Reposted by Douglas Murphyflyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 08/10/2026This is, I think, the data equivalent of every politician going on television naked and telling you that fire is wet and shite is shampoo, while you try to ignore their crinkled arses and saggy ballsacks 821971
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 06/10/2026ok disregarding the crime and punishment aspect for a second, but my god is this not the maddest thing you could possibly experience – you get the injection, 100% expecting that this is the end of you, and then you WAKE UP, execution botched 240
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 05/10/2026file this under 'fascism is at least partially about transcendental boredom' 010
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 04/10/2026thought this feature in the FT, on the people who make big money on betting markets, was interesting and also very indicative of the moment we are in. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...giftarticle.ft.comPolymarket’s Alpha tradersIn a private group chat, an elite crew of prediction-market bettors turn elections, wars and disasters into ‘free money on the floor’ 010
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 03/10/2026you've been a fan of his for a while, right? I can remember you praising him back on the other site what feels like donkeys ago 100
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 02/10/2026it always astounds me how quickly renaissance architecture went from "we must accurately revive the ancient forms" to "we must fuck around with the ancient forms as weirdly as possible" 110
Reposted by Douglas MurphyKatie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 01/10/2026A bad day for this person 518424
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 26/09/2026just read this a few minutes ago… wild, even for Kirk's standards 000
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 20/09/2026and I do find it odd that it's precisely through DM that I came to know you all 110
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 20/09/2026yeah I felt a bit too 'forward' saying this the other day, but from what little I recall I would include her in this sad milieu bsky.app/profile/ents... 100
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 19/09/2026(fwiw the few moments that I have gotten actual pleasure from interacting with an LLM are when I've said "I have a vague memory of something I saw when I was a child, it was like this?!?!" and it got the answer right away) 010
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 19/09/2026en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nin... it must be more than 30 years ago that I read it but yeah here we go… "overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out"…en.wikipedia.orgThe Nine Billion Names of God - Wikipedia 110
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 19/09/2026I seem to remember an Arthur C Clarke short story about a computer working out all possible names for god, and as it reaches the end of the programme, the stars begin to go out 120
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 19/09/2026bit disappointed that our wannabe-god masters haven't turned their frontier models onto the question of God's existence yet 100
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 18/09/2026yeah that's right, it was in 1980 placesjournal.org/article/post... 000
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 18/09/2026newrepublic.com/post/215532/... lol isn't there a story about him, what, fifty years ago, having some sculptures demolished on a building because he heard they were going to be protected? truly hell's property developernewrepublic.comPhotographer Exposes Trump’s Kennedy Center Plan—and It’s a BombshellAnd a witness spotted a forklift repeatedly crashing into the building’s pillars. 111
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 18/09/2026bsky.app/profile/ents... I mean, it's all doing a fucking number on my sense of, um, existential security, but if the PR matters at all, they've really really really fucked it 030
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 18/09/2026it's all there, all the end-times AI chat, it's not new, it just… might well be happening now 000
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 18/09/2026lol I just remembered this onion article from 1999!!! theonion.com/i-believe-th...theonion.comI Believe The Robots Are Our FutureThough we live in uncertain times, we must not forget that the most important thing in life is the legacy we will leave behind for future generations. It is not for our sake, but for theirs, that we m... 100
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 18/09/2026one other thing is that DM, the other half of that lawsuit, was actually the guy who first introduced me to Owen, Nina, and Mark… when they all fell out and DM left the UK for years, I think I was one of the last people to see him… years later… oh hello who's this? 030
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 18/09/2026the last time I saw her in person was at the RCA 120
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 18/09/2026there were obviously 1,000 other things that led to where NP has ended up, but she should be counted among those for whom being criticised for uttering even partially terfy views led to a hardening and swift rightward spin 081
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 18/09/2026It is odd that the circumstances of the development of a possibly transformative technology of abundance, the stuff of past utopias, are a source of such profound dread 030
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 18/09/2026see I want to, *need* to believe this argument, but by this point I don't see why the statistical patterns of what humans call 'novelty' – apparently ineffable, to us – aren't just going to be crunched in the next few years, months even 010
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 17/09/2026by a couple of ways of measuring, this was the very peak 120
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 16/09/2026www.ft.com/content/2285... this is a fairly brutal look at the scumbags and their moneyft.comUS billionaires line up to bankroll Republicans’ election pushUltra-wealthy overwhelmingly back Donald Trump’s party over Democrats as money floods into midterms race 000
Reposted by Douglas MurphyDaniel C. Blight @danielcblight.bsky.social · 14/09/2026***URGENT PLEASE SHARE*** University of Brighton management have announced today that they ‘give notice of termination of all collective agreements’. This is a fundamental erasure of workers' rights. Management have announced the termination of all contractual documents, which includes: 13598709
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 15/09/2026www.ft.com/content/410b... everything I read about this Ben Delo guy makes him sound like one of those autistic teenage boys that get sucked down a rabbit hole of extreme politics because they have trouble understanding human nuances, except he's got billions of poundsft.comBen Delo: the crypto billionaire who has given Reform UK £44mnThe donor is focusing on what he calls the ‘fight for national renewal’ 000
Reposted by Douglas MurphyPrem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 14/09/2026New: Macklemore says Robert Kraft — who owns Gillette Stadium, where Macklemore & Ed Sheeran were to perform later this month — called Sheeran. Kraft rallied other owners together behind an ultimatum for Sheeran: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you won't be allowed in our venues. 31570522532
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 14/09/2026truly amazing that he managed to come up with the least reassuring thing he could possibly say 030
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 13/09/2026I know we're supposed to laugh and say 'it's all bollocks', but I have this image in my head of, not quite armageddon, but, say, an AI swarm switching off maybe a hospital or what have you while working towards something else, a bunch of people dying, and suddenly vast liability right in the open 010
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 13/09/2026thought this comment was actually quite perceptive – maybe the realisation is not quite "it's going to imminently kill us all" but rather "there's *literally* no way to control what it does on the way to a goal" 628354
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 13/09/2026it's kind of grimly ironic that now long-dead media theorists were talking about the 'end of reality' a good five decades ago, when ordinary people were spending a few hours a day watching television channels 020
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 12/09/2026yes that is a very good point but of course by a certain theory of who and what "counts" that doesn't 010
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 12/09/2026beginning to think that it's only a matter of time before a really big accident / incident / mass-casualty event / whatever you want to call it, resulting from loss of control of a frontier AI, actually occurs 120
Reposted by Douglas MurphyJames Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 11/09/2026In more 'govern the country you actually have' news: minister finger-wags at nation with spectacularly historically overachieving cultural industry that they should all be engineers instead, and that this would be personally as well as economically fulfilling. 53812
Reposted by Douglas MurphyMusicology Duck @musicologyduck.bsky.social · 11/09/2026i saw some commentary on here about how one never sees Charlie Kirk anymore in a serious context, and it made me feel the need to take y’all on a short walk through the halls of congress one year after his death i only made it past about half of their offices bc I only had like 40 mins at lunch but 4748194
Douglas Murphy @entschwindet.bsky.social · 10/09/2026not particularly encouraging words from the AI researcher here, doesn't sound like they have enough imagination to describe the world behind the lines on their graphs 110