The best metaphor I’ve seen for AI is that it’s our generation’s asbestos. If you think about it, asbestos was this technological marvel that promised to solve a huge problem and that got crammed in everywhere. And yeah, it was good at keeping things from catching on fire, but it also came with an extremely elevated chance of painful, lingering death, and removing it from the system has taken untold years and billions of dollars.
Oooh. Nice to see @onionbagblog on here!
Managed to clear 100 GB or so of cruft off my aging, but still perfectly serviceable, M1 MacBook Pro, and it’s amazing how much better it performs with some free storage space again.
I’ve been listening on and off to the BBC Sounds investigation of Kate Clanchy’s cancellation a few years ago. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s much more nuanced piece of reporting than it’s being portrayed on social media. Two episodes in, it’s clear (to me, at least) that there are some very valid and quite serious criticisms of her work being made, and that she didn’t help the situation by not really engaging with them. (And, frankly, the publishing business comes out pretty badly.)
But it’s equally clear that many of her critics are unwilling to engage with the deeper consequences of the social media storm they helped stoke. There’s a line where criticism of the work turns into criticism of the author, and where criticism of a complaint turns into criticism of the complainer.
And, it’s at that point that any chance of a meaningful conversation about the work is done. Then it’s about good guys and bad guys and tribalism.
It’s very depressing. But riveting listening.
This is such a great story:
Meet the teen behind the Louvre ‘Fedora Man’ mystery photo
Love an eccentric.
Spectacular hagstone find on the beach.
At the Remembrance Day parade on Southwick Green, supporting my daughters who were marching with the Guides.
Props ready to go for my first online training course to help journalists understand AI - and use it safely…
The people who hold Trump, Farage, Javier Milei and their copycats accountable cannot be part-time freelancers or bored TikTokers. The issues that journalism is supposed to shield us from are way too grand and their subjects way too powerful for individual users - or even ad-hoc online collectives - to be able to tackle on their own.
— The New Censorship by Ayala Panievsky 📚
Started reading: The New Censorship by Ayala Panievsky 📚
My notes from a fascinating but worrying talk between Emily Maitlis and my colleague Dr Ayala Panievsky about how populist politicians manipulate media to shift the conversation in their direction – and what journalists can do about it.
Worrying stuff, but with some hope.
24 years ago, I started blogging.
That’s nearly a quarter of a century.
It will be one of the defining activities of my life. And I'’d never have predicted that back in 2001.
2001: the year blogging changed the world – but it would be decades before we realised how much.
And I’m no longer as sure as I was that it was a good thing.
