sean thomas knox
@thomasknox
Thriller writer, travel writer, vacillator
I now have a substack. Huzzah. The first article is here, it’s all about encountering strange new places and moments - spiritual or devilish, dark or light - the tingle of OMG when you enter… PLEASE do subscribe; I aim to write at least once a week open.substack.com/pub/thomassean…
Having Ben Stokes and Joe Root in the same test team is really quite something
🚨 Sunday in the Dolomites, Italy 🇮🇹 Overtourism is reaching an alarming level If this trend of “traveling just for the social media photo” doesn’t stop, Italy will implode and worse, visiting it will become a miserable experience
Whilst scrolling through my gallery looking for a gif, I found this. Every flat roofed murder pub in the country has a list like this.
An absolutely perfect line, in the Wiki page for would-be Green Party leader: Zack Polanski
This poster was claiming that AI was all hype and nonsense about six weeks ago To be fair, AI is making fools of many and eventually will make fools of us all
I find it mildly amusing how mathematicians are currently clinging onto the hope that there is something special about their creativity that AI will not also be able to pull off in a year or two.
I find it mildly amusing how mathematicians are currently clinging onto the hope that there is something special about their creativity that AI will not also be able to pull off in a year or two.
I was there last week Tuesday. Absolutely dead at 8pm.
Went to Soho last night. Got the horrible impression that government taxes and rising crime are absolutely killing London nightlife
In particular, I reckon AI could now write 86% of the articles in the @FT and do a better job.
90% of the time, when I read an article about AI taking our jobs - or not taking our jobs - I find myself thinking: “AI could write this article, and it would be better”
People act like great urban design is some intangible mystery. Something almost impossible. It’s not. Look at Primrose Hill. We mastered it 200 years ago and here’s the recipe: Nice terraces Pub on the corner Loads of trees That’s it
Old English had a word for the opposite of a friendship: fēondsċipe, or ‘enemy-ship’. If the word survived, it would be ‘fiendship’, but since it went extinct, we have to translate it vaguely as ‘hostility’, ‘rivalry’, or ‘feud’.
In about 18 months your average tumble dryer will be in the running for a Nobel Prize
1/N I’m excited to share that our latest @OpenAI experimental reasoning LLM has achieved a longstanding grand challenge in AI: gold medal-level performance on the world’s most prestigious math competition—the International Math Olympiad (IMO).
I sometimes wonder if the reason the UK is screwed is not some big conspiracy or foreign sabotage. It’s just that everyone at the top - PM, chancellor, civil service, judiciary - is dismally thick Here’s the ex head of UK intel claiming the Druze are Muslims. They are not
This commentator doesn’t know the basic fact that Druze are not Muslim, or that they’re one of many ethnic groups in Israel. Instead he provides cover for their slaughter. He was the Chief of British Intelligence and Representative to the UN
On a more cheerful note. At last… Things you rediscover while decluttering & refurbing. A length of magnificent handwoven silk, handmade by the dynastic craftswoman who weaves for the Bhutanese queen. And I bought it from her in Bhutan. But what on earth do I do with it?
