Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 7hWell done McKinsey for keeping up their report that forecasts the value of the Metaverse as $5 trillion by 2030. www.mckinsey.com/capabilities... 88916
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 8hOK, who had three days on the “How long until Trump forgets he wants to call it “super intelligence” sweepstake? 051
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 14hLife is like a box of chocolates. I really like you, but you killed my dog. 000
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 21hReminder that both the "mass vaccination = mass death" nutcases, and the "ongoing deadly pandemic" lot are proven wrong every day. Actuaries - whose jobs depend on getting death rates right regularly publish age-standardised mortality rates. Post-pandemic, back to a steady year-on-year improvement. 37327
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 28/09/2026[ghost of Christmas future comes to viait Jensen Huang in 2006] “And you will be condemned by the Pope for unleashing a future devoid of humanity and …” “Hold on, when do we stop doing graphics cards?” “You don’t, this is about the graphics cards.” 052
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Putting this forward as a theory now. Or fly-tippers. Or doggers. 140
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 28/09/2026I really hope this is what they actually said. 010
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 28/09/2026The opening of "Iron and Blood", a biography of the founder of @stanforduniversity.bsky.social. pghrev.com/iron-and-ivy/ 130
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 28/09/2026[Keep calm, no-one knows you're a logit, no-one knows you're a logit] They're ... [sweats] ... the same. 001
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 28/09/2026No idea what went on here, but it’d be the funniest thing if a bunch of hare coursers blundered into an armed response to a national security threat. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c6...bbc.co.ukFarmer who called 999 saw 'large group of hooded and masked men' near RAF Fairford, she tells BBCThe farmer says someone "dropped the ball" by allowing five suspects to get near the base - but Defence Secretary Wes Streeting says she only has a "partial picture". 021
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Grisham’s Law: Like Gresham’s Law but for bookswaps. 000
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Caesar: The ides of March are come. Soothsayer. Ay, Caesar; but not fucking gone. 130
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 27/09/2026A special, quite mathsy case. But not that special. Claude is coming to tick off your frontier physics problems now. www.anthropic.com/research/yes...anthropic.comClaude computes a nine-loop amplitude in N=4 super-Yang-MillsClaude computes a nine-loop amplitude in N=4 super-Yang-Mills 120
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Probability of occurrence of event is somewhere in the range 0% to "over 95%". Somehow, a columnist manages to disagree, presumably in order to fill space. 110
Reposted by Paul MainwoodTom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Ooo, he's got the special tense that's normally reserved for the NYPD or the IDF. 413424
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 24/09/2026So far, flu is looking like the good kind of "way above average for the time of year". An atypically early rise rather than an atypically steep one. www.gov.uk/government/s... 060
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 24/09/2026If AI models are breaking into national healthcare systems worldwide, then can I suggest that we in the UK might end up in the position of Battlestar Galactica? That is, NHS systems are so manual and decrepit that the AI will spend weeks reverse engineering the fax and bleep system before giving up. 2131
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Weasels at the CDC continue to weasel around in order to avoid admitting US measles deaths. Now they're up to one, but have removed the "underlying cause" language which they themselves introduced a few weeks ago. There have been four measles deaths in the US this year. www.cdc.gov/measles/data... 042
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 22/09/2026To be fair, it would be funny if Trump decides that he must now bully OpenAI into renaming itself OpenSI, and they have to pretend that they agree in order to get their IPO off the ground. 140
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 22/09/2026It's worth thinking about why using AI to train AI models is "pretty much the one thing that will get you kicked off ASAP" from current efforts. "Model collapse" seems the most important phenomenon at the frontier imho. www.404media.co/people-train...404media.coPeople Training OpenAI’s AI Fired for Using AI to Train the AIOpenAI has thousands and thousands of contractors helping improve the company's AI models. Multiple contractors have been fired for using AI to train the AI. 030
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Economists' reactions to "Sorry, our decomposition was wrong, the productivity slowdown everyone's been obsessed about for a decade is half the size we thought it was." All variations on "Oh. OK. But it doesn't change anything." Just a mild note that it makes you wonder what's being studied here. 100
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 22/09/2026If the frontier models are now just solving everything we point them at - to the extent that the mathematicians are incandescently angry - can we please just take all that compute, and point them at the problem of finding new catalysts and reaction pathways to break down atmospheric CO2? 160
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 22/09/2026<< Smiling awkwardly while desperately clicking on the profile and replies so I can guess which side of which issue is being satirised and not mistakenly think it's other side of exactly the same issue because that would be embarrassing >> 0121
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 22/09/2026The Guardian is running a series describing unpleasant encounters its journalists have had with vermin: cockroaches, rats & mice. No obvious reason and unreadably disgusting. Now we learn their Kings Place office has a bedbug infestation, so I guess it's a clandestine protest against management?theguardian.comThe pest I’ll never forget: the cockroaches were everywhere – even on our wine glassesIn a cheap London flat with no heating, dozens of the insects swarmed, leading to a Valentine’s Day that still makes me break out in a cold sweat 100
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 22/09/2026This map is entirely implausible. - California, Texas and Florida seeing COVID waves at prevalence rates we only saw at the peaks of the pandemic? - Deriving prevalence from wastewater readings, without contemporaneous calibration from randomised surveys? Bullshit. Dispiriting to see it shared. 1152
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 21/09/2026At some point, someone in the US is going to look at a map and start asking some questions, right? 281
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 21/09/2026I think this means that a company developing a product that has a 99.9% chance of wiping out all life on earth and 0.1% change of producing ~$1bn/year profit in perpetuity, is correctly valued at ~$12.5bn (on an 8% WACC) and so should attract investment from a rational market to continue their work. 230
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 20/09/2026A slightly more succinct and self-contained version of why: a) We're going to be OK (mostly). b) The AI labs should to pay for the bits that won't be. paulmainwood.substack.com/p/were-going...paulmainwood.substack.comWe’re going to be OKA parochial parable, and suggestion not to panic 032
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 20/09/2026A fervent hope that everyone mentioned in this story gets precisely what they deserve. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/u...nytimes.comHow President Trump Broke the Kennedy CenterInternal emails and documents demonstrate the political capture of the institution, including how officials once pursued a plan to unload much of the art collection. 010
Reposted by Paul MainwoodTom Reagan’s Hat @rufustsuperfly.bsky.social · 20/09/2026My fave Kubrick anecdote - David Prowse on acting in A Clockwork Orange: 'So you want me to carry Patrick Magee, who weighs 17Olbs, plus the wheelchair, another 30lbs, so 200lbs, down the stairs & then do a dialogue scene?' 'Yeah, you can do it.' 'I know but your name isn't One Take Kubrick, is it?' 124456
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 19/09/2026Measles cases in the US might well be peaking (Pennsylvania / Wisconsin cases levelling off). The death toll of four does suggest that only a fraction of cases have been reported, so let's hope this is not just a reporting effect. 230
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Amongst the widespread cowardice of the US administration, one of the most abject examples is the CDC's obeying Kennedy's order to lie about measles deaths. They're still lying today in their latest update: there have been four US measles deaths in 2026, and their count remains at zero. 072
Reposted by Paul MainwoodJim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 18/09/2026I spend my week crossing london on a bike and increasingly that means cycling alongside Wayve/Waymo robotaxis. it’s uncomfortable. they give you so much space, don’t do a close pass while accelerating as lights go red. So unnerving if you cycle on assumption everyone’s mental and wants to kill you. 1526740
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Looks early. If you're thinking about getting a flu vaccination, would get it sooner rather than later. 1188
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Christ. 1,000 kids dead since March. To put the "19.8m children vaccinated" figure into context, there are ~55m under 18s in Bangladesh. So we're talking about a ~40% rate. You need high 90%s to stop large-scale outbreaks. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...bbc.co.ukBangladesh measles outbreak kills more than 1,000 children despite vaccine effortsUntil March this year, Bangladesh had made "substantial progress" towards eliminating measles. 010
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Why isn't a one-line refutation of longtermism something like: "The epistemic uncertainty around the consequences of almost all human action grows far faster than the population which is affected by that action." Exceptions (asteroid detection, maybe?) are wildly atypical, and do not generalise. 290
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 18/09/2026- Normal person: Wow, this shows that US politics is determined by price at the pump. What a chart! - Chart person: They've got scale and intercept degrees of freedom - they could show US politics is determined by whatever the hell you like. 2102
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Fortunately, I think Spiderman has that guy covered. 010
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 17/09/2026“You’re absolutely right and that one’s on me. Here’s the brutal truth: when I said that the airspace was clear …” 171
Reposted by Paul Mainwoodelia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible 25150153937
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Enormous amounts of intelligence has been expended in trying to interpret this man's actions and words into some set of coherent strategies or plans. He's an idiot who doesn't understand anything. That's all. 23910
Reposted by Paul MainwoodGregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 16/09/2026Thinking of/with antiwar activist A. J. Muste: 12420334
Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Saw this and wanted to know how US beef can be that cheap? So I looked, and now I want to know how US politicians can think that voters are that stupid? 011
