Dr Gavin Kirby 🏳️‍🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇺

Clinical Scientist (bioinformatics & medical physics). Passionate about automation, FLOSS, LGBT rights, equality, and mental health advocacy. He/they. 🏳️‍🌈

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

terrible. 20 yrs ago, the internet was full of hobbyist blogs and forums. over time, these have been replaced by paywalled substacks and private discord channels, each a walled garden. google's decision to prioritize AI just makes it less likely ppl will create free, public info

[Daniel Jeffries @Dan_Jeffries1]

Friendly reminder, Hinton is the same guy who told us this:

"We should stop training radiologists now. It's just completely obvious that within five years, deep learning is going to do better than radiologists.".

That was six year ago.

He was right about the AI. Wrong about the job.

AI already reads scans better than any human. Six years after this nonsense prediction we have more radiologists. That's because Hinton and many others just fundamentally misunderstand that tasks are not jobs and that the job of a radiologist is also interacting with patients, being a light in darkness, providing hope and warmth and care and a thousand other things.

Again we need to stop listening to these folks.

I cannot say it enough, just because this fellow is brilliant with AI does not mean he has any clue how it will impact society. None. Zero.

[Vatnik Soup @P_Kallioniemi]

ICE detained a Norwegian tourist who had a JD Vance meme on their phone. They weren't allowed to enter the country.

These are the same people who blame Europe for a lack of free speech.

[Nicole Lee Schroeder, PhD @Nicole_Lee_Sch]

We are in a fascist moment, where the humanities are being attacked, because people in power dont want you to have the ability to think for yourself. And every time you use generative AI, you help them achieve that goal. Go to the sources yourself. 5/5

[Dr Gavin Kirby 🏳️‍🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇺 @archon88]

@SHRMcKinnon @yelhsaashton "Prepone" (opposite of "postpone") from Indian English is another good one, especially as Standard English doesn't really have a nice single-word equivalent

[Dr Gavin Kirby 🏳️‍🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇺 @archon88]

@ZoltanOctoro @CSMFHT I'm definitely stealing this!

[Simon Hedges @Orwell_Fan]

My own analysis of Hillary's harrowing defeat has come to the following conclusions; Liberals are great and we should carry on as normal.

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

All the takes are correct and yet they also miss the point.

Yes, it was insane for the Democrats to think they could win by running a soulless candidate, without a shred of progressive policy vision, pursuing endorsements from neocon war-hawks everybody hates, while arming and funding a genocide, and belittling and crushing those who have enough morality to protest it.  It is enraging that the Democrats are so smug and blind to this.

But these are all just symptoms.  The deeper reality is that liberalism has failed, liberalism is dead, and people urgently need to wake up to this fact and respond accordingly. It is a defunct ideology that cannot offer any meaningful solutions to our social and ecological crises and it must be abandoned.

Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even *basic* steps like public healthcare, affordable housing, and a public job guarantee - things that would dramatically improve the material, social and political conditions of the working classes. And they cannot accept a public finance strategy that would steer production away from fossil fuels and toward green transition to give us a shot at a liveable future.

Why? Because these things run against the objectives of capital accumulation. And for liberals capital is sacrosanct. They will do whatever it takes to ensure elite accumulation, it is their only consistent commitment.  At home, they suppress and demonize progressive and socialist tendencies. Abroad, they engage in endless wars and violence to suppress input prices in the global South and prevent any possibility of sovereign economic development.

The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly, for my whole life, not as some kind of "mistake" but in full consciousness that it is in the interests of capital.

And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right-wing populism.  They know this pattern, and yet they risk it every time - this election being only the most recent example. They did it in 2016, when they actively crushed the Sanders campaign and sent Trump to the White House. They do it because ultimately they (and I mean the liberal ruling class here) don't really mind if fascists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. They 100% prefer this to the possibility of a socialist alternative.

So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of "converting" the Democratic party is dead. This is now a fact and it must be accepted. The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle that can integrate disparate progressive struggles into a unified and formidable political force and achieve substantive transformation. This will take real work, actual organizing, but it must be done and that process must begin now.

[Rhianna Pratchett 🧙🏻‍♀️ @rhipratchett]

When countless members of the LGBTQ+ community speak about how utterly damaging Section 28 was, listen to them, try to understand and don’t pretend it was in their best interest. It wasn’t.

[Dr Gavin Kirby 🏳️‍🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇺 @archon88]

@notCursedE There's a really toxic combination of a naive belief that we can simply educate people out of their bigotry, combined with a deeply embedded forelock-tugging instinct when confronted with a well-spoken bigot with a Cambridge education.

[Dr Gavin Kirby 🏳️‍🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇺 @archon88]

@notCursedE I think this latter-day "Whig view" of bigotry being driven solely by ignorance is responsible for a lot of misapprehensions about how structural oppression actually functions in society. Many bigots, like say Scotland's deputy first minister, are not entirely ignorant people.

[Gordon 🇵🇸 / rent controls fan account @istreasatuatha]

This is an idea that actually has broad consensus even among people who don't usually agree with Living Rent - Shelter, Chartered Institute of Housing, ALACHO and more. The Scottish Government could lead the way and amend the new housing bill to do exactly this.

[Future Economy Scotland @FutureEconScot]

NEW: 82% of Scots support the introduction of rent controls – including a large majority across all regions of Scotland and voters of all major political parties

Thread on our new polling with YouGov 🧵

[Dr Gavin Kirby 🏳️‍🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇺 @archon88]

@xgigglypuff Gonna be a bit cheeky and say there are reasons people like unpasteurised dairy that don't involve being a Nazi -- there's a reason many classic French and Italian cheeses like reblochon and taleggio are made from unpasteurised milk, as they have an unmistakable flavour

[Dr Gavin Kirby 🏳️‍🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇺 @archon88]

@zihinselorgazm @JacksonLeach @anothercohen You're not acquainted with the idea that plenty of people cook for enjoyment rather than just necessity?

[Dr Gavin Kirby 🏳️‍🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇺 @archon88]

@DannyBate4 There's also an (urban legend?) that when pizza was introduced to the UK, it was initially marketed as "Italian Welsh rarebit"

[Dr Gavin Kirby 🏳️‍🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇺 @archon88]

@rachaelwrd @SpillerOfTea I've been watching the whole spectacle unfold in close detail and I've not seen much "general negativity", but rather quite a lot of very focused criticism of clear departures from anything resembling progressive principles by the Labour centrists.

[Roe 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @rosiefolksongs]

What I remember hearing all the way through the indy ref was "no point in a different country if it isn't a better country"

[Dr Gavin Kirby 🏳️‍🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇺 @archon88]

@kgndesign @istreasatuatha Not if it's run by the Minister of State for Burning Heretics Alive, no