Just when you think British politics can’t sink any lower, the Home Office–

But I need to interrupt myself here. Don’t let the cuddly-sounding name fool you. You know, the home part of Home Office. This is not someplace you go to de-stress and enjoy some soft cushions and a nice cup of tea. It’s home to some of the meanest spirits in a mean-spirited government. 

Are you with me now? I’ll pick up almost where I left off.

–the Home Office noticed that a couple of immigrant detention centers had painted cartoon figures on the walls, so it gave orders for them to be painted over. The initial explanation was that they were “too welcoming,” but when that didn’t play well the second explanation was that they weren’t age appropriate. 

Obi Wan waved his hand and told us all we’d never heard the first explanation. But since Obi Wan’s a fictional character and the government, sadly, exists in the nonfictional universe, some of us have kept the original alive in our memories. We’re aware that Robert Jenrick, the minister for immigration, said it had to be clear that the center was a “law enforcement environment” and “not a welcome centre.” 

Being the minister for immigration is awkward in a government that’s against it, all of it, but the wording, I’ve been told, was inherited from a time when ministries that had been of something–education or health or whatever–became, even when they’re against it, for it.

So what ages weren’t the murals appropriate for? Teenagers, but one of the centers has a family section for parents with babies and toddlers, and unaccompanied children as young as nine are known to have crossed the Channel in small boats. So we can leave that explanation for Obi Wan to deal with.

Those small boats are something the government’s hoping to leverage into an election victory–or at least something short of a crushing defeat. Immigrants risk their lives crossing the Channel in them illegally, since the legal avenues for asylum seekers have been all but closed. 

 

The response

But let’s not get into that. I’ll lose whatever’s left of (or possibly for) my sense for (or was the of?) humor. Let’s talk instead about the response: cartoonist Guy Venables said he had a “huge list of highly regarded cartoonists” who’d offered to repaint the mural. 

What happens if they repaint and Jenrick orders them painted over again?

“We will be cartoonists for a lot longer than Robert Jenrick will be in mainstream politics. So we’ll paint it back on. If they paint it over, we’ll carry on. It’s all you can do about this kind of evil.”

You won’t be surprised to learn that the detention center turned down the offer to repaint the murals–I mean, come on, their boss had just ordered their destruction–so the cartoonists have created a coloring book instead. Its themes are Welcome to Britain and Life in Britain. They’ll be given free to kids in detention and, possibly, sold as a fundraiser. 

 

Other ways to be unwelcoming 

It’s not just humans who aren’t being welcomed. Birds have bee faced with spikes to keep them off statues and buildings. And why wouldn’t humans want make them feel unwelcome? Have you ever seen a bird who filled out the paperwork necessary to move its feathery ass from one country to another? No, of course you haven’t. Scofflaws, every one of ‘em.

Okay, I can’t blame this one on the Home Office, although I’d be happy to. This one’s the fault of the Department for Pigeon Spikes.

Anyway, birds have started not just pulling up strips of metal spikes but making nests out of them. Some have even used the spikes the way their human creators had in mind, facing them outward to keep predators away. 

They’ve also been found to make nests out of barbed wire and knitting needles. The trick is to line the inside of the nest with soft material to protect the chicks. It’s easier than wrapping the chicks in padded vests. Anyone who’s ever tried to keep socks on an infant will understand why.

 

The science news

Scientists have found a way to make energy out of thin air using humidity and pretty much any material that can be punched full of ridiculously small holes. So far, they’ve only made a fraction of a volt, but they’re hoping to bump up the output. And I can’t think of a thing to say about this that’s even remotely amusing but now that our world’s on fire I thought it might be worth mentioning.

*

The news is full of stories about artificial intelligence, just as humans are full of what passes for intelligence but given the state of the world might not be. Two stories caught my eye. One was about how to spot online reviews that have been written by AI in order to puff up whatever’s for sale–or if the AI was set loose by a competitor, to tear it down.

What should you look for? Overly perfect sentences. Long sentences. American English. (That makes me a suspect.) Good spelling. Grammatical accuracy. In other words, if anyone writes well, that should set off all the red flags. Or at least if any American does–

More usefully, they warn us to beware of long reviews–the ones that go on for paragraph after paragraph after paragraph, because artificial intelligence doesn’t get bored. And, what with not being human and all, it never has the experience of people edging away when it talks nonstop for half an hour, so it never learns when to shut up.

To be fair, I know people who’ve never learned that either.

But AI is, apparently, adapting. It’s learning British English for British reviews. It may start throwing in a human error or two. 

In the spirit of nothing-is-ever-simple, though, a different article (in the same newspaper) notes that the computer programs that have been introduced to spot AI-written job applications and essays are biased against people who speak English as a second language: Seven of them flagged their writing as being AI generated. One program flagged 98% of it as AI generated but passed 90% of the essays written by native-speaking American 8th graders. 

Why does that happen? Something like ChatGPT is trained to guess what word comes next, so it spits out what’s called low-perplexity text: text using familiar words and common patterns. Throw in something surprising and your writing sounds less GPTish. The problem for non-native speakers is that they’re likely to use predictable words. 

All this comes from a group of scientists, who then went back to their AI programs and asked them to rewrite their essays using more complex language. Those were submitted to the detection programs and were accepted as human-generated. 

Does that mean non-native speakers would be well advised to use artificial intelligence if the want their writing to be accepted as human-generated? Possibly. 

Education is arguable the most important market for AI-detection software, the researchers (or the artificial intelligence that by then had locked them in the cupboard) said. “Non-native students bear more risks of false accusations of cheating, which can be detrimental to a student’s academic career and psychological wellbeing.”

 

A note on book recommendations

I don’t know if you’re aware of what pesky creatures writers are, but we’ll do just about anything to publicize our books, and in an effort to make mine more visible I’ve put up a page of book recommendations at Shepherd.com, which in spite of encouraging me to obnoxiously publicize my page seems like a good website, full of book recommendations that are organized around whatever themes contributors choose. So it’s useful not just for writers but also for readers.

The best publicity is when you can actually offer people something useful. 

The books I’ve recommended are LGBTQ+ books you haven’t heard of and should, but I’d recommend them regardless of whether you’re gay, straight, or something else entirely. A good book can speak powerfully to the community it grew out of, but it doesn’t have to stay within those borders. The ones I’ve recommended can speak to anyone who’s willing to listen.