South East, England
Joined February 2009
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Guy Leppard retweeted
Let me fix that tweet for you:
1. The people rioting in Paris are criminals who are committing crimes.
2. Destroying hard-working people’s businesses is evil and not a valid form of protest.
From the high schools of France to the streets of Madrid to the universities of Tirana, young people are telling their governments the same thing: in an age of massive wealth inequality, they want a future they can believe in.
In France, students and teachers are asking for safe schools, enough teachers and smaller classes.
In Spain, for affordable rent and housing.
In Albania, for good jobs and an end to corruption.
@JDVance says this is what happens when a nation lets in too many immigrants from the global south.
He is not just morally wrong, but misreading the moment.
The is what happens when nations let wealth and power accumulate in the hands of a few.
This is what happens when young people lose hope in their future.
In America, let us listen to our young.
We need an economic and political transformation.
America's Next New Deal.
Guy Leppard retweeted
In this study of ~400k people, daytime naps were also linked with larger total brain volume equivalent to being ~3-7 years younger.
Guy Leppard retweeted
MIT published a terrifyingly honest report on what AI is actually doing to students.
professors and students studied it for five months, and the findings are hard to ignore.
study groups are dying, office hours are empty.
take-home assignments prove nothing now, because AI can just do them.
they even gave the problem a name, "cognitive surrender", reaching for AI the second things get hard.
the scariest line in the report is that "getting the right answer from a chatbot can create the illusion of learning."
the numbers say the same thing, 46% of undergrads use AI constantly, only 23% of MIT feels good about it and students now feel more replaceable than capable.
the part i didn't expect is that MIT refused to fight it with surveillance.
it called AI detectors a losing arms race and said lockdown browsers feel like spying.
instead of more tech, their fix is oral exams, in-person projects, real conversations, and maybe even dropping grades, because if there's no GPA to game, the reason to cheat mostly disappears.
the most famous tech school on earth looked at AI and chose more humans, not more machines.
and the real warning is bigger than school, when a degree becomes just a thing to produce as fast as possible, that mindset follows you into work and into how you think.
i actually finished university right as the first versions of AI showed up and my learning got worse even then.
instead of digging into a topic and picking up a ton of other useful things along the way, i'd just ask ChatGPT and take the short answer.
nothing really stuck and my actual understanding wasn't great.
AI is an incredibly useful tool, but only if you learn to use it the right way, the full report is below.
Guy Leppard retweeted
Today marks the birthday of Neil Peart, who was one of the greatest drummers of all time.
Happy Heavenly Birthday to the Professor.
🥁❤️
I'm sure he's having the best of jam up there in heaven just like this one.
Guy Leppard retweeted
Somewhere between 75 and 80% of Britain's barn owls now have to nest in a box somebody built for them. One man has built 350 of them.
The reason the number is that high is that almost everything they used to nest in is gone. Hollow trees came down. Old barns got converted into houses or replaced with sealed steel sheds.
The rough field margins where voles live got farmed right to the edge, so even where a bird finds a site there's often nothing to feed a brood.
Add road deaths and rodenticide moving up from poisoned mice, and the species spent most of a century sliding toward extinction.
Robert Salter, a bricklayer from Camerton in East Yorkshire, has been working to save the barn owl for 35 years. He has no grants, no formal organization, no funding. He started at 21 after watching a news segment about a man in Lincolnshire putting up owl boxes.
Every June he takes four weeks off work, unpaid, and does the rounds with his wife Sue. Up ladders into farm sheds and trees, checking boxes, repairing them, weighing and ringing owlets under a British Trust for Ornithology license. He built a brick owl tower in his own garden, and a pair in it raised five young this year.
Last season he ringed 308 owlets. The year before it was 95.
That jump was mostly due to voles. Barn owl breeding tracks field vole numbers, which boom and crash on their own schedule, and 2025 was a boom year in his patch. Across the rest of England it was a poor season, dry spring, thin grass, not enough cover for voles.
That's what a box does. It doesn't create owls. It makes sure that when the food is there, there's somewhere to raise a brood, and the good year actually converts into more birds.
"I don't see it as a hobby," he told the Yorkshire Post. "I see it as my duty. As long as I can keep doing it I will keep doing it."
Guy Leppard retweeted
If you're wondering where the generational split we have today comes from, it's largely because of 9/11.
There is a sharp dividing line between those of us who heard the news of a first plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46am and thinking it was a small Cessna that crashed, then heard the news of a second plane hitting the south tower at 9:03am and understanding that we were under attack, then hearing the Pentagon was struck at 9:37am and understanding we were at war, and then watched with total shock as the towers collapsed live on TV.
Those of us who experienced that day and were old enough to understand the symbolism of what had happened also understood that the world would never be the same – and it hasn’t.
Those of us who spent the next week glued to the TV with tears in our eyes watching desperate family members walking like zombies around New York holding up signs of their loved ones searching for any drop of information about the people who had vanished into thin air will never forget the horror of the day that changed the world forever.
Those of you for whom 9/11 is a history lesson that you watch on YouTube will never understand what was truly lost on that day – starting with the innocence of the greatest country in history – which is why so many of you are willing to tear it all down in the hopes of building a failed utopia that every time has been tried has taken down millions of people with it.
That’s why those who see 9/11 through the eyes of its attackers because they experienced it as a TikTok trend after reading Bin Laden’s letter are so willing to give the reins of power to those who sympathize with Bin Laden.
The world is divided between those who experienced the apocalyptic horror of 9/11 and those who were too young to have any sympathy for the victims, so they blame their government instead of the perpetrators who committed mass murder.
Those of us who were there and watched the horror unfold in front of our eyes will never forget what was lost on that day, or the pain of tens of thousands of Americans and nationalities from all over the world.
Those of us who grew up in the 90s felt it was boring at the time. It was full of angst, had no meaning and was considered “the end of history.” If only we knew what a blessed decade it was.
May the memories of all those lost 25 years ago today forever be a blessing.
We will never forget them.
Guy Leppard retweeted
Can anybody think why a Net Zero supporting government is now asking the UK to be prepared for power cuts?
Guy Leppard retweeted
scared baby and scared parent cuddling at the end of the world. i feel overwhelming grief
Guy Leppard retweeted
Burnham just now:
“Who in government drives growth? My theory requires it to be driven with the [thumps hand on despatch box] full authority of the very centre of government”
The most forthright demonstration of a lack of political understanding of growth I’ve heard.
Government can only create the conditions for growth. It cannot create growth.
Growth itself only happens when government gets out of the way.
This approach is doomed to fail.
Well done @IanMcnuff
"Exclusive: utility company wants to draw off tens of millions of litres of water a day from Thames and replace it with treated effluent."
Ah yes, as I discussed with former Olympics rower Ian McNuff and @HenryRiley1 last night on @LBC Thames Water's big idea to save not only the company but London's water supply, take clean water out of the Thames and replace with it 'treated' sewage.
No, really, that's the plan...
theguardian.com/environment/…
Guy Leppard retweeted
This month’s Prime Minister Andy Burnham @andyburnham has just announced he’s increasing foreign aid to 0.7% of GDP, which is £21 billion per year. Let me put that in context for you. The average amount of income tax paid per year by basic rate taxpayers in the UK is £2,700. So that means that nearly 8 million taxpayers in the UK are working all year ONLY to give their wages to foreign governments. There are 30 million basic rate taxpayers in the UK, so one in four people that you see working in restaurants or pubs, nurses, cleaners and many more are paying all of their tax to foreign countries. Countries like Pakistan that can afford nuclear weapons, to India that can afford a space programme, to China that can afford to buy the world, to Somalia that doesn’t have a government, only warlords. Etc etc etc etc etc. One in eight British basic rate taxpayers are paying all of their money not to schools in this country. Not for hospitals in this country, nor to fix the roads, nor anything whatsoever in Britain. Every penny goes abroad. Eight million people here giving their hard earned money to the British government who then give every penny away. Every single penny. So, if you’ve ever wondered why things aren’t improving in this country and wonder what happens to the money you’ve made from your toil and your sleepless nights of wondering how you’ll pay the next bill, that’s what happens to it. 8 million of you are working for foreign governments. Think about that.
Guy Leppard retweeted
The UK chose to encourage wealthy taxpayers to leave.
Italy welcomed them with open arms offering an attractive tax regime.
So far it’s generated approx €5.3 billion in tax revenue and wider economic impact - with projections reaching €38.4 billion by 2040.
And then there’s the weather, beaches, food, culture..
Guy Leppard retweeted
No one can argue this is an accurate reflection of reality.
Or deny that for the sake of our viability as a nation it needs sorting, urgently.
But the slightest suggestion of reform results in shrieks from politicians with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
The sad irony is that if support was reserved for people with genuine need, we’d not only be a happier, more prosperous and productive country, we’d be able to provide for those in need in a far more satisfactory way.
It won’t happen until we have been driven into the ground because of the utter mediocrity of our politicians, but change will eventually be forced upon us by circumstances.
Guy Leppard retweeted
This is so awful these highly intelligent marine mammals locked in a fish bowl prison looking out at squirrels with such wonder
