Gnasher has seen better days.

A badge with googly eyes, a black and white face, and black hair-like material on a wooden background.

More old box sorting. This is a card for a restaurant — Restaurante O Manuel — I visited nearly 40 years ago as a teenager with my family.

It’s still there!

A cartoon man with a large mustache and red shirt is carrying a fish on a restaurant card labeled "Restaurante 'O Manuel'."

A little blast from the past - I just found my mid-80s Prince August fantasy miniatures moulds.

You melted metal in a little crucible and poured it in…

Black, rectangular rubber moulds with miniature figure patterns are placed alongside some brown paper cards on a textured surface.Two black molds with intricate patterns are placed on a textured fabric surface.

Lakeside.

A serene lakeside scene features lush vegetation and a pebbled shore under a partly cloudy sky.

Vigilant pigeon.

A pigeon peeks out from a hole in a stone wall near a padlocked wooden door.

In the mood for a little discovery.

A modern wooden building - the Rye Harbour Discovery Center - is situated along a pathway in a grassy, rural landscape under a cloudy sky.

I’ve just discovered that there’s an academic conference about Warhammer.

This delights me no end.

My lucky daughters are on a sailing course. I am drinking coffee in the café. Hurrah.

⛵️ ☕️

Kayaks and paddles are arranged along a pebbled lakeside shore with a grassy area and a small trailer nearby.A person in a pink garment stands near a café with a menu board and string lights.

Trading Post Coffee Roasters living up to their name.

A coffee roasting machine is situated in an industrial setting, surrounded by bags and barrels, with a "Trading Post Coffee Roasters" logo on the wall.A blue cup holds a latte with a heart-shaped milk foam design on a brown surface.

There are times when reality feels perturbingly like an architect’s CGI composite.

A London cityscape features modern skyscrapers mixed with historic architecture under a partly cloudy sky.

Having a blast from the past this morning. I’m having a quick coffee at the Bridge Café. I used to be a regular here in the pre-pandemic days, when Journalism.co.uk held its training courses here.

I’m off round to corner to run an in-house training course, but it’s nice to revisit the past.

A cozy café features eclectic artwork on the walls, mismatched chairs around wooden tables, and a counter displaying a menu.

Mike Masnick on who goes MAGA:

It is also, to an immense extent, the disease of a generation—the generation that grew up online, that learned to mistake engagement for truth, that confused being heard with being right. This is as true of suburban millennials as it is of rural boomers. It is the disease of the algorithmically poisoned.

The same could be said to be true of rise of Reform in the UK.

Is the AI bubble about to burst?:

The neuroscientist Eric Hoel calls this the “supply paradox of AI”: “the easier it is to train an AI to do something, the less economically valuable that thing is. After all, the huge supply of the thing is how the AI got so good in the first place.”

Feeling pretty good about the dinner I put on the table for my family this evening.

A plate of grilled chicken salad topped with fresh greens and herbs is served on a wooden table.

Man follows ChatGPT’s advice – and so poisons himself:

As described in a new paper published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, a 60-year-old man ended up coming down with an all-but-defunct condition known as “bromism” after ChatGPT suggested he replace sodium chloride, which is better known as table salt, with sodium bromide, a substance used in pesticides, pool and hot tub cleaners, and as a canine anticonvulsant.

We need to keep teaching people that LLMs are guessing machines, not answer engines.

I see that the Generative Engine Optimisation grift is building up speed.

This morning’s links on the dominance of YouTube, the state of university education and Ghostly publishers…

Cuttings for 11th August 2025

Fun guys to hang out with in the woods.

(Yes, I’m reusing this joke. Yes, I love it.)

Two mushrooms are growing on a moss-covered forest floor.

Beach life

Sailboats with people on board are on a calm body of water near a shoreline with buildings in the background.

Ignoring the fact that AI produces hallucinations does not make those errors go away: Google’s healthcare AI made up a body part.

Any long term use of GenAI needs a strategy for identifying and eliminating hallucinatory results. And that’s going to have a major impact on the claimed cost/efficiency savings.