Samuel

Easy for Rachel Reeves to claim the current student loan system, which has graduates tens of thousands of pounds in debt, is fair when she, like most MPs, went to university for free.

In less than 2 minutes, @OliDugmore explains how the social contract has broken in Britain for the under-45s The only thing missing from his list here is the cost of childcare, which, when added to everything else and even with new support, is breaking young families

A £9k tuition fee graduate excels in life and is on a salary of £100-125k. They start a family. Their marginal tax rate is… 85% What social contract?

My son called me crying “Dad, school ended 4 hours ago. I’m still waiting for you to pick me up!” Click. I hung up. Weak pitch. No clear call to action. Didn’t give me a reason to care. I went back to cold emailing billionaires. He’ll have to learn a better way to get my attention if he wants my help.

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees. $30 per seat per month. $1.4 million annually. I called it "digital transformation." The board loved that phrase. They approved it in eleven minutes. No one asked what it would actually do. Including me. I told everyone it would "10x productivity." That's not a real number. But it sounds like one. HR asked how we'd measure the 10x. I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards." They stopped asking. Three months later I checked the usage reports. 47 people had opened it. 12 had used it more than once. One of them was me. I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds. It took 45 seconds. Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations. But I called it a "pilot success." Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail. The CFO asked about ROI. I showed him a graph. The graph went up and to the right. It measured "AI enablement." I made that metric up. He nodded approvingly. We're "AI-enabled" now. I don't know what that means. But it's in our investor deck. A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT. I said we needed "enterprise-grade security." He asked what that meant. I said "compliance." He asked which compliance. I said "all of them." He looked skeptical. I scheduled him for a "career development conversation." He stopped asking questions. Microsoft sent a case study team. They wanted to feature us as a success story. I told them we "saved 40,000 hours." I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up. They didn't verify it. They never do. Now we're on Microsoft's website. "Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot." The CEO shared it on LinkedIn. He got 3,000 likes. He's never used Copilot. None of the executives have. We have an exemption. "Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction." I wrote that policy. The licenses renew next month. I'm requesting an expansion. 5,000 more seats. We haven't used the first 4,000. But this time we'll "drive adoption." Adoption means mandatory training. Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches. But completion will be tracked. Completion is a metric. Metrics go in dashboards. Dashboards go in board presentations. Board presentations get me promoted. I'll be SVP by Q3. I still don't know what Copilot does. But I know what it's for. It's for showing we're "investing in AI." Investment means spending. Spending means commitment. Commitment means we're serious about the future. The future is whatever I say it is. As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

Flight attendant comes over intercom: “your flight is oversold, I need two volunteers to take a flight this afternoon for a $300 voucher.” I spring into action. I was born for these moments. This is why I studied game theory. Literal tingles. I pull out my megaphone and address our boarding gate: “guys, they absolutely must off board at least two passengers or this bird isn’t taking off. Every 3 minutes they will increase their bid by $200. If we all hold out for 45 more minutes, 2 of us can make nearly 5 grand each. Textbook prisoners dilemma, this is (3,3) in its most visceral representation. I’m not even going to give up my ticket but I know value when I see value. Let’s make Nash proud ladies and gentlemen. Do not acquiesce. Do not defect.” Anyhow 2 people immediately accepted $500 and I called them retards on my megaphone and was placed in a detention room by airport police. This is why we study game theory.

Last week I hosted family for Thanksgiving. My 12-year-old nephew asked for the WiFi password. He wanted to play Roblox on his iPad. I looked at the device. Unmanaged. No antivirus. No encryption. I’m an IT Professional. I don't run an open network. So I didn’t give him the password. Instead, I spent 45 minutes provisioning a Guest VLAN. I set up a captive portal. I throttled the bandwidth down to 56kbps. Then I blocked all traffic on ports 80 and 443. He came back crying. He said it wouldn't load. My sister screamed at me to "just let him play." I told her that Zero Trust architecture doesn't care about bloodlines. We didn't have a "fun" Thanksgiving. But we had a secure perimeter. You’re welcome for the compliance.

FYI. Voice memos drive me crazy. They shift all the work from sender to receiver. You hit record and ramble for 3 minutes while I’m stuck listening with no way to skim. You’re trading YOUR efficiency for MY time, and if you keep choosing your convenience over mine, don’t be surprised when I stop opening your messages altogether.

"Sip margarita on the beach with Federer and Nadal and just reflect on our rivalry" @rafaelnadal, @rogerfederer are you down? #Wimbledon

Carlos Alcaraz, historical. #RolandGarros

Please Mr Bull, not right now, we have a lot going on

The bartender at the microbrewery showing me the 100 ipas they serve right before I ask for a Guinness

Gettin sick of Porn on the timeline

Normalise knee slide celebrations in rugby. #ENGvFRA #GuinnessM6N

Steve Diamond will appear before an RFU disciplinary panel on Tuesday, charged with not knowing the words to the ‘Blaydon Races’. The sanction for this offence ranges from three to six pints. The club will be making no further comment.

He never liked retirement anyway. 🙌

Thank you for giving everything, @RafaelNadal.

Chargers scoring defense ranks in recent seasons 2020 23rd 2021 29th 2022 21st 2023 24th 2024 1st