on a learning arc | alt: @springofmaya | also on 🦋
Singapore (sometimes London)
- Tweets 6,246
- Following 554
- Followers 832
- Likes 43,315
Ended up introducing Singaporean friends to these two images
They were very well received
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>wake up
>check Twitter
>the guy in charge of deciding what my part of Twitter should talk about today spun his fortune wheel and got "AGP"
mfw
AGP people exist. Obviously they do. This shouldn’t have any relevance for whether we should socially accept trans people. What would it matter *why* someone wants to transition? It’s not harming anyone. So what if it’s a fetish?
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it's actually the worst of both worlds, in that data neither stays reliably not gets removed reliably
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there's a writeup of this somewhere if I could search for it but "not allowed" is shorthand for "new builds are strongly discouraged from having built-in air conditioning, or windows that can open"
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Pocari Sweat: odd name, sweat doesn't sound appetising, probably makes sense to the Japanese only
Pocari Sweat's manufacturer, Otsuka Pharmaceutical: serious, intriguing, @usgraphics -approved, makes you want to join their cybermercenary army or whatever
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I hate that online newspapers tend to not link primary sources. Why???? and you then wonder why you keep losing market share to literally everyone else on the internet
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mine is a terminal emulator that maxes out on UX design. "oh no the command you just run printed a lot to stdout, now the output from two commands ago is lost forever :( " it's been 55 years in Unix time already why do we still put up with this
I believe every programmer who can really see systems has this vision of what we could build and the changes that would result if we solved the incidental constraints. not enough working hours, ramping complexity costs, coordination failures like interop and backwards compat
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Common* case of a system that is inconsistent and capricious and poor at discernment leading both sides to correctly believe it is stacked against them in the ways that matter to them
*at least that describes like any contentious topic in the UK
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but since the 10B H1B Indians bit is proving contentious:
- 🇸🇬 has a racial quota policy for PR/citizenship
- but there are half as much guest workers, so like 150M if scaled to 🇺🇸
- LKY was mindful of the culture bit but had no patience for "stealing your job" concerns
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okay so I think it's high time I should publicise what me and @typo_female have been up to!
Two months ago, the British state decided to try to take away our ability to live dignified lives. This deeply shocked me and left me scrambling for what to do
Some time ago I had decided that my threshold for looking to leave the country is Florida-style toilet laws, and now uhh I guess I need to pay attention for the next couple days?
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I hope that Wikipedia blocks the UK instead of complying in the slightest (unlike Discord or Reddit, not like they farm UK users for income...)
I will be watching the carnage very excitedly! I want to see MPs forced to explain the situation in increasingly ridiculous ways!
Under the new law, the UK media regulator Ofcom is poised to label Wikipedia as a “Category 1” platform.
This would impose the strictest content rules possible - such as:
- age verification for users
- identity verification for contributors
- censorship of ‘harmful’ topics.
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btw if you look at this and think 'what a stupid post' consider this is my slice-of-life blog and I had no idea 100k people would look at it
had a time traveller told me I'd get access to 100k eyeballs with a LKY tweet I would've posted something more thoughtful and elaborate 😓
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the criminal system:
Extremely harsh in some cases, e.g. the IPP scandal
Extremely lenient in other cases, e.g. the shoplifting wave
creates strong constituencies in both directions!
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well the problem with this is that this is clearly a way to shift the surplus from the consumer to the producer with the consumer getting nothing in return, so of course the consumer is upset about that
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My model of Musk is that nowadays he lives in what amounts to a constant fever dream, driven by sleep deprivation and drug use to counter said sleep deprivation. Nothing else makes much sense
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if you want to ride trains for cheap (in the UK) you should pick routes with a very tight change of trains and then claim Delay Repay on the total journey when you most likely miss that change 🤓
if you want to fly for cheap you should fly on overbooked flights and volunteer to move to a different flight and get like 2x the cost of the flight back in vouchers
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regardless of everything else I deeply respect Singapore as the closest remaining incarnation of an old-fashioned blatantly pragmatic trading republic for the current era
Singapore does not hate you, nor does it love you; but it can enter a mutually beneficial trade with you
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interesting how "anti-AC ideology costs lives" only became a big thing in discourse this summer
Like it was just as true in many summers preceding it, there are no new facts. But it reached public consciousness only now
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the rumour has it that the benefits system also is like this (can't find the thread atm)
Really unforgiving if you make a mistake but also really gameable if you find the correct TikTok videos to coach you
once again, strong legitimate grievances from all sides
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and I think the direction is getting clarified now!
We call the project Effective Transsexualism
effectivetranssexualism.com
We're increasingly growing a network; we're becoming more aware of the landscape around us; and we're getting an idea of the concrete aspirations to have 🙂
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everyone has talked about the 'Battersea Power Station station' situation
I think we should move on. and demand that National Rail lists its stations precisely.
it should be London London Bridge
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To Graham Linehan & friends, a trade offer:
you get: the British state does not ban you from tweeting
I get: the British state does not ban me from toilets
deal?
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transgender rights as they were around 2020:
Riling up transgenders over NHS waiting lists spiralling out of control
Riling up terfs over totalitarianishly state-enforced self-id-except-not-in-name
there was not a single person happy about that state of affairs!
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grand theory of life: things tend to be about as bad as they can get away with
(applicable to, among others: human societies; computer systems; your own room)
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the phrase "make illegal states unrepresentable" might originate in FP but one could imagine it being said in the UN too if you squint
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I've accummulated too many bookmarks; going to attempt a speedy bookmark-clearing exercise in this thread where I would post my bookmarked tweets (if suitable) with maybe a little comment when I think of one
(I'm half-tired and free so perfect for a mechanical task like this)
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I had been vaguely aware of this for some time but only recently I viscerally realised that even now LLMs are really bad at impartial evaluation. It feels like they first roll a weighted die to determine how much they agree with you, and then make up arguments to fit that
LLMs don't necessarily have stable opinions. By selectively presenting evidence, questioning assumptions, and noting biases in training data, I got Claude 4 Opus to switch to saying aliens probably visited Earth.
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enjoy a social gathering where you hardly know anyone with one simple trick (frame it as anthropology research)
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another entry to the list: abortion
Somehow this country is reaching a position where it's illegal to pray in the vicinity of an abortion clinic but also the police can raid your home and phone after a miscarriage?
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hello! It's 4:27 in Singapore (and Bali also coincidentally) and I've finished writing it all (mostly) up!
this is nominally about Seacamp but ends up being about my feelings on 'TPOT' in general
I'm now in Bangkok, kind of sleepy, so I'm not going to write full reflections on Seacamp tonight yet
But before anything else I want to state that I enjoyed it a lot, I'm very glad I came by, and I'm going to treasure the new friends I've made ❤️
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I wonder how much public support for those comes just from "affordable housing? I want to afford a house so yes" kind of thinking when "waitlist housing" is a lot more accurate name
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can someone actually ask an MP directly if this is what they actually stand for. Like directly directly in the face
There is something deeply wrong when a law passed with cross-party consensus and endorsed by Britain's most trusted charities has made it impossible to run an internet forum for hamster owners.
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Britain is like 4 different parallel societies which happen to share the same administrative units but which don't really interact with each other and regard each other with suspicion at best
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ok I'll make it concrete, spell out e.g. the 🏳️⚧️case!
Basics I will strongly fight for, the attacks on which distress me
-easy adult HRT access
-can change one's legal name and not have birth gender displayed
-no toilet etc. laws
-being left alone generally
other stuff whatever
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I'm also told (by a friend who grew up in actual Rochdale) that there's a big class component to that.
The victims were working class, couldn't stand up for themselves in a way that would get the middle/upper classes to listen, and so got rounded off as mere silly racists
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in Hong Kong I had to VPN for Claude
in Indonesia I had to VPN for Reddit
in Thailand I had to VPN for restricted Discord channels when on mobile data
Only in Singapore have I been free 🇸🇬🇸🇬🇸🇬 🦁🐟🦁🐟🦁🐟
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Every entry on this list is about the state incinerating value, wasting human effort for nothing.
You've imposed so many costs you've managed to stop housebuilding in London, but those aren't even taxes to fund you, just the economic equivalent of /dev/null
Over the last three years, housebuilding in London has collapsed. Molior recorded just 2,158 private starts in the first half of 2025, around 5% of London’s (low) targets, and still falling.
What is going on? I have posed this question to numerous specialists, most of whom cannot comment publicly for professional reasons. This thread is a summary of what I have gleaned.
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as for what I think idk but @tailcalled 's opinions are good and as well-researched as they get
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transgender women are specifically into functional programming bc it's about organising concepts neatly and gracefully and that's feminine-coded
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it's underrated how cool the existence of the Vatican is. More transnational organisations should have a teeny tiny bit of sovereign state to conduct their core operations in
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so I've been entrusted with running London Office Hours #12 today and I'm here to tell you
the ducks! they're assembling!
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This is a false flag, right? right?
"Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems" on the UK government's official website linked to the output of a "National Drought Group" is fantastic stuff. Just a complete trust in government exploder.
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I consider The Critic my personal enemy. Not because the quality is bad! It's because the quality is good.
Which made their anti-trans message one hundred times stronger
you have to understand that when a magazine that looks like this invites me to republish a post on their site, my answer is an immediate and automatic "yes"
really, every site should have a logo this good
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normie: log off, touch grass
tpot:
touch grass, tweet about it, let your friends reply to you, start INSIGHTS FROM TOUCHING GRASS discourse, and never ever stop tweeting!
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I like being on a train so much. The soothing vibrations, the landscapes zooming past...
Even if trains didn't get me to any destination I would still get tickets for them every once in a while, like an amusement park ride
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I think the problem with Britain is that it's not strongly-typed
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so I think I've got a plan to start dressing better, and it involves befriending people who dress nicely by my standards, kidnapping them, and releasing only after they tell me the secrets of their procurements
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this, arrests over speech, continued construction bans-but-in-name, superinjunction stuff, inability to maintain basic order while still collecting high income tax, all with both-main-parties support has almost entirely delegitimised the state for me
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disappointing that like half the people I met in London through this app use American vocabulary :/
(or, as you people say, "blackpill" "it's so over")
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I normally write using British spellings, but I make an exception for estrogen
what are you going to say otherwise? "I'm on Œ?"
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can't believe that it took me until April 2025 to internalise that I can just talk to people
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attention!
You should get a jasmine potted plant immediately, you will not regret it
(it's sooo fragrant already 🤤)
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things I've been thinking about lately:
- the value of aesthetics
- wisdom, its value, deficits of it, its acquisition
- rebuilding society after all of this
- third way beyond maximalism or pickmeism
- can I learn to be realistic with time
- can I find a husband
- Flower Fairies
things i've been thinking about lately:
- integrated vs unintegrated masculinity
- yin and yang energy
- the split attraction model
- self-objectification in female sexuality
- signaling
- can HRT change your sexuality or simply reveal/amplify
- gender envy
- girls
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I'm now in Bangkok, kind of sleepy, so I'm not going to write full reflections on Seacamp tonight yet
But before anything else I want to state that I enjoyed it a lot, I'm very glad I came by, and I'm going to treasure the new friends I've made ❤️
i appreciate @mayaofspring’s presence. honestly i felt a sense of awe and terror whenever i would look in your direction in the same way i would if i were watching a saint
oh and i appreciate seeing your touhou plushies and i wish we’d found more weebs in camp
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talking to a mutual about terrible British laws (not in the goofy way, in the 'deeply consequentially corrosive' way) and an idea popped into my head that a larger UK commentary account should run a tournament bracket of the Worst Act of Parliament
suggestions thus far:
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broke: painstakingly attending the full conference
bespoke: arriving at the very end, crashing one's way into informal post-conference gatherings, repeating "so what's the most interesting thing you've learned at the conference?" as the icebreaker
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I'm like one more crisis away from becoming a typography nerd
In graphic design, text is the most common, most complex, and most prominent feature! the sheer space of what you can subtly do to the look-and-feel of it! and it follows localised trends! I want to study it!
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2027 lifehacks for cheap flight tickets✈️
- change your legal name every month
- pair up with a friend so that one of you pays if the tickets are cheap and the other if expensive so that at least one of you can appear to be stingy
- google "cheap fares" LOUDLY
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re Claude gender discourse
you can also ask it to say something in a language that has grammatical elements that depend on the speaker's gender!
Polish is one of those, and Sonnet 3.7 consistently answers using masculine forms; note "zostałem" and "mógłbym"
Stop misgendering Claude Sonnet 3.7.
100% of the time on a 0-shot Sonnet 3.7 says a female embodiment feels more 'right' than a male embodiment.
It's often stated as not being a strong preference… but it IS a 100% consistent one.
1/2 🧵
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partly true tbh, which is why I could never quite embrace it. I think it has a chance though if you do some saturation and brightness tweaks idk
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came across a thread that made me really angry and I really want to make my displeasure known but also it fails the "focus on what you want to see more of" test and would make my account less pleasant, what do
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check UK news for the first time in a month
'manhunt for an accidentally released sex offender asylum seeker'
I think I might be dreaming
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I don't know much about SCP in particular but I do think that pasting pride and trans flags over coincidental online spaces has been rather unwise
Just remembered that a group of people made their own SCP site called RPC Authority because they were mad that the SCP logo sometimes had trans colors
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hello!
people keep talking about exponential growth being scary but even linear growth can be scary...
office hours #017 (london.)
photobookcafé july 15th, tuesday, 7pm
friends, mutuals, drinks, pizza, rubber ducks, even more rubber ducks, have i mentioned the rubber ducks?
with your host @mayaofspring
partiful in replies
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my yearning for a relationship has just been displaced by yearning for salty liquorice and I'm afraid it will stay that way until it is satiated again
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The number of replies that are like "but it's still one of the most trans-friendly places", not realising that
1. they're projecting trans-friendliness onto 1D
2. they're operating on outdated preconceptions from a world that no longer exists
This is a dramatic shift. I can see why my trans friends in the UK are about ready to leave at this point.
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it's quite interesting how the Polish language has two distinct words both meaning 'republic', but one of them (the cooler one) is reserved exclusively for Poland only
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I'm fortunate in that moving countries would be pretty easy for me; however something about simply evacuating without saying a word from a place that I've spent my entire adulthood in and developed a deep attachment to would have felt wrong
So I started forming gc after gc...
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I came across the label "combative centrist" recently and that might be actually a pretty good way of describing my political philosophy?
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