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James Aylett

@james.tartarus.org
767 followers 509 following 5.5K posts

He/him. Thinking about books & art & narrative & drama ... and the future. Previously professionally worried about privacy and AI (now only in a personal capacity). If I don't follow you it doesn't mean I don't like you. tartarus.org/james

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 3h
Well, now I'm hungry. And I've just eaten.
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 4h
I hope another lesson learned from the Cornell case is that college students can’t just “go to the police.” A lot of public and elite private universities have their own police departments with exclusive jurisdiction over their campus. So going to the police still means reporting to your school.
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Razzball @razzball.bsky.social · 4h
Announcing the merger with Titanic footage is an incredible bit
David Ellison • @ellisonskyd... 2h
What once was the peak, is now just the beginning.
Paramount and Warner Bros. shaped over a century of culture. By combining them, we aren't rewriting history — we're equipping these iconic studios with a more powerful engine. Together, we are Skydance: a creative-first ho Show
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Robin Z @firepile.bsky.social · 5h
An interesting side-product of @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social sending US folks to Blackwells online for his books is that I've also discovered Blackwells online will ship overseas to me for even better prices than amazon in many cases (and they have lovely UK editions of things I can't otherwise get!)
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Amy Hoy @amyhoy.bsky.social · 5h
google works to destroy the open web, one thing at a time
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SwearyMess @swearymess.bsky.social · 5h
"Drunk Octopus Wants To Fight!" might be one of my all time favourites and it makes me incredibly happy every time I see one.
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United Tech & Allied Workers @utaw.tech · 5h
7000 members and counting 🎈The UK's original and largest trade union for tech workers has hit a new membership milestone, with 7,000 active members joining our branch to fight for better conditions for workers in tech, and for more responsible deployment of the tech we build.
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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 5h
Could threachery be a thing? (You have to say it out loud for maximum effect.) Like a threat and treachery at the same time. Maybe it's a threat you make to convince someone not to be a traitor. Or when you threaten to betray someone. Or (informally) just operating under the suspicion of treachery.
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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 5h
Oh noes :( hateful evri
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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 11h
Not sure why I didn't think this before, but since AIUI Margaret Thatcher's first term was fairly unambitious, and she didn't really unload the biggest changes until the third term, there's a possibility she did a turnaround CEO dead cat bounce play, but with an entire nation.
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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 11h
Following the Trusspocalypse I actually have reasonable confidence in the political judgement of most lettuces.
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Alexandra Lanes @ajlanes.bsky.social · 11h
This is one of those etymologies that sounds like a just so story but is in fact true.
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Paul Clarke @paulclarke.com · 11h
From the archives, 14 years ago: a doomed campaign by a tobacco lobby group, hiding their identity (one might even say they were attempting to pass it off as a dot gov dot uk poster). Fat lot of good it did them, thankfully.
A campaign poster showing a graphic picture of an eyeball on a cigarette packet, and trying to steer people away from 'plain packaging'
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Aram Zucker-Scharff @chronotope.aramzs.xyz · 01/10/2026
AI systems do not have feelings but they are good at tricking our empathy, this is a great example. But treating AI chat boxes like shit is still ethically questionable because of what it does to us to treat something we perceive as humanish in an abusive way www.tomsguide.com/ai/an-ai-tor...
tomsguide.com
An AI ‘torture chamber’ went viral — then a developer gave the chatbot constipation
A bizarre counterexperiment challenges what we can infer from an AI describing its own suffering
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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 11h
I think that the impacts (on own mental health, subsequently on others' safety) makes this an unethical project to have actually done. Is there ever a situation where using LLMs to produce transcripts as-if of torture could be ethical? I'm sceptical, but maybe there's a possible valid purpose.
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Dr Duncan Robertson @duncanrobertson.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I've gone on Traitors by mistake #celebritytraitors
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Annalee Newitz @annaleen.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Absolutely incredible. I love to see this digital art history being preserved.
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Night of the Abigail @popeguilty.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
what if you were a medieval monk dabbling in the occult and you summoned a demon and instead of teaching you magic he teaches you what a Turing Machine is and you don't get it and he's like I am trying to help you here and you're like I really just wanted to poison my boss so I can be the Abbot
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Mariah McCourt @monsterteatime.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
If you see this, post a vampire that isn't Dracula.
Ink piece of lesbian vampires.
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Mariah McCourt @monsterteatime.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
100%. As a Gen Xer media when I was growing up was full of situations like this and movies/tv movies about how bad frats are. So it is really horrifying to me that we're STILL allowing this in 2026. They're toxic.
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Dirk Maggs @dirkmaggs.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
From The Times obit for Esther Rantzen. Nothing against Ms Rantzen but us dogsbodies trained for 9 months to “do the chores” and would like to see the obit writer survive “Red Light Fever” and operate the panel in a busy studio live on air or create believable sound effects for a convincing drama.
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Aliette de Bodard @aliettedebodard.com · 01/10/2026
Just went through this list and basically ordered almost everything Please also read @freyamarske.bsky.social's amazing Bodies of Magic (medicine school plus five disaster students plus murder), @everinamaxwell.bsky.social's Call me Traitor (two unreliable narrators/disaster stabby lesbians)
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Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This presents a serious challenge to those of us in 'AI positive' institutions, where we have no choice but to engage with AI to some extent. (Tho' students here have an ethical opt-out, teachers do not.) We must educate our students about ALL aspects of AI, including the (un)ethical underpinning.
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Purple Wyrm @purplewyrm.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Hear hear!
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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 01/10/2026
Periods of torpor, my difficult second darkwave album
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j4 @jaffa.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
creature Mouth perfec t size for put vicar in to preach! inside very Soft and Comfort
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Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The rulers of post-apocalyptic Cambridge will be the herons.
A heron in the ruins
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Brian G. aka urbanbohemian 🪩🥂💖 @urbanbohemian.com · 30/09/2026
We're on Bluesky, put the link in your post. Put the link in your post. Put. The. Link. In. Your. Post. Links in posts aren't buried or de-prioritized here. This is one of the last platforms you don't have to make interested users do detective work to find the link. Just put it in the post.
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Chris Farnell @thebrainofchris.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This is why you should never confuse "Elite level poster" with "good person" or "someone who has intelligent or coherent thoughts."
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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 30/09/2026
Doom gets regressed to a child and sent back in time to be Tony Stark. Avengers: Infinity Loop.
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sirosenbaum.bsky.social @sirosenbaum.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
thinking about Shakespeare's sonnets about immortality and realizing how weird it is that the AI cult believes in the idea of preserving human consciousnesses while actively destroying the only technology we currently have to do that: Art
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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
unpopular opinion: food almost everywhere was worse 250 years ago
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Cethan Leahy @cethanleahy.com · 30/09/2026
I think we underrate that JCO came up in 20th century New York literary circles where everyone said five most devastating insults before breakfast and as one of the last one standing, her competition is guys who get sad if their chatbot isn't sufficiently nice to them.
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Jordan @jordanpfot.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I accidentally spent £17,700 on 400 subscriptions to the LRB for Home Office staff and now the Life in the UK test is asking applicants to rank Derek Jarman films from most to least emotionally resonant?
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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 30/09/2026
Congratulations to Firefox for giving tabs rounded corners in 2026, changing the visual feel sufficiently that it impacts my tab navigation / management. 10/10 cramped UI feeling, maybe if you added another border box around them it'd really feel like 1997 again.
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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 30/09/2026
If you're an idiot, you may believe that intelligence doesn't require (ongoing) learning. Or if you're an awful person, you may believe that you shouldn't have to pay for that because you're a superior special boy. Or if you're a fascist, you really don't want teachers surviving.
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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 30/09/2026
Normally I'd also be up for fining the execs & board, but in this case we want to nationalise it anyway so let's avoid having artificial compensation inflation for anyone qualified to run them before we do that. (Though some of the people running them don't seem qualified to steward a public good.)
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REwadent Evil @ewacat.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I suggest that - 'godspeed' means 'i wish you well in your endeavours' - 'god speed' is somewhere just above the speed of light
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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Fuck ChatGPT flyers. The future is broadsheets.
A crowded broadsheet with way too many fonts. It says:
Forget ChatGPT Flyers
Say it with 
Broadsheets
Unlimited fonts
Stretch them
Or cram a really long sentence into one line for no good reason
No whitespace
Mix capital and lowercase
Pointing hands
(They're called manicules!)
Don't be left behind
Broadsheets are the future
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Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A 2,300-year-old silver container in the shape of a scallop-shell decorated with an octopus 🐙 It may once have held cosmetics. From Paternò, Sicily. Altes Museum, Berlin 📷 by me #Archaeology
My photo shows a silver shell-shaped container with an eight-armed octopus in relief at the centre of the lid. The arms of the octopus curl outwards across the ridges of the shell’s surface. This ornate shell container has a hinged lid and may once have been a cosmetic container . It is displayed on a clear stand in a museum case. Dimensions: 13.3 × 13.2 × 3 cm. It is part of the Silver Treasure from Paternò, Sicily, a hoard discovered in 1909, consisting of tableware and toiletries. Dated 4th-3rd century BC.
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 29/09/2026
unsolicited brag: dug into the data -> ai -> surveillance pipeline in class this morning and received a standing ovation at the end of class. genuinely did not expect it. now i’m in tears. first time for everything
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Laura J Mixon @laurajmg.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Manderon Flavuris sez hi. Have some fruit joy.
A friendly action-figure doll in a berry bowl, whose head is a whole mandarin, with the back half left unpeeled for hair, raisins for eyes and a smiling mouth. Its trunk is a large blackberry and its limbs are raspberries. It looks like it’s waving hello to you.
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I’m seeing a lot of posts about talking to your sons in light of the Cornell article. And yes. Talk to your sons. Here are some things you should say, based on anti-violence research about what they need to hear:
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Neil Mullarkey @neilmullarkey.com · 29/09/2026
youtu.be/PHOnykmznyo the Better Work podcast… with me as guest
youtu.be
COMEDY LEGEND Neil Mullarkey | How improv could change the way you work | Better At Work Season 5
YouTube video by Better@Work Podcast
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Kate Watson @loreandordure.com · 29/09/2026
The most stupid, annoying, obvious dark pattern.
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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 29/09/2026
And somehow it's rarely the reasonable people whose disagreements are promoted.
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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 28/09/2026
Apparently my unconscious mind is unaware that there is a different between goats and donkeys.
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Bailey Wolfe, Voice Actor and Lacticide in Progress @bbwolfevox.com · 28/09/2026
Eyyyy!
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Diane Duane @diane.dianeduane.com · 28/09/2026
Status report, "Weary Experimentation Mode": I wonder if the 9:16 book trailer for THE ADVENTURE OF THE LIONESS'S MANE will display correctly here? *Let's find out!* (...And yes, you can buy the book! Wait for the QR code. Or go to bit.ly/Lioness-Mane! Whichever you prefer!) 🙂 #booksky #ebook
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Richard Littler @richardlittler.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
#meta #muse #ai
Meta Muse character with Big Brother's (1984) face.
Slogan: Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength!
Meta-stasize
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