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This week, Simon and Eugene look at the second episode of Real Humans, season 2, where they discuss the changes between the last season and this, or lack thereof, the loss of some of the interesting ambiguities, and whether there is a Swedish TV body count limit.

Next Week: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: The Sky’s on Fire.

@sil Thoughts and prayers

CogDog's Cheap Tricks for Running Webinars.

1. Show up Early- and dont leave participants in the cold space of a waiting room. Let people mingle before a session like they do in person.

2. Please have links ready to share in chat. Don't make me search for them during your session.

3. Stay Later. Don't slam the door shot, let people linger after if they have time.

It ain't about the slides folks, its the experience.

Critics of LLMs are going to have to adapt to an uncomfortable fact: a lot of people like LLMs. They like automation, emulation, and delegating work and responsibility to machines, intrinsically. For many reasons.

Liking things is not vulnerable to rational critique. It is emotional. One cannot be argued out of it.

Neither will those who dislike LLMs, Chatbots, etc. be logically argued out of it. Most objections to these technologies are also, at root, emotional. Objections that they are wasteful, destructive, abusive, and broken are based on feelings that those things are bad. By contrast, their fans don’t care. Arguments will not make them care.

Most people are in awe of power, in some form or other. Some of them are in awe of machines. Some of them are in awe of computers. Some of them are in awe of token predictors. We cannot control when they will become disillusioned. We can only be patient, and seek joy in honest human craft.

Palantir Sues Swiss Magazine For Accurately Reporting That The Swiss Government Didn’t Want Palantir
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/27/palantir-sues-swiss-magazine-for-accurately-reporting-that-the-swiss-government-didnt-want-palantir/

Please note that Palantir would rather that you didn't share this story, it makes them look even more stupid if you do...

One thing we know about the mass tech layoffs attributed to "AI" is that they follow a trend of mass tech layoffs that firms were formerly forced to admit were the result of their businesses contracting sharply after the lockdowns ended, when users didn't need nearly so many cloud services. By blaming the continuing layoffs on "AI," companies whose business continues to contract can tell investors that they are on the bleeding edge, not the contracting tail.

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Leave big tech behind! How to replace Amazon, Google, X, Meta, Apple – and more https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/26/how-to-replace-amazon-google-x-meta-apple-alternatives

30 Years of Riotous Adventures With Barnacles https://dalefort.wordpress.com/2026/02/24/dale-fort-blog-number-109/

"Al is here to stay"

well ok, but me complaining about Al is also here to stay

@archelina.bsky.social That was very peaceful of you 😁

Free buses? Really? Of all the promises that Zohran Mamdani made during his New York City mayoral campaign, that one struck some skeptics as the most frivolous leftist fantasy. Unlike housing, groceries and child care, which weigh heavily on New Yorkers’ finances, a bus ride is just a few bucks. Is it really worth the huge effort to spare people that tiny outlay?

It is. Far beyond just saving riders money, free buses deliver a cascade of benefits, from easing traffic to promoting public safety. Just look at Boston; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; Kansas City, Mo.; and even New York itself, all of which have tried it to excellent effect. And it doesn’t have to be costly — in fact, it can come out just about even.

As a lawyer, I feel most strongly about the least-discussed benefit: Eliminating bus fares can clear junk cases out of our court system, lowering the crushing caseloads that prevent our judges, prosecutors and public defenders from focusing their attention where it’s most needed.

I was a public defender, and in one of my first cases I was asked to represent a woman who was not a robber or a drug dealer — she was someone who had failed to pay the fare on public transit. Precious resources had been spent arresting, processing, prosecuting and trying her, all for the loss of a few dollars. This is a daily feature of how we criminalize poverty in America.

Unless a person has spent real time in the bowels of a courthouse, it’s hard to imagine how many of the matters clogging criminal courts across the country originate from a lack of transit. Some of those cases result in fines; many result in defendants being ordered to attend community service or further court dates. But if people can’t afford the fare to get to those appointments and can’t get a ride, their only options — jump a turnstile or flout a judge’s order — expose them to re-arrest. Then they may face jail time, which adds significant pressure to our already overcrowded facilities. Is this really what we want the courts spending time on?

Free buses can unclog our streets, too. In Boston, eliminating the need for riders to pay fares or punch tickets cut boarding time by as much as 23 percent, which made everyone’s trip faster. Better, cheaper, faster bus rides give automobile owners an incentive to leave their cars at home, which makes the journey faster still — for those onboard as well as those who still prefer to drive.

How much should a government be willing to pay to achieve those outcomes? How about nothing? When Washington State’s public transit systems stopped charging riders, in many municipalities the state came out more or less even — because the money lost on fares was balanced out by the enormous savings that ensued.

Fare evasion was one of the factors that prompted Mayor Eric Adams to flood New York City public transit with police officers. New Yorkers went from shelling out $4 million for overtime in 2022 to $155 million in 2024. What did it get them? In September 2024, officers drew their guns to shoot a fare beater who was wielding a knife and two innocent bystanders ended up with bullet wounds, the kind of accident that’s all but inevitable in such a crowded setting.

New York City tried a free bus pilot program in 2023 and 2024 and, as predicted, ridership increased — by 30 percent on weekdays and 38 percent on weekends, striking figures that could make a meaningful dent in New York’s chronic traffic problem (and, by extension, air and noise pollution). Something else happened that was surprising: Assaults on bus operators dropped 39 percent. Call it the opposite of the Adams strategy: Lowering barriers to access made for fewer tense law enforcement encounters, fewer acts of desperation and a safer city overall.

If free buses strike you as wasteful, you’re not alone. Plenty of the beneficiaries would be people who can afford to pay. Does it make sense to give them a freebie? Yes, if it improves the life of the city, just as free parks, libraries and public schools do. Don’t think of it as a giveaway to the undeserving. Think of it as a gift to all New Yorkers in every community. We deserve it.

Comparing “The One and Only Herb Mcgwyer Plays…” and “The Ballad Of…” #WallisIsland. I really like Key’s performance in the original. But it is excellently adapted. They really should have kept “it’s another Le Carre” though 👌

To mark Valentine’s Day, here is what is believed to be the world’s oldest surviving love poem, written 1.5 million years ago by one of our earliest ancestors, homo unrequitus.

Enjoying Radio 3’s subverting Valentines with a cue from Bernard Hermann’s Vertigo...

@GIFS_of_Puppets ❤️

Today's #Muppets GIF of the Day is..

@LoneLocust I'm kind of actively put off by the 007 link. I'd happily read a YA novel by Charlie Higson if everyone said it was good. And yes, maybe I might even try Silverfin, but despite not because. Can't see me bothering with audios though.

But I do like the ‘proper' James Bond audios with Toby Stephens and it annoys me that Eon seem to have been able to squelch any commercial release of these.

@LoneLocust Looks interesting! First time I've come across it.

I don't personally see the appeal of stories about a pre-Casino Royale #JamesBond, but it's interesting that shortly after the EoN/Amazon MGM deal, we're seeing CD dramas featuring the character… https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/young-bond-audio-dramas

Hopefully that means that CD releases of the Jarvis/Ayres radio adaptations will become possible…

This isn’t new news as such, but people keep being surprised by it, so it’s worth repeating. Substack hosts, profits from, and promotes explicitly Nazi content, and if you are adding value to that network, you are helping them to do so. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-substack-makes-money-from-hosting-nazi-newsletters