Paddy Alton

Linear combination of astronomy, data science, catholicism, and politics.

[The Rest Is History @TheRestHistory]

Tom Holland meets a fan

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

@AndrewCurran_ @lymanstoneky As the internet did before that - "nothing ages faster than the future", as they say ...

[Robert Colvile @rcolvile]

@stripe Second, even as Companies House numbers have remained flat, there has been an absolutely huge surge in... sign-ups to Stripe's payment systems. And looking at the numbers, they think these are mostly new traders, not them suddenly expanding their market share.

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

@rcolvile @stripe This is such a great spot - nice job!

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

@Phoenix4419 @rcolvile Would you like some counterexamples?

e.g. just this week chatted to a guy who founded a recruitment firm a few years ago. Just hit ten employees. Using AI everywhere, reckons they're doing what a firm triple the size could do five years ago.

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

@1967Rogerwade @francesweetman Like, you can include references for all sorts of reasons, not just "hey isn't this article great".

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

@1967Rogerwade @francesweetman Right, but all I did was say "not a fair criticism, they've changed it to be consistent".

I'm linking that article literally just to say "and note that your political opponents are officially annoyed by that change". I don’t agree that the info shouldn't be reported.

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

@bouledenerfs_ That's the spirit!

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

Harald Hardrada! Erik the Red! Lief Erikson! Olav Tryggvason can you hear me? Your boys took a hell of a beating! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

@1967Rogerwade @francesweetman You don't think it's relevant that your political opponents are making the same argument in reverse?

Regardless, all I am doing is making a statement of fact about the change to police guidance. The change to consistency on this is good.

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

(I decided calling it 'AI slop' would be unfair. The lyrics are slop for sure, but the video is quite inventive and probably took its creator some time to assemble)

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

Notable that neither Crick nor Walker seem to have immediately clocked that (i) the video is 100% AI, or (ii) that the cost of making such things is now measured in hundreds of pounds, not tens of thousands of pounds.

[Michael Crick @MichaelLCrick]

But he & Count Binface should be careful, Tim, as by-election spending limit is £180,000. Farage knows about such limits having accused Jenrick & his campaign of breaking them in 2014 Newark by-election. Electoral Commission later agreed Jenrick & Tories broke Newark limits.

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

@Noahpinion So, I think we should certainly be concerned by non-technical politicians not understanding the possible unintended consequences of legislation. But I am completely unable to find any primary source where Burnham actually says this about VPNs? The Spiked article doesn't give one.

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

@peterrhague Oh, neat. The SpaceX robotic arms are cool, but I have to admit there's something elegant about the simplicity of this. Presumably needs less precision/has higher margin for error?

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

Liz Truss may have accidentally done the UK a great service: she made a misstep so colossal that it can be used as a shorthand for a point everyone will now intuitively understand for a generation.

Like the child touching the hot stove, a lesson that won't soon be forgotten.

[Dr. Jeevun Sandher MP @JeevunSandher]

I have a confession to make: I’m a fiscal credibility hawk.

When it comes to growth, tax, spending, borrowing, inflation, and debt - the numbers all have to make sense.

And we only transform our nation if we are hawkish about getting those numbers right.

'Cos if we're not hawkish, the markets charge us more for borrowing. Truss taught us this. The numbers have to add up.

As a young(er) economist, I went to the Somaliland Ministry of Finance to help write their budgets. The lesson to me was: fiscal credibility matters.

I was there during their worst drought in living memory.

Inflation was rising, the currency was weakening, and we couldn’t borrow. The constraints we faced were brutal and real. The government had to pay soldiers to keep the peace and feed hungry kids. The country couldn’t afford to do both.

But by being hawkish on fiscal credibility, accepting the numbers as they were, we built a contingency fund to feed hungry kids in the future. Somaliland still has it in their budgets to this day.

We in Britain are in a much better situation (obviously) but the constraints we face are real. We only transform the country by facing up to them.

And we *can* change our country within them. Getting growth rising and inflation down through investments in clean energy. Making life affordable through energy bill reductions, which also reduces inflation.

All of it built upon hawkish credibility. Being wide-eyed about the numbers so we can change the country.

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

@SRasch @grok @Noahpinion @tonyannett The problem is quite underdetermined. Need to define it better:
- what do you mean by 'disposable'? Essential spending will be radically different because France has chosen high tax & spend.
- how do you account for cost of living; how far does discretionary spend actually go?

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

@mattsquair @_HelenDale I reckon they're only annoying because they are suddenly everywhere.

I contend that e.g. Claude writes quite well, with a style no more specific than that of an opinion columnist. In the past I'd often find myself adopting the 'tells' of any writer I'd been enjoying reading.

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

@kisstheblade_ Are Chestertonposts the necessary supports to assemble the famous fence?

[Paddy Alton @PaddyAlton]

@eigenrobot A generative pretrained transformer as a mathematical object can surely be embodied in different ways, but I struggle to see how you'd instantiate one with biological neurons. A biological neuron doesn't really behave like its digital counterpart and is much more complex.