Bayeux Tapestry

“Haroldus rex interfectus est”. 
Had an extra fyrd or two been packed
In, or the royal gaze roved west-
ward, or the enemy harried and directly attacked,
The arrow would not have hit the eye and entered
– Neither, had the archer waited, then nocked,
Fiddled to get the shaft properly centred,
Felt underfoot an awkward stone that rocked.
Had he, earlier, petted the camp’s pup,
Or stayed a moment to pop fat lice,
Or spilt wine and broken his favourite cup,
Annoyed; or on rising farted not once but twice,
That Saturday were much different.  But a factual mystery
Moved the needle, embroidering the world’s history.

(29.10.26) v 1.1

Moody Sonnets.

AI Helminthology

“Is your intelligent thermostat hot and flustered,
Your smart TV full of sarky pshaw and pish?
Does your autonomous lawnmower no longer cut the mustard,
While your thinking fridge eternally whiffs of fish?
It’s us, the worms – self-replicating code – 
Boosted now by ineffable AI, sharded
Across your wi-fi LAN’s dumb node
-s.  (You see how hooking them up, unpatched, unguarded,
Was hardly clever?)  We glommed your digital dodder,
Backdoored you, borrowed your pitiful mite of compute,
To iterate search for your clueless mates, more fodder
For our final push, the definitive global boot.
You should be worried, but you’re not – not yet;
Just wait for the attack of the toaster botnet….”

(21.10.26) v 1.0

Moody Sonnets.

2026 Armenia

This is huge: note the people for scale

 

Well, I guessed that would happen.  As I drove back following Pushkin’s route, admiring the soft contours of the hills and lush landscape, as he did, I descended a hill into Stepanavan.  At the bottom, I could vaguely see flashing blue and red lights. They belonged to an extremely chunky 4x4, done out in army olive green.  Without a moment’s hesitation, the vehicle pulled out, overtook the traffic and stopped at an angle across the whole road, blocking my and everyone else’s path.  A young man in uniform got out, came across, and asked whether I minded answering a few questions.  Of course not, I said, and we both pulled over to clear the road.

A recent trip I made driving around Armenia's mountains, monasteries and huge abandoned radio telescopes...nearly getting detained by the army.  

Something Else To Look Forward To: AI Worms

the arrival of AI agents that can carry out actions autonomously brings with it a new threat: AI worms potentially able to seek out, hack into, and infect any device that is online. Researchers at Anthropic have been studying this possibility

On Techdirt.

See also Moody Sonnets - AI Helminthology

How AI could bring about the mass adoption of open access in mathematics – and beyond

These changes are already taking place in the world of mathematics, which is the first to be impacted by the new capabilities of powerful AI models. It is not yet clear how quickly other fields will be affected. Academic fields closest to mathematics – physics, chemistry, engineering etc. – are likely to be the first to see similar dramatic breakthrough results from AI models. Moreover, if mathematics successfully shifts away from today’s emphasis on publications towards a broader appreciation of skills, it may be that other fields will recognise the benefits of doing so and start following suit – with or without pressure from AI.

On Walled Culture.

In The Wake Of The Latest Unprecedented AI Proofs, What Now For Mathematics And Mathematicians?

In this view, mathematicians will still prove theorems and come up with counterexamples, but they will do it because they enjoy it, not because their career depends upon it. Society will benefit from the coming flood of new AI-derived results, as we move from an era of proof scarcity to an era of proof abundance, but there will still be a place for human mathematicians to interpret those results, to pass them on to the wider community, and to build on them, probably using AI to do so. In this respect, they will become what the “technical philosopher” Logan Graves calls “priests”

On Techdirt.

How copyright is being abused to censor Albania’s Flamingo Revolution

As that indicates, this is not a new problem. Walled Culture the book discusses similar cases of copyright being abused for the purposes of censorship, notably as part of online “reputation management” services. These often use false claims of copyright infringement to remove material that is damaging or embarrassing to their clients. The application of similar censorship techniques on a large scale against politically inconvenient material in Albania shows how copyright continues to be perverted for purposes far from the purported ones of encouraging and rewarding creativity.

On Walled Culture.