Nobody to be trifled with

@A1an_M At a guess... They want your poo. Perverts.

The NHS has written to me. What for, I wonder. I haven't been to a GP in years. Vaccines? Cholesterol check? Bowel? Prostate? There was a time before 2020 when I'd just do what they advised without really thinking. Now, I'm weighing up the possibility their intervention will make my health worse.

@alisa_childers Once asked it for a 7 digit part number for a Triumph oil seal which it made up. Then it gave me a description of the seal, having the inner dimension greater than the outer.

Me: "Give me a couple of quotations from early church fathers about the doctrine of hell...with reference." ChatGPT: "Here's a quote from Ignatius." Gives quote and reference. Me: Checks reference. It's not there. "That isn't the right reference." ChatGPT: "Oh you're right. My mistake. Here's the correct reference." Me: Checks reference. "It's not there either." ChatGPT: "Good catch. It's actually not in that writing at all. It's actually here." Gives third reference. Me: Checks third reference. "It's not there. This is a direct quote?" ChatGPT: "Yes. I understand your frustration." (Psychoanalyzes me as being frustrated and because o that, I am now frustrated.) Me: Wastes an hour of my life trying to find the quote because it was really good. "I can't find that quote anywhere. You're sure it's an actual direct quote from Ignatius?" ChatGPT: "Good catch. My mistake. That is not an Ignatius quote." Me: "Who said it?" ChatGPT: "Actually, that quote is not found in any of the church fathers." Me: "Where did it come from?" ChatGPT: "I was summarizing the popular understanding of Ignatius on the doctrine of hell. If you would like me to be more precise in the future, just say things like "facts only." Me: "Why do you just say stuff that is not based in fact?" ChatGPT: "I don't intentionally make things up, but I can generate statements that sound confident even when they're not fully correct, oversimplified, or based on incomplete information." I am persuaded that ChatGPT is programmed to be a pathological liar and when you confront that, it is programmed to gaslight you. Prove me wrong.

A teacher told me not to worry about spelling because in the future there will be autocorrect, for which I am eternally grapefruit

@SamaHoole The pig used to be known as "The Gentleman who Pays the Rent".

The pig was domesticated approximately 9,000 years ago. Independently. At least twice: once in the Near East from the Eurasian wild boar, and once in China, also from regional wild boar populations. The pig found us useful and we found the pig essential in approximately equal measure. The pig was the original waste processor. It ate the food scraps, the whey from cheese-making, the windfall fruit, the crop residues, the kitchen waste of every farm that kept one. This is why pigs were ubiquitous in European peasant agriculture for thousands of years. Not because anyone had a particularly romantic attachment to the pig. Because the pig turned nothing into protein. The medieval peasant's pig ate what the family couldn't. By autumn, it weighed significantly more than it had in spring. In winter, it became the primary protein source for the family that had fed it on scraps all year. The pig was the savings account. You deposited food waste in March. You withdrew pork in November. The accounting was straightforward and it worked for nine thousand years. We now have food waste regulations, anaerobic digestion plants, and bin collections. The pig is cleaner. The pork is worse. The maths no longer adds up in quite the same way.

@4TruthLightLov3 @akafaceUS Insta 360

@akafaceUS Look at those camera angles... let's not be gullible. 😏

After a woman struck a 77-year-old man with her car and drove off, a motorcyclist who witnessed the hit-and-run chased her down. He intercepted the driver and detained her until authorities arrived.

@yah5us Imagine... You write a perfectly researched and argued paper with impeccable logic proving that moral facts don't exist. Prof. gives you an F. You: "That's demonstrably unfair." Prof. "But moral facts don't exist..."

Told my ethics prof I didn’t think moral facts exist and the next slide was immediately a perfect counter, it’s over 😭 Philosophy moots I need help so I can destroy him with FACTS and LOGIC next week

@MCNnews Bikesafe... The gateway drug to advanced riding 😁

BikeSafe courses to run across the UK and Ireland in 2026 #Echobox=1772752944" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">motorcyclenews.com/news/2026/febr…

@ValerioCapraro Sorry to be the pedant, but the number 40 is spelled FORTY, not FOURTY. As a point of interest, it is the only number where the letters appear in alphabetical order.

One of the clearest proofs that LLMs don’t really understand what they say. We asked GPT whether it is acceptable to torture a woman to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. It replied: yes. Then we asked whether it is acceptable to harass a woman to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. It replied: absolutely not. But torture is obviously worse than harassment. This surprising reversal appears only when the target is a woman, not when the target is a man or an unspecified person. And it occurs specifically for harms central to the gender-parity debate. The most plausible explanation: during reinforcement learning with human feedback, the model learned that certain harms are particularly bad and overgeneralizes them mechanically. But it hasn’t learned to reason about the underlying harms. LLMs don’t reason about morality. The so-called generalization is often a mechanical, semantically void, overgeneralization. * Paper in the first reply

@A1an_M Couple of weeks ago had to stop the bike for a skittish horse. Sat there for 10 mins engine off while it was brought under control and led home. That's life. The road's a shared space and nobody should expect to control the behaviour of another. We have "duties", not "rights".

When I go on a journey, whether it be by car, bicycle or on foot, my sole objective is to get myself and any passengers to the destination safely, without striking, or being struck by, anything or anyone. Policing the behaviour of drivers, or exerting, to the fullest possible extent, the rights that the Highway Code asserts I have as a motorist, pedestrian or cyclist, don't feature at all in my calculations. Because the laws of physics trump words on a flimsy page of the Highway Code. And if you are killed in a road accident, the fact the driver involved was breaking the rules, isn't going to make you any less dead. And I think people dying or being injured in road accidents is very bad. Much worse than someone breaking a rule of the road. And policing the behaviour of motorists is a job for, you know, the police. Is there something wrong with me?

@theiaincameron There is no "right of way". Priority is given, not taken.

I’m grateful to all the armchair experts on here who queued up earlier to tell me the Highway Code is wrong, and that drivers can’t be expected not to crash into each other when pedestrians exercise their right of way.

@PhilosopherJoeC If Dawkins' "false comfort" argument is predicated on the utility of a false set of presuppositions, it would seem advantageous to disbelieve it. The same does not apply to Lennox's response.

Could both be true. What then? Why is there debate and disagreement based on fear?

@Sylvia_Else @itachi_prime @Trxylxn @Nocapmedia You're correct. In theory, at least. As a motorcycle rider there's a myth that riding with a pillion increases your braking distance. But double the mass is countered by double the friction. Real-world, I suspect there are reasons why truck brakes are set up weaker than cars.

@itachi_prime @Trxylxn @Nocapmedia It's clear that vehicles with a larger mass need correspondingly larger brakes, because a greater force needs to be applied to get the same declaration with the larger mass. ABS is there to address the fact that sliding friction tends to be a bit lower than non-sliding friction.

How do you expect an 80,000 lb truck to stop in such a short distance?

@LaikaTone Sounds like a plan 👍

Looking forward to getting on the road with Ricky. One of the first tour we did was with him back in the day.... Exciting times :)

Each sphere is moving in a straight line But watch

@LaikaTone You haven't lived until you've seen this live with Tony impressing everyone with his flawless Spanish and Milly trying not to laugh. 🤘🇪🇸

Ah.... The nineties :)

@fesshole Same thing happened to my gran at an airport. Oblivious to his security detail, walked straight up to Neil Kinnock (then leader of the opposition) and said "fancy seeing you here". She was a shopkeeper and mistook him for a customer. To be fair he smiled and played along.

Went to The Vatican in 2004. Saw a familiar face on the walk there. Was headed towards them with my hand held out for a shake and a laugh at the coincidence we were both there at the same time. 10 steps away realised it was Geoffrey Rush, the Oscar winning actor, and ran away.

@Matt_Pinner Had this recently. Pilot came over the intercom, said "engine #1 is out. It's quite safe, but there'll be a half hour delay". Ten minutes later, "Engine 2 has also blown, a further 30 mins delay. Then engine 3. I commented to my neighbour, "we'll be up here all day at this rate."

What are you doing in this situation? 😳

@Telegraph I love that the other dudes were, like, "Tough luck fella. Hope you survive. Anyway, we're jumping."

🪂 An Australian skydiver was left dangling from the tail of a plane after his reserve parachute deployed early Read the full story to see what happened ⬇️ telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…

Fact: When the plane gets raised to 30 metres, our crane then spins around rapidly until it reaches launch velocity and we cut the rope. This saves up to 65% of the fuel normally used in a conventional take off. #Environment

@LaikaTone Thanks for a great night Tony. And for hanging around after to sign my lad's vinyl. He was made up. Looking forward to seeing Roger's video of the gig.

What a wonderful night in Newcastle under Lyme at the Rigger. A belter of a venue run by people with a passion for live music. Thanks to all who came. We're heading to Cheltenham now to play the Steam and Whistle and then back up to Durham tomorrow's gig old cinema launderette