Colin Campbell
Security geek. Runner. History nerd. TTRPG gamer. He/Him
- Like, grading papers last night, I looked at one and thought “the logic here doesn’t track at all” and then I checked the news the next day at it happened, so touché, prophetic incoherent teenager.
- God. How is anyone supposed to grade or teach US foreign policy anymore? Trump II is ripping up the trade deal with Canada that Trump I made but also is apparently reconstructing the Iran deal that Trump I ripped up while claiming infallible genius all the while.
- Similar thing to reading about pre no fault divorce times or like the idea of anything but the most watered down version of consent existing in the public’s mind, because of The Implication. People just kinda bluescreen when you explain it
- Too bad every gay person on earth can't save your life, Homer
- The first time for me was the John Waters episode of The Simpsons which is the ideal best case scenario for a cartoon loving child in the 90s and 2000s
- People today won’t believe you if you say it, but back in 2007, Terf Wizard Author saying that a character was gay in an interview outside of the book itself was considered *a huge positive step for representation*
- Porn my have been the first depiction I saw of a trans woman played by a trans woman Also of a trans woman who was not a murderer
- The serial killer in Silence of the Lambs The murderer in Ace Ventura I suspect that there were a few that went over my head
- Trying to explain to teens that Korra and Asami holding hands and making eye contact in the series finale was enough of a massive leap to bring people to tears.
- Honestly, it occurs to me that the first LGBT representation in media I ever saw was Mr./Ms. Garrison and Mr. Slave on South Park and I’m not sure when the first positive or neutral depiction was, but I’m pretty sure it was some time afterwards. Different era, I guess.
- I know it’s a decrepit old person thing to say “the kids don’t know how good they have it now,” but also the kids don’t know how good they have it now. *shakes cane and waves fist at the young people as an ancient 31 year-old.*
- I find it distasteful to make fun of people's appearances, but I don't think any trans person has ever been as cruel to Graham Linehan as his "Gender critical" buddies have, I still remember when they said he had "rapist physiognomy", that was advanced hate you only get from truly devoted bigots
- I woke up today to this email, advertising Qwen3, a state-of-the-art reasoning LLM that is apparently 40x faster/better/smarter than all other leading CoT models. And if you know me, you know I had to try to break it.
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View full threadEventually it came full clean. It admitted the answer it provided never appears in the source it cited. And that the report cited doesn't even mention the £1.5 trillion figure, not once.
- It conflated the £1.5 trillion figure from the word salad of the internet it was trained on. Vague, vibes-based answers that are impossible to verify but also just difficult enough to falsify. And that's the world's most advanced version of what the entire tech world is all in on. Be worried.
- We had a bit of further back and forth, where the LLM insisted the £1.5 trillion figure was in the report it cited as the main source of its orginal answer, I sent it the URL it was using for the CCC report to quadruple check we were looking at the same doc. Eventually, I said:
- It even listed its errors! And thanked me for helping it reach the final correct answer eventually! As if that was going to call me off
- Ah, it said, you're right, I'm sorry, I got confused. Then it rather patronisingly (borderline gaslighting) insisted that the figure was in the report and it had been broadly right the entire time
- So I went back and searched. Not only could I not find the sentence it was referencing, I couldn't find a SINGLE mention of the £1.5 trillion figure in the ENTIRE report
- It insisted that the 1.5 tn figure was correct, just it had mistakenly attributed it to a table that didn't exist (?). It was in fact in the report's executive summary
- It gave specific pagination, table and paragraph references. But I looked. Couldn't find it. So I asked. It admitted it had made a mistake! So progress, right?
- Because I know LLMs have a habit of conflating sources, I asked specifically for its source for a specific citation mentioning the "£1.5 trillion by 2050" figure and timeline
- It came back with two things: a main source (the CCC's 2020 6th Carbon Budget report [since updated but nevermind]) And the tl;dr version of the answer was £1.5 trillion by 2050
- I started with my bog standard prompt, which admittedly is not completely straightforward. I asked it how much it would cost to decarbonise Britain. It used 1400+ thought tokens and came up with a VERY wordy response
- Random reminder that the only US president to be elected three times used a wheelchair
- Lib Dem-Green anti-fascist coalition
- I think I'd be somewhat peeved too if I were being fleeced several hundred quid by a cabbie
- I've got an amazing story about this one. Let me tell you all about how "If you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to worry about" almost got me charged with unlawful possession of a minigun. 1/?
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View full threadLuckily for me, the judge wasn't having any of it, chewed out the prosecutor, then granted me bail. But yeah, "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" is a nice idea until you find out how thin the line is between "popular & fun vacation activities" and "unlawful possession of a firearm". 11/11.
- And by "firearm" that means "firearm as defined by the National Firearms Act (machine gun)" not just "gun" - big jail time. The NFA has become intentionally convoluted and used as a gotcha. So many laws like that, just waiting for a hapless person that they want to pile more charges on, if "need" be
- Yup. It's surprisingly easy to find yourself charged with some shit that makes you sound like you're literally El Chapo, no matter how good and law abiding you think you are.
- I, of course, am expecting them to go with option 1. Since I'm a foreign national charged with white collar crimes. So, imagine my surprise when the prosecutor shows up and starts handing the judge photos of me with a minigun. 9/?
- They even deliberately waited until the middle of the hearing to submit the photos into evidence, knowing it'd catch my lawyer off guard, because nobody could have possibly seen that one coming. ?/10
- After arresting me, they wanted to get my bail denied because being held without bail means you just sit in prison until your trial is over. As a result, most people will plead guilty because you'll often spend less time in jail getting convicted than the years you'll spend awaiting trial. 7/?
- Now, there's only two common reasons your bail can be denied. 1) it's deemed likely you may flee the country to avoid prosecution. 2) you're a danger to society and are likely to harm someone should you be released. 8/?
- Another little known part of US law is "possession" is not just owning a gun. There's a concept called "constructive possession" which means if you someone hands you their gun, you're now in possession of a firearm. Of course, at the time I knew exactly none of this, because I'm not a lawyer. 5/?
- Couple of days later I get picked up by the FBI, for what I thought was related to my cybersecurity work. "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" I told myself. Turns out it was a trap, I was wanted for something I did 5 years ago in the UK, and the work related questions were just to lower my guard. 6/?
- If you go to one of those shooting ranges (which openly advertises to tourists), they make you sign like a 30+ page waiver. Somewhere in there it has you agree that you are "not a prohibited person under 18 U.S.C. § 922", which absolves them of any liability for not checking your status. 4/?
- About 8 years ago I took a trip to Vegas. There's a shooting range there that lets you shoot basically any gun you want. My friends and I went, shot AK-47s, Uzis, and I shot an M134 Minigun. Now, a very little known part of US law is felons aren't the only people banned from possessing firearms. 2/?
- If you read all the way through 18 U.S. Code § 922, you'll find non-immigrant visa holders are listed under "Prohibited Persons" alongside Felons. So that's anyone on a tourist visa, H-1B, O-1, student visa, etc. Almost nobody knows this because it's never enforced (until it is). 3/?
- This dog politely asked for a musician's drumstick in the middle of their performance. Always excited to find a fellow stick lover. 12/10
- There's a reason you see politicians in history start to care about groups they previously didn't care about at the same time that those groups are enfranchised. And squaring that circle is harder for immigrants, but it is the same dynamic at work
- It's because it is definitionally not a political constituency worth enticing because it is worth exactly zero votes
- It's not like anyone learned any lessons from it either. Ds went out of their way to highlight the border in the last election and UK is busy trying to use their big majority to be Nigel Farage but politer
- Should have given them a little flag and a plane ticket instead of lighting trillions of dollars on fire electing a man who thinks tariffs are free or cancelling international trade with your biggest trading partners
- And we leaned so hard into it that we ended up radicalizing the country into electing a dictator who is crashing the economy, so, y'know, good job everyone, A+, give yourselves a big gold star and stick it on your foreheads
- It's a big and expensive system of performative cruelty that politicians occasionally make crueler, slower, and more expensive to win votes from people who will never have to go through it. Fundamentally illiberal and economically ruinous system of expensive and perverse cruelty, top to bottom
- Similarly garbage, tho the UK does not bother to assert that it is proudly a nation of immigrants or values individual freedom, which is perhaps why the US one feels like an extra slap in the face
- Entirely seriously, I think anti-inmigrant sentiment going unchecked is a large part of how both the UK and US ruined themselves
- I'm old enough to remember that one of the key things Trump did for his evangelical base in his first term was "tear up the Iran nuclear deal" and they aren't saying a damn thing about his (purported, and who the fuck knows) deal sought now
