Dave T-W @davoloid@qoto.org

And - via @aral - another good piece by Cory Doctorow about the problems with the commercialisation of email in the hands of a few small corporates https://doctorow.medium.com/dead-letters-73924aa19f9d

1/ Two nearly identical cases provide a good illustration of how procurement corruption works in Russia. Corrupt contractors working for the Russian government falsely claimed that work had been done and pocketed the unused money without actually doing the contracted work. ⬇️

Sharing this here as so rare I get to be involved with actually handing out money, not just complaining that it's flowing to all the wrong things 🤣. Feels like a real achievement to announce the first cohort of Community Tech Makers and Maintainers (all based in England for the time being), who've all been awarded money to maintain and sustain existing tech 😍https://www.powertochange.org.uk/news/meet-the-makers-and-maintainers-in-community-tech/

@geekaren It wasn't much except to the people who benefited: our household generated enough money for the Mamie Martin Fund to pay for a girl to stay at school in Malawi for 18 months. Ask her whether that was "meagre", Amazon.
#AmazonSmile #Amazon #GirlsEducation #Scotland #Malawi

This is a dumb bit but it was worth the effort.

This strip came out in 1995. What would Calvin’s dad have to say about technology in 2022? 😬🫠 #CalvinandHobbes

I can't find anything about this from googling - but, does anyone know/have any good sources on how the TikTok text-to-speech narration was developed, specifically the voice inputs* that were used to develop it?

*Prob not the right term - I mean, I think, the training data that informs the sound of the synthetic voice output

The origins of the ‘household analogy’ https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/01/15/the-origins-of-the-household-analogy/The biggest mistake any politician can make is to think that running a country is like running a household. Only those who want to crush the well-being of people in this country make that mistake. Right now both the Tories and Labour are deliberately making it. That's deeply depressing.

Oh wow. I know there have been a ton of debates and discussion about quote tweet functionality and whether it's good or bad (I'm on the "I think it would be good" side), @hildabast has put together a VERY detailed review of all research on the topic. Her take based on that: it is not a major vector of abuse, as some claim. https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2023/01/12/quote-tweeting-over-30-studies-dispel-some-myths/

It's Friday, so that means it's time for a 5 minute episode.

This week it's about how sometimes our urge to procrastinate is because we're overwhelmed with everything and we need rest.

Other times we're just being lazy!

Let's explore a little about how to tell the difference.
https://youtu.be/8XE6rZm6qek

the Hollywood Foreign Press were right to not give Everything Everywhere All at Once the Golden Globe for best comedy. That motherfucker made me full on sob for the last 40 minutes that is NOT comedy, sir

Curious news that all north America flights have been grounded. There seems to be a lot of planes in the air even now. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64236047

Another UCL academic in the running for an #ignobel Prize on a subject many cyclists have speculated about. Go Team! https://psyarxiv.com/uy7ph/ HT @MarcAbrahams [The last one, as I recall was for a paper entitled “Testicular Asymmetry in Greek Statuary]

This may go nowhere because I have not been using this platform but if it works, I will be very happy!!! I am teaching online communities to our master's students. If you are a graduate student, practitioner, or faculty member working in this space I would love to have you as a guest speaker to my class. Please let me know! Topics include moderation/regulation, hate speech/harassment, misinfo/disinfo/conspiracy theories, design-oriented online communities work, and privacy!

COMPETITION TIME

The nice thing about Grant Shapps erasing Boris from that rocket photo is you can now put whatever you want there.

Reply to this with your own creation. I'll send a copy of The Brexit Tapes to whoever does the one that makes me laugh most, by midnight.