Kevin F. Quinn
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kevfquinn.bsky.social
Kevin F. Quinn
@kevfquinn.bsky.social
250 followers 550 following 1.3K posts
Mostly harmless. He/him.
vi, spaces, and the Oxford comma.
GenX, born at 325ppm.
Hastings, UK.

ALT avatar: Egyptian goose
ALT banner: four Canadian Geese
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kevfquinn.bsky.social
If only the truncation here were the story.
Snapshot of the linked article with the headline as, "Guardian writers and editors set up group to make Guardian more trans..." (Unfortunately the "..." on the full headline is "phobic", of course)
December 16, 2025 at 12:39 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
Had a peek at his GitHub profile. Elsewhere he has received rather more abrupt responses...

github.com/tshort/Stati...
Snapshot from the linked pull request (which is for a huge amount of code) - the issue wrangler has simply written, "Closing as slop"
November 27, 2025 at 7:51 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
Expanded view of the same chart, skipping the first increase which is so much higher for France, Belgium, and Germany it swamps the rest of the data.
Same chart as before, but with the first column skipped. Shows much more clearly the UK line higher than the others only at the top two income brackets.
November 21, 2025 at 8:50 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
What the article is saying, however, is that the UK line has the *steepest rise* out of the group - ignoring difference in actual tax rates between nations.
UK rise is steepest for the 225% and 250% brackets (only!).
...
Chart plotting, for each nation, what the difference in tax is between each adjacent income bracket as income increases. The UK line is only higher than the others for the top two income brackets, where income is 225% and 250% of the national average.
November 21, 2025 at 8:48 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
The OECD data looks like this across the nations, which shows the UK line (cyan blue with circle points) comfortably in the lower half of the group.

...
Line chart of the OECD data on tax levels for each increasing income bracket. Shows each nation's lines rising, mostly in a similar fashion, with different absolute values separating each nation. UK line is a little below the middle of the set.
November 21, 2025 at 8:46 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
@jburnmurdoch.ft.com if you have a moment, I'm confused by your piece on relative progressiveness of tax systems - is the link to the OECD data on the published article the right link?

I get this, "Labour taxation – tax wedge decompositions":
Snapshot of the linked OECD page https://data-viewer.oecd.org/?chartId=e3c5bb94-5bf1-4807-8b94-e82b6fef5324
November 21, 2025 at 11:23 AM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
Maybe he's a retro 1980's home micro geek. More Electrons!
An Acorn Electron 8-bit home microcomputer
November 19, 2025 at 6:40 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
Heh. I see the 9th edition is available for the oh so accessible price of £1,307.90 ($1,720) on Amazon, and for *rent* at £67 for 6 months on McGraw Hill.

Table of Contents listed here for anyone interested.
www.mheducation.com/highered/pro...
Snapshot of the listing for the book on Amazon, £1,307.90 for the hardback edition.
November 2, 2025 at 9:06 AM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
Interesting aside from there - they expect public's use of LLMs to increase the number of consultation responses.

Sounds bad - of course disingenuous people will try to brigade public consultations with LLM-generated responses. Others will just submit a lazy response without checking.
Quoted from the government explanation of their Consult AI tool, with emphasis on the last phrase, "and widespread adoption...": "It would take 75,000 days to analyse all central government consultations in-house, costing £20m per year. Public consultations are a critical part of the process of making laws, but analysing consultation responses is complex and very time consuming. The government runs around 600 consultations a year on matters of importance to the public. Some are very small, but a large consultation might attract hundreds of thousands of written responses, and widespread adoption of Large Language Models will likely only increase the number of responses that consultations attract"
October 24, 2025 at 8:26 AM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
The debug handle thing shows http verification ok, but DNS failing.
Snapshot of the Bluesky handle debug service; shows "DNS LOOKUP FAILED: NO RECORDS FOUND" against DNS query verification method. Also shows the HTTP verification method is ok.
September 27, 2025 at 9:08 AM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
Image in quote post with alt text
Boris Johnson @BorisJohnson X.com The murder of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy, and a sign of the utter desperation and cowardice of those who could not defeat him in argument. Charlie Kirk has been killed not for espousing extremist views - because he didn't. He has been killed for saying things that used to be simple common sense. He has been killed because he had the courage to stand up publicly for reasonable opinions held by millions and millions of ordinary people both in the US and Britain. The world has a shining new martyr to free speech Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and loved ones. 22:16 . 10/09/2025 . 2.6M Views
September 12, 2025 at 6:39 AM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
"Adult Content" per bsky mods.
🤷
Snapshot of Vajra's post with the "Adult Content" un-hidden, to reveal a cropped version of Raja Ravi Varma's 1890 painting "Judith".
August 31, 2025 at 4:45 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
I see there's a White Knobs Park at the end of the road.
Google maps image of Valley Sports Ground (White Knobs Park), in Caterham. White Knobs Way leads away from it at the top of the map.
August 15, 2025 at 3:30 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
We'll have to watch this. Can easily see a lot of YouTube content being marked adult-only because of the embedded VPN ads.

Social media providers may over-conply to manage litigation risk; so I could see any post here mentioning VPNs being put behind the age-verification wall.
"Virtual Private Networks While Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are legal in the UK, according to this law platforms have a clear responsibility to prevent children from bypassing safety protections. This includes blocking content that promotes VPNs or other workarounds specifically aimed at young users. This means that where platforms deliberately target UK children and promote VPN use, they could face enforcement action, including significant financial penalties"
August 2, 2025 at 6:50 AM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
Bodiam Castle, East Sussex 🤠
@nationaltrust.org.uk

Also featuring a duck 😁
The archetypal castle at Bodiam, gloriously reflected in its broad moat on a clear still day, photo taken by me. Approximately the same shot as in the postcard in the quoted post. There's one solitary duck floating towards me. The postcard in the quoted post shows much more green and not such a bright clear day; taken from slightly further back it has foreground trees at the edges of the image, and the moat has a lot of leaves or similar on the surface.
July 30, 2025 at 7:12 AM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
Seeing more of this recently. Cloudflare blocks me from some sites in a similar fashion.

I suspect it's the filters I use in the browser to (probably somewhat ineffectively) reduce the amount of ad-tech personal reaming that's endemic on today's internet.
Snaphot from New York Times blocking me because they "suspect that you're a robot". They list three possibilities; that I'm clicking inhumanly fast (no), that JavaScript isn't working for them, or there's a bot on the same IP as me (no). So likely the JavaScript thing (that may also cover cookie behaviour and other stuff).
June 23, 2025 at 11:58 AM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
One having a rest in mine yesterday. Yes, grass needs a bit of a mow. Couldn't do that while the fox was there, though, could I? 🤠
Fox looking around, head poking out above the long green grass, trees and stuff behind.
June 7, 2025 at 1:06 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
🥰 Hastings parkrun at St Leonards on Sea 🥰

maps.app.goo.gl/7tpP3KDXnAaZ...
Snapshot of Google Maps. Top half is a view of the Parkrun signs, beach and sea behind, taken by the Coastal Surveyor. Bottom half is the map, labelled "Hastings Parkrun, 4 years ago".
June 5, 2025 at 10:10 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
It was rather misty on Hastings seafront yesterday, took this snap of the boat sculpture on the beach.
Misty scene of the skeleton sculpture of a boat's prow (which also looks like a proud bird looking upwards) on the pebble beach at Hastings. Seafront buildings to the right, and the pier on the horizon line in the distance to the left.
June 1, 2025 at 10:23 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
Latest pic on Google maps
maps.app.goo.gl/M3dbWbY7nZ9p...
Pub on George Street, Hastings - looks like a Tudor building with black wood framing and white plaster infill, and an overhanging first floor and further overhanging second floor/attic/roof.
May 31, 2025 at 5:20 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
🤦 your *other* port side, for crying out loud!
Cargo ship NCL Salten, having run aground with it's bulbous nose on the bow, which is supposed to be below the waterline, digging into the shoreline mere metres from the beautiful coastline house of an unfortunate Norwegian.
May 23, 2025 at 9:07 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
Although, to be fair it seems if you serve "filet mignon", such a paltry plate is the norm - if this image from Wikipedia is anything to go by.

At least on this image the meat isn't incinerated as it is on that served to the crypto-bros.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filet_m...
A small lump of meat alongside three cherry tomatoes on the vine, a few sprigs of small salad leaves, and the bottom half of a whole garlic bulb - all one corner of a plate (most of which is out of frame).
May 23, 2025 at 8:15 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
Lives saved thanks to vaccines per year via Our World In Data, research by Shattock et. al. (2024).

"Anti-vax", in the end, means killing upwards of 150 million people per year.

ourworldindata.org/measles-vacc...
Bar chart of the cumulative global number of lives saved by childhood vaccinations from 1974 to 2024, from Our World in Data. Measles 93.71 million. Tetanus 27.95 million. Whooping cough (Pertussis) 13.17 million. Tuberculosis 10.87 million. Haemophilus influenzae type B 2.85 million. Streptococcus pneumoniae 1.63 million. Polio 1.57 million. Yellow fever 554 thousand. Hepatitis B 464 thousand. Rotavirus 396 thousand. Diphtheria 357 thousand. Rubella 286 thousand. Japanese encephalitis 29 thousand. Neisseria meningitidis A 2 thousand. Data source: Shattock et al. (2024), "Contribution of vaccination to improved survival and health: modelling 50 years of the Expanded Programme on Immunization."
May 23, 2025 at 6:09 AM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
Just finished this today, "a closed and common orbit" by Becky Chambers, and loved it.

Lots of allegorical sci-fi AI* and aliens. Published 2016, elements particularly relevant right now.

* not remotely the current LLM nonsense, to be clear
Cover of the book. A night sky-scape, like a timelapse of stars as streaks across the sky, with a foreground shillouette from behind two people, on the ground, looking up at the sky.
April 27, 2025 at 1:27 PM
kevfquinn.bsky.social
Three types.
Glasses stored upside down dont accumulate dust on the inside.
Same with mugs (not shown) 🤓
Kitchen cupboard, two rows is miscellaneous drinking glasses, all upside down, bottoms row is mixed stuff.
April 25, 2025 at 12:33 PM