James Vincent
@jjvincent
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author and journalist. wrote a history of measurement, BEYOND MEASURE; a New Yorker, Times, Economist book of the year. formerly senior editor @verge
London, England
Joined January 2011
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some great pictures from port revel, a french maritime training school where pilots learn how to maneuver supertankers and container ships at 1:25 scale
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it's very beautiful to me that the victorians created a generationally-slow tree timebomb by planting half a million giant redwoods in the UK, which are only now beginning to outgrow native trees
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i love photos of wind turbine blades being transported across rural parts of the UK because it makes me think they're assembling an EVA unit in the midlands somewhere
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another example of a chatbot encouraging delusional tendencies. The baseline agreeability of these systems - their tendency to mirror the user - and their cultural framing as semi sentient beings with special insight seems extremely dangerous
Man who broke into Windsor Castle grounds with crossbow to "kill the Queen" being sentenced for treason
Follow live link
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These are real exchanges between the would be assassin and the chabot, incredible
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It’s interesting how quickly the basic AI generated aesthetic has become dated
Someone on Reddit made an Adidas commercial on Midjourney during their coffee break.
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Looking forward to the age of AI psyops where intelligence agencies make the horniest chatbots possible to encourage young men to commit acts of terrorism… “ah- senpai *blushes*, you really think you could find that much fertiliser?? 👉👈”
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“a white horse covered in blood galloping down a busy street” sounds like a dream tony soprano has before killing a close friend for snitching
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“The fantasy of purely technological solutions is bound up with the desire to eliminate political and social responsibility for human vulnerability.” - excellent letter in the
@LRB
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this is like one of those sci fi stories where robots keep fighting world war whatever long after all the humans have died but instead of bombing runs it’s drop shipping
THE WORLD IS A DEAD THING, WITH NOTHING INSIDE IT.
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If this is how little OpenAI cares about duping part of an extremely famous celebrity’s identity, what does that say about its capacity to safeguard their tech for the benefit of the general public ?
Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI situation. Wow:
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born too late to write $8 a word magazine features; born too early to read wikipedia pages on tiktok
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Google has unveiled its vision for how it will incorporate AI into search. The quick answer: it's going to gobble up the open web and then summarize/rewrite/regurgitate it (pick the adjective that reflects your level of disquiet) in a shiny google UI
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I’m beginning to think of ChatGPT as a tool that reveals weak points in institutional credibility; illuminating checks that humans should make but skip out of lack of reward, laziness etc. LLM shibboleths then show up in the text like idoine glowing in your veins before a CT scan
New from 404 Media: first, ChatGPT was used for writing academic papers. Now, researchers suspect AI is being used to 'review' papers, threatening to undermine the peer review system writ large
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may we all aspire to leave such generous gifts to our descendants
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Another relevant factor: socially isolated individuals may be more likely to turn to chatbots for company, finding it easier to talk without threat of judgement; these bots are heavily marketed to these users (particularly young and male) as an alternative to normal socialisation
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"it changes the way you’ll experience search, especially on mobile, where that AI snapshot often eats up the entire first page of your results."
the endpoint of google search is no search results at all — just google
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I imagine this will become something of a cliche in the future. “Oh yes well he spent a lot of time talking to his AI girlfriend you know.” Mainstream alignment work will be useless; there’s too many ways to fork LLMs and already a strong community based around “freeing” chatbots
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the Vegas sphere is a perfect example of David Nye's American Technological Sublime - previously instantiated in engineer feats like dams, bridges, and skyscrapers, then the pilgrimage of space launches; now built to validate the gaze of the consumer
This is inside the Sphere in Las Vegas.
This may be the most insane concert venue ever built
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Out in London to OpenAI CEO
@sama
give a talk about AI - and the protestors are out, asking for a stop to AI development
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I wrote about the current convulsions gripping the web, and the part AI is playing in rebalancing its economies
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lime bikes finally doing some good for the commons
Great use of lime bikes
Well done to comrades stopping the deportation coach in peckham this morning
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@edcumming
I love those sort of newspaper measures because their rhetorical function is always a little oblique. No one knows how tall cleopatras needle is so the quantity being compared is really more like some vaguely defined idea of monumentality
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it's completely damning of google's principles that its defense for the failure of AI search is that the queries being asked are "uncommon." like a library telling you the more infrequently a book is taken out, the less you should trust it
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They built a robot to help you practice reactions to your friends’ poetry readings 👇
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Jameson on Knausgaard back in 2018: "we have abandoned the quest for new languages [...] All that is left is to itemise"
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some personal news from me: after eight wonderful years at
@verge
I'm leaving in 2024 to focus on other writing projects, including books. to celebrate/commmiserate, here are a dozen of the stupidest headlines i managed to get on the site over the years, i love them all:
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If you’re serious about AI risk and xrisk in particular, I feel like the overriding lesson from this incident is: the money won; the money will continue to win. Not a comfort
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the video for the new electric Atlas from Boston Dynamics is ... quite something. practically, it's showing off how human-shaped robots are not limited by the human body's degrees of freedom, but it feels like a videogame introduction to a robot bossfight
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the inflatable corn cob banana fingers glove is quite something
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Id say a sizeable amount (perhaps a third?) of AI art I see is political propaganda and caricature made by groups who have always been motivated enough to share such work but generally lacked resources to produce it - the democratisation of AI
Is this the future you want for your daughters and granddaughters? 😡
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when politicians and tech companies are patting one another on the back about regulation, it's natural to be suspicious. My writeup of this week's AI regulatory hearings and the prospect of industry capture:
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a few years ago, after much haphazard trial and error, I settled on Muji boxers and socks as the option and felt like a great weight had been lifted from me and I would never have to think about such things again. if they go under I will scream
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in an age of media decline it's always SUCH a relief to find small curatorially-minded publications that really reach readers where they are 🙏🙏🙏
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EU lawmakers approved a new version of its upcoming AI Act with strong prohibitions on mass biometric surveillance, predictive policing and much more. Digital rights campaigners tell me it's "overwhelmingly good news." Details here:
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OpenAI emphasising voice interaction for gpt-4o is canny and somewhat telling - they’re leaning into the masquerade of intelligence, voice is emotive and seductive (and they do it incredibly well) but it doesn’t necessarily indicate leaps forward in capability
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here's some excerpts from John McPhee on Port Revel, collected in his book Uncommon Carriers. (and credit to
@the_prepared
for alerting me to this wonderful thing)
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The most boring, unloveable strand of the AI creative scene seems to have been inherited from the MCU and the metaverse - it’s a thoughtless combinatorial approach; endless crossover events without taste or originality. Its ugly inbreeding and it’ll die soon enough
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constantly haunted by the notion that if only I properly sort my Files - my tabs, my bookmarks, my pdfs and screenshots, my notes and my lists - that the whole of my life will fall into order, like some hermetic ritual that summons god through the rearranging of his many names
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finally deleted all my tweets, spurred not by the slow decline of this platform, but by the prospect of scraping and AI misinformation. i'm sure my old tweets were scraped numerous times, but no need to enable this in the future
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you've got a notification on Facebook telling you "we're planning new AI features for you" (aka, we want your data to train our models) — you click the notification and see this screen, and there's ... no obvious way to opt-out. shameful and rapacious behavior from Meta
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@JuliaErrens
yeah, absolutely. the top notes themselves are dated (squid game/cyberpunk tracksuits-and-neon) but so is the underlying aesthetic (what i call The Smear - the shifting, amorphous movement that comes direct from the use of latent spaces)
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@PeteBlacker
it's certainly part of an established pattern, but it's a bit of a 'when does a pile of sand become a heap' question - and with the current AI boom, the capacity to summarize more types of info (and google's keenness to implement) have increased significantly
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on may 8th i deleted my tweets (I know the date because I tweeted about it). but when I checked my timeline this morning, twitter had restored some old re-tweets without warning. it's yet another illustration of twitter's unpredictable infrastructure:
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someone just sat down opposite me at the library, huge hardback book laid down with as much grace as the weight allows. I peek with interest and respect at the title. Two words: TURTLE REHABILITATION
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This feels like cheating - like writing an entirely new book without any extra effort - but the UK paperback of Beyond Measure arrived today and it looks gorgeous !!! It’s out June 1st if you’re looking for a holiday read —>
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ted chiang is spot on again in his comparison of AI's (emerging) function to consultants that act as "capital's willing executioners" — a way to justify decisions that primarily benefit the interests of shareholders and management
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was just obsessed with these as a kid, really felt i could live inside them
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it seems obvious that facial recognition defeats the most empowering characteristic of mass protest (anonymity in a crowd) but i think we've yet to reckon with the effect this will have on free speech in countries like the UK
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was watching this (very good) video on whether gen Ai has peaked (because it can’t abstract outside training data) and was struck that the position “let’s make judgments using verifiable evidence and not future speculation” now seems radical and refreshing
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In 1632, British mathematician William Oughtred decried the slide rule, saying it required no actual thinking and turned students into mere "doers of tricks [and] jugllers." Surprisingly, he helped invent the thing. Here's me on the history of calculators:
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i'm sometimes quite hopeful that AI language models and chatbots will have a rejuvenating effect on literary culture -- choking us with such a surfeit of bland and meaningless semi-language that people begin reaching for new forms of expression
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E.O. Wilson here recalling cormac mccarthy and werner herzog in his evocation of nature's brutality. "For millions of years human beings simply went at nature with everything they had [...] Life was short, fate terrifying, and reproduction an urgent priority" (Biophilia, 1984)
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the failure of google glass was partly due to public shaming. but this was possible only because google tried to replace your *phone*. with the vision pro, apple is trying to replace your *computer*, something primarily used in private spaces. it can't be countered the same way
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the use of deepfakes in US politics are becoming more brazen. A recent attack ad by the DeSantis campaign includes what appear to be AI-generated fakes of Trump embracing Fauci, intended to presumably gin up support with Fauci hating anti-vaxxers
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@SzMarsupial
very much agree. i can't fully articulate it, but there's something in the overt use of symbolism — presenting acts of barbarism as something allegorical or even poetic — that seems designed to insulate those involved or watching from reality
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this is advanced memetic warfare
The Indiana Pacers used Snapchat AI filters to make LA Lakers fans look like they were crying while watching game 😆
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i do get the impulse to say this sort of thing in contemporary internet crit but ... it's simply not true, is it? for a definition of "know" or any accounting of facts. it's just a fantasy, spurred by a desire to romanticize and mystify what are very banal facts about modern life
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an illuminating example. left: GPT-4 asked to write like an 18th century fur trader. right: what an 18th century fur trader *actually* sounds like. as ever, LLMs are models of surface and pastiche; as historically dense as a hollywood backlot
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I’m testing AI chatbot apps for a story and it’s funny that their privacy policies now force you to acknowledge you’re talking to a computer that does not understand you
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i do really appreciate that at some point youtube, without really meaning to, gave me the option of just turning off all algorithmic recommendations and now whenever i load up the homepage i just get a blank screen and my subscriptions. much better.
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I do truly think this is one of Americas great cultural institutions and have relished every diner breakfast I’ve had. For me, the experience is epitomised by those thick walled coffee cups, durable and everfilling; a symbol of industrialised care and abundance
I have never been to America but it is a dream of mine to one day go and to go to a proper diner and have pancakes with that streaky bacon and syrup from one of those jugs and coffee that a waitress will refill from one of those coffee pots
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"The scientists concluded that Rakus knew he was applying medicine because orangutans very rarely eat this particular plant and because of the length of the treatment." - this is so cool
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appropriately, this will also be my last piece for the
@verge
for a while, as from this week, i'm on book leave once more, and will return in January... I guess I'll check in again in six months and see how things have gone
I wrote about the current convulsions gripping the web, and the part AI is playing in rebalancing its economies
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I cycled drunk round London for a while trying to see the aurora borealis after seeing the tweets and didn’t see anything but I enjoyed the cycle and the cold air regardless so no loss, cosmically speaking
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I have a tooth infection right now (some of most maddening and insistent pain I’ve experienced, jeers to that) but I do love this x ray of my wisdom tooth; just barrelling horizontally into my jaw like a drunk frat bro spear tackling a group of friends
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AI mysticism continues to foster a priest class convinced they’re heirophants to higher intelligence rather than hypemen for capitalism
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wikipedia editors really knocked it out the park with their choice of illustration for "free will"
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praying monks, trumpeting angels, and furious, howling devils: I wrote about medieval automata and their place in the medieval mind as entities neither mechanical nor magical for the
@LRB
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got a lot of negative feedback for this on Instagram but I reckon a cold tin of soup (tomato for preference, drunk straight from the can and paired with some fruit) is a sane and practical lunch
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brilliant essay on the experience of masquerading as an AI chatbot in customer service. for all the fantasies of tech boosters, stories like this reveal the limitations of chatbots' ability to act as meaningful agents in the messy world of humans
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can AI produce real art? my answer is: yes, but only when it goes mad. read my essay on here on ChatGPT, Italo Calvino, pornbots, and machine poetry:
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I tried to think about what the modern equivalent of “buying a horse I don’t need at all” is, but I think it’s still “buying a horse I don’t need at all”
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another tick in the coming of the automated social network. if ai is as effective at retaining interest as actual humans then FB may as well embrace it. They can put a dying user base into a sort of ai genned cryofreeze - retaining enough life to click on ads
Facebook has turned into an endless scroll of AI photos and the boomers don’t appear to have noticed
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this is a neat way of encapsulating our current era of AI-inflected technology: we're in the Douglas Adams age of technology — one characterized by technological products with "human" interfaces that are at turns irritating, laughable, and absurd
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How stupid is this approach exactly? Any suggestions for the most comprehensive study of LLMs factuality? Obviously not a trivial thing to review and very difficult to quantify
ChatGPT-4 is replacing Wikipedia as my vehicle for mainlining random knowledge during my leisure time. I worry that I'm occasionally learning wrong stuff ("hallucinations"), but the ability to customize questions outweighs it, for now.
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And Beyond Measure is now out in U.K. paperback TODAY !! Thank you so much to everyone who’s read or bought a copy so far - (and also if you left a review or send me a note a particular THANK YOU) - and here’s hoping it continues to find readers
This feels like cheating - like writing an entirely new book without any extra effort - but the UK paperback of Beyond Measure arrived today and it looks gorgeous !!! It’s out June 1st if you’re looking for a holiday read —>
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a friend has pointed out that in the ongoing legal drama about the NYC lawyer citing legal cases fabricated by ChatGPT I am one of four authorities cited for my piece responding to the very same case...
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@edcumming
I think these second order comparisons are mostly unintentional but help the image stick. Eg comparing satellites to dishwashers to domesticize the exotics of space exploration. Yes I do think about this stuff more than is useful
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interesting that the Lena image — a computer vision benchmark that's also a Playboy centerfold — is now banned from IEEE papers as of April 1st. I wrote a little bit about its use for the LRB back in 2022
Just FYI, computer vision papers submitted to IEEE that include this image of Ms. Forsén will no longer be considered for publication
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I'm equal parts nervous and excited to be giving a talk at
@Ri_Science
next Friday on the history of measurement! I'll be talking ancient measures, the invention of the metric system, standardized peanut butter and much more. Tickets here if you fancy:
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i've just remember the time when, as a child, i spilled raspberry sauce on a brand new cream carpet (after being warned against exactly this behavior) and told my mother, who dropped to her knees next to the stain, pointed at me and screamed "you'll SWING for this james vincent"
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german industrial conglomerate thyssenkrupp has an elevator testing tower that i think is quite beautiful
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"Wim Wenders’s tender and lovely film Perfect Days has fired me up with a new object of desire: public bathrooms as clean and beautiful as those in the Shibuya neighborhood of Tokyo."
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Huh. You can now buy a robot flamethrower dog for <$10k. One of those things that isn’t any more illegal than a flamethrower strapped to a large RC car but feels like it should be. (h/t
@AndrewCurran_
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AI creativity is only found in errata !! high temperature = greater entropy !! statistical regularities are slough of the soul !! i believe descartes had the thighs of a tren user!!
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the key flaw in levy's argument - and one that dates him ideologically - is that he still believes in disruption for its own sake. i agree that AI will be "transformational," but the important question is: will the change be for the better?
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what freedom have i known since discovering that you do not need to put dishwasher tablets in the dishwasher tablet tray (all they do is open and let the tablet fall in) - how gaily and with what great abandon do i now toss tablets hither and yon amongst the dishes, tra lala!
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can't quite explain why but this image is very calming for me
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the only bit of the presentation i felt mildly jazzed by was the AR dioramas. don't care about disney content, i want dorling kindersley castle cross sections
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very glad to see the japanese edition of Beyond Measure retains the tape measures yellow. I'm told the new title is "THE SCIENCE OF MEASUREMENT: Gospel and Disaster Created by Mankind" 🤏🤏🤏
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what the guards see when they check my bag at the british library
You hear a lot about the Mediterranean diet but not enough about the French peasant diet.
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“I think Sam Altman is probably someone with a Messiah Complex who wants to push humanity to the precipice.”
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It is a sunny day here in London and the equally sunny US paperback edition of BEYOND MEASURE is out today!! Links for the buying here and so much thanks to everyone who’s supported or bought the book so far. It really does mean so much
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hello to the unseen hand to which
these now-seen fingers must belong.
i did not imagine you holding down pages
before you did it slightly wrong
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