Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 29/09/2026I think I’d have a bit more respect for AI if it just said “oh shit oh fuck”, rather than this pathetic snivelling 010
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 27/09/2026Let’s have an annual flagship science and technology prize for the UK - @nestauk.bsky.social ‘s event at the Labour conference in Liverpool 011
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 26/09/2026I agree with this, and I think AI is going to make it a million times worse. ojusher.medium.com/theory-of-mi...ojusher.medium.comTheory of mindWhen LLMs rewrite things for us, we lose something important: empathy 020
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 24/09/2026An opinion I semi-seriously hold is that AI text, by law, should have to be rendered in that 1980s-style robot font. You know which one I mean. I am now extending this to say that you should, by law, have to read it out through a vocoder. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westmin...en.wikipedia.orgWestminster (typeface) - Wikipedia 131
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 16/09/2026Not gonna lie, I am not tempted to eat one of these AI oysters 000
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 11/09/2026What happens in a world in which all text is reprocessed for us by LLMs? ojusher.medium.com/theory-of-mi...ojusher.medium.comTheory of mindWhen LLMs rewrite things for us, we lose something important: empathy 000
Reposted by Olivier UsherSam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 14/08/2026I do not need to be jumped scared into not buying a disposable BBQ. Fucks sake. 8976163
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 12/08/2026I was never quite able to take the BBC series seriously after my dad said he thought the triffids looked like celery 010
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 12/08/2026Delighted to be targeted for ads for, uh, whatever these are. I wouldn't dream of penny-pinching and going for the £4,600 option. 020
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 23/07/2026My vibes-based but strongly-held opinion: 🪖 The Soviets, Pinochet, Mobutu and Mussolini would have loved AI. 🎖️ The Khmer Rouge, English Puritans, Nazis and Falangists would have hated it. ojusher.medium.com/chatkgb-what...ojusher.medium.comChatKGB: what would the Soviets have made of AI?And other what-ifs from the history of tyranny 000
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 22/07/2026This excellent question from @zachweinersmith.bsky.social has been playing on my mind, so I've had a go at thinking through what various horrible dictatorships would have made of AI. ojusher.medium.com/chatkgb-what...ojusher.medium.comChatKGB: what would the Soviets have made of AI?And other what-ifs from the history of tyranny 100
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 21/07/2026It's now over 18 years since there was a government department led by a Welsh MP (Hain, DWP) and over 16 years since there was a Scottish MP (Darling, Treasury; Alexander, DFID). I know there's a lot going on, but I think this is genuinely insane if you care even slightly about the union. 120
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 20/07/2026The thing with these freaks like Dominic Cummings and all his imitators is that they've never had a real job, so you could stick a Salesforce or Looker Studio dashboard on a big screen and tell them all about the "PhD physicists" who had developed it and they would be impressed. 010
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 19/07/2026This posts your Trophies directly to your National Record of Achievement 000
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 17/07/2026Reviewing dozens of job slopplications today. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers. 000
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 16/07/2026This is ridiculous, but there’s also a ridiculous loophole. Fly to Dublin on your EU passport. You’re then in the common travel area and can continue on to the UK without checks. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...theguardian.comBritish girl, 15, stranded in Rome for six weeks due to new passport rulesThe dual national, who missed six weeks of school, is latest of several children affected by recent Home Office policy 001
Reposted by Olivier UsherSamira Shackle @samirashackle.bsky.social · 15/07/2026"As far as the government is concerned, they’ve washed their hands of us. Would they do that to a white person?" For a @prospectmagazine.co.uk feature on Britain's citizenship-stripping boom, I spoke to families of people who have had citizenship revoked www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/uk/...prospectmagazine.co.ukBritain’s citizens of nowhereHundreds of UK nationals have been made stateless, and left trapped in squalid refugee camps, without being convicted of any crime 34534
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 14/07/2026This is a really excellent question, and I think the answer is that they would have loved it, for reasons that are not a great compliment either to Soviet economics or to AI. 130
Reposted by Olivier UsherZach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 14/07/2026Weird hypothetical: how do you think the USSR would've responded to the development of LLMs? 3511911
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 10/07/2026every hometown’s got the ominous megastructure, what’s yours? 010
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 10/07/2026My controversial take is that Euston Station really doesn't deserve the hate. With more sympathetic shop frontages inside, the mezzanine removed and some clutter cleaned up, it could actually be a pretty classy space. 221
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 04/07/2026Idea: companies should only be allowed to present AI-generated text to customers if they use a font that clearly indicates you’re talking to a robot 000
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 29/06/2026If they could bring it forward to 12 July then it would make it 7 PMs in 10 years. 000
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 27/06/2026@gwr.com If your service is running an hour late and the previous two were cancelled, how about you open the ticket barriers rather than wasting even more of everybody’s time, eh? You’re going to have to delay-repay everyone anyway. 000
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 23/06/2026Cars will have a kinetic energy limit, not a speed limit. This would be based on the current speed limits, as applied to the lightest car currently available on the market. 173
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 23/06/2026The best time to stop Brexit was 10 years ago today. The second best time is today. 010
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 17/06/2026Wild. Just saw a LinkedIn post tagging someone and saying that they had been fired. 010
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 17/06/2026I can certainly think of one big role Starmer could offer Burnham that would avoid the need for a contest 120
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 12/06/2026Reflections on skill and automation, arising from a very stressful day in hospital last year. I've been wanting to get this off my chest for quite a while. ojusher.medium.com/gut-feels-7e...ojusher.medium.comGut feelsThere is a strange focus that comes at the most intense moments. The rest of the world, with all its distractions, is stripped away, and… 010
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 12/06/2026I don't really agree with the consultancy hate - consultants absolutely serve a purpose beyond just repeating back to managers what they want to hear. But what's the point in spending money on consultants if they just serve up the same slop you could get from Gemini yourself? archive.is/T39aSarchive.is 010
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 11/06/2026Is there anything more pathetic than an LLM's grovelling after repeatedly bullshitting you? (Having a go at updating my website using Gemini... it did an OK job in the end, after several false starts including, on one occasion, extracting about 2/3 of my real website and hallucinating the rest.) 110
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 06/06/2026Three suggestions, each with a caveat. 1. Nuclear War (Annie Jacobsen). But is this just A House of Dynamite? 2. Light Perpetual (Francis Spufford). But would the domesticity make it dull? 3. The Affirmation (Christopher Priest). Would the Dream Archipelago narrative work though? 210
Reposted by Olivier UsherOlivier Usher @ojusher.com · 03/06/2026I take an extremely dim view of chatbots’ use of the word “I”. There is no “I” there. LLMs are a useful technology but the chat interface is a disaster. ojusher.medium.com/chatbots-are...ojusher.medium.comChatbots are a terrible way of interfacing with AIAt best, they mislead us about AI’s capabilities. At worst, they make us go nuts. 011
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 03/06/2026I met a “Head of Lettuce” (for a big greenhouse operating company) 010
Reposted by Olivier UsherSam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 26/05/2026Interesting that the idea of another EU referendum is regularly discussed on broascast media as something that would cause division and thus a bad idea. But plans to deport literally millions of people are discussed as administrative questions. 372356660
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 18/05/2026Is there a decent Gmail plugin that can tell me if emails I receive are likely to be written by AI? 000
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 18/05/2026So many “traditional recipes” turn out to be “printed on the back of a margarine packet in 1971”. 0151
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 16/05/2026He’s right. Over to you @andyburnham.bsky.social. I’ll vote for you in the leadership election if you top this. 120
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 13/05/2026Apropos of nothing, John Swinney had an undistinguished term as leader of the opposition, leading to his party going backwards in an election and him stepping down as leader... Before returning years later as a safe pair of hands, regaining the initiative and winning an election that looked lost. 010
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 12/05/2026Back in the day someone would have set up "haskeirstarmerquityet.com" and there would be several terrible Flash games about the PPS resignations. I miss the old internet. 210
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 11/05/2026I have no idea why Labour thinks it can find a middle ground that mollifies Brexit supporters. There is none. Brexit is an economic, social and geopolitical failure for this country and the sooner they accept the only way to fix it is to fully reverse it, the sooner we can all move on. 021
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 05/05/2026I forget who described chatbot prompts as "incantations", but that's what they are. 110
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 01/05/2026What I want to know is why, given practice/practise, licence/license and advice/advise, there isn’t uce/use. 010
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 27/04/2026Britain has the opportunity to do something very funny with the Strait of Dover 000
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 24/04/2026A fun thing I am working on: challengeworks.org/news/we-are-... Lots of ways to get involved in the coming months.challengeworks.orgWe are searching for the next Longitude Prize | Challenge WorksThe team at Challenge Works is embarking on a mission to find the next Longitude Prize, can you help? 000
Olivier Usher @ojusher.com · 22/04/2026People *think* AI will kill us all by nuking us. But it will *actually* kill us all when Russia and the US speak on Google Meets, the US team stay on the line for a post-summit moan, then Gemini emails everyone a transcript of the moan and the Russians are so furious they nuke the world. 000