Alix Mortimer

Hitting desalination plants is so bad. Not just evil but strategically incomprehensible. Without desalination 75% of the entire population of the Middle East will be refugees. Israel and Kuwait depend on desalination for 90% of their water and other Middle East states aren’t far behind.

the Boring Company is maybe the purest example of the Elon Bullshit

his other companies are all wildly overvalued but they do make actual money, the Boring Company would have collapsed many years ago if his name wasn’t attached

Coping intensifies bsky.app/profile/otto...

Can’t park there mate

If I were Boris Johnson I would simply not allow the phrase “piffling irrelevance” to appear anywhere near my name

Today I want to talk about Jess’ Rule and Martha’s Rule, two new initiatives across NHS England that I think are really important and you should know about.
Tl;dr: if your symptoms are not improving or getting worse, at home or in hospital, you have the right and Drs the responsibility to review.

move slow and repair things

My God.

Bronze statue (Ashmolean Museum)

A bronze statuette of a Hindu saint, acquired by the Ashmolean in 1967, has been returned to a temple in Tamil Nadu. The Ashmolean had been alerted to doubts around its provenance in 2019 and voluntarily approached Indian authorities for an investigation.

www.ashmolean.org/press/return...

Far down the list of important questions derived from this war is after Trump *inevitably* bows out (no stomach for a ground invasion, no proxy forces willing to fight, no revolution in Iran on the horizon), how do its UK cheerleaders process its failure? Do they blame our lack of involvement?

And (this is waaay too reflective for them obviously) how would they have processed and presented it *if we’d been involved* and he’d still have inevitably bowed out.

Me, crying, asking once again: who *are* the Greens/Lib Dems who…

Zelensky highlighting the moral and strategic poverty of the USA under Trump. In the last year Trump has ended all military aid for Ukraine, has undermined Ukrainian air defense, has tried to bully Ukraine in handing over territory, and has rolled out the red carpet for Putin.

God that’s pitiful, it’s not even gamechanging like you can retire on it. Imagine drawing this kind of opprobrium just to get half an extension built, or five nice holidays.

Your regular reminder that the UK is in fact a high trust society and anyone who implies it isn’t is either selling you a pup or has bought one.

“Sir unfortunately early reports indicate that they are shooting back”

Yes good grief you couldn’t force that admission out of me

I used to work in tax many moons ago for a wise partner who would advise people “don’t change your life and do things you don’t want to to avoid tax”, because he knew it can get what we now call gamified. But he meant like, continuing to live in a house you don’t like to extend your taper relief.

I have just started training and this was my thought too. I think a better term than resilience here might be just “the ability to self-regulate”, which is what therapy should give you and LLMs mostly don’t, or insofar as they do it’s by accident (the positive reinforcement bit clearly they can)

I know that the people who need to read this aren’t here, but here goes:

Rules of engagement aren’t for the enemy. They’re for you. They’re for your soldiers when they’re captured or wounded. They’re for your civilians when they’re in range of the enemy. They’re for your allies, to reassure.

U.S. sub sinks Iranian warship off Sri Lanka, killing 87 and expanding war zone A U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, killing dozens of sailors and dramatically widening Washington's pursuit of the Iranian navy.

A US submarine sinking a lonely, dinky Iranian surface ship an ocean away from the theater of the main conflict—and 9000
miles from North America—makes it pretty clear the US is fighting a general war, without the declaration required by the Constitution. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

@columnist.bsky.social sorry! All caught up now

Yes the slowness is actually not disorganisation, it’s that someone knowledgable enough has to decide which of the 17 available routes is appropriate and procure the necessary goat, scrying tools, 5cc of blood etc.

🇪🇨Pedro Sánchez responds to criticism from Donald Trump:

“We do not intend to be complicit in something that is bad for the world and also contradicts our values and interests. I am completely confident in our country’s economic, institutional and, I would also say, moral strength.”

If you ever want to read a paper for free and can't find it otherwise, email the lead author and politely ask for a copy. You will not be bothering the person. You will in fact make their whole entire day. I have had scientists get so excited I asked they sent me everything they ever published.

Could working from home help reverse declining birth rates? | King's College London Couples who work from home at least one day a week are having more children and planning larger families, according to a comprehensive new study spanning almost 40 countries.

Is remote working the answer to declining birth rates? 👶📈

New research co-authored by Dr Cevat Giray Aksoy found couples who work from home at least one day a week are having more children and planning larger families

More 👇

www.kcl.ac.uk/news/could-w...

Now that’s very interesting, when I switch keyboards the Croatian autocorrect is still perfect as far as I can tell, I’d probably know if a word was obviously weird

Which is a terrible thing to happen to a person who qualifies everything

No they have, there was an article about autocomplete getting worse in a particular generation of upgrades but I can’t find now. Lots of talk on Reddit, hackers news etc on it. My phone now corrects probably to probanly because I think I may have mistakenly hit the n once.