Mick W@tson ↙️

I have big news! I will be leaving @roslininstitute and @EdinburghUni at the end of September to take up a new position as Principal Data Scientist at @DSM!

@bencsmoke It isn't

it should not be controversial to say all forms of income should be taxed at the same rate and that the wealthiest should pay more.

@mdf200 @gordymeister I didn't say it was against the rules, but you can game the system within the rules. It is an example of a failed PR system - majority for indy on a minority of votes. PR failure.

@BioMickWatson @gordymeister That's not gaming the system, it's specifically allowed by the rules written by the UK Parliament. Unionists are just pissed it's backfired on them. if it had been like WM, the SNP would have won about 80% of the seats, something no WM party has ever even come close to.

More seats than ALL Unionist parties combined. Highest number or Pro-Indy seats, and a massive pro-indy majority. More than enough for a stonking pro-indy majority and a referendum. It's literally what the people have voted for.

@mdf200 I'm talking voter numbers, not seat numbers. Again, I know you're not stupid, so I find it really odd that you argue like a 5yr old.

@BioMickWatson Oh, so now you're happy to have "multiple" parties form a majority? 😂 in which case, SNP+Greens have the largest Pro-Indy majority in Scottish history. 🤣

@mdf200 @gordymeister @Alfaromeo170 Nope. The UK is a sovereign country, the EU is not. Why are you making up this stuff?!

@gordymeister @Alfaromeo170 Irrelevant. All your talking about is how many seats and votes needed to hold a referendum to modify peoples rights. The "Act of union" is simple a political agreement - like Brexit, and Scotland can decide to leave if it's people want to.

@mdf200 The thing is, you KNOW this, so I am really unsure why you keep bleating on about a referendum. It's over.

@mdf200 The Tory party wasn't the only pro-brexit party. To make this comparison, you have to look at data showing whether there is enough voter signal to justify a referendum. The fact is the BIGGEST signal we have in Scotland just arrived: 40%. No mandate, no referendum

@mdf200 @tonytownend Zero mandate, and you know it. It's not happening.

@tonytownend More seats than all unionist parties combined. Massive majority of Pro-Indy MSPs. More than enough as a mandate for another referendum.

@mdf200 @gordymeister Yep, Greens game the system by not standing in constituencies

@gordymeister The overall vote share was down. Labour/Tory votes fell yes, STILL more seats than ALL unionist parties combined. And the highest number of Pro-Indy MSPs. It's literally what those who voted for the largest number of pro-indy seats wanted. "Gamed the system" my arse.

@mdf200 @Telboyshow it's not irrelevant - it is a direct read of how enthusiastic people are for independence. It's over, Mike. You lost.

@Telboyshow More seats than ALL unionist parties combined. Number of votes is irrelevant. Just like Boris got LESS than 30% of the electorate vote, but still withdrew from the EU. Or Cameron held a Brexit referendum with less than 50% of the vote. One rule for the UK... blah blah blah..

@bencsmoke @SageoftheShire citation needed!

@SageoftheShire private landlordism was almost eradicated in britain 40 years ago - were we a communist country then?

being a landlord is morally repugnant. remains a great social failure that we allow landlords to extort profit from working people for the luxury of 'having shelter'. they must be taxed into oblivion, releasing housing stock, bringing down prices + making living affordable.

@bencsmoke Can you name any country in the World that has zero private landlords?

@StuartBudd1 @SteveAkehurst @AaronBastani Scotland has voted in idiot nationalists for nearly 20 years

@SteveAkehurst @AaronBastani Hey? The Scottish can see shysters a mile off and have a good nose for English nationalists who are more interested in bigotry and authoritarianism than the economy.

Interesting. Burnham barely makes a dent in Wales and Scotland… 😬

@AaronBastani Kills ur Green revival though doesn't he? 🤣

@SteveAkehurst @AaronBastani Steve, he's an idiot

@AaronBastani i am begging you not to trust extrapolations of a 2500 person hypothetical poll and esp not to the weird dynamics of Scottish politics ! (no shade to MiC, some shade to S4L)

@HughMcsween @kevverage Unions are normal

@kevverage (2) 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Independence is Normal on X: "“Whatever’s left [after Scotland🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 leaves], Little England or Great Britain or Great England … whatever you want to call it … doesn’t have much to sell to the outside world any more” #ScottishIndependence🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 #voteSNP "

Andra says Scots don't pay taxes that go to Westminster, doh

@jegamegus @MrTCHarris @SeamusLoganMP @theSNP Would Scotland not pay interest on debt then?

@MrTCHarris @SeamusLoganMP @theSNP Scotland pays a %age of the interest on All debt , HS2 is debt, not our debt as you say ,so how is it an England only project. all debt thats paid to BofE helps net profits which are then split between its own financial reserves and HM treasury , where's our split?

Scottish taxpayers are paying for #HS2 but no one in this Labour Government is clear about whether this white and rather expensive elephant will ever make it across the border! It's the same old story for Scotland, Westminster just expects us to pay up without any benefit @theSNP

@lukeakehurst Luke, it's the constant back pedaling, giving in to bank benchers, nonsensical policies and lack of action

It's quite bizarre to have Labour people panicking about the Government's polling position given: a) Labour is going up in some polls at the moment b) a 6% opposition lead in mid-term is not abnormal (winning opposition parties are usually 20% ahead) c) it's 3 years until the next General Election

@EricTopol @Nature @GoogleDeepMind @FutureHouseSF On the multi agent system, please read the details about Finch, the "analyst" agent. It doesn't make for good reading!

A big day for multi-agent AI to accelerate biomedical discovery, hypothesis generation, designing experiments with proof points of new candidate drugs (cancer, fibrosis, macular degeneration, antimicrobial resistance, and more) 2 @Nature reports @GoogleDeepMind @FutureHouseSF nature.com/articles/s4158… nature.com/articles/s4158…

@CDHughett @SGRodriques It's also not surprising that the weak link in the AI paper was the analysis agent, which needed significant oversight.... because language models make very poor statisticians.

@CDHughett @SGRodriques The bottleneck is data. Language models had an abundance of data just ready to be ingested. Biological data is stored in 1000s of niche formats, behind paywalls, behind log ins, on 1000s of project websites, separated from key metadata

I have spent my entire life working on this and thinking about this for the past 4 years. I don't know what will happen in 20 years, but I can promise you that on the 5-10 year timescale, scientists are not out of their jobs. AI is going to massively accelerate the pace of science, increase productivity, let individual scientists make way more discoveries way faster, and is going to make science overall more fun. But the model is going to be collaboration between humans and AI, not replacement. The key difference here between science and e.g. software engineering is that science is not verifiable in any rapid/convenient way (unlike software), unlike programming. We still need humans for their scientific taste.