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Michael

@tingedfringe.bsky.social
132 followers 245 following 833 posts

Heterodox Discordian. Small-i illuminati. Nothing is Reasonable, Everything is Absurd. All Hail Eris!

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Reposted by Michael
Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 16h
A lot of people are speculating that this will lead to the US government having to bail out AI companies but there's no world where that happens and the government bond market doesn't completely collapse and cause a fiscal crisis.
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Ellie Mae O'Hagan @elliemaeohagan.bsky.social · 2h
OK now I'm back at work I want to talk about GB Grid. I think the govt did the best it could at communicating this announcement but it's quite technical and you need to understand the energy system to fully get it, so it's almost impossible to sum up in a soundbite. Let me explain as far as I can:
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Michael @tingedfringe.bsky.social · 16h
100% the call for regulation is so they can ban competition from ~scary~ open weight models.
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A. Feder Cooper @afedercooper.bsky.social · 18h
Our large-scale study of memorization of books in open-weight LLMs (e.g., Llama, Qwen) will appear at the 2026 Conference on Language Modeling as an oral. We made a website for exploring our results on 200 books and 14 models: books-memorization.github.io
books-memorization.github.io
How much do open-weight LLMs memorize specific books?
Open-weight LLMs memorize books far more than previously believed. Memorization varies by model family, model size, and book. In extreme cases, entire books are memorized, and we can generate them eff...
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 21h
Not sure how the triple lock change will ultimately play politically. But trapping the Tories and Reform into defending a policy literally none of them support in private is potentially a neat move.
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a rare photo of sean connery signed by roger moore @steamedhamms.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
i know a lot of people have been long invested in the idea that andy burnham is a bit crap at politics, and with the caveat I know polling this far out isn’t the whole thing, but taken together with his electoral record is there a chance he’s maybe alright at it
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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
such a good eg of why political argument matters - polling previously showed over 60% support for keeping triple lock. Argue to unlock it *for something people also want* & numbers can change. (Obv can change back again if someone makes a good argument against, but either way, politics=argument)
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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Starmer but with better TikTok arguments aging poorly today.
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Emily✨ @emilyoram.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Liquid Bluesky
National Trust• @nationaltrust.org.uk 
Nobody has ever regretted a scone after a long walk.

Except someone with ceoliac disease
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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I give up. I’m moving into a cave.
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
It’s a mark of the corruption of our whole way of thinking about the world that trying to meet a planetary emergency is routinely described as “ideological”, while continuing to accelerate it is presented as “pragmatic” and “economic”.
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 29/09/2026
genuinely useless to give this number without defining A) what run rate means and B) what period it refers to
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Tony Yates @t0nyyates.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Weird how 'hyperscalers' has slipped into the lexicon as an accepted, objective term for the AI firms. How about 'megalosers' to refer to the recorded gap between outgoings and incomings?
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Patrick Cosmos @veryimportant.lawyer · 28/09/2026
i don't think it's glib to say this: it's possible that nobody on earth cares less about consent than mark zuckerberg
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Museum of Twitter @museum-of-twitter.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
@ddeaen

iphones ruined an entire generation's tech literacy because i regularly see 14+ year olds asking how to make a desktop shortcut or duplicate a File

@inkballpro

i was literally figuring out virtual machines and basic linux at like 6 lol

@ddeaen

this is also not normal im sorry
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
as a satire on so-called late stage capitalism how could one beat investors pouring a trillion into a company offering to wipe out humankind
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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
If you are going to end the triple lock, you’re better off just ending it. Talking about a process of maybe ending it in the next Parliament, following some sort of review, feels like a way of minimising the fiscal saving while maximising the political pain.
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David Milliken @davidmilliken.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Britain sold £4.25 billion of 10-year government bonds this morning at an average yield of 5.383% – the highest borrowing cost for newly issued 10-year debt since 1999. Yields were higher in the secondary market in 2007, but no 10-year bonds were actually issued then so the cost wasn't locked in.
Table of results from the UK Debt Management Office's 29/09/2026 auction of £4.25 billion of the 4.875% 2036 gilt
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 28/09/2026
this is the fridge of a person who doesn’t prepare a single meal
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The FT runs an explainer on El Niño in which it drily tells us that scientists don’t typically use the classifier ‘Godzilla’ El Niño www.ft.com/content/c411...
What is a 'Godzilla' El Niño?
Some observers have referred to the upcoming El Niño as "super" or "Godzilla".
James Hansen, an American climatologist, has called this year's phenomenon "super-duper"
Scientists typically do not classify the event in such terms. The WMO's preferred
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David Milliken @davidmilliken.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
For connoisseurs of UK labour data, the ONS has now produced a reworking of LFS data using PAYE numbers to better adjust for the post-pandemic drop in responses. Key chart is here, showing a bigger fall in employment at the start of pandemic, stronger recovery after and more decline recently.
Estimated rate of employment among people aged 16 to 64 years, before and after recalibration of Labour Force Survey (LFS) weights to Pay As You Earn (PAYE) employee totals, Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2019 to Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2025, Great Britain
Source: Labour Force Survey from the Office for National Statistics, Pay As You Earn Real Time Information from HM Revenue and Customs
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Michael @tingedfringe.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my fucking thumb, sir.
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Jared Yates Sexton @jysexton.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Just helping with editing here. These bots aren’t sentient. They’re doing what they’re programmed to do. OpenAI, a private company supposedly bound by laws, committed federal crimes.
Screenshot of BBC article: OpenAI bots (struck through) meddled with multiple US government agency sites
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Tony Yates @t0nyyates.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
You need to give me more money because my computer program did bad things I don't remember telling it too, which is amazing really, just think what I could do next with your money.
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FT Alphaville @alphaville.ft.com · 25/09/2026
www.ft.com/content/4c3f...
ft.com
OK, so where are all these data centres?
A construction shortfall so big you can’t see it from space
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
UK PM Andy Burnham has pledged in an interview for regional TV that he won’t call a General Election until one is due in 2029. “All of this speculation on an early election, I can knock that dead.”
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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Once again, I am reminding people that I did not write the list. And also noting that it is ok for people to like different things. And watching very little TV is fine. And watching a lot of TV is also fine. It’s all fine.
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Jesse Felder @jessefelder.com · 24/09/2026
‘It does seem a bit rough that Oracle might be on the hook for hefty rental payments starting 2028 as anchor tenant of a massive data centre complex if the complex is just a hole in the ground. What do credit markets make of this?‘ www.ft.com/content/82db...
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Thank God Reform is standing up for masked, knife-wielding, ex-cons. Society's most marginalised group.
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Michael @tingedfringe.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
There was a time when Reform realised that they needed to extend their reach beyond their core vote - but it seems that being social media influencers is now to them personally more profitable than the pursuit of power.
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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 24/09/2026
If Elon Musk and half the Tesla C-Suite were currently in jail because Grok spent weeks generating CSAM-on-demand while they memed about it, Altman and the rest might be a bit more cautious about letting their little robots commit share price friendly press releasable crimes.
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Michael @tingedfringe.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The cold and rain? We've been in summer since early May and we're about to enter October still in the low 20s. My garden still thinks it's July, judging from the plant growth.
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
One party with an interest in actually solving problems is all I ask for.
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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The reoccurring theme of recent news is ‘company/individual commits a crime. There is no obvious consequence’. Doesn’t feel ideal.
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dr. rich traditions, JD @helldude.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
we have control mechanisms for this. it's called The Law. these guys should be held personally liable for these harms. the suicides, the thefts, the intrusions into computer systems. they should be sued and prosecuted as appropriate. problem immediately solved
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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The British right has now descended to the point where 'the England team are not English' is becoming the consensus position
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Michael @tingedfringe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I put on Bloomberg and their take is that there's nothing to see here, it's just a defensive strategy, Oracle will definitely pay their obligations, please don't look at the man behind the curtain. Lmao.
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Josh Sawyer @jesawyer.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Escaping to her only safe haven: a Kojima game.
Elizabeth Holmes being body scanned. Thumbnail for a trailer for You Can See Everything
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Michael @tingedfringe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
If I set a swarm of bots to autonomously hack a government, I'm pretty sure I'd be extradited the day after I was caught.
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Michael @tingedfringe.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVlx... Richard Werner is probably my favourite economist - in that he's right about a lot (credit creation theory of money, disaggregation of credit having different effects, etc) but he's also a massive conspiracist.
youtube.com
The Greatest Fraud In Human History | Prof. Richard Werner
YouTube video by The Peter McCormack Show
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
One of obvious problems Reform has is the views of those in charge don't remotely match many of their voters.
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Michael @michaeljsc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
they should study him in a lab. I don’t think I could write this badly on purpose. still, glad this has higher billing than coverage of last night’s far right escalation
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Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The complete and total collapse of state function in the face of far right extremists. It is frankly ludicrous that Daniel Thomas continues to be at large given the series of crimes committed which he has literally filmed.
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 22/09/2026
I don't know, maybe all those non-"straight white dude" people won their awards because their books were actually really fucking good, how about that as a hypothesis
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
There is, I think, a really good argument to be made that the bit of the income distribution that the Liberal Democrats are winning from the Conservatives are specifically overtaxed (the £100k marginal rate + the end of free childcare). Fixing that costs c£4bn, and might actually raise revenue.
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Michael @tingedfringe.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
This isn't to dunk on this particular post - but I find this whole debate on the left really frustrating. The debate isn't between hurting pensioners (bad!) and hurting pensioners (good!), it's that you can't have a government expenditure that rises faster than economic growth over the long-run.
Projection of State Pensions expenditure over time - source: Parliamentary research paper No 7812, referencing OBR forecasts.
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 22/09/2026
This shit is dead as disco. Needs $174 billion in debt to get off the ground and had to pull its IPO because it makes no money and won’t make a dime off OpenAI until, at best, 2028, and that is making a lot of assumptions about OpenAI’s solvency
SB Energy warned in its prospectus that the data centre projects it needs to fulfil its current contracts would require $174bn of investment.
The company said it planned to fund the majority through project-level debt but cautioned that it "may face difficulty securing the quantum of capital required to fund our project pipeline, particularly if the debt capital markets tighten"
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
If this is confirmed it will be the first time ever that the CDU have failed to meet the threshold in a German election (regional or national). Catastrophe is the word.
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