magnusramage.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Here’s the massive, magnificent but very rare Octobasse, invented in 1850. To play it, the musician must stand on a platform. You can hear its rather alarming deep bass tone, and see it being played, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=12X-...

submitted 21 hours ago • 17 comments

Look. I have written a book about how Nazis took over and guess what—this is how they take over: Claim there is an invasion of immigrants. Use it to create an authoritarian state. Shut down any objection or protest with excessive force. I have receipts. I will talk to press. It’s right here, now.

submitted 8 days ago • 5 comments

Most of the news is horrifying and this story from Bourton-on-the-Water is no exception. Brace yourselves: a family of eight arrived for a picnic to find that… other people were also having picnics 😱 www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/whats-on/wha...

submitted 1 day ago • 165 comments

A Fox host’s ‘rules for being a man’: no leg-crossing, no public soup drinking | Arwa Mahdawi

submitted 23 days ago • 248 comments

“Tesla’s driverless ‘robotaxis’ could launch in Austin as soon as June 22. But a demo in Austin today showed a $TSLA, manually driven to test its Full Self-Driving system, failed to stop for a child-sized dummy at a school bus—and hit it.” @cbsaustin @velez_tx

submitted 3 days ago • 1920 comments

Hidden in the AI decisions being made right now is an elitist, essentially authoritarian ideology, writes ‪@dacemoglumit.bsky.social. It doesn’t have to be this way. www.prospectmagazine...

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

Judgement Day for the EHRC: How the equality watchdog turned into a toxic culture war campaign group iandunt.substack.com/p/judgement-...

submitted 3 days ago • 65 comments

My interest level in football is very low so I didn't recognise this man as I scrolled through the Guardian online, but I did immediately think "well at least he has a blue lightsabre, must be ok". Image source: www.theguardian.com/football/202...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

It's common to compare Trump to 1930s' fascists. I discuss a huge study by 3 German economists that places him amidst broader spectrum of populists since 1900. How do populists perform in power? Do they get reelected? What's their economic impact? And do they leave willingly? @FT on.ft.com/4dZCX2M

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

Good news! UCU have won an employment tribunal against the directors of the film 'Adult Human Female,' who claimed UCU's protest against the screening of the film represented discrimination and harassment due to their GC beliefs. UCU press release here for details: www.ucu.org.uk/article/1404...

submitted 7 days ago • 6 comments

New Quaker banners just dropped: @afsc-org.bsky.social supersized their yard signs! (1/2)

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

ChatGPT is down! For the same results, why not go talk to the biggest bullshit merchant you know while setting a tire dump on fire.

submitted 6 days ago • 8 comments

for people who are never going to play a game but are interested to understand a bit about what games culture is like, I can highly recommend the film Grand Theft Hamlet, about two out-of-work actors during the lockdowns trying to stage a production of Hamlet inside the game Grand Theft Auto

submitted 6 days ago • 9 comments

Good morning, a reminder: Artificial Intelligence is NOT an intrinsic moral (or indeed social) good. Have a good week.

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

For most Jews, Israel was not about settler colonialism. It was supposed to be a safe homeland for a traumatised generation post-Holocaust. It was, in the Jewish consciousness, a homecoming to a land we’d been expelled from. What it’s become fills me with grief, rage & shame I can’t even articulate.

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Who cares that Britain is on course to be ‘minority white’? Well worth reading, by @anandmenon.bsky.social: www.independent.co.uk/voices/immig...

submitted 9 days ago • 3 comments

This piece going round on why LLMs hallucinate is absolutely excellent. LLMs don’t fact check. They can’t, they won’t, and they probably never will. If your work relies on facts being correct DO NOT USE GenAI garymarcus.substack.com/p/why-do-lar...

submitted 9 days ago • 19 comments

Kemi Badenoch is a dangerous fool but if she'd said this about the EHRC she might be right: "The ECHR is now being used in ways never intended by its original authors. It should be a shield to protect. Instead, it’s become a sword, a sword used to attack democratic decisions and common sense."

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Slightly off-topic but one of the lovely things about this thread is the way it unselfconsciously begins with referring to the 18th century. I was thinking Georgian buildings, Bach etc - but in fact this is 18th century BCE. Wonderful.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

ANYONE who thinks ANY group should accept fewer human rights than everyone else is totally unfit to serve as an EHRC commissioner.

submitted 10 days ago • 32 comments

As many of us people who study or work in tech tried to tell y’all, move fast & break things was always about POWER, not progress.

submitted 11 days ago • 39 comments

Even if "white British" will be a minority in the UK in 40 years - so what? Seriously, so what? What is so terrible about that? Make people spell out their horrors. Make them spell out the things they are supposedly not allowed to say. Make them own it.

submitted 12 days ago • 240 comments

We don't have "DEI" in hiring in the UK. First, nobody calls it EDI here. It's an American term and any politician using it here is pushing far right rhetoric. Secondly, what few legal inclusive practices exist - positive action, reasonable adjustments - are embedded in The Equality Act 2010.

submitted 14 days ago • 15 comments

Moving piece about PIP cuts, and more generally the awfulness of PIP assessments, by Elsa Williams, an autistic writer who co-writes the (very funny) site The Daily Tism.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

i have said this before but this is why it was and is important not to ignore the “NPC” language. these people really believe that other human beings are not real, with all the consequences that flow from this

submitted 17 days ago • 104 comments

He looks like a cormorant about to be cleaned by RSPB volunteers.

submitted 18 days ago • 72 comments

"I've got a brand new content harvester"

submitted 17 days ago • 71 comments

This looks like an early candidate for next week's Wokey Dokey on @quietriotpod.bsky.social. Apparently it's now woke not to kill cyclists.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments