Category Archives: social

VerifAI

May 31, 2026history, maths, science, social@bazbt3

What’s wrong with me? I no longer have the urge to check when someone on the internet mentions an AI getting things wrong; you know, hallucinating (offering demonstrably false statements as facts).

An increasing number of reports of such behaviour appear to be completely fabricated either for the lolz or as another reason to not use AI, but some are verifiable.

It’s undeniable that AIs or large language models (LLMs) are an increasing part of modern life, and whether one personally participates in the hype/bubble/de-skilling of not. But I’ve concluded that it’s pointless to fact-check posts. Why?

Other than using an AI how else is there to find out whether someone is making something up?

Humans don’t want to hear things that upset their worldview. We saw it writ large at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re seeing it with the rise of populist, far-right politicians. We should be checking stuff the little people in our phones or on our computer and TV screens are saying, and yet we don’t.

Why? Despite the decades-old dream of artificial intelligence giving us time to do things that enrich our lives, it’s not really come to pass has it. But it really can’t be far away now, right?

All the media chatter is of knowledge transfer, of chatbots supplanting interactions between humans, of ‘coming here and stealing our jobs…’ of the billions spent by the billionaires on the data centres required to keep AI running… and of the billions written off by the billionaires as each technology hits an evolutionary dead end.

It looks to me like Facebook’s ‘move fast and break things’ motto won out over Google’s ‘do no evil’. And it’s boundless.

A heart-shaped 'tuft' of grass, buttercups and probably dandelion leaves left over after mowing our back lawn towards the end of 'No Mow May' – mowed early due to the forecast of lots of rain. Photo taken during the early evening and facing roughly north; the shadows are long enough to split the heart in two but the sun is high enough to not have the fence shadow obscure the top of the tuft. A vaguely human's shoe-clad feet appear at the bottom of the photo. Photo by the vaguely human foot custodian. — A heart-shaped ‘tuft’ of grass, buttercups and probably dandelion leaves left over after mowing our back lawn towards the end of ‘No Mow May’ – mowed early due to the forecast of lots of rain. Photo taken during the early evening and facing roughly north; the shadows are long enough to split the heart in two but the sun is high enough to not have the fence shadow obscure the top of the tuft. A vaguely human’s shoe-clad feet appear at the bottom of the photo. Photo by the vaguely human foot custodian.

There’s not much yet of the increasing cost of AI to business as the subsidies start to become economically unviable for the AI peddlers, and there’s not much yet of the cost to humanity.

The cost of the AI ‘arms races’, like the cost of climate change and the cost of COVID denial, is an inconvenient truth that ordinary humans don’t want to confront.

And then there’s this, an excerpt from Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space’ (Goodreads link and a link to one of The Planetary Society’s videos of Dr Sagan):

“From this distant vantage point [that of ‘an alien scientist newly arrived at the outskirts of our solar system’ where Voyager 1 took the photograph], the Earth might not seem of any particular interest.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

This should make us all think. And yet…

Reception

May 16, 2026family, health, misc, social, tech@bazbt3

I read a wholly positive toot a couple of days ago by @abetterjulie@wandering.shop. In it Julie pointed herself toward an acceptance that not everything in interactions with other humans is as bad as she previously thought. (I hope my summary is accurate).

I have a counterpoint from my wife. She visited the doctors for a routine check from their practice nurse.

A engraving of a 17th century plague doctor with caption "Why Did Plague Doctors Wear Beaked Masks?" I cannot recall where I got this from, but the Wikipedia page has the same picture, link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague\_doctor — A engraving of a 17th century plague doctor with caption “Why Did Plague Doctors Wear Beaked Masks?” I cannot recall where I got this from, but the Wikipedia page has the same picture, link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_doctor

Technology, that’s problem 1. Or is it…

There’s a touchscreen to sign in to show the doctor you’re there. It’s simple to use.

The system is not set up to show an option for the practice nurse though, and won’t be done because she’s not a doctor (my wife has asked). One has to check in at the reception desk – waiting in the inevitable line.

Humanity’s inability to compromise, that’s problems 1 and 2 then.

Waiting in line there often provides an insight into how customer-facing people in positions of authority work. Doctors receptionists are gatekeepers, pure and simple.

An elderly man was asking for a prescription for his wife. He’d driven to the building because phoning them didn’t work. Their preferred contact method – an internet service – only operates during their working hours.

Their web site only shows the opening hours for the current day. But it takes pains to state they are closed on the second Thursday of every month.

Their prescription phone line ha a window of a couple of hours per day. Really. They will not talk about prescriptions outside that window, so patients must phone back the next day and hope. And so…

His wife, she’d been released from hospital 2 weeks before and would run out of one medication the next day. The hospital had sent a letter to the doctor on her release and so a prescription should have been made out for continuing medication. Two of the three had been processed.

The third, it hadn’t happened. The doctors had simply failed to process it.

He was quite obviously asking for an expedited prescription so he could visit the pharmacy next to the doctors building and get his wife the meds she needed.

The receptionist?

No, you’ll have to wait the standard 72 hours.

The man?

Why? Can a doctor not sign it now? I’m here. I can wait. (My wife said that in common with all of her visits the place the waiting areas were almost empty).

So, receptionist?

No, our system says you’ll have to wait 72 hours.

The man left.

Honestly, it really shames the profession, any profession, when someone cannot be human and simply help someone, especially when it’s their problem to begin with.

It’s not the first time my wife had either witnessed or been the recipient of such behaviour. It seems that their training is insufficient to allow for edge cases.

Or even normal cases.

Or even in the case of simply doing the job they’re paid for.

The doctors I go to is nowhere near as bad, but they protect their appointments my making it insanely difficult to contact them. Unless one physically enters the building at 8am and waits in line.

Humans can be good, can be great, can be compassionate, and just kind. But there’s a good chance it won’t happen in time of need. And that saddens me.

But for now I’ll take Julie’s toot and think of the good that does exist.

Apocalyptic

April 18, 2026family, food, science, social@bazbt3

@atoponce@fosstodon.org posted a poll earlier:

What is your preferred “end of the world” apocalyptic scenario?
– Aliens
– Nuclear fallout
– Pandemic
– Zombies
Assume strict science fiction and not fantasy fiction in the scenario (no supernatural magic).

The last time I looked Aliens was comfortably in the lead with 61% of the vote.

Quite naturally given that the world is undergoing an unprecedented period of stability and equality and… I took the question seriously and replied thus:

Feel free to accuse me of overthinking this 🙂 but is this based on the likely survivability of my family and me (ark ship, bunker, isolated cottage) or a quick and easy demise free from watching the inevitable dismantling of our, er… civilisation?
*Or* (cue spooky music) something painful in between, something extraordinarily painful?
Maybe I should think of the bigger picture. 🙂

Aaron’s response?

There aren’t really any rules other than no supernatural mumbo jumbo. I think that’s part of what makes this question kind of fun.
Are zombies animated only for a limited few days/weeks before decay makes them immobile?
Will the cancer from nuclear fallout kill you quickly, or will it be a slow painful death?
Are you food for the aliens or a science experiment?

Me, after a bit of thought:

I’ve voted for aliens on the basis that my preferred scenario involves the destruction of Earth for a hyperspace bypass, and it happens not long after the announcement. I’ve never been keen on prolonging things. 🙂

Ok, I’m not at all keen on the destruction of anything but if it has to happen I’d like my participation in it to be over quickly. Incidentally, the hyperspace bypass thing is borrowed from the novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy¹, a trilogy in five parts.

So, why did I not choose any of the other worthy contenders?

Nuclear fallout?

I’m thinking of Chernobyl.² I’ve watched dramatised documentaries³⁴ and actual documentaries of the nuclear meltdown incident. That’s accidents. Thoughts on the intentional use of nuclear weapons leads me right to Threads – a film I cannot bring myself to watch but that I’ve read lots about.⁵

Not sure, but I don’t think I’d want to survive in a bunker, to see out my days cut off from ‘life’.

Pandemic?

2019- COVID-19. Everyone who reads this will have a memory of the 2019- pandemic. But not everyone died, and civilisation didn’t collapse, so that’s alright then.

1981- HIV/AIDS. Mostly under control, and it’s a good thing global outreach programmes are still well-funded isn’t it.

1918-1920 Spanish flu. Pretty much no-one who lived through this is alive now. A 100% mortality rate by now should annoy most people, right?⁶

1331-1353 Black Death.

Heck no, it’s not an exhaustive list, but this is only a blog post, I’m no academic!

Pandemics vs epidemics though, it’s all a matter of scale, excess mortality rates, pre-existing medical conditions, demographics, isn’t it.

So, a world-ending virus, bacteria, biological thing, has to be pretty, er… virulent, right?

Zombies

Watch the film ‘Shaun of the Dead’.⁷. That’s all.

It won’t be enough to prepare you for zombies, but it’s a good start.

I can’t choose this way to go because I wouldn’t want people I know and love to be consumed by or turn into zombies and want to eat my face off. Er… whether they consciously want to or not. I see enough of that with the increasing reliance on social media and propaganda shaping opinions instead of taking the time to have views shaped by ‘hard’ news organisations. So much for my 1997 dream of a golden age of information availability.

And, like most people, I rely on infrastructure spanning the turn of the 21st century for my survival. Were not ready for bartering and butchering and bravery.

So…

Aliens

Right. I’ve read and watched a good amount of science fiction. The ones that stand out, plot themes from memory:

‘Footfall’, novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle; conquest, assimilation, kinetic energy weapons.

‘The War of the Worlds’, novel by H.G. Wells; mass killings, enslavement, nourishment, climate change (in the grossest of senses).

‘Battlefield Earth’, large novel by L Ron Hubbard; mass killings, enslavement. Great book, dire film worth watching only after reading the book and then never again.

‘Doctor Who’, TV series; particularly extermination by the Daleks.

‘V’, TV series; sneaky extermination, eating us.

‘To Serve Man’, Twilight Zone TV episode; misunderstandings, a cookbook for humans.

There’s a theme that pervades (is that the right word?) most of these works, that humanity will somehow prevail against the might of space-going aggressors. Sure millions die along the way, but…

And that’s the problem. I’d still want to ‘go’ quickly. I’m not prepped and ready, not even for probing by little green men

Hyperspace bypass then. I don’t even want to know of the planning application. Ignorance is bliss.

Or is it…

Links:

‘The Hitchhiker’s Guidevto the Galaxy’ by Douglas Adams, Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheHitchhiker%27sGuidetotheGalaxy. ↩
‘Chernobyl disaster’, Wikipedia link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster ↩
‘Surviving Disaster review Chernobyl’, brief Aerial Telly review, 2006: https://aerialtelly.co.uk/surviving-disaster.php. (Page is broken but the review still stands).
‘Chernobyl Nuclear – Surviving Disaster (BBC Drama Documentary) FULL COMPLETE 1hr – ADE EDMONDSON’, video on DailyMotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tufjj ↩
‘Chernobyl (miniseries)’, Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries) (Jared Harris is superb in this). ↩
‘Threads (1984 film)’, Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(1984_film). (One of the most terrifying things the BBC has ever shown). ↩
Please note the sarcasm here, sorry! ↩
‘Shaun of the Dead’ film, Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_of_the_Dead ↩

Why I’m ambivalent about working from home

March 19, 2026family, social, work@bazbt3

This post is a shamelessly opportunistic stream of consciousness follow up to Larry’s Why I Hate Working From Home and Jeremy’s Why I Like Working From Home. Larry’s is a response to his employer’s unwelcome shift from office to remote working across the board, and Jeremy’s more of a summary of a self-employed life. (I’ve never been able summarise, so this might be unfair; read their words first).

Like theirs, mine is a personal view. Unlike theirs I couldn’t have written this without standing on the shoulders of their giant-ness.

Erm… there’s aren’t any indications from my employer that it’s likely. Winter’s pretty much over here and there are no stay-at-home mandates, thank goodness.

Then

My experience of working from home (or working at home as I still think of it) is limited to a total of 6 months enforced by the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. 6 years ago now. I was lucky enough to be loaned a laptop, so I could choose where I worked. Dining room table it was, spread out but stopping the proliferation of newly folded clothes we usually see.

A dining room table repurposed into a working desk. Laptop, mouse, headphones, reading glasses, phone stand, notebook, 4-colour pen, opened beer, telescope…

What

I’m pretty tech-savvy so already had links to everything I needed – apart from paper records of course. And in fact I prepared the guides for the department to make their transitions easier. SharePoint, at least for me as a content creator and user, holds no scary corners now.

Teams, the Microsoft thing, was a godsend. I’ve heard other services are somehow better but I integrated SharePoint and Teams and built something useful we still rely on.

Free of casual interruptions, although my productivity didn’t exactly soar, I found my focus on even complex tasks was easily maintained. I hacked hours off jobs, created new methods that made things sustainable, and checked out all the major productivity/project planning methodologies/sites until I found one that clicked for me.

I found a comfortable niche.

Oops

My wife hated my constant presence. Hated the fact my posh headphones leaked the other side of conversations (and the music I used as a daily crutch – from bands I’d never previously have listened to). Hated my muttering when working through stuff. Hated the simple fact that she still had to travel into work.

My daughters were off school too, compounding the strife at home. I attempted to enforce a framework of study and rewards. Eventually the schools caught up and imposed some order to their education. I discovered I can’t teach, not as bad a thing as I’d thought when I began.

Now?

Not sure. I wouldn’t want to do any of it again, but if circumstances dictated I could. My girls are older, one’s at university and away most the week. The other in her final year of high school has a degree of independence I simply didn’t at her age.

We had the garage converted from a dumping ground into a room (with a heavy fireproof so sound-deadening door) and so I have choices.

We started a new contract with our broadband supplier, so speeds are easy multiples of what we had 6 years ago. 6 years ago I had to set up a supplementary router to work around a wireless bug in the ISP’s device. Again a validation of my expertise in areas unrelated to my work. (I use the term ‘expertise’ here, I think it means what it might not mean).

Bottom line

Anyway, if my employer decided to retain my services as I head towards retirement and thus obsolescence, I’d do it, sure.

What it’d do for our mental health, who knows.

When I started my working life, and even though I acquired my first home computer that year and bought into the ‘computers are our future’ ideal, no way could I have envisaged doing my job at home.

Would I want to?

Not in the same way, heck no.

And I would rather not prepare for the chance it might happen.

But maybe I don’t need to?

Stray

December 26, 2025misc, social@bazbt3

We walked Pumpkin dog before lunch today – later than normal. Halfway round we came across an unattended dog, a labrador-spaniel cross. No name tag on the collar. He was very friendly, more so when he figured out we had a small bag containing Pumpkin’s treats. We asked people around if they’d seen anyone looking for lost dog – it was little early to call it a stray. Nope.

A labrador-spaniel mix dog. Ralph (microchip name Percy/Percival). He's younger than he looks in my photo. — A labrador-spaniel mix dog. Ralph (microchip name Percy/Percival). He’s younger than he looks in my photo.

He followed us and continued to follow us until we got close to home. Uh-oh.

So on the lead he went and we invited him inside. I looked through local Facebook groups, nothing. Decided to post. As far as I know the posts still haven’t been approved.

Rang the local RSPCA. Number rang out 3 times, no opportunity to leave a message.

Looked on the local authority site, found a number of a national dog collection service, rang it, left a message.

We filled a water bowl, got an old and way-too-small dog bed down and I gave him some food. And treats.

Rang the 24 hour vet, asked if they checked microchips. Yes. And they could fit us in even though it’s emergencies only today and until the holiday weekend ends.

Half an hour later we were at the vet. Luckily the dog was indeed. Chipped, yeah. A local-to-us owner then, the vet receptionist rang and left a message…

About an hour later we got a call, the owner was on his way…

Turns out their teenagers left the door open while the adults were preparing for a family thing later. Anyway, grateful owner took the dog off our hands, and it seems my comment about ensuring the dog got a name tag flew right over his head. It seems they think he’s safe out of doors on his own – he’s ‘usually’ to be found on the area between the countryside and housing estates. And now we know they don’t care enough to get a tag they can secure on his collar – ‘it’s always coming off’.

Anyway, at least we know what to do next time.

Should we have reported the owner for their dog not having a tag – a legal requirement here in the UK?