Maybe an imitation of a solution is good enough. Maybe the imitation is the mental crutch that helps you to understanding, and onward to a real solution, which is fine. But maybe all you want is to pass off the imitation as real, which is not.
Humans often want the solution to a problem, but rarely the hard work of understanding the problem first. Hence the appeal of magic wands.
Technology may look like a magic wand, but *somebody* has to understand the problem well enough to make a good tool for it, even if the user doesn't.
The #LLM promises to solve your problem, but without either its creator or its user having to understand it. The magic wand only imitates understanding - and so only produces an imitation of a solution.
It is no exaggeration to state that Microsoft Exchange is an albatross around the neck of the internet.
In the wake of the latest Proton ... noise ... I see a few people taking the opportunity to complain about the fundamental insecurity of email. Which on one level is fair, but on another it misses the point.
There has been *no end* of practical ideas to fix email. The rock they have all (so far) foundered on is backwards compatibility with Microsoft. If not for Microsoft, email security would have been a solved problem decades ago.
/rant
Lockhart wants to *collapse the executive* over the Drumcree parade? Thankfully Robinson seems to have more sense (for now).
Pick up your toys, put them back in the pram and take defeat like a grown up.
https://sluggerotoole.com/2026/10/23/is-carla-lockhart-about-to-quit-the-dup/
Wow. The people holding up the Internet. https://sheets.works/data-viz/holding-up-the-internet
“Lobbying” is such a bullshit word for “bribery and blackmail”.
“OpenAI isn’t just defending their own supply of memory, but attempting to choke the market to cut off anybody else. There are reports that OpenAI is attempting to buy up the DRAM manufacturing equipment as well, to deny future manufacturing capability.
This is a classic monopolist’s move!”
https://www.someweekendreading.blog/cornering-markets/
“There are many aspects of Northern Ireland’s Education system that need to change. Some would like a more radical overhaul, resulting in a single, shared, secular system. That may be beyond the possible right now.
But there is an opportunity for Integrated Education to act as a pioneer and a beacon, as it did 45 years ago.“
https://sluggerotoole.com/2026/10/03/integrated-education-must-change-to-survive/
I don’t know whether Putin actively wants to start a global war to save his political career, but if he keeps following his current strategy, he’ll manage it anyway.
The Orange Order lost this particular fight 30 years ago. Picking at the scab now achieves nothing but chaos. There is no great principle at stake here, only the wounded pride of a very small number of people.
Put on your big boy trousers and move on with your life. Everyone else has.
https://www.thejournal.ie/orange-order-protestants-letter-garvaghy-road-7180147-Oct2026/
“U.S. military sends top-secret F-35 parts by UPS from Australia. China intercepts package in Hong Kong, won't give it back.” 🤪 https://bsky.app/profile/gabekahn.bsky.social/post/3mw7rl4tdyc2u
The mafia have taken the USA, and they are coming for your country next. The remains of the free world must hang together, or hang separately.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/10/maga-foreign-policy/688352/?gift=qNsy63SDgz-kC5EUBgarsEX4n3Oj81DV7JV4c4Q-V2Y&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
“Privacy regulation will get there too. Not because the industry repents because industries don't, but because this is how every one of these stories ends: seatbelts, smoking sections, lead paint. Normal, then scandalous, then unthinkable. Someday someone will ask what an ad network for children was and refuse to believe the answer. And the executives who fought this will be on a boat somewhere, explaining that they were for it all along.”
https://matduggan.com/you-know-gdpr-is-good-based-on-who-hates-it/
The RNLI are up there alongside the fire brigade and paramedics in the hierarchy of Good People. If you find yourself campaigning against paramedics, or the fire brigade, or the RNLI, particularly if you think they should only save the lives of Approved People, then you have chosen the side of evil, and you need to step back and consider what the fuck went so badly wrong in your life.
https://www.bearlypolitics.co.uk/p/the-far-right-has-put-rnli-volunteers
At least 50% of the time that I click into an article to read it, I don’t finish it because life’s too short to hunt for the close button of popups.
You do not own your DNS name, you rent it. And it can be taken from you at any time, for no reason at all.
https://neil.fraser.name/news/2026/09/03/
“One scientific paper reports that the soil structure has been damaged in 75% of fields used for growing maize, sampled in south-west England. Partly because of the loss of carbon as the soil is washed away, biogas made from maize is likely to cause more greenhouse gas emissions than burning fossil methane. An estimate in Germany suggests that in some cases its emissions are comparable to burning coal”
https://www.monbiot.com/2023/03/09/the-hunger-gap/
Our leaders keep pleading for “five more minutes” like a videogame-addicted teenager at midnight.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-massive-climate-lie-that-will-destroy-human-civilization
*Yet another* example of someone bullied to death by the newspapers.
“An investigation… cleared Arday of wrongdoing.”
‘plagiarism allegations made by another academic, Nathan Cofnas – who has reportedly defined himself as a “race realist” – opened up a “media frenzy”’
“Jason was bombarded by every media outlet to paint him as a fraud.”
“the media didn’t stop ridiculing him, humiliating him, discrediting him.”
“his last voice note was that he just couldn’t go on.”
https://www.thejournal.ie/jason-arday-death-7132091-Aug2026/