compliance before kickbacks to shareholders.
Ben Taylor
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Hearing more and more about marketers using GPT-type "a.i." for SEO and marketing copy, and every time i talk to these people, none of them seem to understand/care that they're in an algorithmically-defined self fulfilling confirmation bias feedback loop.
And i mean, marketing's ALWAYS had something like this problem, but the uncritical gpt/"a.i."/"ML" feedback processes are going to make it a goddamn flat plastic nightmare.
I sweatr, the way some people are willing to cede their preferential and decisional criteria to something that crystalizes and amplifies THE WORST processes of human cognition just TERRIFIES me some days.
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*
Software Engineer, Trade Unionist, Gamer, Geek, Dad. Lives in Devon
Joined Nov 2022
