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

Did you hear about the time David Goodhart went to a bus stop to find someone of a different ethnicity so he could try out a joke? He waited for ages and then three turned up at once! Thank you, thank you. Anyhow, just as he was telling them his joke, an out-of-service bus arrived. No one got it.

submitted 6 hours ago • 2 comments

As EM Forster put it, "How do I know what I think until I see what ChatGPT says?"

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

At some point in the early noughties, the Economist style guide dropped the W from "George W Bush" on the grounds that it wasn't really needed and that it was tiresome both to keep typing it and to keep reading it. I think we've reached that point with Keir Starmer's "Sir". It's tedious and prissy.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Using an LLM is like taking a forklift to the gym: it's a slow form of transport with poor fuel efficiency and you'll struggle to fit it through the front door, and even if you do there'll be a host of health and safety concerns. Anyway, I finally understand this analogy, thanks to Google AI

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Whether AI can transcend human intelligence depends on which human you take as your reference point

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Having told us in advance to expect a surprise, the only way to then surprise us was, paradoxically, with no surprise.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

These ICE goons are absolutely out of, um, comptrol

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

When someone says "nothing is off the table" you can tell they've never had a cat

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders? That the fence is electric.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

In one of my final uni exams, a lack of better options forced me to write an essay based on a passage of a book I had once read while researching a different topic; it had struck me as interesting but not (then) relevant. Without that meandering, "inefficient" reading process, I'd have been screwed.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

That will do extremely well, pundits and politicians talking about variously coloured "walls". You have delighted us long enough.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Ever seen a Matt cartoon and thought "I like the way he fuses two unrelated news stories, but I wish he'd do it with 17"? Ever seen a Banksy artwork and thought "This is great political analysis from someone with impressive stylistic range, but I wish it was a TV show"? Then why not try Adam Curtis

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

When linguists talk about "AAVE" (African American Vernacular English), how is it usually pronounced? Letter by letter, or "ah-vee" or "ahv" or "av" or something else?

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

When it's time for your regular late-afternoon playfight but today's too hot and really you just want to laze around with your darling sister

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

When linguists talk about "AAVE" (African American Vernacular English), how is it usually pronounced? Letter by letter, or "ah-vee" or "ahv" or "av" or something else?

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

I asked ChatGPT whether my critical faculties were eroding because of my increasing reliance on it as a research tool and my disinclination to check its superficially confident and sycophantic responses, and it told me that I was a very clever boy. Handsome too

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

In Christianity, Purgatory is an intermediate state after physical death for purifying or purging a soul. It has often been explained using metaphors of cleansing and fire, but theologians now largely agree that it consists of being forced to read the full contents of all one's open browser tabs

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Looks like Trump's birthday parade was the biggest military flop since Putin decided that he could take Kyiv in a week

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Going through some old photos and am delighted by this early evidence of brothersplaining to my unfortunate sis

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

I get why ministers would like to describe an increase as an "uplift"; it sounds, well, uplifting (think it started with Johnson and Sunak raising Universal Credit in 2020?). Not sure why anyone else would want to join in, though.

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

"I'm not a tool maker, I'm a tool maker's son, and I'm only making tools till the tool maker comes."

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

I don't generally approve of moral panics, but if we do have to have them, maybe it'd be worth focusing on this kind of thing rather than Turkish barbers?

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Absolutely appalling that Padilla charged at Noem swinging a scimitar and then doctored all the video recordings to make it look like he was just walking and talking

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Just rewatched Tenenbaums and Life Aquatic, and it's striking how Anderson's style has grown so much more formal. "At the centre of the labyrinth of quirks lies the beautiful sadness" is the constant; but now the labyrinth is so ornate that we can barely reach its heart. Still good fun, but thinner.

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Hello, and welcome to Tom Has Only Just Realised That The Word 'Circus' Is Related To The Word 'Circle' And, Like, Circuses Are Circular, So Yeah That Makes Sense I Guess. I'm your host, Tom, and I've only just

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Is "peel hunt" what you do when the kids have been eating tangerines in the front room and have notably failed to bring any remains back to the kitchen

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

It strikes me that I really ought to keep my notes about how to deal with my laptop crashing on my phone or even a piece of paper rather than on my laptop

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Badenoch's interview style is so weird. Keeps refusing to follow up on points that she herself has raised. (Although the only strong moments were when responding to questions about polling and who's leading the agenda, which are second-order media questions that always deserve disdain.)

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Turns out there was a Norwegian flag already there www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

submitted 8 days ago • 4 comments

Have been a bit glum since the cygnets died, but now the Egyptian geese have provided four little bundles of cuteness to cheer the neighbourhood up #NewRiverBirds

submitted 8 days ago • 2 comments

ChatGPT is short for Chat Grand Peft Thauto

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Sorry to hear that ChatGPT has died of shame after reading some of its output

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

For much of the last week I've been hearing frantic chirping from the new family of 8 ducklings in the river on the other side of the road. Now and again I pop down to see what the emergency is, and every time it turns out to be "WE EXIST!" Their mum looks tired.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

One thing social media has taught me (though I have definitely experienced it in other media too): a lot of people, even quite smart people, are worryingly bad at reading comprehension. For instance: many have trouble distinguishing between someone describing a thing and advocating that thing.

submitted 9 days ago • 126 comments

I suspect this is less about general falling trust in the BBC than about people who already distrust the BBC being much more likely to support Reform

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

The replies and quotes here provoke a wonderful mix of "How the hell did you not know that?!" and "How the hell did I not know that?!" reactions

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Hillaire Bellend, more like

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

Seems that there are quite a few pundits and politicians who either sincerely believe that "Britishness" is a recessive genetic trait which will disappear when cross-bred with "foreignness" or secretly think that people with non-white skin can't really be British

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

I definitely'll be using this

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward getting pretty good around the middle of season 8, if you just stick with it. Although obviously the ending is terrible, you might as well skip that

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments