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.

Yesterday I wrote an article describing one of the ways traditional Lisp macros can be unhygienic even when they appear to be hygienic. Here’s a horrible solution to that.

It’s tempting to think that by being sufficiently careful about names bound by traditional Lisp macros you can write macros which are hygienic. This is not true: it’s much harder than that.

An article constructed from several emails from my friend Zyni, reproduced with her permission. Note that Zyni’s first language is not English.

There is what I think is a confusion as to bound declarations in the Common Lisp standard. I may be wrong about this, but I think I’m correct.