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Pranksters across Essex have conjured up some rather creative April Fools' Day jokes to trick people this morning.

Network Rail has finished replacing glazing panels as part of its major roof refurbishment project at Liverpool Street, bringing lighter and brighter journeys to Britain's busiest station.

Network Rail has finished replacing glazing panels as part of its major roof refurbishment project at Liverpool Street, bringing lighter and brighter journeys to Britain's busiest station.

Lori Greiner, an entrepreneur best known for her appearances on Shark Tank, travels extensively for work. But she will never use the supplied shampoo.

More than 18,000 preventable cancer cases in Britain are currently linked to obesity, making it the second biggest cause behind smoking.

Trump predicted the US will be done with the conflict 'within maybe two weeks, maybe a couple of days longer to do the job. But we want to knock out every single thing they have.'

A Starlink satellite broke apart in orbit after suffering an unexplained "anomaly," apparently due to an "internal energetic source" rather than a collision. "The incident appears to have created some debris, with fragments likely to fall to Earth over the next few weeks," reports Scientific American. From the report: The satellite lost communication at about 560 kilometers above Earth, Starlink said. While the statement from Starlink, which is a subsidiary of Musk's rocket company SpaceX, merely noted that investigations are ongoing, LeoLabs said its radar observations of the event indicated an "internal energetic source" as the likely cause rather than a collision. The incident underscores the potential hazards of the increasingly large numbers of satellites and other spacecraft in low-Earth orbit -- some 10,000 Starlinks are currently in orbit and counting. Starlink's statement said that "the event poses no new risk" to the International Space Station or to the upcoming launch of NASA's Artemis II mission, targeted for April 1.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Welcome to national compulsory jetlag week when everybody is bleary. More people have heart attacks and there are more road accidents.

Police also want to speak to him in connection with a serious assault

Parents are soon to be banned from the road outside the school due to the terrible behaviour reported by local residents

'I feel like a f****** idiot', Oliva said, adding that she should never have believed the 'grovelling apologies' from her footballer ex

As we all know, there are two basic kinds of scientific studies. The first is a ground-breaking paper that changes the way we view the world, and forces us to confront our presuppositions and biases about how we think the world works, and change our perspective. The other tells us what we already know to be true, and makes us feel good. The second kind, of course, is what we'd call "good science".

Or, if you want to skip past this straight to the generator at the bottom.

For example, what if I told you that people who are impressed by hyperbolic corporate jargon are dumber than you or I? It's probably something you already believe is true, but wouldn't you like a scientist to tell you that it's true?

Well, have I got good news for you. If you're tired of hearing about "growth-hacking paradigms" researchers at Cornell found that people who are impressed by semantically empty phrases are also bad at making decisions.

The entire paper is available, if you like charts.

There are a few key highlights worth reading, though. The paper spends a fair bit of time distinguishing between "jargon" and "bullshit". Jargon is domain specific language that is impenetrable to "out-group" individuals, while bullshit may be just as impenetrable, but also is "semantically empty and confusing".

It also has some ideas about why we drift from useful jargon to bullshit. It starts, potentially, as a way to navigate socially difficult situations by blunting our speech: I can't say that I think you're terrible at your job, but I can say you need to actualize the domain more than you currently are. But also, it's largely attempts to fluff ourselves up, whether it's trying to contribute to a meeting when we haven't an idea what we're talking about, or trying to just sound impressive or noble in public messaging. It seems that the backbone of bullshit is the people who didn't do the reading for Literature class but insist on holding forth during the classroom discussion, confident they can bullshit their way through.

Of course, bullshit doesn't thrive unless you have people willing to fall for it. And when it comes to that, it's worth quoting the paper directly:

Bullshit receptivity is linked to a lower analytic thinking, insight, verbal ability, general knowledge, metacognition, and intelligence (Littrell & Fugelsang, 2024; Littrell et al., 2021b; Pennycook et al., 2015; Salvi et al., 2023). It also predicts certain types of poor decision-making and a greater proclivity to both endorse and spread fake news, conspiracy theories, and other epistemically-suspect claims (Čavojová et al., 2019; Iacobucci & De Cicco, 2022; Littrell et al., 2024; Pennycook & Rand, 2020).

The paper cites a study that indicates there's an aspect of education to this. If you take a bunch of undergrads to an art gallery and present them with fluffed up descriptions of artist intent, they're more likely to see the works as profound. But if you do the same thing with people who routinely go to art galleries, the bullshit has little effect on them. It also indicates that our susceptibility to bullshit is highly context dependent, and anyone could potentially fall for bullshit in a domain they don't know enough about.

Wait, I thought this was about talking about a paper that confirms my biases and makes me feel good? I don't want to think about how I could succumb to bullshit. That's terrifying.

The backbone of the paper is the actual methodology, the analyses of their results, and their carefully crafted bullshit phrases used for the study, which are pretty goddamn great. Or terrible, depending on your perspective.

ul { list-style-type: disc; list-style-position: inside; margin-top: 1.5rem; }

• Our goal is to engage our capabilities by focusing our efforts on executing the current transmission of our empowerment, driving an innovative growth- mindset with our change drivers, and coaching energetic frameworks to our resonating focus.
• Our goal is to engage our conversations by focusing our efforts on architecting the current vector of our balanced scorecard.
• Working at the intersection of cross-collateralization and blue-sky thinking, we will actualize a renewed level of cradle-to-grave credentialing and end- state vision in a world defined by architecting to potentiate on a vertical landscape.

There are a few other key things the paper notes. First, unchecked bullshit can turn an environment toxic and drive away competent employees who need to escape it. It also could potentially impact hiring: a bullshit laden workplace may seek out bullshit friendly employees, making the situation worse. What the study does show is that bullshit-receptive employees are more likely to fertilize the field themselves. And there's also the sad truth: bullshit works. If you're looking to fluff yourself up, impress your superiors, and climb the ladder, the careful application of bullshit may get you where you want to go.

And it's that last point that brings us to the real point of this article. If you're here, you're likely not the most bullshit friendly employee. Clearly, you're smarter and make better decisions than that. (This is that good science I was talking about- you're probably more attractive than those people too, though there's no study to that effect yet.)

If you're not using bullshit, you're leaving powerful tools for self-promotion on the table. But it's hard to come up with suitably impressive and semantically vacant phrases. Fear not, we're here to help! Here's a phrase generator for you, that will come up with endless phrases that you can use in meetings and mission statements to sound far more impressive.

Generate class Replacement { constructor(text) { this.tokens = text.split(" "); } } class Rule { constructor() { this.replacements = []; } addReplacement(text) { const opts = text.split("|"); opts.forEach((o) => this.replacements.push(new Replacement(o))); } choose() { return this.replacements[Math.floor(Math.random()*this.replacements.length)]; } } class Grammar { constructor() { this.rules = {}; } setStart(token) { this.start = token; } addRule(token,text) { if (!this.rules[token]) { this.rules[token] = new Rule(); } this.rules[token].addReplacement(text); return this; } addRules(token,sepText) { sepText.split("|").forEach(text => { this.addRule(token, text); }); } generate(token) { if (this.rules[token]) { const nextVal = this.rules[token].choose(); let res = []; nextVal.tokens.forEach(token => { res = res.concat(this.generate(token)); }); return res; } return [token]; } phrase() { return this.generate(this.start); } } class UI { constructor(grammar) { this.button = document.getElementById("generate"); this.content = document.getElementById("generated"); const callback = () => { const text = grammar.phrase(); let joined = text.join(" "); joined = joined.replace(/ ,/g, ","); this.content.innerHTML = joined; } this.button.addEventListener("click", callback); callback(); } } let g = new Grammar(); g .addRule("!mission", "Our goal|Our objective|Our stance|Our culture|Our mission|Our ethos|Our call to arms|Our essence|Our scent") .addRule("!missions", "!mission|!mission and !submission") .addRule("!visions", "vision|perspective|orientation|clear-sight|foresight|over-the-horizon planning|clear-eyed self-assessments") .addRule("!submission", "raison 'd etre|purpose|customer-focused soul|!withs powered !visions") .addRule("!is_that", "is that by|is by|demands that|expands over our") .addRule("!prep", "in|with|onto|into|without") .addRule("!bleeding", "technology|values|timelines|commitment|redundancy|credentialing") .addRule("!withs", "AI|creativity|the ubermensch|prestige|the latest technology|user-enabling|bleeding edge !bleeding|blockchain|NFTs") .addRule("!action", "leveraging|powering|working|engaging|bandwidth-widening|agentifying|vision questing|covering all the bases|solving|absorbing|communing|joining") .addRule("!action", "actioning|emoting|crafting|forging|manifesting|demonstrating|advocating|willing|engaging Nietzschean will-to-powering") .addRule("!action", "pressure testing|getting in the tent|saving|drumming our own beat|enabling|blue-skying") .addRule("!target", "core competencies|synergies|cross-collateralization|blue-sky thinking|best practices|vision|impact|target|low hanging fruit") .addRule("!target", "foundation|ideation|idea generation|lead generation|pull|bank accounts|shareholder-value|new domains|the whales") .addRule("!target_mods", "cradle-to-grave|balanced|cross back|high-value|high-impact|maximalizing|throughput-maxxing|reinvented|collaborational|optimized") .addRule("!target_mods", "withholding|full-ecosystem|cross-functional|network-oriented|cross-paradigm|growth-hacking|disruption|appropriate|gravitational") .addRule("!targets", "!target|!adjective !target|!target_mods !target|!target and !targets") .addRule("!adjective", "open|wide|smart|enabled|agentic|AI-first|AI-forward|fifth-sigma|forward looking|future-proof|optimized|four-quadrant") .addRule("!adjective", "vast|moatified|inverted|AI-enabled|LLM-driven|agent-driven|paradigmatic|pragmatic|blue-sky|open doored|window-oriented|maximizing") .addRule("!adverb", "markedly|vastly|smartly|synergistically|agentically|cooly|vapidly|rapidly|overwhelmingly|abstractly|inherently|value-balancingly") .addRule("!adverb", "disruptively") .addRule("!actions", "!action|!adverb !action") .addRule("!objects", "the world|the economy|the market|society|best practices|the info-sphere|cyberspace|the dating scene|high-value market segments|the eschaton|anime consumers|the poorly hydrated|Warhammer fanatics|executive assistants|stake holders|investor value|the median consumer") .addRule("!objects", "future generations|high quality sandwiches|thought-leaders|visionaries|the reckless ones|Big Brother|paradigms") .addRule("!objects", "the infodome|the terror dome|gorgeous lights|city-pop albums|heart transplants|financial envelope") .addRule("!by_phrase", "By !actions !targets we are !actions !prep !objects") .addRule("!by_phrase", "By !actions !prep !targets we are !actions !objects") .addRule("!by_phrase", "By !actions !prep !targets with !withs we are !actions !objects") .addRule("!miss_phrase", "!missions !is_that !action !prep !targets !adverb !action !target") .addRule("!miss_phrase", "!missions is !action !objects by !actions !targets") .addRule("!with_phrase", "With !withs , we are !actions !objects to !action !targets") .addRule("!with_phrase", "!missions !is_that with !withs we are !actions !objects") .addRule("!are_phrase", "We are !objects !action !targets|We are !actions !prep !objects|We are !withs !prep !targets") .addRule("!phrase", "!by_phrase|!miss_phrase|!with_phrase|!are_phrase") g.setStart("!phrase"); let ui = new UI(g);

Now, admittedly, this generator may use a grammar for generating phrases, but it's not an English grammar, and the result is that sometimes it has problems with verb agreement and other prosaic English rules. I say, lean into it. Let someone challenge your bad grammar, and then look down your nose at them, and say: "I'm blue-skying the infosphere across new domains, you wouldn't get it."

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The John Lewis spring collection is brimming with polished, sophisticated pieces spanning dresses, tailoring and accessories.

Royal author Hugo Vickers shares his tales of dining with the late Queen in this week's Palace Confidential newsletter and YouTube show.

The 1969 landing took place just 12 years after the Soviet satellite Sputnik I became the first craft launched into low earth orbit.

Mills, 53, was fired by the BBC on the weekend after 27 years with the company - reportedly over 'serious sexual offences' against a boy under the age of 16 between 1997 and 2000.

In July 2018, the DJ was reportedly questioned over allegations of historic 'serious sexual offences against a teenage boy'.

Sara Cox has said she is no longer afraid to 'crumple a man's fragile ego' as she replaces sacked DJ Scott Mills on the BBC's Eurovision coverage.

The Breakfast Show DJ was axed on Monday after claims he had been questioned in 2018 by Scotland Yard over alleged serious sexual offences against a boy under the age of 16.

Springsteen, long an outspoken liberal, sounded off on Trump as he took the stage at Target Center to launch his Land of Hope and Dreams Tour.