Gavin Chait;
@gavin
I am a data scientist, researcher, engineer, sometime-traveler, and African SFF author. I am fascinated by the frontiers of human progress: innovation vs ignorance; wealth vs poverty, migration vs stasis. I also drink a great deal of coffee.
Nothing shrieks 'hope' more than re-appointing a home office cabinet minister intent on brutalising immigrants, refugees, and minorities.
Not now venomous-snakes-escaping-breeding-farms-during-flooding, we have other things to worry about.
I've chatted with Sting and he's agreed that now that he's decided he's a social scientist and economist, I can be lead guitarist in his band.
Saw this advert on the Tube and I see gender-affirming care for "tired" cis men is just fine. But the alternate requires the hypocritic oath.
There's this amazing technology called high-voltage transmission. DC current max effective distance: 7,000km. AC max is about 4,000km. Distance from somewhere like Almera in Spain to the middle of the Sahara is about 500km. It's not a technical problem.
This is why I have no respect for The Guardian. Can you imagine the utter carnage if this headline was about Jewish rather than trans rights? If a vulnerable minority is targeted for oppression & government won't protect them, it is not a "debate". It is a human rights legal issue for the courts.
I'm visiting a walkable, livable North American city. Excellent food, lots of culture, parks, trees, boulevards, public transport, accessable... Hell, they even have public hire bikes, & the place is so safe parents are out chatting while their kids play under the trees. Welcome to Mexico City.
Rest well Jane Goodall. You did one hell of a job for humanity and our delicate planet.
You are fucking cowards @theguardian.com You do *not* deliberately introduce doubt for one of the safest anti-inflammatories in the world in the fucking headline! Link for those wanting to see this shame www.theguardian.com/society/2025... One for @ianbetteridge.com to get angry about too.
And this is precisely why The Guardian will never get a cent from me (this and their whole anti-trans crusade). It's not "contentious" assholes. It's fucking anti-science, anti-women lies and hatespeech. Take a fucking stand.
I'm always fascinated by the curious lack of brain cells in people who respond to their absurd fear of immigrants by ... rising up, and becoming immigrants.
My bank emailed me asking for information, but providing no way for me to send it to them. So I tried their help chat in the app. But it's an "AI" which gives me wrong answers only. When I complain, it says "Transferring you to an agent", but doesn't transfer me anywhere.
For the Zapiro fans, and South Africans who have been waiting for Trump to get the Zuma treatment. www.dailymaverick.co.za/cartoon/the-plumbing/
South Africa threw off Apartheid and white-supremacy. Trump and Musk can never forgive this. Cry the beloved country.
The Godwin Betteridge Corollary: the probability that any headline that ends in a question mark that should be answered by the word `yes` is only left in doubt because the privileged proclaimants are too chickenshit to declare that this *is* about Nazis. @mnemonic.bsky.social @ianbetteridge.com
It's genuinely astonishing how Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang - a.k.a. Dr Beetroot - has been reincarnated as US health minister. Trump's America combining the worst of 1980s Apartheid ZA with the worst of 2000s ANC ZA's state capture & incompetence, with no intervening period of service to the people.
South Africa's #Zapiro with the view from the South. www.dailymaverick.co.za/cartoon/unhi...
Ah, yes, we should definitely trust all our important decisions to computers programmed and used by humans.
Between Janan and Jemima, I'm starting to feel the FT is going the way of The Economist with its highly privileged "takes" and "sane-washing" on social inequality and injustice. After 20 years of subscribing, just cancelled my renewal.
Musk's DOGE will soon be introducing this sophisticated tool, used during South Africa's Apartheid era, to ensure scientific racial classification. After all, if White South Africans are to get easy entry to the US, first you need to ensure they really are "White".
Shunning a G20 meeting in ZA over their efforts at post-Apartheid equality is quite the look. Given that US ideas of "majoritarianism" involves its majority "race" vomiting all over its minorities, would he prefer ZA do the same thing? Oh, wait, no, that would be called "white genocide" wouldn't it?
Zapiro with the hot takes from One Day in the AI Money Pool. www.zapiro.com/250130dm
Fifty years after Trump's catastrophic Canadian campaign in the winter of 2025, noted French cartographer and engineer, Charles Minard, produced the definitive chart revealing the tragic and disastrous losses of the American military advance and retreat.
OK, America, real talk from a South African who's seen this story many times. This is *not* "bending the knee". It's table stakes to buy a spot for the rich & powerful to dip their snouts in the gravy train feeding trough of favourable regulations & cash handouts. This is what corruption looks like.
If there's one thing that smelts South Africa's diversity into nationhood, it is enduring the crucible that is Home Affairs. Feels like an achievement in solidarity & good humour to have emerged successfully with a new passport & my sanity intact.
Hey, @ianbetteridge.com ... one for you? Does this finally break the rule?