Everyone wants to believe in conspiracies. Some people believe that the alarmingly far-right government of the UK is conspiring with shadowy plutocrats to enrich themselves. That government itself apparently believes in the ludicrous ‘15-minute city’ conspiracy theory, and that something variously known ‘the blob’ and ‘lefty lawyers’ is working furiously against them. Trump supporters in the US believe in more conspiracy theories than it’s easy to count. Their opponents believe that Trump is a sock puppet for Putin, or in various conspiracies called ‘disaster capitalism’. People on all sides think the Jews or, perhaps, the Muslims, are behind everything. Or is it the climate scientists?

Some time ago I wrote a post with empirical evidence for sexism in computer science. I’ve since realised that the data I used then is part of a much larger data set maintained by the US National Center for Education Statistics: here are some more pictures of their data.

Does the UK government’s incompetent response to COVID–19, as exposed by the enqury, offer any lessons for the future?

Symbol nicknames allows multiple names to refer to the same symbol in supported implementations of Common Lisp. That may or may not be useful.

Here is the British government’s new ‘plan for drivers’. And here is a quote from it:

We will explore options to stop local councils using so-called “15-minute cities”, such as in Oxford, to police people’s lives

We are now ruled by people pushing conspiracy theories: either knowingly because they think that provoking further divisions in society will keep them in power, or because they believe the conspiratorial nonsense they’re peddling to be true. I don’t know which is more terrifying, but in either case these people are grotesquely unfit to be in office.

Wayback machine link because rewriting history is pretty much certain here.

The government of Britain wishes to stop councils — councils elected by local people — implementing schemes where essential amenities are always within a 15-minute walk for their voters.

Being another letter I will not send to my MP.

In late 2018, when I still worked at the Met Office, I sent a document to some people there which explained why I thought AI would come to dominate weather forecasting, and why weather forecasting organisations should be looking at AI, urgently. Today, the 28th of July 2023, there is a leader on the subject in The Economist as well as an extended article in its Science and Technology section.

The UK government wants to force banks to explain why they close accounts. This will make financial crime in the UK easier.

A very rich man, on being denied a bank account available only to the extremely rich by a bank which serves only the extremely rich:

Squealy whine squealy squealy whine cancelled squeal whinge moan

An even richer man, on hearing about this outrage:

Squealy squealy no one should be barred from using basic services for their political views whine squeal probe shock

A halfwit, joining in:

Whine whine exposes the sinister nature of much of the diversity, equity and inclusion industry squeal tantrum blob politically biased dogma whine round up the foreigners squeal small boats elite

All together:

Squealy squeaky SQUEAL whine outrage basic services for the very rich whine squealy cancel culture elite blob squeal

I love the sound of entitled plutocrats whining in the morning. It smells like … victory.