A living collection of notes, ideas, and reflections from Doug Belshaw.
Laurens Hof writes about decentralised online social networks and does so very well, covering the wider social, political, and technical aspects. In his most recent post/newsletter he connects Elon Musk calling for race-based pogroms, the (unrelated) resignation of Keir Starmer as UK Prime Minister, and both the "structure of permission" and "amplification layer" that decentralised social networks could make even worse.
…Via Pauline von Hellerman, the top image is fictional weather forecast for 18th August 2050 which was broadcast on French television in 2014, with the intent to show how bad climate change could be. The bottom image is the weather forecast for yesterday, 22nd June 2026.
…This gif is in no way accurate but I had fun making it in Midjourney.
Scientists have taken a surprising step toward unlocking regeneration in mammals, showing that the ability to rebuild complex body parts may not be lost after all—it may simply be switched off. Using a two-stage treatment, researchers redirected the body’s normal healing response away from scar formation and toward regrowth, successfully restoring bone, joints, ligaments, and tendons after amputation in animal studies.
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He would reason about people’s conduct as though a man were as simple a figure as, say, two sticks laid across each other; whereas a man is much more like the sea whose movements are too complicated to explain, and whose depths may bring up God only knows what at any moment.
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Yes, yes, and yes would be my answers to the 3-30-300 test. (I can't actually count the number of trees that I can see out of the windows of our house.) But then, we don't live in a city and my home county of Northumberland is blessed with trees and open spaces.
…It turns out that you can add the word "only" pretty much anywhere in this sentence.
Are.na block: ↗
Collection: finds-au723pdfugg
About a decade ago, I was flying back from LA and I realised I hadn't bought a gift for my wife. As I was into matcha before it was cool, I happened to be in Starbucks, where I saw they had a mug saying 'California' on it.
…A follow-up to [this note] given Anthropic's recent announcement that they're going to require government-issued ID to use "certain features" of their models. They're using none other than Peter Thiel-backed Persona for this. Ugh.
…There are many signs that middle age is creeping, or has crept, up on you. One is that you start putting your foot up on a chair or something else to put your socks on. Another is that you start showing an interest in birds.
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