BoxOfRain

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

> I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern [1946] English:

> Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

A 2026 version of this phenomenon would instead be:

> Here's the thing: success isn't just about talent — it's about timing. The fastest runner doesn't always win. The strongest army doesn't always prevail. Ultimately, life is a complex interplay of skill and chance, and recognizing that can be both humbling and empowering.

That's actually Claude and you can see precisely why the resulting vague language is bad; the LLM has changed the actual meaning of the passage from a sober reflection on the futility of expecting natural justice from the universe to one that emphasises skill and timing, exactly what the author is telling us is futile.

Admittedly the slop text LLMs produce in the 21st century isn't the same as the 20th century slop humans produced, but there's definitely a family resemblance in my view! Orwell was concerned with the idea language can be used to curtail thought, and he disliked what we'd now call slop because it merely gestures at a thought without actually instantiating it directly.

The whole essay is worth a read in my view, it remains highly relevant.

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

I also find Claude deeply Americentric in a lot of ways for what it's worth.

Then again, as you say, they probably have much better things to do. Would be nice to hear more stations popping up on MW too as all the legit stations leave the band.

Yes and no...

Firstly there's not been a King of England since 1707, he's king of the United Kingdom (and fourteen other places) and secondly it really depends who you ask. On paper sovereignty flows from the 'Crown in Parliament', many powers are actually the King's and are now vested in other parts of the state. Since the 19th century these powers tend to be used 'on the advice of the Prime Minister / Cabinet'. In theory the King could go against this advice, but Parliament ritually reminds [1] the King's representative what happened the last time a king got too uppity and the courts can still rule on the limits of these powers. There's one view which says the people are fundamentally sovereign (very relevant during Charles I's trial for treason), but while this might be true in practice the orthodox view is that sovereignty comes from the 'King-in-Parliament', a composite body of the King, House of Commons, and House of Lords acting in concert.

The point is that when Andy Burnham exercises his power in many cases he's in a sense doing 'su king' by virtue of his role as PM rather than acting in his own right. The PM role is weird as well, traditionally (and in my opinion correctly) the PM is merely the first among equals in a collectively responsible Cabinet, the term 'Prime Minister' actually started life as an insult. Of course since the late 20th century the role has become increasingly presidential, but this seems true in Westminster-style systems generally.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Rod#State_Opening_of_Par...

How can you meaningfully participate in a democracy when the world is so globalised without at least a basic understanding of international affairs?

This wouldn't work nowadays for obvious reasons, but they still pretend the vans are a thing as far as I know.

Interestingly this mechanism contributed a lot to Brexit in my opinion, whenever there was legislation the politicians wanted to enact but knew would be unpopular with the voters they'd blame the EU and wring their hands saying there was nothing to be done, while in the background gold-plating the legislation far beyond what the EU was even asking for. This also made it easy for populists to point to many absurd examples of the EU being comically bureaucratic, when a lot of the more nonsensical ones were literally domestic additions. When the referendum happened, the consequences were obvious to everyone.

While no Brexiteer myself, I personally would want to see the European Parliament get a lot more powers and influence before I threw my wholehearted support behind rejoining. Half the problem with the EU is that it's seen as not particularly democratic as a place for legislation to originate, and giving the elected organ more power (including the power to propose legislation in its own right, and dismiss legislation proposed by the Commission with much more prejudice) would go a long way to addressing that I think. The Parliament needs to be more, well, parliamentary in how it functions.

I've seen more local opposition to datacentres than anything else, and the fact we have discretionary planning (which can't be abolished for political reasons, despite it amounting to putting economic sanctions on ourselves) means there's a lot of stakeholder vetos in the system.

I made this post and it died on its arse initially, didn't even get an upvote. The second chance pool meant that it turned into a useful discussion about a pretty niche element of frontend development.

The US absolutely could coerce the rest of the West in the short term, but everything that's happened in the last decade calls the long-term future of Atlanticism into serious question and such action would accelerate this process I think. If coordination came as an order from Uncle Sam, it would be seen not as a legitimate act of ensuring collective safety but as mere technological imperialism on America's part.

It's a really stunning place to visit as well, mid Wales in general is so pretty and the dams themselves are ornamented in a way nobody would bother with today. Of course the Victorians got away with things that would be unthinkable now, when Liverpool did the same approach of flooding Welsh valleys to water English cities in the mid 20th century it was very controversial because the scheme flooded a majority Welsh-speaking village and the language was in a fairly steep decline then; nowadays there's a lot more protections for Welsh.

Mind you most of the talk seems to be along the lines of 'GWR couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery' these days.

I often wish I had the woodworking chops to build a guitar myself, I have a very specific idea of what I want from a guitar.

Maybe I'm being unfair to the film because of the fanbase as well. I've always seen it as a mild red flag when someone says it's their favourite comedy, but it's hardly the film's fault it got popular on places like reddit.

Maybe there's naunces I'm missing because I'm not American, but it made me feel a bit gross in the same way a lot of pop culture around 'chavs' in the UK made me feel a bit gross. I don't think always refraining from punching down is a good rule in comedy, but I struggle to find much comedy in things which are nothing but punching down.

Also the BBC still issue black and white TV licences, I suspect my phone is eligible for one! Still about 3.5k of them working apparently.

I know this might not be a popular view but I'd be fairly content with a fediverse that never scales to the size of platforms like reddit, a lot of the reasons I use the fediverse is because it resembles older forums or even reddit before it was enormous.

If you're trying to communicate 'this much rainforest disappeared' or 'look how large this landmass-sized Antarctic iceberg is' to a wide audience a well-known area is a reasonable way to do it. In Britain basically everyone knows roughly what the size of Wales is relative to the other countries of the UK, even if they don't know its exact size.