Andrew @generalising@mastodon.flooey.org
Librarian and occasional researcher. Opinions of course my own. Scholarly communications, historic MPs, Wikipedia, inter alia other things. Misplaced Scot.
Joined Nov 2022
Andrew
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When you are a Wikipedia editor, sometimes you have to help out your fellow contributors who struggle to maintain an encyclopedic tone
Andrew
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The moon appeared inside the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower, in breach of the Olympic Brand Guide.
Andrew
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This #Politico piece critical of Kamala #Harris at a recent #tech summit in #London actually put her up in my estimation. Rishi #Sunak and the tech bros wanted to talk about the fantasy "future #risks" of #AI. She pointed out that tech risks have already arrived: “When a senior is kicked off their #healthcare plan because of a faulty #algorithm, is that not existential for him?”
https://www.politico.eu/article/kamala-harris-brits-uk-vp-usa-elections-2024-joe-biden-president-downing-street/
There is a small village outside Aviemore called Boat of Garten (went there once, nice place). Turns out it has a community newsletter.
The BoG Standard.
Genius.
Andrew
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This is fitting. The top topic on Xitter right now is of course the global Crowdstrike/Windows clusterfuck. But the AI summary of the discussion is hilarious, b/c it summarizes a bunch of sarcastic posts and makes it sound like a positive (or at least can-do) story.
Andrew
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For those of a psephology bent, the House of Commons Library have just published their briefing on the full results of the 2024 general election:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/
Also available in deferenceable URI format on our election results website:
https://electionresults.parliament.uk/general-elections/6/political-parties
And as a datasette for those who prefer SQL over point and click:
https://psephology-datasette-f3e7b1b7eb77.herokuapp.com/
Andrew
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Today is #WorldSnakeDay – here’s Edwin Morgan’s “Siesta of a Hungarian Snake” (Collected Poems, Carcanet 2012) 🐍
Andrew
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In which I get mad about sloppy use of AI in a way that can actively endanger people!!!
https://thisisimportant.net/threads/ai-duty-of-care/
(thx to the American Alpine Club for their amazing work publicizing climbing and mountaineering accidents and identifying patterns in the causes)
Andrew
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New feature! We've added another lookup to WhoCanIVoteFor.co.uk that tells you about the various elected people that represent you and your area.
Give it a go here: https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/your_area/
Read the blog: https://democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2024/07/09/the-rest-of-the-state/
Andrew
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Someone complained that the xkcd Dependency comic is unrealistic because it only shows one critical dependency you've never heard of.
However, it all makes sense once you realize it's actually a fractal:
"Wha wouldnae fecht for Chairlie..."
"Saw'd ye the cotton spinners..."
"Wha saw the Forty-Second..."
"Ya, ya, you hielan' bastard..."
The folk process at work!
Stumbled across this little oddity: Hamish Henderson going through the evolution of a single song from c18th Jacobites, to c19th Chartism, to Boer War popular music, to soldier's songs in WWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qvoLA_vSnk
@symroe update - both MNIS and TWFY now complete
@symroe I *think* all the DC IDs on that are your current (post-merging) ones. Some unelected candidates don't line up and will need IDs updating but not worried about them for now!
@symroe This is a little fiddly (because one Lib Dem has two TWFY IDs - I've tweaked it to only give his live one) but otherwise correctly reports all 649 known plus one blank. 100+ missing TWFY at the moment, and I don't think Commons Library have issued MNIS yet? https://w.wiki/AaLa
@symroe looks like there has been a bit of churn since the DC IDs were imported for candidates - will need to do a bit of merging and polishing, but in general it's looking good. I think 647/648 declared currently line up but may be a little bit of merging still to go.
@symroe will get you one this PM!
Got a day of normal work today (mistakes were made...) but wrote up the @democlub data import when I woke up this AM and the bot's churning away in the background to bring it all in. Should have the new #wikidataMPs list up and running shortly.
Pace Inverness, anyway...
All seats and candidates - and who we've noted as the winner if we have one https://w.wiki/AZtc
Librarian and occasional researcher. Opinions of course my own. Scholarly communications, historic MPs, Wikipedia, inter alia other things. Misplaced Scot.
Joined Nov 2022
